Startup Grind NYC

What happens when an artist thinks like an ecologist, and software becomes a tool for witnessing planetary change?

Join media artist Marina Zurkow and Whitney curator Christiane Paul for an intimate conversation about Parting Worlds, Zurkow's landmark exhibition, and her Hyundai Terrace Commission at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Complete your FREE RSVP here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1976492177308

In collaboration with the National Arts Club and its Art and Technology Committee, this is a rare opportunity to hear directly from an artist whose work sits at the intersection of environmental urgency, computational beauty, and speculative futures — and from the curator who shapes how institutions understand and present art made with code, data, and systems thinking.

Zurkow's practice is simple: she takes wicked problems (things like invasive species, resource extraction, the Hudson River's relationship with a city) and translates them into immersive digital experiences that make the invisible visible.

Three software-driven animations anchor this conversation: Mesocosm (Wink, TX) (2012), The Earth Eaters (2025), and The River is a Circle (2025).

But beyond the screen, Zurkow's toolkit spans animation, generative code, participatory dinners, and bio-based projects — each chosen to deepen our understanding of how humans entangle with ecological systems across geological and human timescales.

Complete your FREE RSVP here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1976492177308

What makes this conversation essential is the meeting of two distinct forms of expertise.

• Zurkow will walk through her process: how she collaborates with climate scientists, how she builds software to animate temporal cycles and tipping points, and why she moves between digital and tangible media.
• Paul, who has spent two decades mapping digital art's evolution from net art to AI and immersive environments, will contextualize Zurkow's work within broader conversations about artistic agency, technological infrastructure, and the museum's role in addressing planetary futures.

This dialogue will probe the boundaries of what art can say about ecological interdependence, as well as how institutions collect, present, and preserve work that speaks to our moment.

The room will include artists, technologists, environmental thinkers, and curious minds hungry to understand how creative practice engages with real-world complexity.

Reserve your spot and arrive early. Space is limited.

Complete your FREE RSVP here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1976492177308
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Founded in 1898, the National Arts Club is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission to stimulate, foster, and promote public interest in the arts and to educate the American people in the fine arts.

Annually, the Club offers more than 150 free programs—both in-person and virtually—to the public, including exhibitions, theatrical and musical performances, lectures, and readings, attracting an audience of over 30,000 in-person visitors and thousands more online.

The AI Briefing is a new recurring AI deep-dive for decision-makers.
Each month, we select one high-signal industry report, circulate it in advance, and meet to cut through the noise.

You must complete your RSVP here to be considered to attend:
https://www.startupgrind.com/events/details/startup-grind-new-york-city-presents-the-ai-briefing-by-startup-grind/

This Month’s Source: The State of Enterprise AI (OpenAI 2025)

This is a look under the hood of how 1 million+ businesses are actually using GPT-4 and o1. The data reveals a shift: enterprises are moving from chatting to doing, with reasoning token usage up 320x and agentic workflows finally hitting production.

The Mission: Bridge the gap between strategy and execution. We'll dissect the data to answer one question: What does the Agentic Enterprise actually look like in 2025?

📊 The Format:

• 10-Minute Executive Download: A rapid-fire summary of the report’s critical metrics (e.g., the 8x growth in message volume and the rise of non-technical coding).
• Cross-Pollinated Debate: Founders share what they are shipping; Executives share what they are actually deploying (and blocking).
• Operational Reality Check: We’ll discuss the Shadow AI reality: 75% of workers are completing tasks they previously couldn't do. And how IT is scrambling to govern it.

You must complete your RSVP here to be considered to attend:
https://www.startupgrind.com/events/details/startup-grind-new-york-city-presents-the-ai-briefing-by-startup-grind/

🤝 Who Should Attend:

• Enterprise Executives: Benchmark your adoption curve. Are you in the AI Leader bracket seeing 1.7x revenue growth, or falling behind?
• Founders & Builders: Stop guessing what enterprises want. See the exact use cases (IT, Marketing, HR) that are scaling right now.
• Operators: Learn how non-technical teams are using AI to write code and automate their own workflows.

📍 Where: Location on approval 🗓️ When: Friday, January 23rd | 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM

📬 The Prep: This is a working session, not a lecture. Review the report here. Skim the executive summary. Bring your perspective.
RSVP to be considered. Strictly limited capacity to ensure high-quality dialogue.

You must complete your RSVP here to be considered to attend:
https://www.startupgrind.com/events/details/startup-grind-new-york-city-presents-the-ai-briefing-by-startup-grind/

Silicon Valley obsesses over AI agents for office workflows. But 70% of the U.S. workforce doesn't sit at a desk.

While most AI startups build LLM wrappers, Rachael Nemeth architected an AI-native engine for the most underserved segment of the economy: frontline workers.

Before that, Rachael spent 13 years in NYC hospitality (including Union Square Hospitality Group) before writing a single line of code.

Now, as Co-founder and CEO of Opus, she's using Agentic AI to solve the $100B+ training problem for workers juggling three jobs, subway commutes, and zero corporate email.

This is a masterclass in usable architecture and a high-stakes pivot that captured 50,000 users in a few weeks during the global pandemic.

Complete your RSVP here to attend:
https://www.startupgrind.com/events/details/startup-grind-new-york-city-presents-agentic-ai-in-the-trenches-scaling-intelligence-for-the-real-world/

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• The Agentic Shift: How the Opus AI assistant delivers operational answers in 9 seconds.
• Neural Translation at Scale: Automating content localization into 100+ languages with 99% accuracy.
• Closing the Feedback Loop: Converting complaints into targeted training triggers that reduce issues by 60% in 30 days.
• When to Burn the Boats: Why Rachael walked away from a growing business in March 2020 to build a venture-scale AI powerhouse.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

• Engineering Leads: Design AI-native systems for thin clients in zero-Wi-Fi, high-churn environments.
• Product Managers: Move beyond theoretical AI to see real-time user data integrated into automated training loops.
• Early-Stage Founders: Navigate pivots and build defensible moats from deep domain expertise.
• Investors: Understand why the hidden 70% of the workforce is the next multi-billion dollar AI frontier.

Complete your RSVP here to attend:
https://www.startupgrind.com/events/details/startup-grind-new-york-city-presents-agentic-ai-in-the-trenches-scaling-intelligence-for-the-real-world/

Tickets for this event include food and drinks, as well as exclusive access to this founder who will show you how to build a defensible, high-growth business by solving the gritty operational problems that standard tech often misses.

You'll also meet dozens of other high-performing entrepreneurs who are creating their next big thing. Seriously, it's some of the best founder networking in the city.
Getting a ticket guarantees admission. No waitlisting.

AGENDA

• 6:00 PM: Networking, Food & Drinks
• 7:00 PM: Fireside Chat with Rachael Nemeth
• 8:00 PM: Meet the Speaker

And don't miss our other monthly tech events. They are great opportunities for builders, founders, and operators to network with each other to share best practices and find new resources to grow your startup the right way.

Complete your RSVP here to attend:
https://www.startupgrind.com/events/details/startup-grind-new-york-city-presents-agentic-ai-in-the-trenches-scaling-intelligence-for-the-real-world/