While the west coast seems to get most of the credit for being America’s technological hub, the New York startup scene is booming like never before. In fact, technology is the fastest growing industry in NYC with more and more tech companies choosing to call New York their homes.
The early employees at these companies actually end up growing right along with the startups they build. What makes startups particularly awesome is their willingness to hire people from diverse experiences and backgrounds.
Every day startups hire writers, musicians, philosophers, actors, and bakers. Unfortunately most people assume you have to be a developer or designer to even get a startup job, which couldn’t be farther from the truth.
60% of the jobs at NYC startups are non-technical in nature, meaning an engineering background is not required to work there.
We’ve decided to highlight some more groundbreaking startups, all of which are specifically hiring for non-technical jobs.
1. Appboy -- The Mobile Marketing Superhero We Deserve
Why they’re awesome: Go to the nearest Starbucks/beach resort/alien invasion announcement, and you’ll see almost everyone is on their phones. Our dependence on our devices totally dictates how we frame our experiences with the outside world, and Appboy uses this idea to allow companies to more effectively market to their target consumers. Mobile marketing is an entirely different beast than the traditional kind, and now companies like Urban Outfitters, Mapquest, and iHeartMedia, can finally take full advantage of this distinct channel. Appboy creates a relevant mobile experience for each user, engages audiences with push notifications, email marketing, and in-app messaging, runs targeted mobile campaigns, and performs real-time big data analytics to optimize ROI.
Who: Founded by Mark Ghermezian, Jon Hyman, and Bill Magnuson.
Funding: $15M in Series B raised October, 2014.
How do you infiltrate? Currently hiring for: Content Marketing Specialists, Enterprise Account Executives, and Product Marketers.
Size: ~67 employees.
2. Artsy -- Smart Art
Why they’re awesome:
Ever read about an artist in a book (or more likely the girl/guy you were into was talking about a painting and you wanted to seem erudite)? Thankfully Google Image search was just a smartphone away! Though let’s be real, Google Images was always a clunky way to really sink your teeth into art. Sometimes the resolutions would be weird, other times they’d show you the same picture 14 times; it wasn’t really an organized discovery process. Artsy’s looking to overhaul the way we engage with art by becoming the go-to online portal for art discovery and absorption. Sort of like an art Wikipedia, Artsy offers biographies of artists and high-res pictures of their work. Though calling them just a search engine is like saying Picasso just drew some boxes. They’re a pulse on the art-world, providing a way to keep up with art news and featured events. Plus, you could actually buy art on the site with pieces ranging from as little as $100 to more than $1M.
Who: Founder and CEO Carter Cleveland who came up with the idea while still a Princeton student.
Funding: $50.9M in Series C raised March, 2015.
How do you infiltrate? For the more artistically minded check out their Associate Editor, Executive Assistant, and People Ops roles.
Size: ~137 employees.
3. Baublebar -- Baubleheads
Why they’re awesome: There seems to be a new jewelry trend popping up every couple of days. Last week it was earrings made of Kryptonite, this week it’s necklaces that look like US Press Secretary Jay Carney, next week we hear the hip new thing’s going to be bracelets that light up whenever you’re within a four block radius of an Arby’s. With the fashion landscape constantly changing, who’s got time to keep up? Luckily Baublebar is an ecommerce jewelry site recognized by its ability to bring new pieces to market fast. They use real-time data to design and order jewelry based on up to the minute consumer trends. Bringing over 100 new offerings a week, there’s never a lack of optionality either. When you use Baublebar you can rest assured your jewelry will always be on point.
Who: Founded by Amy Jain and Daniella Yacobovsky.
Funding: $10M in Series B raised July, 2014.
How do you infiltrate? Always wanted to break into the jewelry world but never knew how? Check out the Baublebar career page. They’re currently hiring for Customer Experience Associates, Associate Merchandise Planners, and even Jewelry Designers.
Size: ~126 employees.
