Companies to Watch: Celebrating Pride with LGBTQ+ Founders

After a few years, Pride was back in full force in 2022 — and infused with a new sense or urgency. Just as Pride Weekend was getting underway in NYC, the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion and signaled other consitutional liberties could be next.

But New York is and will remain a safe haven: Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier this week signed a package of laws that create more financial support for organizations serving transgender and gender non-conforming people and allow candidates for elected office to choose the gender marker “X” on official paperwork, among other measures. NYC is also opening the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center right next door to the historic Stonewall Inn, the first center in the US park system dedicated to LGBTQ+ history.

New York tech companies are also responding swiftly, using the moment to affirm their commitment to gender and sexuality-inclusive reproductive health care, including expense reimbursements for employees who must travel to access abortion or fertility care.

To close out Pride Month, we spoke to a group of LGBTQ+ New York founders about how they’re responding in this moment and continuing to grow their businesses — and, of course, how they’re celebrating Pride.

RUTH HEALTH

What does your company do?
Ruth Health co-founder and CEO Alison Greenberg: Ruth Health is a progressive Care Hub and comprehensive virtual care platform built for women, by women. Our suite of remote patient services includes pelvic training and recovery, lactation Support, C-section recovery, exercises on demand, and upcoming doula services — all of which are performed by certified and experienced providers for pregnant or recently pregnant women. Ruth Health is bringing an outdated, historically inadequate system into the twenty-first century, while empowering the people who are birthing our next generations with empathy, education, and support. Our mission is to make women’s healthcare an accessible, superior quality, and even joyful experience for everyone. 

A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
AG: It was New York or nowhere for me when I moved here nine years ago. There is so much energy, entrepreneurial spirit, and grit here. It was a great place to start my career in the advertising and branding agency world, and it continues to be a great ecosystem, especially for startups and healthtech. Plus, my ancestral roots are in NYC.  

We’re chatting during a dark week in the US, following the reversal of Roe, especially, as you’ve noted, this country has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed nation. Why is it important — especially given you work with pregnancy care — that you lend a voice to those who don’t choose pregnancy?
AG: This is really a horrific moment in the history of women’s health. Overturning Roe will even further increase that maternal mortality rate and put the most marginalized — especially women of color — even more at risk. With our services, we aim to support those who experience pregnancy loss (including miscarriage and abortion) just as much as those on their pregnancy journey. All vagina-owning bodies are capable of storing stress and trauma in the pelvic floor, and our upcoming services include doulas that can help those who opt out of pregnancy. We support all choices our patients make for their own bodies.

Are all of the virtual health tools that took off during the pandemic going to have staying power? What do you hope healthcare in this country looks like in 2030?
AG: Some of the federal telehealth regulations relaxed during the pandemic have already been reconsidered — especially waiving licensure requirements for providers from out of state. But I believe broad adoption of hospital and clinic avoidance for non-essential visits is here to stay. Especially for parents, it can be crucial to consult with clinicians virtually at first, to avoid needing childcare or a day off work. I hope healthcare in 2030 is an intelligent hybrid of remote and in-person, with more effective use of care teams so patients can break out of the outdated exclusively GP/specialist model. 

You raised your seed round just two months ago, but before that, a pre-seed, all within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic? What was it like to seek venture support — for a healthcare company — during a public health crisis?
AG: In some ways, we did benefit from being a remote care company raising during a pandemic. But I think it was especially remarkable to see how raising venture capital became possible for a broader range of founders during the crisis. We could all book dozens of Zoom meetings per week, rather than having to cover expensive travel to a few in-person meetings. It became a more efficient process for many of us. 

What’s one top growth goal you hope to achieve by the end of 2022?
AG: We’re excited to finalize our first major corporate contract with one of the largest payers in the US, and to expand our sales through physicians. We’re targeting a physician referral network of 300+ doctors.

Okay, four rapid fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
AG: As a proud Bronx resident, I have to go with Arthur Avenue. Full Moon Pizza or Tony & Tina’s Pizzeria. 

What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
AG: I love Maman because they have locations all over, whether you’re in Tribeca, Soho, or the Upper East. Consistently great coffee and light lunches. 

What’s your favorite remote work or productivity hack?
AG: Setting task timers. Helps me keep tasks from stretching out over too long — or from overthinking. 

And, lastly, in honor of Pride Month, what’s your favorite local LGBTQ+ establishment, and what’s your favorite way to celebrate Pride?
AG: I’ve got to support Henrietta Hudson as one of so few queer women’s spaces left in New York. But my favorite LGBTQ+ owned spot is Via Carota — so delicious. The Dyke March that kicks off in Bryant Park is an amazing activist institution of NYC Pride every year. 

