Tech:NYC Digest: February 21

Tech:NYC Digest: February 21

February 21, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Welcome back! In today’s digest, how NYC’s for-hire vehicles achieve zero emissions, matching highly-skilled immigrants to New York tech jobs, and the companies that want to see the four-day workweek pilot become permanent.

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  • Last month, Mayor Eric Adams announced a goal to require NYC’s for-hire vehicle fleet to reach zero emissions by 2030, and a new study out today from Uber and HR&A Advisors details some recommendations for how to get there. (Gotham Gazette)

  • A tentative contract agreement has been reached between NYC and the city’s largest municipal union, which includes a plan to allow some city employees to work remotely beginning in June. Remote work has been a core issue in the negotiations, and it signals a shift the mayor had previously resisted: an acceptance that flexible work will have staying power. (New York Times)

  • New York is expanding a program to help highly-skilled immigrants find jobs that match their experience. The program was first launched in 2021 and will award grants over three years amid the ongoing influx of migrants and asylum seekers coming into the state. (NY1)

  • Lastly, it’s been a tumultuous two weeks for NYC’s newest celebrity, Flaco the owl. (Curbed) And Central Park Zoo has given up on capturing him (for now).

In other reading:

  • How to find out if your at-home COVID-19 test kit is actually expired (Crain’s New York Business)

  • Want to Lower Housing Costs? Build in New York’s Suburbs (New York Times)

  • Welcome to the Year’s Most Unhinged Italian Restaurant So Far (Eater NY)

There was a swell of stories last year on the global push for a four-day work week, but is the idea really in the cards for NYC?

What’s new: A six-month pilot program joined by 61 companies in the UK wrapped in November 2022, and more than 91% said they would continue testing the shorter work week.

The COVID-19 era gave the idea new momentum — none of the 2,900 employees participating in the pilot said they wanted to ditch the four-day arrangement, and 15% said that no amount of extra money could convince them to return to five days. (Bloomberg)

“At the beginning, this was about pandemic burnout for a lot of employers. Now it’s more of a retention and recruitment issue for many of them,” Juliet Schor, an economist at Boston College who conducted the study, told the Wall Street Journal.

But widespread adoption faces a number of obstacles: Most companies that have experimented with the concept are small employers, and some workers report that fewer work days doesn’t mean a smaller workload — and they’re struggling to get everything done in that time.

  • In the UK pilot, workers didn’t report working more intensively, however. Rather, managers sought to make work days more efficient by cutting back on meetings and staggering other team-based functions.

Our takeaway: Endless Summer Fridays look unlikely for now, and employers hope that a package of other flexible work options can achieve the same benefits of a permanent four-day work week.

In other reading:

GET INVOLVED: The annual NYC Computer Science Opportunity Fair (CS Fair) is back, fully in-person! Now in its eighth year, the CS Fair is an opportunity to inspire students to pursue interests and careers in tech. It's the city's largest gathering of high school students studying CS, bringing together more than 2,000 students from public high schools across all five boroughs.

Tech:NYC is recruiting member companies from our network to join us at the fair by hosting a booth that provides students with an interactive opportunity to engage with the company’s products and team members. There’s no cost to participate. If your company is interested,

and we’ll follow up with next steps.  

  • Capsule, a NYC and remote-based video creation, editing, and distribution platform, raised $4.75 million in seed funding. Human Ventures, Swift Ventures, Tiferes Ventures, Behind Genius Ventures, Array Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, and other angels invested in the round. (TechCrunch)

  • Chaos Labs, a NYC-based crypto security startup, raised $20 million in seed funding. Galaxy and PayPal Ventures co-led the round and were joined by Coinbase, Uniswap, Lightspeed, Bessemer, Hashkey, Balaji Srinivasan, Naval Ravikant, among others. (CoinDesk)

  • Strider, a NYC-based collaborative storytelling startup, raised $5.5 million in seed funding. Makers Fund and Fabric Ventures co-led the round and was joined by Shima Capital, Sfermion, Magic Eden, among others. (VentureBeat)

  • Tiplink, a NYC-based crypto wallet and transaction startup, raised $6 million in seed funding. Sequoia Capital and Multicoin Capital co-led the round. (CoinDesk)

  • February 23: In-person: Cornell Tech @ Bloomberg speaker series, with Esusu co-founder and co-CEO Wemimo Abbey. Hosted by Tech:NYC, Bloomberg, and Cornell Tech. Register here.

  • February 28: In-person: Black Latines in Tech & VC, with Digital Health Review founder Blair Hirst, givepact co-founder and CEO Alicia Cepeda Maule, and BBG Ventures head of platform and operations Amber Quiñones. Hosted by VCFamilia and BLCK VC. Register here.

  • February 28: In-person and virtual: #newtovc: Goal-Setting for Next Rounds, with General Catalyst managing director Niko Bonatsos, Left Lane Capital vice president Laura Sillman, and 3L partner Jodi Kessler. Hosted by Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. Register here.

  • March 9: In-person: Innovating for Financial Inclusion in Fintech, with Alinea Invest co-CEO Eve Halimi, SoLo Funds director of growth Nicole Bayard, and Bolder Money co-founder Amy Schultz. Hosted by WIN NY and Rise, created by Barclays. Register here.

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