4. Canary -- Out of the Coalmine
Why they’re awesome: Canary is the home security system the future has been waiting for. No, they’re not outfitting your front porch with a pack of Terminators primed to enter kill-mode at a moment’s notice. Instead, Canary’s a complete home-security package crammed into one device. It’s outfitted with a 1080p, wide-angle, HD camera and a state of the art microphone, which it uses to create an idea of what your home normally should be like. If Canary thinks something weird’s going on, it sends a high quality video of the event straight to your smartphone. This of course means that when you’re on vacation and a guy in a giant Elmo costume breaks into your garden, you’ll finally be able to do something about it.
Who: Founded by Chris Rill, Adam Sager, and Jon Troutman.
Funding: $30M in Series B raised June 2015.
How to infiltrate: Currently hiring for: Technical Recruiter, Office Administrator, Supply Chain Manager, and Facilities Manager.
Size: ~71 employees.
5. Chartbeat -- Tell-Tale Chart
Why they’re awesome: If you’ve ever used the internets (also known as the world wide webs), you already know there’s a lot of different “sites”. How do you make sure your “site” is driving the most traffic? You can’t run analytics and then wait a month, week, day, or even an hour for the results. By that time any actionable insight is already long gone. You need real-time analytics, and Chartbeat’s gonna get it to you. Chartbeat hooks website managers up with visitors, load times, and referring sites on a minute by minute basis. It’s mainly useful for heavy content creators so they can monitor trends in real-time and see if something like “8 Llamas Who Look Like Andrew Garfield” is doing better than “9 Emus Who Wish They Were Tobey McGuire.”
Who: CEO Tony Haile, CTO Wesley Chow, and COO John Saroff.
Funding: $15.5M in Series C raised May 2015
How to infiltrate? Currently hiring for: Account Manager, Sales Development Associate, Content Marketer and lots more.
Size: ~94 employees.
6. Contently -- Neverending Storyteller
Why they’re awesome: Traditional marketing outreach is sorta like the Wile E. Coyote of branding. It gets left behind in the dust as the Roadrunner of content marketing runs circles around it. No one gets the importance of content marketing more than Contently. They’ve created a robust platform that enables brands to tell their stories, access a top-notch network of creatives, and run analytics on what they should be doubling-down on. The content powered by Contently helps drive serious user acquisition and is the most sure-fire way for brands to actually engage with their audiences. Plus, storytelling works. Would you rather buy ice cream after a guy in a suit screams at you to buy ice cream or after overhearing a friend talk about how he met his girlfriend at an ice cream shop? Exactly.
Who: Founded by David T. Goldberg, Joe Coleman, and Shane Snow.
Funding: $9M in Series B raised January, 2014
How do you infiltrate? Want to join the content revolution? Plenty of roles ranging from Recruiter to Client Development Manager, to Sales Strategist.
Size: ~128 employees.
7. Joor -- Wholesale Savants
Why they’re awesome: Joor is wholesale made simple. When you buy a bag/romper/jetpack from a place like Neiman Marcus you don’t realize the long and arduous process it took to get to the store. Between juggling brand, retailer, and vendor relationships, getting items from the showroom to the purchase floor is way more complicated than it has to be. Joor took the fractured process of wholesale buying, streamlined it, and put it online, allowing brands and retailers to increase revenue, slash costs, and improve efficiency. Plus they’re partnered closely with FEED, a bag company that donates a portion of their sales revenue to the United Nations World Food Program.
Who: Founded by CEO Mona Bijoor, a previous buyer at Chanel and Ann Taylor.
Funding: $14.6M in Series B raised July, 2013.
How to infiltrate? Currently hiring for: Internal Recruiters, Customer Success Managers, and Sales Development Representatives.
Size: ~50 employees.
