Meet the Team
We’ve built communities around small businesses for over a decade. Built a radical music venue & small business incubator in Brooklyn, created a membership-supported video game gallery in Manhattan, learned about institutional memberships from the founder of MoMAPS1, and campaigned to create the Office of Nightlife in New York City.
We are a one-of-a-kind team bringing industry insights, community-building roots, and the backing of Y-Combinator to small businesses everywhere.
Joe Ahearn
Co-founder & CEO
Native New Yorker, raised by artists. Helped start and run events for art spaces including Silent Barn, Showpaper, Death By Audio, Pioneer Works, Knockdown Center, Roulette and more. Former Program Director for Clocktower, New York’s oldest alternative arts project.
Kunal Gupta
Co-founder & CTO
Software engineer by trade, experimental musician with Loud Objects, world traveler. Creator of Silent Barn and Babycastles, the first gallery for video games as art, and now Withfriends. Believes in the power of physical communities. (Photo by Edwina Hay)
Along with our backers...
Y Combinator
#1 Startup Accelerator
Y Combinator is an American seed money startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 2,000 companies, including Stripe, Airbnb, Cruise Automation, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, Dropbox, Twitch, and Reddit.
And hundreds of community investors on Wefunder
Tyler Whitmer
Partner at Quinn Emanuel
Lawyer by day, investor by whenever I find time. Putting my money where my values are, and having fun in the process.
Jeff Stark
Cultural Producer
Producer of site works emphasizing the spectacle of collective experience. Editor of Nonsense NYC, a weekly email list for independent art and Do-It-Yourself events.
Tristan Perich
Tristan Perich is a contemporary composer and sound artist from New York City who focuses on electronic one bit sound.
Jake Rosenthal
Co-founder of Elsewhere, a music venue, nightclub, and arts space in Brooklyn, with multiple stages, a seasonal rooftop, an art gallery, and a lounge.
Jeff Rosenstock
Jeff Rosenstock is a musician from Long Island, United States. He was the lead singer of the bands with names like The Arrogant Sons of Bitches and Bomb the Music Industry!
Jiwoon Moon
Co-founder of Wefunder, a Public Benefit Corporation working to fix capitalism via crowd-equity. Co-founder of XX Fund, a project who dedicated to launched new startups by encouraging experienced founders to invest in those a few years behind them.
Eliza Ryan
New York-based independent curator, producer and artist manager at MoMA and MoMA PS1, co-organising seminal exhibitions for artists like Ryan Trecartin, Antony and the Johnsons, and Kraftwerk. Leads the MoMA PS1’s music programme, Warm Up.
Yifu Guo
Founder of Avalon, first Bitcoin miner company, co-founder of CoinApex, tech for Occupy Wall Street.
Interested in working for Withfriends? Contact us at team@withfriends.co.
Or come drop by our virtual office in Gather.
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