PICO

What does your company do?
Pico co-founder and CEO Nick Chen: Pico is the business platform for creators. We’re building a collection of tools to help creators engage more deeply with and earn revenue from their biggest fans. With Pico, creators can effectively build their own independent fan club outside the social media platforms’ algorithms, where they can directly text and email their followers and even sell memberships or earn tips.

A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
NC: We primarily served news media companies in the first few years of Pico (before the pandemic), so it made sense for us to be in one of the media capitals of the world. We were also getting started just as the 2016 election wrapped up, so we were able to hire some talented engineers from Hillary Clinton’s tech team in Brooklyn. More broadly, we saw tremendous potential in the growing pool of tech talent here — by nature, NYC has attracted technologists who deviate from the Silicon Valley norm, and as Bay Area kids, my co-founder and I were eager to bring those different perspectives to our team. 

And at the end of the day, on a personal level, I simply fell in love with New York… the diversity of people and experiences, the arts and culture, the food… the excitement of life here gives me the energy I need for my startup!

Not to jump straight to the pandemic, but: A lot of companies, of all sizes, had to adapt to entirely new online solutions to better reach customers in the last two years. Did that create new demand for Pico — or did the pandemic impact your product roadmap at all?
NC: We’ve been in the business for some time now of helping media companies grow their consumer revenue through subscriptions and donations. 2020 certainly accelerated the media industry’s transition to these consumer revenue strategies, and for the most part, we were well prepared for the rapid growth. 

Later in the pandemic, however, we began noticing a new breed of media startups — creators — adopting similar strategies. We found ourselves iterating on our product design and even long-term vision in new and unexpected ways. It’s quite motivating to see the technology we’ve built apply to more and more use cases over time.

How do you help media businesses better identify their audiences? Do Pico’s tools advise, say, a legacy newspaper and a TikTok creator differently?
NC: Pico specializes in helping creators of all types — from news publishers to social media creators — better understand how their biggest fans engage with them on their owned properties. For news publishers, that’s typically their website (to which they’ve added the Pico Plugin), and for social media creators, it’s their PicoLink page. Although the content may vary drastically from creator to creator, all of the audience insights we provide share the same foundation of clicks, views, and demographics to help the creator refine their content and communication strategies.

What’s the engagement tool creators are most bullish on right now? 
NC: Going old school — it’s all about texting and emailing. Instagram and TikTok have been incredible gateways to overnight fame, but creators are increasingly frustrated by these platforms’ algorithms, which dictate how many of their followers actually end up seeing their content (sometimes as few as 10 percent). The only way to solve this is by going back to basics and getting your followers’ contact info, so you have full control over when and how you communicate with them.

What’s one top growth goal you hope to achieve by the end of 2022?
NC: Especially under current market conditions, it’s all about revenue! We’ve built and released so many new tools in beta for creators in the past half year or so, including PicoLink (our bio page builder) and mass texting capabilities to help creators communicate with their followers outside of social media. We’re excited to bring even more capabilities to those tools later this year and to see them graduate out of beta into established lines of revenue for the company.

Okay, four rapid fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
NC: L’industrie in Williamsburg.

What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
NC: Hard to name the best spot for a coffee meeting, but my go-to’s include any of the Devoción locations around the city and the Stumptown in Cobble Hill.

What’s your favorite remote work or productivity hack?
NC: We use Google Workspace at Pico, so most of my productivity hacks revolve around Google services. For example, I’ve added Google Meet to my macOS dock as a Chrome app, allowing me to easily jump on calls and switch between windows while on a call (in effect replicating the Zoom experience). On the email front, I do most of my triage via push notifications. The default Mail app on macOS lets you delete an email from its notification, as does the Gmail app on iPhone. I still use the default Mail app on iOS for reading and composing emails (smoother scrolling, fewer bugs, and more formatting control than in the Gmail app), but I use the Gmail app’s push notifications to quickly delete unimportant emails.

And, lastly, in honor of Pride Month, what’s your favorite local LGBTQ+ establishment, and what’s your favorite way to celebrate Pride?
NC: Love spending an evening at Marie’s Crisis Cafe with kindred musical theater nerds, especially when “One Day More” from Les Misérables comes up at some point in the night. For Pride, it’s hard to beat just hanging out at Washington Square Park after the parade. It’s one of those days of the year when every inch of the park is occupied, and the energy of the crowds is just so infectious.

REBELMOUSE

What does your company do?
RebelMouse founder and CEO Andrea Breanna: RebelMouse powers the fastest websites in the world. We are a cloud based enterprise grade CMS (content management system) that delivers the best Core Web Vitals in the world. We also have a creative agency in the company that does strategy, design, and development work on the platform for our clients. 

A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
AB: I came to New York for undergrad at the Gallatin program in NYU. I had already fallen in love with the incredible diversity and sense of progress that New York brings. I was in the closet as a transgender person back then, but I knew who I was and I knew I wanted to be here, in one of the greatest cities in the world for a queer creative person to find success. 