8. Managed by Q -- Clean Office Space (with free iPads)
Why they’re awesome:
Managed by Q takes the hassle out of office cleaning by sending cleaning professionals directly to your workplace. The Office Manager can then review everything the cleaning staff has done by checking out the Managed by Q dashboard (installed on an office iPad that Managed by Q gives you for free). They’re growing fast and are looking to completely take over the cleaning, maintenance, and restocking of your office (while supplying you with an iPad that you don’t even have to pay money for). They’ve quickly expanded to San Francisco and Chicago too, so don’t expect them to stop growing (or doling out free iPads) anytime in the near future. What’s even cooler is they’ve got a less than 1% turnover rate, a fact that makes us think their employee culture is top notch (most likely because they’re all getting iPads).
Who: Founded by Saman Rahmanian and Dan Teran.
Funding: $15M in Series A raised June, 2015.
How to infiltrate? With their recent funding, this company is looking to grow fast. Think you can help them? Check out their Customer Success, Business Analyst, and Operational roles.
Size: ~55 employees.
9. Mic -- Nu News
Why they’re awesome: Mic is the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of the editorial world. In one corner you’ve got the viral digestibility of sites like BuzzFeed and Upworthy and in the other you’ve got the breaking news and hard-hitting perspectives of places like the New York Times and The Atlantic. Mic slams them together and creates a site that’s both informative and clickable, educational and shareable, relevant and readable. Mic gives you listicles, charts, infographics, and Tweets but about things that actually matter. It’s news, for millennials.
Who: Founded by Christopher Altchek and Jake Horowitz.
Funding: $17 Million in Series B raised June, 2015.
How to infiltrate? Have the writing itch? Editorial jobs abound at Mic.
Size: ~283 employees.
10. Moat -- I’m on a Moat!
Why they’re awesome:
How do you define effectiveness? No, this isn’t a flashback to your philosophy 101 intro class, but rather a question a lot of marketing managers bring up when discussing online advertising. The old school of thought was that ads that got the most click conversions were the most effective. That might have made sense back when Justin Timberlake was only famous for being a part of N’Sync, but as millennials came of age it started ringing less and less true. You see if there’s one thing millennials hate (besides Internet Explorer and paying for HBO Go) it’s clicking ads. Moat creates a more accurate definition of ad-effectiveness by measuring things like whether or not the ad is visible, how long it’s viewed for, and how exactly the user is interacting with it. This system helps paint a complete picture of how well an ad is doing and allows companies to more efficiently allocate their advertising dough.
Who: Founded by Jonah and Noah Goodhart and Michael Walrath.
Funding: $13M in Series B raised April, 2012.
How to infiltrate? Currently hiring for: Sales Development Reps and Recruiters.
Size: ~76 employees.
11. Paperless Post -- Give up the Post
Why they’re awesome: Hallmark watch out, because Paperless Post isn’t your Grandma’s greeting card company. They combine the thoughtfulness of traditional paper stationary with the accessibility of the internet, providing customizable print or e-cards for every occasion. Here are just a few of the cards they presumably offer: Birthday, Thank you, 4th of July, Bar Mitzvah, Anniversary, Celebration of the time you banished that demon back to the netherrealm, Congrats on your colonoscopy, Good job on growing an inch, and Arbor Day. As of the writing of this post, over 85 million cards have been sent!
Who: Sibling founders Alexa and James Hirschfeld.
Funding: $25M in Series B raised April, 2014.
How do you infiltrate? Some of the many roles available at Paperless Post include: Recruiting coordinator, Marketing Manager, and Partner Design Merchandise Planner.
Size: ~114 employees.
12. Placemeter -- We Found Love in a Hopeless Placemeter
Why they’re awesome:
Let’s say you own a cupcake/taser store and you want to increase customers. When is the best hour to send out the guy in the cupcake costume to beckon people in? What day of the week do the most people walk by? Why did you insist on selling both cupcakes AND tasers when they don’t really go together as a pair? There are a lot of platforms out there that provide analytics data for websites, but no one has yet to master analytics for brick and mortar stores. Until Placemeter of course. Placemeter analyzes storefront video data and wraps it up neatly for business owners to make sense of. They install a camera in front of your store, analyzes pedestrian, car, and bicycle movement on the streets, and then allow you to access the data on an easy to read dashboard. According to Placemeter, the most people walk by your store Saturdays at 12 PM, so tell Barry to quit napping and get the cupcake suit out of the back room.
