Tech:NYC Digest: August 23

Tech:NYC Digest: August 23

August 23, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Monday, August 23, 2021

Happy Monday — hope you managed to stay safe and dry over the weekend. In today’s digest, Gov. Cuomo wraps his final day in office and incoming governor Kathy Hochul prepares for midnight swearing-in, the Pfizer vaccine gets full FDA approval, and Envoy CEO Larry Gadea shares his future of work predictions.

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By the numbers:

  • New positive cases statewide: 3,816

    • New positive cases, NYC: 1,522

  • Statewide Fatalities: 28

  • NYC Positivity Rate: 2.6 percent 

  • Statewide Vaccine Progress:

    • Percentage of adults (18+) with at least one dose: 78.6 percent

    • Percentage of total population with at least one dose: 66.2 percent

(For fuller breakdowns, find the state’s numbers here and the city’s numbers here.)

Today’s latest:

  • Two weeks since he gave notice of resignation after the AG report corroborated numerous sexual harassment claims, today is Gov. Cuomo’s last day in office. He delivered a pre-recorded farewell address highlighting his administration’s achievements and denying allegations. (New York Times)

    • At midnight, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul will assume the governor’s office, the first woman in history to do so. At 3pm ET tomorrow, Hochul will deliver her own address to the people of New York to mark the transition and outline her priorities. It can be streamed live at ny.gov.

    • And sadly, it appears Gov. Cuomo is leaving behind not only his job, but his dog too. (New York Magazine)

  • The FDA has granted full approval to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for people ages 16 and up, making it the first to move beyond emergency use status in the US. (New York Times) The decision is expected to set off a cascade of vaccine requirements by hospitals, colleges, corporations, and other organizations that have been waiting for full approval before issuing mandates.

    • With the approval, the drugmaker’s vaccine will now be marketed as “Comirnaty” (koe-mir’-na-tee), which sounds mostly like a very clever way to get Americans to just keep calling it “the Pfizer vaccine.”

    • Alternatively, the FDA also issued a reminder that Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug commonly used for livestock, should not be taken to treat or prevent COVID-19. The FDA said it plainly and to the point: “You are not a horse. Stop it.”

  • New York City will require every Dept. of Education employee — including teachers, principals, custodians, and all central office staff — to have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine by Sept. 27, without the option of instead submitting to weekly testing. (amNY)

    • This requirement affects some 148,000 city employees and overrides a previous rule that required staff either show proof of the vax or undergo weekly testing.

  • For New York City and its trillion-dollar economy, September was supposed to mark a broader return to normal, but the city’s economic recovery plans have hit another snag in the Delta variant. The city’s unemployment rate remains at 10.5 percent — nearly double the national average. (New York Times)

  • More than 80,000 New Yorkers have received their first COVID-19 vaccine in exchange for a $100 gift certificate from the city, roughly $8 million given directly to individuals. (NY1)

In other reading:

  • A Starter Kit for Biking in New York (New York Times)

  • Finding reliable masks online can be tricky. Here are tips that can help. (Washington Post)

  • Once Again, Travelers Ask: ‘Should I Cancel My Trip?’ (New York Times)

A remote, digital-first future of work could spell bad news for certain companies — what with some bosses predicting WFH could last for two more years. This could be especially problematic for those like Envoy, which has spent a number of years building tools for physical offices, including the visitor-check-in system it's best known for.

But Envoy founder and CEO Larry Gadea told Protocol in an interview that, while the pandemic created some tough times for the company, it has also helped accelerate it toward other plans.

  • Gadea said the industry is rethinking what an "office" actually does, with more intelligent tools to make sure every employee maximizes what they need when they come in. And in a world where five days a week, 9-5 is no longer the normal setup, those tools matter more than ever to Gadea.

Here are some key takeaways from the conversation:

  • The future of the workplace is there’s not one workplace: “You can work from anywhere, be it your home, be it your office, a satellite office of your company or a co-working space. The whole world's resources and workplaces are being allocated based on: You need a desk, you need a meeting room, you need to accept some people that come in, you need to be able to open the doors in these buildings. You now have this world where any company can be sharing its desks, its meeting rooms, its open event spaces.”

  • Sharing is caring: “Now that they've opened themselves up to, ‘Hey, we're sharing desks, which used to be permanent. We used to share meeting rooms, so that's totally normal.’ They're going to see more and more benefits, be it in cost reductions or in community building, and people knowing each other. And having everything accessible on a phone, where you can see other people around me, their interests, maybe the event that they're going to go to tonight.”

  • Technology is your friend: “Before the pandemic, most people weren’t sold on the power of technology. Most people didn't even have Microsoft Teams or Zoom or Google Meet, but the pandemic forced the whole world to realize, hey, technology can help you. And you don't have to resist it, and it's worth the investment. It made it easy for people, if they had a hunch it would help them, to get into the future and try out the new technology.”

In other reading:

  • What Happens When All Your Co-workers Quit? (The Cut)

  • 5 Ways to Reduce Rudeness in the Remote Workplace (Harvard Business Review)

  • Proof of vaccination in a tap? Smartphone developers want to make it that easy (NBC News)

  • CloudPay, a unified payroll and financial wellness platform, raised $58 million in a venture round of new funding. The Olayan Group led the round and was joined by existing investors Pinnacle Investment Partners, Rho Capital Partners, and others. (PYMNTS)

  • Breef, a marketplace for finding a marketing agency, raised $3.5 million. Greycroft led the round and was joined by investors including Rackhouse Ventures, The House Fund, John and Helen McBain, Lance Armstrong, and 640 Oxford Ventures. (FinSMEs)

  • Frame.io, a video review and collaboration platform, was acquired by Adobe for $1.28 billion in a cash deal. (TechCrunch)

  • Prospr, a platform for deskless workforce management, raised $3.2 million in seed funding. The round was led by Bonfire Ventures and was joined by Quiet Capital and Animo Ventures. (Businesswire)

  • Weav, a universal API developer for commerce platforms, was acquired by Brex for $50 million. (TechCrunch)

  • August 25: Virtual: The Digital Transformation of Consumer Engagement, with Amperity CEO Kabir Shahani. Hosted by Savills America. Register here.

  • August 26: Virtual: What’s Next in Cybersecurity, with Adobe chief security officer Mark Adams, Salesforce chief trust officer James Alkove, Microsoft vice president of security Ann Johnson, and others. Hosted by The Information. Register here.

  • October 6: In-Person Outdoors: 2021 Propelify Innovation Festival, with Tech:NYC founder and executive director Julie Samuels, Capsule CEO Eric Kinariwala, Noom CEO Saeju Jeong, Bowery Farming CEO Irving Fain, and others. Hosted by TechUnited:NJ. Use code WeInventTheFuture to register for a free general admission ticket for a limited time here.

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