Before founding RebelMouse, you were the Huffington Post’s CTO. What most surprised or challenged you in shifting into a CEO role, especially as a first-time founder?
AB: I have always been proud of working on things that make me happy. I strongly believe that when your work makes you happy you are as close to heaven as you could be. That’s why being an artist or an athlete is such a dream for so many — but it’s been my dream to be a creative person building technology, and I’ve been very lucky to have that as a huge part of my life and career.

Being CEO is about so much more than just the creative aspect though, and about five years into the company, there was so much pressure I woke up every day with an impending sense of doom. I had hired so quickly and with such ambitious venture capital-driven goals that I let toxic behavior exist in the team. I had a very expensive sales team and ended up hiring some terrible frat bros. I spent a lot of my time apologizing for their behavior, trying to make things good and bring things together. I ended up getting things right by finding an amazing CEO coach, Katia Vereseen, who helped me remember my core values and have the courage to act on those. I feel very lucky I had a chance to turn it around, make the company profitable, clean up the culture so it was actually inclusive, kind, and meaningful. 

I can’t emphasize enough: being a founder is so hard. I am a mentor for TechStars and for NYU’s Entrepreneurial Institute, and I always try to spend time talking with the founders about their own mental health and how to protect themselves. It’s almost always the first time anyone has ever given them this type of advice, in a society that pushed founders into “hustle culture.” That’s a really awful way to live your life. 

RebelMouse is now ten years old (congrats)! What’s changed most about the media landscape in that time? What tools are brands asking for most in 2022 that perhaps weren’t even on their radars a decade ago?
AB: It has been a fascinating ten years on the internet. When we started the company, the media landscape was dominated almost entirely by Facebook. In recent years, we have seen a huge erosion in the trust and confidence in Facebook’s role in the media landscape. Google is the reigning queen of traffic again, and there are so many opportunities to develop real loyalty and a 1:1 relationship with customers and readers through the open web. It is an exciting time for the re-emergence of the open web as society catches up with and stops the invasions of privacy that programmatic and social opened up. 

Our clients are very focused on building traffic from every possible source, and there are so many of them. We love helping them find new audiences and create real loyalty — it’s very rewarding. 

The tight labor market in tech — especially during the pandemic — has pushed a lot of companies to put more resources into DEI efforts to be more attractive to future talent. But it seems LGBTQ+ resources often aren’t a part of those strategies. How can HR/people leads ensure LGBTQ+ workers remain a priority?
AB: I find it very sad, actually, that there is such a huge advantage in recruiting and retention for us because of the subconscious discrimination against women, queer people, people of color and people for whom English is a second language. Our company has an incredible retention rate on the team and we find it fairly easy to find and onboard incredible talent from around the world. 

What’s one top growth goal you hope to achieve by the end of 2022?
AB: The CMS business is a long play — there’s so much technology that has to be built. We are in an amazing place with the best product in the world and a tiny sales and marketing team. We hope to keep our organic growth growing at 50 percent year-over-year with the chance for a rocketship-type outbreak through partnerships with Google and others.

Okay, four rapid fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
AB: I’m vegan, so I really like Two Boots on 5th Avenue in Park Slope, which we live very close to. 

What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
AB: I love to turn these meetings into walks. Because we live in Park Slope, I tend to take people through a walk in Prospect Park after picking up a coffee at Blank Street. When I lived in Tribeca, we would grab a coffee at Laughing Man and walk along the water. 

What’s your favorite remote work or productivity hack?
AB: The most important thing you can do is block out times where you are not working. When you are remote you can have blurred lines that invade your personal life in a way that isn’t healthy for you, your productivity, or the company. We talk about this in every all-hands — the company is not more important than your own life, and you need to protect the habits that keep you healthy. Get your yoga, cardio, or walks in. Pick up and/or drop off your kids at school. Cut the work day off to have dinner and watch a show to refresh your head. Those things make a massive difference, particularly when you work in the creative industries. 

And, lastly, in honor of Pride Month, what’s your favorite local LGBTQ+ establishment, and what’s your favorite way to celebrate Pride?
AB: There is a local bar named Ginger’s that I’ve rarely gone into (my wife and I have four kids, so it’s hard to find time to go to a bar)! But it attracts all the lesbians of Brooklyn and is just around the corner from our house — and I absolutely adore them for it. I feel very lucky to live in this beautiful pocket of progressive people.

REALBLOCKS

What does your company do?
RealBlocks founder and CEO Perrin Quarshie: RealBlocks is a technology platform that connects advisors and investors to the best alternative investment managers. Today many real estate and alternative investment managers are limited to raising capital locally. However with RealBlocks, these managers can now raise capital globally through our platform's connectivity with institutional and intermediary channels. Our firm’s growing client list includes some of the world’s most respected alternative investment managers that are using our technology to increase their AUM.

