Showing posts with label nyc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nyc. Show all posts

Thursday, July 16, 2026

Five NYC Tech Startups With Solara Potential

Here’s a list of five (plus a bonus) NYC-based tech startups with plausible paths to trillion-dollar potential. These are ambitious picks—trillion-dollar outcomes are rare and require massive market disruption, network effects, defensibility (e.g., data moats, tech leadership, regulation), and execution at scale. NYC’s strengths in finance, media, healthcare, and talent give these companies tailwinds.

I focused on companies headquartered in NYC (or with primary operations there) that are still in growth/scale-up phases, drawing from recent ecosystem data on funding, AI/fintech/healthtech momentum, and market opportunities. Valuations and details are approximate based on public info as of mid-2026.

1. Ramp (Fintech – Corporate Spend Management)

  • Case: Ramp offers corporate cards, expense automation, and accounts payable tools with built-in savings (e.g., bill pay, rewards). It’s eating into legacy players like American Express, SAP Concur, and manual processes. Fintech has already produced multi-hundred-billion companies (e.g., Stripe, Adyen). Ramp’s model combines payments, data analytics, and AI-driven insights. If it expands globally, captures more of the massive B2B spend market (~trillions annually), and layers on lending/banking services, it could become the default financial OS for businesses. NYC’s finance hub status aids talent and partnerships. High growth and strong unit economics position it for hyperscale.

2. ElevenLabs (AI – Voice/Speech Synthesis and Agents)

  • Case: ElevenLabs leads in high-quality, natural AI voice generation, cloning, and real-time agents for audio, media, dubbing, customer service, and creative tools. The global audio/content market (podcasts, video, games, localization, enterprise voice) is enormous and exploding with generative AI. As voice becomes a primary interface (beyond text/chat), a leader with superior models, low latency, and enterprise integrations could dominate like Nvidia in chips or OpenAI in text. NYC media/finance ecosystem is perfect for applications in advertising, news, and trading. With rapid iteration and research investment, it has a shot at becoming an AI infrastructure giant.

3. Runway (AI – Generative Video and World Models)

  • Case: Runway builds cutting-edge text-to-video, image, and generative tools for creators, filmmakers, and enterprises, pushing toward general world simulation models. Video generation is one of the highest-value AI frontiers (Hollywood, social media, advertising, training data, simulations). Success here could mirror or exceed Adobe’s dominance but in a generative era, with potential for platform lock-in via APIs, models, and creative suites. NYC’s creative/media industry provides ideal testing ground and talent. If Runway achieves leading multimodal capabilities and scales to consumer/enterprise, the addressable market (entertainment + productivity) supports trillion-scale outcomes.

4. Headway (Healthtech – Mental Health Access Platform)

  • Case: Headway simplifies insurance acceptance for therapists/psychiatrists and connects patients, addressing massive gaps in mental healthcare access and administration. Mental health is a multi-trillion-dollar societal/economic issue (depression, anxiety, workforce impact), with telehealth and AI augmentation as accelerators. A dominant platform could expand into full integrated care, primary care adjacency, employer benefits, and AI tools (notes, matching, outcomes tracking). U.S. healthcare digitization is still early; network effects (providers + patients + payers) could create a defensible moat akin to a vertical Epic Systems or better. NYC’s diverse population and talent pool support scaling.

5. Kalshi (Fintech – Regulated Prediction Markets)

  • Case: Kalshi operates a CFTC-regulated prediction market for real-world events (elections, economics, sports, weather, etc.). If prediction markets go mainstream as information aggregators, hedging tools, and data sources (potentially integrating with finance, insurance, and AI training), the TAM is vast—rivaling or complementing traditional betting, derivatives, and analytics markets. Regulatory approval gives it an edge; scaling liquidity and user base could lead to data monopoly advantages. NYC’s finance ecosystem is ideal. In a world of uncertainty and AI-driven decision-making, accurate crowd-sourced probabilities have huge value.

Bonus: Bilt Rewards (Fintech – Housing/Neighborhood Loyalty Platform)

  • Case: Bilt turns rent (and potentially mortgages/home services) into reward-earning spend, building a massive consumer loyalty network tied to the largest household expense. Housing-related spending is enormous; combining it with neighborhood commerce, travel, and payments creates sticky network effects. Expansion into broader consumer finance, real estate tech, or even a “daily life” super-app could mirror or surpass traditional loyalty giants in a rent-heavy economy. Strong NYC real estate ties help.

