A summer internship application at a New York startup took a shocking turn when a student at Cornell University turned down an interview opportunity with an anti-Semitic message, telling the company he was “not interested in working for a Jew.”
Thanks.”The letter was sent by 19-year-old Austin Franco after he applied for a summer job at VryfID, a New York-based startup that helps connect renters with landlords and verifies identities to reduce fraud. The company is run by brothers Gabe and Aiden Einhorn, who are Jewish.According to the founders, Franco had already applied and was under consideration for a position on the company’s growth team.
However, when the company tried to arrange a Zoom interview through recruitment platform Handshake, Franco responded with an eight-word message that left the brothers stunned.“Sad world,” Gabe Einhorn, 24, wrote on X on Monday, sharing a screenshot of the exchange.Gabe later told the New York Post that he decided to go public with the incident because he wanted to draw attention to anti-Semitism.“I felt bad when he exposed it because I thought he could have made a mistake and he really didn’t believe it wholeheartedly,” Gabe said.
Any doubts about Franco’s intentions disappeared. A day later, the Cornell University student defended his comments in a post on X.“My experiences with Jews have not been pleasant, either in person or online. This does not mean that I have not had positive experiences, but overall that is not the case,” Franco wrote.The incident has now prompted an investigation by Cornell University, where Franco studies industrial and labor relations, according to the New York Post.
His LinkedIn profile has since been deleted.A university spokesperson said: “Cornell condemns anti-Semitism and all forms of hatred and discrimination in the strongest possible terms.”The controversy has also drawn attention to VryfID, the startup launched by Gabe and his younger brother Aiden Einhorn, 22, a business student at New York University, in 2025.“Instead of renters struggling to find apartments and having their applications rejected, we have them sign up and pay $20 to be verified.
“Then we bring them apartments that they already qualify for,” Gabe explained.“For landlords, it helps them fill their units and bring in the right tenants.”Gabe often speaks publicly about his Jewish faith and wears a kibbeh. He said he had encountered online hostility before, but never anything directly.“I’ve seen some terrible things across the board — anti-Semitic things and just terrible things in general,” he said, adding that he has received several death threats via social media.“People just like to spread hate on social media because they are anonymous and have no repercussions.”Despite those experiences, the brothers said Franco’s reaction was shock.“My brother and I looked at each other, ‘What?’ We had never experienced it [antisemitism] Gabe said this directly.“The whole thing was very shocking and uncalled for.”