A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
PQ: Because it’s the best city in the world (wink, wink)!  But seriously, the energy and the economic and cultural diversity of the city make it an attractive place to build a business, and as a fintech company, there’s an incredibly rich talent pool from which to hire from. 

RealBlocks has a more B2B model, which feels unique among similar investment manager services. What does that approach help you accomplish that other providers don’t? 
PQ: The B2B business model helps us operate more profitably and lower customer acquisition costs and obtain better unit economics!  

You raised your Series A right in the middle of the COVID-19 peak in New York. Did the pandemic change your plans for the new funding or your product roadmap?
PQ: Our business had a lot of momentum that was actually bolstered by COVID, and the need just increased for technology to automate investing and reporting processes that were previously undertaken by people. Investors were excited to get involved, and we were excited to have them.  

DEI has never been more important, especially as tech companies try to recruit and retain talent through the current labor market. What more does the tech sector need to do to ensure those strategies are truly LGBTQ+ inclusive?
PQ: I feel like tech companies can frame DEI as “doing well by doing good”. Labor costs are high and companies can mitigate the impact of that by using DEI to foster an inclusive culture that attracts and retains a broader pool of talent — steps that only help control labor costs and positively impacts margins. 

What’s one top growth goal you hope to achieve by the end of 2022?
PQ: I want to add another $70 billion in assets!

Okay, four rapid fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
PQ: I normally shy away from pizza in the summer, but Prince Street Pizza in Soho is my favorite.

What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
PQ: Hm, I’m going to go with the rooftop at Eataly.

What’s your favorite remote work or productivity hack?
PQ: I’ve found it sometimes harder to get the brain running during remote work. To address that, I love starting the day with a workout, even if it’s something as simple as stretching. 

And, lastly, in honor of Pride Month, what’s your favorite local LGBTQ+ establishment, and what’s your favorite way to celebrate Pride?
PQ: The Stonewall Monument and all the happenings at the Brooklyn Mirage.

WE ARE THE NEW FARMERS

What does your company do?
We Are the New Farmers co-founder Jonas Guenther: We Are The New Farmers is an indoor farming company that uses captured carbon to create sustainable food products from microalgae like spirulina. Unlike other spirulina products, our products are locally grown and completely unprocessed. Our bestseller is our fresh frozen spirulina cubes — with just one or two cubes into your blender, you can simply make a smoothie. One cube has the same amount of nutrients as two cups of leafy greens and two cubes have the same protein as a chicken egg. In contrast to the commonly available powders, our spirulina is not dehydrated, resulting in a delicious flavor without the bitterness and with much higher nutrient bioavailability.

A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
JG: New York has it all: an innovative and supportive ecosystem for founders, an interested audience that is not scared of trying new foods, and enough distraction on days I don’t want to think about algae.

So why spirulina? Do you think We Are the New Farmers will expand into other products? Other superfoods, perhaps?
JG: Microalgae such as spirulina are microscopic organisms closely related to kelp and other seaweeds. They are incredibly efficient machines that turn carbon into protein, fatty acids, and other valuable nutrients, making them a promising form of cellular agriculture in the fight against global warming. So a superfood indeed! We are looking into other types of microalgae, but today we are focusing on spirulina.

NYC has seen a real surge in farming startups — indoor, rooftop, hydroponic — over the last several years. Are there unique advantages to farming in dense, urban cities like NYC?
JG: While each of these systems has unique advantages and disadvantages, all of them bring fresh food closer to people. The majority of the food we get on our plates in NYC is shipped across the country, which is bad for the environment and for the nutritional content. There are literal fresh food deserts in parts of the city — places in which you can get a bag of Doritos but not a fresh salad. Urban farms can help to address this problem.

If you could sit down with city or state officials to help guide their food policy goals, what’s the one goal that should be at the top of their priority list?
JG: We are very lucky that Mayor Eric Adams is a big proponent of urban farming and plant-based diets. But the reality is it’s complicated. I think it is important to enact policies that increase the access and affordability of fresh, healthy, and plant-based food in all parts of the city. 

What’s one top growth goal you hope to achieve by the end of 2022?
JG: We are expanding our operations right now and if we can get our second farming location up to full speed, I will be very happy!

Okay, four rapid fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
JG: Crown Heights Pizza.

What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
JG: Industry City.

What’s your favorite remote work or productivity hack?
JG: Not as much of a hack, but more of a privilege: working from our tiny outdoor space.

And, lastly, in honor of Pride Month, what’s your favorite local LGBTQ+ establishment, and what’s your favorite way to celebrate Pride?
JG: I love to go to Good Judy, but my favorite is to just hang with my friends and have a couple of good drinks and delicious home-made food.

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