Who: Founded by Alexandre Winter and Florent Peyre.
Funding: $6M in Series A raised September, 2014.
How do you infiltrate? Placemeter’s helping to “quantify the world” and needs Sales Development Reps and Marketing Managers to do so.
Size: ~20 employees.
13. Plated -- 50 First Plates
Why they’re awesome: Order delivery, you’ll eat for a day. Order delivery that’ll show you how to cook, you’ll eat for a lifetime! Plated sends artisanal recipes and fresh ingredients straight to your doorstep. It goes like this: You tell them what kind of food you’re into, they send you a box of ingredients as well as step by step recipe cards, you follow the instructions, eat the food, and repeat the process until you’re a culinary wizard. It’s just like Legos but instead of building a model Millennium Falcon that you unsuccessfully try to sell on eBay, you can make pan roasted chicken thighs with bulgur, raisins, and pine nuts that will taste delicious.
Who: Founded by Josh Hix and Nick Taranto.
Funding: $15 M in Series A raised August, 2014.
How do you infiltrate? Their Customer Experience Associates are the most helpful in the business.
Size: ~123 employees.
14. Shutterstock -- Pop, Stock, and Drop It
Why they’re awesome: A website with no pictures is like a flat spoon. It’s kind of useless and depressing and you’re wondering how it got that way. Shutterstock is the best place to load your website with professional photographs, videos, and music guilt-free. The company displays 55 million royalty-free stock images with 400,000 new images added weekly. Here are just some of the pictures we can imagine are available for use on Shutterstock: Dog, cat, woman eating salad, man giving thumbs up, plaid shirt, picture of a man scratching his head while reading a book, a jar of peanut butter with no recognizable brand name, PacMan wearing a Mozart wig, and finally, an alarm clock (the eternal symbol of time’s ephemerality).
Who: Jon Oringer, who founded the company in 2003 with a camera and a dream.
Funding: Initial Public Offering, October, 2012. Ticket: SSTK.
How to infiltrate: There are lots of sales, customer service and marketing jobs available right in NYC!
Size: ~1000 employees.
15. SOLS -- Happy Feet
Why they’re awesome: Have you ever wished that you could buy shoes that were custom made to fit the shape of your foot? Why does one shoe fit all when we all have different size feet (some of us even have different numbers of toes)? SOLS solves this problem in the coolest way possible, by utilizing 3D printing! They make custom 3D Printed insoles to provide patients, athletes, and regular consumers with pain relief and constant comfort. Not only is SOLS 3D Printing technology awesome, but New York Knicks’ Carmelo Anthony was an investor in their latest round. Slam dunk, Carmelo.
Who: Founded by Kegan Schouwenburg and Joel Wishkovsky.
Funding: $15.5M in Series C raised May 2015.
How to infiltrate? SOLS is currently looking to add some rockstar account managers, online marketers, and sales gurus to their NYC team.
Size: ~60 employees.
16. StreetEasy -- Real Estate, Real Easy
Why they’re awesome: StreetEasy is NYC’s top online real estate marketplace, a service which saves hundreds of broke post-grads from living on friend’s couches. Not only does StreetEasy help to provide up to date listings on both for-sale and for-rent properties, it also has a proprietary search tool that allows both apartment hunters and real estate professionals to figure out the rat race that is the NYC real estate market. They’re currently active in the five boroughs, North Jersey, and the Hamptons.
Who: Founded by Nataly Kogan, Sebastian Delmont, Michael Smith, and Doug Chertok.
Funding: Acquired by Zillow for $50 million in August, 2013.
How do you infiltrate? Senior Account Managers, Ad Ops Managers, and even Editorial Interns can all be found on their careers website.
Size: ~50 employees
17. Warby Parker -- Glasses for the Masses
Why they’re awesome: You make your glasses look good. Warby Parker makes them look great. If you’ve ever wanted to rock some stylish glasses at affordable prices, Warby Parker is your go-to e-commerce startup. They’re revolutionizing the glasses industry with amazing designs at unbeatable prices. The also have a social good element and will donate a pair of glasses to someone in need for every pair they sell.
