Tech:NYC Digest: January 26

Tech:NYC Digest: January 26

January 26, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

In today’s digest, OSHA’s vaccine requirement is officially withdrawn, free masks hit NYC pharmacies, and what lattes tell us about office reopenings.

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By the numbers:  

  • New positive cases statewide: 16,519

    • New positive cases, NYC: 6,385

  • NYC Positivity Rate: 7.0 percent (-0.7 percent)

  • NYC Hospitalizations: 4,326 (-325)

  • Statewide Vaccine Progress: 

    • Percentage of all New Yorkers with least one dose: 87.1 percent

    • Percentage of all New Yorkers who are fully vaccinated: 73.7 percent

Today’s latest: 

  • An appeals court judge ruled the state’s indoor mask mandate could remain in effect while the case challenging the mandate makes its way through the courts. (POLITICO) Mayor Eric Adams said the city will keep its mask mandate in schools regardless of the state’s legal battle. 

  • The Biden administration has officially withdrawn its vaccine-or-testing requirement for large employers. (New York Times)

    • OSHA and the Labor Department recognized there was no way to revive the emergency temporary standard following SCOTUS’ ruling against it.

  • Free N95 masks being distributed by the federal government have begun arriving in pharmacies and grocery stores. (NPR)

    • A full list of participating NYC retail stores, such as Walgreens/Duane Reade, can be found on the CDC’s website.

  • New York State will send coronavirus rapid at-home tests to every K-12 student ahead of the midwinter break. Gov. Kathy Hochul said this will help children if they are exposed to COVID-19 during the break and proactively prevent further exposure once students return to school. (Staten Island Advance)

  • A(nother) major winter storm is expected to slam NYC and surrounding areas this weekend. Current models predict anywhere from two to twenty inches of snowfall in the city, so we’d recommend getting prepared in case it’s closer to the latter. (Washington Post)

In other reading:

  • New Research Hints at 4 Factors That May Increase Chances of Long Covid (New York Times)

  • The mayor vowed to cut red tape for small businesses. Here’s where he can start. (Crain’s New York)

  • The Rise and Fall of NYC’s 25 Cent Martinis (Grub Street)

The newest indicator we’re following to monitor office trends: lattes.

Bloomberg’s Pret Index is a creative tool that’s tracking sales at Pret-A-Manger cafes in several cities to get a sense of business activity — and food traffic — in office centers.

NYC stores around Wall Street and Midtown Manhattan saw sales at just 20-30 percent of pre-pandemic levels last week.

  • That’s down from more than 60 percent of pre-pandemic business in late 2021, according to the index.

  • The index recorded noticeable upticks in NYC office returns in early December 2021. But office workers have yet to begin returning to their desks at the same pace following Omicron’s NYC outbreak.

That could soon change directions again, however:

  • Much of Wall Street, including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, remain committed to their Feb. 1 RTO dates, with Citi, BNP Paribas, and others planning for Feb. 7 reopenings. Bank of America has already begun gradually calling employees back. 

Tech remains less bullish: Facebook parent company Meta, for example, pushed its RTO date for US offices back to March 28. It had previously planned for a Jan. 31 return date, but the company will use the additional time to add a booster requirement for all returning workers.

What we expect next: As the city rebounds from the Omicron wave and looks ahead to the warmer season, tech executives will feel the itch to get office reopenings back on track. Executives’ biggest concern with indefinite remote work is preserving company culture, so a fresh wave of RTO announcements could be on the horizon.

In other reading: 

  • Four-day workweeks get rave reviews, but they’re not catching on (Axios)

  • Twilio’s chief diversity officer: how to do better corporate DEI (Protocol)

  • Can I Reveal a Colleague’s Covid Diagnosis? (New York Times)

  • Domain Money, a New York City-based stock and crypto investment platform, raised $33 million in new venture funding. Investors included Bessemer Venture Partners, Maveron, RRE Ventures, and Marc Benioff. (Bloomberg)

  • Fever, a New York City-based live events discovery platform, raised $227 million in growth equity funding. Goldman Sachs led the round and was joined by Alignment Growth, Goodwater Capital, Smash Capital, Eurazeo, and Vitruvian Partners. (Bloomberg)

  • LEX Markets, a New York City-based real estate securities marketplace for investors, raised $15 million in Series A funding. PEAK6 led the round and was joined by Khosla Ventures, Two Lanterns, MUFG Innovation Partners, MetaProp, and Gaingels.

  • Order, a New York City-based inventory management platform formerly known as Negotiatus, raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Stage 2 Capital and was joined by investors including Clocktower Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Seven Peaks Ventures, Ankona, and former Salesforce CEO Mark Hawkins. (Newswire)

Y Combinator is accepting applications for its Summer 2022 cohort. The program will be all-virtual with optional in-person opportunities, and accepted companies will receive $500K in total investments Learn more and apply by the early deadline on Jan. 31 or regular deadline on March 31 here.NextView is accepting applications for its Everyday Economy Accelerator program. The program is seeking consumer and SaaS B2B startups at the pre-seed and seed stage, offering $400K access to NextView’s investor, operators, and extended advisor network. Learn more and apply by Feb. 14 here.Interact is accepting applications for its 2022 fellowship program. The Interact Fellowship is open to young technologists interested in participating in two fully-sponsored summer retreats with other founders, engineers, community builders, and more, as well as access to grants programs and VC partners. Learn more and apply by Feb. 15 here.The Founder Institute is accepting applications for its New York Virtual 2022 Cohort. The program focuses on helping tech or tech-enabled businesses at the idea and pre-seed stages interested in the institute's FI Core accelerator. Learn more and apply by the early admissions deadline on Feb. 20 here.

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