Tech:NYC Digest: August 2

Tech:NYC Digest: August 2

August 02, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Tuesday, August 2, 2022 

In today’s digest, NYC will do less tracing and more treating, tourists turn their attention to Brooklyn, and why Primary Venture Partners says NYC is bucking global venture trends.

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By the numbers:  

  • New positive cases statewide: 4,380   

    • New positive cases, NYC: 2,364 

  • NYC Positivity Rate (Daily): 8.9%

    • NYC Positivity Rate (7-Day Average): 8.1%  

In today’s latest: 

  • NYC’s Test & Trace Corps is now the Test & Treat Corps in an effort to bring more emphasis to treatment resources, including free immediate access to Paxlovid or other medications for those who test positive for COVID-19. (NBC New York)

  • As tourists begin returning to the city, they seem to be taking the advice of locals: skip Times Square and head to the Brooklyn Bridge instead. A new study found that Manhattan's tourism numbers in June were down 14% compared to 2019, while Brooklyn was up 5% over 2019. (Patch NYC)

  • A new lawsuit seeks to end NYC’s outdoor dining program. The suit takes aim at the city’s Open Restaurants program for excessive noise, traffic, and garbage.(ABC New York)

    • The NYC Council passed legislation to make the program permanent in February, but it has been delayed by another lawsuit calling first for an environmental impact review. 

  • For those of you living in the redrawn NY-12 congressional district (and for everyone else following what is a crucial primary race): longtime Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Jerry Nadler face off in a televised debate, alongside candidate Suraj Patel. More on how to tune in at 7pm ET here. 

  • Lastly, you can now ride bumper cars on the tarmac at JFK Airport.

In other reading:

  • When you have COVID, here’s how you know you are no longer contagious (Washington Post)

  • Behind a Billion-Dollar Bid to Save Lower Manhattan (Bloomberg)

  • A Final Trip to Papaya King on the Eve of Its Likely Destruction (Grub Street)

With market conditions recoiling, experts have predicted that venture capital activity would follow a similar path. But in NYC, the opposite is (still) happening.

Primary Venture Partners’ NYC Seed Report provides a quarterly update into NYC’s seed environment, and it found Q2 was yet another record breaker, both for total value and number of deals closed.

  • In the same time global VC funding dropped 26% quarter over quarter, it increased 16% in NYC, accounting for $866 million in total new dealflow.

  • The number of deals also increased 7.5% (up to 201 from 187 in Q1), representing a 58% increase year over year.

Healthtech and consumer startups raked in the most deals, according to the report, with fintech and web3 also showing strong numbers.

In other reading:

  • Remote CEO Job van der Voort: Hybrid may not be the golden solution we thought. Here’s why (Fast Company)

  • Are tech layoffs a reputation killer or just part of doing business? (Protocol)

  • The things we’ve learned from two years of WFH (The Verge)

  • Grasshopper Bank, a NYC-based digital bank, raised $30.4 million in private equity funding. Participating investors include GCP Capital Partners, as well as insiders Patriot Financial Partners, Endeavour Capital Advisors, FJ Capital Management and Carpenter & Co. (PYMNTS)

  • Ottonomy.io, a Brooklyn-based maker of autonomous delivery robots, raised $3.3m in seed funding. Pi Ventures led the round and was joined by Connetic Ventures and Branded Hospitality Ventures. (TechCrunch)

  • August 3: Virtual: Using Tech to Make Investing More Accessible, with Fundrise CEO Ben Miller. Hosted by Savills. Register here.

  • August 9: Virtual: Silicon Valley Bank Fundraising Workshop: Enterprise SaaS Edition, with Work-Bench co-founder and general partner Jonathan Lehr and Silicon Valley Bank managing director Andrew Oddo. Register here.

  • August 11: In-person: Climate and NY: What’s Next in Politics, Policy, and Tech, at the Brooklyn Grange. Hosted by the New York Climate Tech Meetup and the Spring Street Climate Fund. Register here.

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