Who: Founded by Neil Blumenthal, David Gilboa, Andrew Hunt, and Jeffrey Raider.
Funding: $100M in Series D raised April, 2015.
How to infiltrate?Warby Parker is quickly expanding, offering roles such as Recruiter, Customer Experience Manager, and Paid Search Specialist.
Size: ~417 employees.
18. x.ai -- x.ai Machina
Why they’re awesome:
Managing and scheduling calendar events is a ton of work. Just finding the perfect time to meet between two people can take what seems like days of back and forth (have my assistant call your assistant’s assistant). Combine that with multiple appointments per day and you can get lost in a scheduling labyrinth with a minotaur of inefficiency waiting for you at the center. Luckily, x.ai uses artificial intelligence as your personal assistant and handles all of your scheduling for you. Just CC Amy in an email to someone you’re trying to meet with and she’ll take care of everything right down to the location. Planted for one welcomes our robot overlords.
Who: Founded by Dennis R. Mortensen and Alex Poon.
Funding: $9.2M in Series A raised December, 2014.
How to infiltrate? x.ai is currently seeking a Customer Success Manager! So, if you’re looking to get in with an exciting company on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence, give it a go.
Size: ~33 employees.
19. Yodle -- Marketing Masters
Why they’re awesome: Yodle does all of the things for local businesses. Seriously, they’re like a swiss army knife for dentists, tailors, massage therapists, and basically any small business that doesn’t have the energy to learn how to most effectively market themselves online. First, Yodle works to set up your website and even lists your business on over 50 online directories. Then, they take care of all the Search Engine Optimization stuff so that your business is found by the people who need it the most. Finally, they build and maintain your social media presence, set up your email marketing campaigns, and help to distribute special offers. All you have to do is sit back, relax, and do what you do best as the customers come rolling in. They’re currently working with 45,000 local businesses and have more signing up every day.
Who: CEO Court Cunningham and Co-Founders John Berkowitz, Ben Rubenstein, and Nathaniel Stevens.
Funding: $5M in Series E raised February, 2013.
How to infiltrate? Hiring for tons of roles including Copywriter, Marketing Manager, and Sales Representative.
Size: ~1193 employees.
20. Zola -- Wedding Stashers
Why they’re awesome:
Getting married? No longer do you need to limit your gift list to boring blenders and crummy cutlery. Zola comes to the rescue by totally revamping what a wedding registry is and could be. Besides letting guests buy specific items from top brands, Zola also lets people pay for more abstract gifts like cooking classes or spa treatments. Even cooler is the ability to allow guests to crowdfund larger purchases like refrigerators and even honeymoons (or trampolines). On top of that, Zola lets couples set up a personalized page with photos and welcome notes, so that your wedding registry is distinctly you.
Who: Founded by Felix Lung, Shan-Lyn Ma, Nobu Nakaguchi, and Kevin Ryan.
Funding: $2.6M in Series A raised October, 2014.
How to infiltrate? Currently hiring for: Customer Support Representatives as well as E-Commerce Merchandising Assistants.
Size: ~36 employees.
As you can see, you don’t need a comp sci or engineering degree to work at a startup. There are plenty of ways you can make an impact at a high-growth, innovative company that don’t involve coding. If you’re a hard worker, can bring fresh ideas to the table, and are willing to do what it takes to help the company get to the next level, all of the startups listed above would be happy to have you join their teams.
If you’re interested in getting your foot in the door at a startup but don’t want to write 1000 cover letters, check out Planted. You can sign up in seconds and apply to hundreds of the top startup jobs (many of which were on this list). Plus, we’ll act as your inside referral to get your resume to the top of the pile.
We also just released a mobile app, so you can keep up with all your job applications straight from your phone. It’s time to grow your career at a job you’ll love.
Want to read about more startups currently hiring for non-tech roles? Check out Volume 1!