Tech:NYC Digest: August 24

Tech:NYC Digest: August 24

August 24, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

In today’s digest, Gov. Kathy Hochul delivers her first public address, the Delta wave of new infections may be cresting in the northeast US, and how employers are grappling with historic worker turnover.

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By the numbers:

Today’s COVID-19 data has not been released as of publication time (our guess is there’s some processes being sorted out with the new administration).

For the most recent breakdowns, current as of yesterday, August 23, find the state’s numbers here and the city’s numbers here.

Today’s latest:

  • Kathy Hochul was sworn in as New York's 57th governor shortly after midnight on Tuesday morning, becoming the first woman in state history to hold the position. Hochul has served as the state's lieutenant governor since 2015. (Gothamist)

    • While Hochul has so far appointed two key top aides, she said she could take up to 45 days to determine which cabinet officials and other top staff she plans to keep from the Cuomo administration. (New York Times) All eyes are on who she will pick as her Lieutenant Governor, but she has previously said she would commit to choosing someone from NYC. (New York Times)

    • In her first public address this afternoon, Hochul outlined the issues she plans to prioritize as Governor, including school mask and vaccine mandates, speeding up rent relief payments, and overhauling ethics training and policies for state employees. (CBS News)

  • Though the Delta variant continues to target New York’s unvaccinated by the thousands, the latest wave of COVID-19 infections may be starting to crest. (Bloomberg)

    • The seven-day average daily number of positive cases fell from 1,906 on Aug. 13 to 1,859 on Aug. 16. In that same period, the seven-day hospitalization average also dropped from 108 on Aug. 13 to 89 three days later. 

    • Overall, the city’s seven-day positivity rate over the past 28 days — one of the Health Department’s “key indicators” of the COVID-19 crisis — sat at 3.82 percent on Aug. 22, which the agency described as “stable.” The daily seven-day positivity rate itself slid from a peak of 3.99 percent on Aug. 12 to 3.81 percent on Aug. 18. (amNY)

  • Pres. Biden is calling on public and private entities to "step up" COVID-19 vaccine mandates, just hours after the FDA fully approved the Pfizer vaccine. The US has seen a recent boost in vaccinations, reaching six million shots in the last seven days, but Biden believes the country needs to move faster. (Axios)

  • A giant ferris wheel made an appearance in Times Square on Tuesday, and it's not just for show. The 110-foot tall "Times Square Wheel" located near Duffy Square is expected to begin accepting ticketed riders starting Wednesday. It's a limited-time pop-up experience to showcase the crossroads of the world as never seen before. (NBC New York)

  • The CDC today placed six new countries on its list of “very high risk” places, including some summer vacation destinations like the Bahamas. The agency recommends Americans avoid traveling to these countries altogether, all of which have had over 500 cases per 100,000 people within 28 days. (New York Times)

In other reading:

  • Why Your Next Trip Might Be More Expensive Than Your Last (New York Times)

  • No vaccination? Americans back tough rules and mask mandates to protect the common good (USA Today)

  • Cow Parade Returns to NYC, But Please Don't Steal Them This Time (New York Times)

The pandemic caused an unprecedented shift in rethinking work-life (or “life-work”) balance. It provided new possibilities for freelancers working from home, with an influx of new businesses taking the leap to remote work. As power and opportunity shifted more toward workers, the pandemic also caused the unexpected phenomenon of what’s now described as a global exodus of talent across organizations small and large.

This has left employers grappling with the fallout from higher turnover than normal. (Axios)

  • A whopping 65 percent of employees said they are looking for a new job, according to PwC's survey conducted Aug. 2-6 of 1,007 employees and 752 executives in the US.

But higher turnover isn’t the only issue: Employers face not just a people-power drain, but severe losses of institutional knowledge. After all, what happens when a person who knows how to effectively utilize a certain tool in a company’s tech stack leaves, taking that important, specialized knowledge with them?

Some companies are trying to get ahead of that problem by reducing their dependence on employees' institutional knowledge. Here are some ways companies can go about this: 

  • Auditing and Identifying: Identify where the knowledge lives. Go through team members one by one and audit the knowledge they have about work processes. When you’ve gathered that information, identify what is worth documenting and what’s not.

  • Document and Capture: Create some training documents! However you choose to document the knowledge is completely up to you and your team. If you can, document it in multiple ways so employees with different learning styles have a resource that works for them.

  • Preventing Institutional Knowledge in the Future: It’s all too easy to let institutional knowledge take over, so it’s up to you as a team leader to prevent that. By putting the focus on leveling the playing field, you’ll create an open, collaborative environment where all of your team members are valued and appreciated.

In other reading:

  • Creating Culture in a WFH World: How 3 Small Businesses Did It (New York Times)

  • Bad commutes make us more likely to want to work virtually (Axios)

  • Workers Don’t Want Their Old Jobs on the Old Terms (New York Times)

  • Bravely, a platform connecting people to on-demand professional coaching and development, raised $15 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Telescope Partners and joined by prior investors Primary Ventures, Bling Capital, Correlation Ventures, RiverPark Ventures, and Tuesday Fund, as well as new investor SemperVirens Venture Capital. (Newswire)

  • Covera Health, a patient care analytics startup focused on reducing medical errors, raised $25 million in Series C funding. The round was led by Insight Partners and was joined by existing investors including Equity Group Investments. (Businesswire)

  • Equum Medical, a New York-based provider of acute care telehealth solutions, raised $20 million in growth equity funding from Heritage Group. (FinSMEs)

  • Givz, an API-powered platform converting discounts into donations, raised $3 million in seed funding. Eniac and Accomplice led the round and were joined by investors including Supernode Ventures, Claude Wasserstein of Fine Day, Phoenix Club, and Dylan Whitman. (TechCrunch)

  • Ramp, a corporate card and spend management platform, raised $300 million in Series C funding at a $3.9 billion valuation. The round was led by Founders Fund, and other participating investors include Redpoint Ventures, Thrive Capital, D1 Capital Partners, Spark Capital, Coatue, Iconiq, Altimeter, Stripe, Lux Capital, A* Partners, Definition Capital, Vista Public Strategies, Honeycomb, and Kinetic. It also acquired Buyer, a "negotiation-as-a-service" platform focused on large purchases like annual software contracts. (CNBC)

  • Veego Software, a home customer experience company, raised $13 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Magenta Venture Partners and joined by investors including State of Mind Ventures, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, North First Ventures, and Amdocs Ventures. (FinSMEs)

  • Xalud Therapeutics, a biotech developer of nonviral gene therapies to treat pathologic inflammation, raised $30 million in Series C funding led by PBM Capital. (Businesswire)

  • 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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