A summer internship application at a New York start-up took a shocking turn when a Cornell University student rejected an interview opportunity with an antisemitic message, telling the company he was “Not interested in working for a Jew. Thanks.”The message was sent by 19-year-old Austin Franco after he had applied for a summer role at VryfID, a New York-based start-up 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 submitted an application and was being considered for a position on the firm’s growth team. However, when the company attempted to arrange a Zoom interview through the job platform Handshake, Franco responded with the 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 make the incident public because he wanted to bring attention to antisemitism.“I felt bad exposing him because I thought he could have made a mistake and he really doesn’t believe this wholeheartedly,” Gabe said. Any doubts about Franco’s intentions disappeared. A day later, the Cornell student defended his comments in a post on X.“My experiences with Jews have not been pleasant, both in person and online. This is not to say I haven’t had positive experiences, but on the aggregate that is not the case,” Franco wrote.The incident has now prompted an investigation by Cornell University, where Franco studies industrial and labour relations, according to the New York Post. His LinkedIn profile has since been deleted.A university spokesperson said: “Cornell condemns antisemitism and all forms of hatred and discrimination in the strongest possible terms.”The controversy has also drawn attention to VryfID, the start-up launched by Gabe and his younger brother Aiden Einhorn, 22, a business student at New York University, in 2025.“Instead of renters struggling to search for apartments and getting rejected, we have them sign up, pay $20 to get verified. Then we actually bring them apartments that they actually qualify for,” Gabe explained.“For landlords, it helps them fill up their units and brings them the right tenants.”Gabe often speaks publicly about his Jewish faith and wears a kippah. He said he has encountered hostility online before but never anything quite so direct.“I’ve seen some terrible things across the board — antisemitic things and just terrible things in general,” he said, adding that he had received multiple death threats through social media.“People just like to spread hate across social media because they’re anonymous and they have no repercussions.”Despite those experiences, the brothers said Franco’s response still came as a shock.“Me and my brother kind of looked at each other like, ‘What?’ We never really experienced [antisemitism] this directly,” Gabe said.“The whole thing was just very shocking and uncalled for.”