Caveats: Trillion-dollar status depends on execution, competition, regulation (especially fintech/health/AI), macro conditions, and breakthroughs. Many will be acquired or plateau. These stand out due to large TAMs, strong moats in progress, and alignment with NYC strengths (finance, media, talent). The broader NYC ecosystem (2,000+ AI startups, robust fintech/healthtech) increases the odds of more breakout winners.



Corporate Culture/ Operating System: Greatness
Musk’s Management
CEO Functions
30-30-30-10: A Better Equity Formula For Tech Startups
Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Founder And The Fisherman (novel)
Verbal Martial Arts, Social Concentric Circles, and Non-Reaction
100 Questions That Lead To Understanding
Remote Work Productivity Hacks
Rule Of 100 For Tech Startups
Marketing Escape Velocity: The Path To Unicorn Status And Beyond
Unicorn to Solara: A Journey of Imagination: From Billion-Dollar Startups to Trillion-Dollar Suns
Unicorn to Solara with Purpose: Marketing, Mergers, and Responsible Capitalism
The Columbus Way, The Neil Armstrong Way: From Unicorns to Solaras: Building Trillion-Dollar Companies That Transform Humanity
1,000 Solaras In 10 Years
Liquid Computing: The Future of Human-Tech Symbiosis
Beyond Motion: How Robots Will Redefine The Art Of Movement
LUMINA AI: The Trillion-Dollar Sun
Himalayan Compute: Grand Solara Vision

Photo Album: NYC July 2026

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Thursday, December 18, 2025

18: Central Park (Snow)

Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 1) (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 1) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 1) (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 1) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 1) (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 1) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 1) (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 1) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

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Wednesday, November 12, 2025

Facebook Is Offline In West Texas (Short Story)

 


“Facebook Is Offline in West Texas”

A short story by a confused New Yorker

When I first moved from New York City to Midland, Texas, I thought I had accidentally stepped into an old sepia photograph that refused to update. The air was so dry it crackled like vinyl, and the land stretched so far that I started to suspect the horizon was on some kind of performance-enhancing drug. You don’t see distances like that in New York. In the city, you’re lucky if you can see past the next food cart. Here, you could see forever—which, for a New Yorker, is frankly unsettling.

The first culture shock hit before I’d even unpacked: Facebook. Back home, Facebook was practically an Olympic sport—everyone friended everyone, sometimes twice by accident. But in Midland, Facebook was offline. No, seriously—people treated it like a church bulletin that only existed once you’d earned your pew. You don’t send a friend request unless you’ve shared at least two briskets, one sunset, and a secret. People formed groups in person first. They’d barbecue, drink, laugh under the Milky Way (which I thought was a myth invented by Hershey’s), and then—only then—would someone say, “You know, maybe we should make a Facebook group.”

In New York, that would’ve been backwards. We’d start a Facebook group first, then spend the next six months avoiding actually meeting.

The second shock came around 11 PM my first night, when I decided to get a late bite. In Manhattan, 11 PM is basically lunchtime for insomniacs. You can get sushi, Ethiopian, or a lobster roll served out of an old ambulance if you walk three blocks. In Midland, I walked three blocks in every direction, and all I found were locked doors, sleeping tumbleweeds, and one raccoon who looked offended that I was interrupting his shift.

I finally stumbled into a gas station, half delirious, and grabbed a granola bar that looked like it had survived three presidencies. The clerk—kind, quiet, wearing a belt buckle the size of my apartment—said, “Y’all just get in?” I nodded. “Welcome,” he said. “It’s real peaceful here.”

Peaceful. That word hung in the air like a church bell. In New York, peace is something you pay $2,800 a month for and still hear sirens through.

Then there was the hat incident.

In the city, I wore hats. Not cowboy hats, obviously—more like “artsy fedora meets existential dread.” But in Midland, I thought, when in Rome, etc. So I bought a broad-brimmed cowboy hat. It was a good hat—wide enough to throw shade on Wall Street.

Turns out, no one wears hats anymore in Midland. The whole cowboy aesthetic, apparently, had retired sometime around the Bush administration. I walked into a diner, feeling like Clint Eastwood, and everyone looked at me like I’d just time-traveled from a spaghetti western. A waitress even asked, “You in a play, honey?”

I muttered something about "East Coast fashion" and ate my chicken-fried steak in silence, trying to remember if it was possible to resign from one’s hat mid-meal.

Then there’s the driving. Lord, the driving.

In New York, we measure travel in subway stops or emotional trauma. In Midland, distance is measured in hours. I met a guy who said, “Gonna go have coffee with my cousin. She’s about four hours up.” I blinked. “You mean… flight?”

