Venture for NYC

Building a more inclusive venture ecosystem alongside investors, founders, and industry leaders.

Venture for NYC (formerly known as Venture Access NYC) is a suite of bold programs launched by NYCEDC designed to make NYC the world’s leading and most inclusive innovation ecosystem. The initiative connects diverse founders and funders with the capital, networks, and resources they need to launch, grow, and thrive in NYC. Through high-impact programs and partnerships, we aim to catalyze systemic change across the investment ecosystem, ensuring that NYC continues to lead as a global hub for equitable innovation.

Venture for NYC Goals

• Network Building: Bring together NYC-based investors, capital funds, and ecosystem players to engage in meaningful conversation and execute citywide innovation ecosystem-building programs.
• Direct Partnership with NYCEDC: Collaborate with NYCEDC by responding to public procurement opportunities, making investments in NYCEDC-supported startups and founders, and participating in venture career pathways and training, innovation industry roundtables and events, and thought leadership. In turn, NYCEDC offers access to a network of NYC funders, a pipeline of NYC-based innovation industry startups, industry-focused working groups, shared deal flow, NYC real estate and incentives guidance, City and State projects, funding opportunities, and exclusive events.
• Startup & Venture Workforce Development: Build NYC’s startup and venture capital talent pipeline by partnering with private, public, and academic organizations. Including offering internships for local students interested in innovation sectors and creating new NYC-based jobs.
• Innovation Success in NYC: Strengthen NYC’s position as a global leader for equitable innovation by expanding access to capital funding, fueling startup success and attracting more funders and founders to build their businesses in NYC.

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The Venture Ecosystem Powering NYC Innovation

NYC’s venture ecosystem is a powerful engine for innovation—fueling the growth of high-impact companies, accelerating emerging industries, and creating economic opportunities for New Yorkers. Venture investment helps move ideas from early experimentation to market-ready solutions, translating innovation into jobs, talent attraction, and long-term competitiveness for the city.

As one of the world’s leading venture hubs, NYC attracts global capital white anchoring it locally. NYC-based investors demonstrate a strong commitment to companies that call New York home as reflected in NYCEDC’s 2024 Venture Access Alliance Portfolio Diversity Report, which found that our coalition of NYC-based startup investors directed more than 60 percent of their investments to NYC-based companies.

At the same time, building a strong venture ecosystem requires broadening who participates in investment decision-making. Despite New York’s leadership in venture activity, NYCEDC’s 2024 Venture Access Alliance Diversity Report found that just 1.2 percent of investment decision-makers in NYC are Black and fewer than 18 percent are women. Sustaining the city’s innovation leadership depends on an inclusive venture ecosystem—one that expands access to capital, strengthens networks, and builds pathways into both entrepreneurship and investment so that innovation-led growth benefits the full diversity of NYC.