Tech:NYC Digest: July 8

July 08, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Friday July 8, 2022

We’re back with another summer Friday edition of the Tech:NYC Digest, featuring our favorite Friday Five highlights in New York tech this week.

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Mayor Adams rolls out youth jobs for the summer with new cash (New York Post)

Hooray for the first week of the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program, which provides paid summer jobs to a record 100,000 youth in the city. In close coordination with that program and the Mayor’s Office of Youth Employment, our own Tech Year NYC initiative also wrapped Week 1 today, bringing those opportunities inside tech companies (and giving each of the students their own custom-created NFT to commemorate their participation! ICYMI: Here’s the very first one).

With Roe Overturned, Austin’s Loss Could Be Brooklyn’s Gain (New York Times)

Two years ago, experts were tracking relocation trends out of “superstar cities” due to the pandemic. Now, industry leaders and advocacy groups alike are following the same patterns, but this time for access to basic rights. In a recent op-ed, Gov. Kathy Hochul wrote to executives concerned about their employees in states where abortion and LGBTQ+ rights are being rescinded: “Move your business to New York.” With those protections codified here in state law, we have to agree.

Mayor Adams Launches Industrial Working Group to Chart the Sector’s Post-Pandemic Future (NYC)

A new working group of 25 experts in manufacturing were convened to deliver on a key commitment of the Mayor’s economic recovery blueprint. The industrial sector in NYC represents nearly half a million jobs in tech startups and small businesses of all kinds — and there’s room for more. Limor Fried, the founder and CEO of Adafruit Industries (a Tech:NYC member!) was named the co-chair of the group. She told us: "NYC is home to so many things, including advanced manufacturing businesses like Adafruit — everything is built upon something. I'm looking forward to working with many other industries and city agencies to bring more high-growth tech jobs and production to NYC!"

#WeArePlay (Google Play)

Our friends at Google shared with us a new project profiling startup founders and entrepreneurs in every US state building their businesses on Google Play. In NYC, one of those is Tanya Van Court, the founder and CEO of financial literacy app Goalsetter. We profiled Van Court last year in our own Companies to Watch series just after she raised her seed round, and since then, the app has been downloaded nearly 200,000 times. As a result, young kids — particularly in Black and Brown households — are gaining the tools they need to build financial health, and Goalsetter is advancing its mission to close the racial wealth gap.

I F*cking Hate Slack (Link)

Some people have very strong feelings about Slack. Now they have a place to vent about it.

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