Hi, I’m Vadim.
Fifteen NYC events between this weekend and the end of August: happy hours, hackathons, summits, and a picnic. July 30 triple-books you: a mental health summit at NYU Langone by day, then the Central Park picnic or the Out-Of-Pocket happy hour by night.
Subscribe for a twice-monthly dispatch of field guides for healthtech builders, and forward this to anyone who just moved to the city.
Warmly, Vadim
Only new mistakes.
📣 Mine First
🩺 The Consult - Free Mentorship for NYC Healthtech Founders
🗓️ Wed–Thu, Aug 26–27 · NYC · ⏰ Applications due July 30
Intensive mini accelerator for digital health founders who have raised less than $250k and done less than $500k of revenue.
Mentors are some of the best digital health operators and investors in NYC.
Two afternoons of 1:1 mentorship for 30 curated NYC healthcare founders: 18 mentor sessions per team, 40+ operator mentors, six tactical workshops, happy hours to close each day. $0 cost, sponsored by Rho.
🎙️ Right to Exist, Ep. 2: Otto Sipe of Photon Health
30 Minute listen.
Otto Sipe and Photon are building and executing against an incumbent with >95% market share.
Otto watched SureScripts’ closed network block the product his Thirty Madison team wanted to build, so Photon inverts the rail: the prescription goes to the patient, who picks the pharmacy with price, stock, and delivery in view.
In the interview we dig into the strategies and tactics through which Otto found their wedge, moat, and drove their Right to Exist.
📗 How to Own Risk Without Getting Pwned (Part 2 of 2)
20 Minute Read. Part II of my essay and recipe for owning risk.
Part I followed Kinetic Insurance and its story arc living the VC healthtech dream. Kinetic creating and now dominates a new category where it owns risk and drives economic and human outcomes.
Part II uses that framework to look at how 4 very different companies found commercial success with upside and downside risk in pregnancy (Fetal Pillow, Maven Clinic, Pomelo Care, Ouma + MedArrive),
Part II closes with a nine-question diligence memo for scoring any healthtech company in thirty minutes.
⚡ This Week: July 19–24
🎛️ Sound and Movement Hackathon
Sun, Jul 19 · Fractal Tech, Brooklyn · Free
Music Community Lab’s day of building music through gesture and dance: artist talks, workshop, open presentations at 7:30 PM.
🎤 Pitch Your Way Into the Hacker House
Mon, Jul 20 · Brown Rudnick, NYC · Free, pitching invite-only
~5 curated pre-seed frontier-AI founders, 3-minute pitches with live VC Q&A, and a fast track into the OnlyExit Seattle hacker house cohort.
💼 My Worst Day as a CFO
Tue, Jul 21 · NYC · Finance leaders only
The NY Tech CFO Group’s panel with the CFOs of Public.com and Lerer Hippeau on the misses and crises that shaped how they lead. Four spots remained when I saved the page.
🍹 Multi-School Summer Mixer
Wed, Jul 22 · Rooftop, NYC · Waitlist
Alumni clubs of Berkeley, Brown, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Oxford, Stanford, UChicago, and more on one rooftop. 500 going.
💄 AI-Native Women: Beauty, Health, Wellness
Wed, Jul 22 · G-Gallery, NYC · Free / $15 guaranteed spot
Build a Claude Projects brand assistant live in the room, then a panel on AI in trend intelligence, sales enablement, and GTM.
🦷 Convergence Health Summit NYC
Fri, Jul 24 · AIC Wall Street, NYC · $250
An all-day summit judging innovation on implementation readiness, reimbursement alignment, and adoption feasibility, with dentistry and oral-systemic health at the center of the room.
🔥 Week of July 26
🛠️ Builders NYC Demo Day: Roast & Roast
Sun, Jul 26 · Fractal Tech, Brooklyn · Free
A morning demo day where builders present real projects and half-baked ideas, then take 3-5 minutes of honest feedback and lighthearted roasting over coffee.
📄 Papers We Love Brooklyn: DeepSeek-R1
Wed, Jul 29 · Mindspace Williamsburg, Brooklyn · Free
Espresso AI’s Edwin Jain walks through the DeepSeek-R1 paper on reinforcement-learned reasoning, for engineers who like their LLM claims with methods sections.
🙏 5th Annual Faith Summit: Mental Health is Physical Health
Thu, Jul 30, 8 AM–3:30 PM · NYU Langone, 550 1st Ave · Few tickets left
The Institute for Excellence in Health Equity’s day-long summit bringing community members, clinicians, and faith leaders together on mental health stigma, access, and support.
🌳 NY’s Healthcare & Lifesci Central Park Social
Thu, Jul 30, 5–8 PM · Central Park · BYO blankets & beverages
One Health Collective’s fourth annual Central Park edition of its ~250-person quarterly ecosystem gathering: clinicians, startups, pharma, payers, investors.
🍻 Out-Of-Pocket x Bunkerhill Health Happy Hour
Thu, Jul 30, 5:30–8:30 PM · Location TBD · Approval required
A small, curated group of FDEs, product people, and consultants building in healthcare, from Nikhil Krishnan’s Out-Of-Pocket crew and Bunkerhill Health.
☀️ August
🤖 Build with Gemma NYC: On-Device AI for Healthcare
Sat, Aug 1, 10 AM–6 PM · NYC · Free, $2,000 prize pool
Bond AI’s one-day hackathon on Google’s Gemma 4 models, built for healthcare’s privacy constraints: voice for care, agentic admin copilots, fully offline patient-data tools. Beginners welcome.
🚀 NYC HealthTech Launchathon
Sat–Sun, Aug 1–2, 9 AM–6 PM · NYC · $50 early bird by application, $250 regular
MedStartr’s two-day launchathon hosted by Alex Fair: form teams and find a problem worth solving on day one, build on day two, then every project continues into a MedStartr.ai showcase and a Founder’s Day with investors.
🧬 Biotech Happy Hour with 2048 Ventures × Rho
Wed, Aug 5, 5:30–7:30 PM · Brown Rudnick, NYC
A mid-summer break for the NY biotech community. No slides, no agenda; drinks sponsored by Rho.
🩺 Health2Tech NYC
Thu, Aug 20, 5:30–8:30 PM · NYC · Approval required
An investor panel (”Beyond Borders”) and two hours of networking, hosted by Bailey Morgan, Christopher Martinez, and Alex Koshykov with Orrick as partner.
🗺️ Make-With-Data: Mapping Mental Health
Thu, Aug 27, 5:30–7:30 PM · Pier 57, 25 11th Ave · Donation-based
Edenas Children’s workshop teaching mapping and data-science skills in service of community mental-health challenges.