Tech:NYC Digest: January 18

Tech:NYC Digest: January 18

January 18, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

In today’s digest, the judicial nomination taking center stage in New York, the data we lose when we don’t test for COVID, and how a Brooklyn startup became a national green jobs engine.

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  • Today’s top story in New York: Justice Hector LaSalle, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s nominee for the state’s chief judge, was rejected after an hourslong hearing by the State Senate Judiciary Committee today. (New York Times)

    • The chief judge presides over New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, and LaSalle would be New York’s first Latino chief judge. But a majority of lawmakers remained wary of his judicial record, and the downvote will force what is usually a noncontentious appointment into a potential legal process to determine whether the Senate will move forward with a full vote. (New York Magazine)

    • If confirmed, LaSalle would oversee the administration of the state’s entire court system and its guiding principles, and the chief judge is often a tie breaker for many of the state’s highest profile cases.

  • The number of NYC residents taking PCR tests available at hospitals and clinics any given day has dropped below 17,000, the lowest rate since May 2020. (Gothamist) NYC doesn’t collect or report on results from at-home test kits, and with reduced data from PCR test use, it becomes increasingly difficult to get an accurate sense of current transmission levels.

  • A heads up to commuters: Transit agencies are finally repairing damage to the Holland Tunnel caused by Hurricane Sandy, which means the New Jersey-bound portion of the tunnel will be closed to overnight traffic beginning Feb. 5 through 2025. (Time Out New York)

In other reading:

  • The New York Small Business Leaders Optimistic Heading into 2023 (Crain’s New York Business)

  • Here’s Why Everything at Walgreens Is Suddenly Behind Plastic (Curbed)

  • Elaborate Broth is Back: Where to Find the City’s Best New Soup (Grub Street)

The Brooklyn-based electrification startup BlocPower has earned a lot of fans for its energy technologies that upgrade buildings into greener, smarter properties. But core to founder Donnel Baird’s vision is an idea we think deserves more attention: a workforce model the company calls its Civilian Climate Corps. 

What’s new: BlocPower developed the CCC program to train unemployed and underemployed New Yorkers to address a labor shortage in New York’s clean energy workforce, and at least 1,7000 New Yorkers have now successfully gone through the program. (Fast Company)

  • It was launched in 2021 with support from the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, and this past fall, the company opened two training hubs in Brooklyn and the South Bronx to allow 3,000 more New Yorkers to participate in the year ahead.

  • About two-thirds of program participants have gone on to complete Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) training, with more than 81% of that cohort receiving a living wage during their training.

The mandate of the program is two-fold: Develop a workforce that helps the city meet its ambitious climate goals and bring those jobs to neighborhoods most affected by gun violence.

  • “The labor supply is a big problem, but it’s also a massive opportunity,” said Baird. “We are going into the lowest-income communities, where folks are at risk of gun violence—personally, their families, their communities—we’re training them on the latest, greatest software to install green infrastructure in urban environments, in rural environments.”

  • In several studies, access to jobs has been shown to correlate with lower crime rates; one study of youth employment in NYC revealed a 10% drop in incarceration for those who had summer jobs. “That’s going to solve not only crime rates in low-income communities in New York City, it’s [also] going to solve the business problem of the shortage of skilled construction workers across America," said Baird.

Our take: There’s no reason BlocPower’s upskilling program can’t be replicated across other tech subsectors — and all other industries. It can (and should!) also seed the idea to reignite the push for a federal civilian climate corps that takes its mission in Brooklyn, Buffalo, and Ithaca to the rest of the country.

In other reading:

  • Rebranding RTO: Why Companies Coin Names for Their Hybrid-Work Plans (Bloomberg)

  • Helping Gen Z Employees Find Their Place at Work (Harvard Business Review)

  • 10 Impressive Questions to Ask in a Job Interview (The Cut)

  • Arch, a NYC-based alternative asset lending platform, raised $2.75 million in funding. Participating investors include Castle Island Ventures, Tribe Capital, Picus Capital, Global Founders Capital, and a group of individuals. (CoinDesk)

  • Carry1st, a NYC and Cape Town-based publisher of social games in frontier markets, raised $27 million in Series B funding. Bitkraft Ventures led the round and was joined by Andreessen Horowitz, TTV Capital, Alumni Ventures, Lateral Capital, Kepple Ventures, and Konvoy. (VentureBeat)

  • Joyn Insurance, a NYC-based insurance technology company, raised $17.7 million in Series A funding. Omers Ventures led the round and was joined by Avanta Ventures, ManchesterStory, Cohen Circle, SiriusPoint, and a group of individuals. (FinSMEs)

  • January 23: In-person: Hidden Lives of Women in STEM Book Launch Party, with author and Women in Tech Chief Digital Advisor Lori Rodriguez. Register here.

  • January 24: In-person: How I Raised My Seed, with re:collect CEO Alice Albrecht, WriteSea CEO Brandon Mitchell, and WeStock CEO Cameron McCarthy. Hosted by Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. Register here.

  • January 25: Virtual: Lessons from Scaling Handy, with Handy co-founder and Angi CEO Oisin Harahan. Hosted by Junction Venture Partners. Register here.

  • January 25: In-person: NY Product Meetup: A Fireside Chat with Ordergroove SVP of Product Paul Fredrich. Hosted by Bond Collective and Productboard. Register here.

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