He laughed. “Nah, just a quick drive.”

They think nothing of it. Four hours one way, four hours back. Eight hours total—for coffee. In New York, that’s two state lines, three toll booths, and an existential crisis. Here, it’s a morning errand.

And the roads—straight as truth and just as lonely. You can drive for twenty minutes without seeing another car, just the occasional oil rig bobbing its head like it’s agreeing with something only God said.

The landscape is a whole other story.

The Hudson Valley has its fiery autumns—red, gold, and orange leaves falling like confetti after a Broadway finale. West Texas, though? It’s always Fall here. The grass is permanently yellow, the trees are introverts, and the sunsets could make poets quit their jobs out of humility. The sky doesn’t end; it just forgets to.

At night, you can actually see stars. Stars! In New York, the only stars are Yelp reviews. Here, they spill across the sky like someone shook glitter over a black canvas. The first night I saw them, I nearly called 911. I thought something had exploded.

And then there’s religion.

Back in New York, I knew maybe two people who went to church—and one of them went ironically. In Midland, it’s the opposite. Nine out of ten people go to church, and the tenth one is just late. On Sundays, the whole town moves in slow motion, everyone dressed neatly, smiling at strangers like they’ve all agreed to be extras in a small-town Hallmark movie.

I went once. The pastor asked where I was from. I said, “New York.”
 He paused. “We’ll pray for you.”

So here I am: a New Yorker in West Texas, a man of sidewalks in a land of sky. I’m learning to drive four hours for coffee, to earn my Facebook friends by attending barbecues, and to stop expecting the city to wake up after 9 PM.

Every night, I step outside, hat in hand, look up at the Milky Way, and laugh.

Because in New York, we say the city never sleeps. But out here, the stars never do.






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Thursday, October 30, 2025

30: Zohran Mamdani

The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

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Monday, October 27, 2025

Musk Hearts Mamdani

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Thursday, July 03, 2025

3: Zohran Mamdani

How Extremely Online Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani Learned to Embrace the Cringe The young democratic socialist has been building buzz and raising money from New Yorkers online, but it remains to be seen how that will translate into votes IRL. ........ and Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, who donned a $30 business suit he had bought the day before from one of his constituents’s thrift stores on Steinway Street in Astoria, Queens. .......... “I’m freezing … your rent as the next mayor of New York City,” Mamdani said to the camera. “Let’s plunge into the details,” he continued, before jumping into the 40-degree water and emerging soaking wet to talk about his affordable housing proposal......... The video went on to garner more than 800,000 views across social media platforms. ......... “I think that you’ll find more people heard about my policy on freezing the rent by me jumping into the water than me being at any number of political forums where I’ve said the same thing,” Mamdani told THE CITY in a phone conversation about his social media strategy on Wednesday. .......... Two days later, his campaign released a sincere video of him talking with some of the New Yorkers who gave to his campaign. That clip quickly racked up more than half a million views on Twitter. ........ Part of the reason Mamdani’s been able to appear so comfortable in front of the camera, he said, came from his experience of being a self-described C-list rapper — including attempts to sell CDs on public buses in visits to Kampala, Uganda. ........ (He was born in the African nation to award-winning indie filmmaker Mira Nair and noted scholar of postcolonialism Mahmood Mamdani before they moved to New York City when he was a child. Despite her filmmaking expertise, Nair hasn’t offered her son tips for his campaign videos, he said.) ........ Those moments of “humiliation,” he added, were part of what prepared him for the harsh truths of the campaign trial, especially the early morning attempts on subway platforms to stop people for petition signatures when they’d rather not speak to anyone. ........... “You have to throw yourself out there, you have to put yourself out there, you have to also just crave rejection like water on your back.” ........

Mamdani, for his part, likened campaign content creation to door-knocking.

........ “With low turnout events, any bit of turnout matters a lot,” Sanderson said — especially when New York City’s last two mayoral contests were effectively decided in Democratic primaries where the winner was the first choice of not even 300,000 voters. ........... “I began this race with most New Yorkers not knowing who I am, but if I want to change that reality I have to be everywhere all at once,” he said. “I have sought to fulfill that commitment by physically going to three to four boroughs in a single day and also by ensuring that when New Yorkers open their phone and they’re scrolling through Instagram or Twitter or TikTok, they may also see a video from this campaign.” ....... Mamdani’s isn’t just working with content creators. He’s also becoming one of them. ......... organizing and hunger-striking with taxi workers drowning in debt back in 2021.

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