What does your company do?

Live XYZ co-founder and CEO Jason Greenwald: Live XYZ is the first neighborhood map and storefront directory where every business is visible, indexed, and mapped to the front door. Cities are in critical need of accurate local data to support economic recovery and future growth. Live XYZ provides organizations across NYC with maps, data, and reporting tools to promote local businesses, track the economic health of our neighborhoods, and connect businesses to the resources and support systems that will help them thrive. 

A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?

JG: We get to build technology for the greatest city in the world. 

There are more than 26,000 restaurants in NYC, all findable on your app — not to mention all the other business types you index. It seems almost impossible, but how did you build a tool that lists every single business in the city? 

JG: Our team of mappers love the city and have walked every block in every borough to take pictures, capture information, and organize the world of urban data in a way that has never been done before. Our ground survey is built on our proprietary space-time data architecture and automation systems. Powerful machine learning and signal processing allows us to track events, activity, and updates as those places change over time.

You must gather a lot of insights based on user activity, and of course, many of those trends might have seen drastic changes due to the pandemic. What’s the most important insight you’ve learned?

JG: Every block across the City has been impacted uniquely by the challenges of the pandemic. Making better use of accurate, hyper-local data will help drive policy and recovery efforts. 

What’s an idea or piece of advice you got during the NYC Recovery Challenge program you’re most excited to implement?

JG: We’re really excited to start leveraging Google Cloud to better serve our customers. 

What’s one top growth goal you hope to achieve by the end of 2022?

JG: We have been working on the procurement process to provide our services to NYC agencies since before the pandemic, and we believe 2022 is the year this will happen.  

Okay, three rapid fire questions.  First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?

JG: Sauce Pizzeria in the Lower East Side.

What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting (remember in-person meetings)?

JG: Landmark Coffee Shop & Pancake House in Little Italy.

What’s your favorite remote work or productivity hack?

JG: Start your day with a walk, everyday. You can find me and my wife on the Brooklyn Promenade every morning.