Tech:NYC Digest: December 17

Tech:NYC Digest: December 17

December 17, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Friday, December 17, 2021

Programming note: Today’s edition of the digest will be the last for the year — all of our inboxes could use a break! We hope you have a safe and joyous holiday, and we’ll see you on Monday, Jan. 3. 

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By the numbers:

  • New positive cases statewide: 21,027

    • New positive cases, NYC: 10,286

  • NYC Positivity Rate: 4.4 percent

  • Statewide Vaccine Progress: 

    • Percentage of adults (18+) with at least one dose: 93.9 percent

    • Percentage of total population with at least one dose: 81.6 percent

Today in COVID: 

  • The spread of the Omicron variant (and existing variants) has taken off in New York, and New Yorkers are feeling a familiar anxiety. (New York Times)

    • Today the state reported more than 21,000 new cases, the highest recorded number of new statewide cases since the epidemic began. The previous record was set with 19,942 cases in January.

  • The prevalence of the Omicron variant is likely far higher than we know: it currently accounts for just one percent of tested cases in NYC. Even so, New York is detecting it at four times the rate of the rest of the country, according to the CDC. (NBC New York)

  • Due to the rapid spread, at least five Broadway productions have been temporarily cancelled and several restaurants in the city have been forced to close.

  • COVID-19 testing demand has more than doubled in NYC this week over the surge. (New York Magazine)

    • Gov. Hochul is creating a portal for New York residents to request coronavirus tests be delivered to their homes. (New York Times)

  • Pfizer said the pediatric dose of its vaccine didn’t adequately produce an immune response in children ages two to five, and will test a three-dose series for official authorization. (NPR)

  • If you’re interested in the wonky science behind why Omicron is spreading so quickly, this interactive explainer is for you.

In related reading:

  • What Happens When You Test Positive While Traveling? (New York Times)

  • How to Deal With (Even More) COVID Uncertainty (Vox)

  • Ed Yong: I Canceled My Party Because of Omicron. Here’s How I Thought Through the Decision (The Atlantic)

It seems like, just overnight, we’re in a rerun of March 2020. And that spells trouble for the companies still trying to make return-to-office plans work. Many have stopped trying, at least for now.

Some of the latest shifts we know about due to escalating Omicron spread:

  • Google has pushed its January RTO to an indefinite future date, and it also announced it would put workers who haven’t been fully vaccinated by Jan. 18 on unpaid leave. If they don’t get vaccinated within six months, they will be fired. (CNBC)

  • Apple also indefinitely delayed its RTO date and reinstated a mask mandate for all staff and customers in its US stores. (Wall Street Journal)

  • Firms like Citigroup, Citadel, Jeffries, and Blackstone are all shifting their New York and New Jersey employees back to remote work through the holiday season. (Bloomberg)

  • And as we’ve reported before, companies like Airbnb, Lyft, SAP, and Uber have all told their employees not to worry about RTO until the second half of 2022, at the earliest.

And unsurprisingly, holiday parties are being cancelled left and right. (Tech:NYC’s own party is included on that list.)

So if current trends hold, we’ll be wrapping up 2021 the same way we entered it: in front of our remote work setups at home. That means this glossary of words that came about during the pandemic could be handy — we’ll be using them for a while longer.

Here’s some of our favorites:

  • Al desko dining: The nostalgia you feel for the dash outside to buy a prepackaged sandwich or salad whose crumbs end up on your keyboard.

  • Mask-issist: That office colleague who inexplicably lowers their mask to cough.

  • Polywork: The more official-sounding way to describe your side hustle.

  • Zoombie: Anyone who has entered their eighth hour of staring at a co-worker’s pores and wished to be back under the fluorescent lighting of an open floor plan knows what it’s like to turn into a Zoombie.

In other reading:

  • 6 Workplace Lessons to Carry Into 2022 (TIME)

  • These are the workplace scenarios executives are ‘future-proofing’ against (Protocol)

  • Four Resolutions for a Healthier Tech Life in 2022 (New York Times)

For the final edition of our Cornell Tech @ Bloomberg series this year, we spoke to Klarna co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski. Klarna helped create and lead an entire industry of "buy now, pay later" businesses, and we discussed what it was like to start the company as a student, why the credit card industry was primed for disruption, how the holiday shopping season is going, and more. Stream the episode on demand here.

  • Air Mail, a New York City-based subscription-based digital magazine company, raised a $17 million in Series B funding. Standard Investments led the round and was joined by TPG Growth and RedBird Capital Partners. (Axios)

  • Haystacks.ai, a New York City-based data aggregation and intelligence platform for real estate investors, raised $5 million in seed funding. Streamlined Ventures and Colle Capital co-led the round. (MarTech)

  • Nucleus Genomics, a Brooklyn-based genomic testing startup, raised $3.5 million in seed funding. Founders Fund led the round and was joined by Pareto Holdings, Quiet Capital, Salt Fund, Bluewatch Ventures, and several angels. (TechCrunch)

  • Parallel Learning, a New York City-based psychoeducational services company for learning and thinking differences, raised $2.8 million in funding. Vine Ventures led the round and was joined by Global Founders Capital, Great Oaks, and others. (FinSMEs)

  • Qonsent, a New York City-based data privacy and consent engagement platform, raised $5 million in seed funding. Investors included Zekavat Investment Group, Crosscut Ventures, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Brand New Matter. (VentureBeat)

  • Rokt, a New York City-based e-commerce marketing company, raised $325 million in Series E funding at a $1.95 billion valuation. Tiger Global led the round and was joined by Wellington, Whale Rock, Pavilion Capital, and insider Square Peg. (Wall Street Journal)

  • Swimply, a New York City-based swimming pool sharing marketplace, raised $40 million in new funding. Mayfield led the round and was joined by GGV Capital, Ensemble VC, Norwest Venture Partners, and Trust Ventures. (TechCrunch)

For those of you preparing for holiday travel, stay safe out there! If you’re sticking around the city, here’s New York’s top ten restaurants of 2021, plus some ideas for where to eat on Christmas Day.

And if the new variant makes you want to hunker down and cancel plans altogether, we hope you take some time to relax, perhaps with some of 2021’s best books and movies.

See you in 2022! 🥂

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