New York’s most creative startup accelerator doesn’t have demo days, business partners or waiting lists, but it does have kettlebells, treadmills and cold plunges.
The Flatiron location of Chelsea Piers Fitness has become an unlikely office for some of the city’s most notable small tech entrepreneurs.
“We have an amazing community of perfect killers here,” Oliver Brocato, founder of the viral aphrodisiac chocolate brand, Tabs, told NYNext.
Brocato is one of twenty-two men who work out of the gym six or seven days a week. Calling themselves the “Media Mafia,” they all run new media companies that generate at least seven figures a year and are encouraged to work and work together.
“I’m going to move to frickin’ Antarctica and be a part of this team,” Brocato said.
If “Mafia” had a goddess, it would be Matt Epstein. He is the 23-year-old founder of Shown Media, which produces branded video presentations and makes an estimated $3 million a year.
He started the company in 2021, working out of his room in his relative’s house at Cornell. After graduating in 2024, he moved to the city and started working in his apartment, but “Working. [from home] he became depressed very quickly,” Epstein told NYNext. Early last year, he visited a gym, signed up and started using it as his office every day.
For similar reasons, Nathan May, 27, did the same.
“The community is the most important thing [we get here],” said May, whose media company, Feed Media, works with the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and makes an estimated $400,000 a month. “Being together greatly increases our fortunes.”
Aside from the sense of camaraderie, there are practical benefits to this arrangement.
At about $300 a month, membership costs significantly less than renting an office. The lounge has fast WiFi, natural light and a cafe. Also, it’s almost mandatory to sneak in a few bench sets between calls and strategy sessions.
“Working out of the gym, you feel like a piece of s— when you’re not working out,” Brocato said.
After scaling Tabs to $11 million in revenue, he now runs Bustem, an AI-powered company that cuts commerce copy for 140 brands. Brocato employs eight full-time employees and 20 contract workers in Africa and expects to generate approximately $5 million in revenue this year. Other young members of the mafia look to him, May, and other tribal elders for advice.
“We’re talking about the issues we’re facing — recruiting, scaling, girls,” Shamus Madan told NYNext. “Your typical 20 year old stuff.”
Madan, 20, founded Dealroom Media, a LinkedIn ghostwriting service for founders, out of his bedroom at Villanova in November 2024. By early 2025, he was making $8,000 a month and, he says, spending no time studying. He was expelled from the university last June and started working at the gym the following month. Dealroom is now on track to bring in $1.5 million by 2026, and he says his company’s success has, in part, been working out of the gym.
“It feels like the college experience I didn’t have,” Madan said. “Since we are in trouble but we all have money.”
Indeed. On a recent Friday morning, at least two of the bro-trepreneurs were sporting Rolexes — and one left during the afternoon promotion. One guy overslept and never entered the fake office. One pair of gym shorts was used by no less than three boys in one day. Until twice, a gym employee came to the community table where they were all working out and reminded them of the venue’s silence policy.
Good times aside, serious work is being done, and there are tangible benefits to exchanging ideas over berry smoothies. The boys help each other with everything from sales calls to building decks and parks.
“We all know the ins and outs of each other’s business and can give feedback quickly,” said JT Sarafa, 25, whose TikTok marketing company, JTS Growth, has generated $30 million in customers and is on track to hit $3 million in 2026. “It’s like having your own Board of Advisors all the time.”
Epstein added, “There’s a lot of customer sharing. We all have our own niche but we offer very similar services.”
Sometimes, the frat house incubator helps a lot, its members grow it.
Epstein recently moved into office space because Shown Media has grown to about 40 employees.
He lived in a larger place than necessary, he said, so that “friends could move on” when they needed a change of location.
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It’s just seven blocks up and one street from the gym. And he kept his membership.
After all, Madan said, “You have to always look like a school.”
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