Tech:NYC Digest: June 22

Tech:NYC Digest: June 22

June 22, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Tuesday, June 22, 2021In today’s digest, New Yorkers hit the polls for Primary Day, how to settle in until we get official results, and the rise of mental health days and the future of the work week. Polls are open until 9pm, don’t forget to vote!Was this digest forwarded to you? Subscribe here.

All eyes are, of course, on the primaries. It’s Primary Day in NYC, where voters will head out to one of the city’s 1,200 polling sites to cast their ballots for mayor and a range of other races.

  • Nearly 200,000 New Yorkers voted during the early voting period — a first for a NYC primary. Here’s an interesting data crunch of who and where those votes came in.

  • More than 220,000 absentee ballots have been requested. Of those, 82,600 have been completed and returned so far. But as long as they’re postmarked by today and received by June 29, they’ll be counted, so we’ll see a lot more pile in over the next week.

All of the leading contenders were up with the sun to begin greeting voters when polls opened at 6am. (New York Times) The final polling released yesterday from Data for Progress and from Ipsos indicates Eric Adams has a five to eight point lead for first choice votes, trailed by Garcia, Yang, and Wiley in varying orders. But with the new ranked choice voting method, it’s hard to say whether those first choice votes will translate to victory.

What updates to look for tonight: Not much. The city Board of Elections will release unofficial first-choice results tonight from in-person votes cast today and during the early voting period. Absentee ballots will continue being counted through next week.

  • If certain races show one candidate way ahead in the first round of first-place ranked votes, they may claim victory with some ballot counts still outstanding, but most races, including for mayor, are competitive and have large fields of candidates, so don’t plan to stay up too late for any winners’ announcements.

  • The race for Manhattan District Attorney, however, is the one race not being determined by ranked choice voting, so it’s much more likely we’ll see a definite winner in that primary tonight. 

What to expect in the coming days: The best estimates say we can expect final certified results on July 12. In between now and then:

  • June 29: The Board of Election will release unofficial results of all RCV early voting and Election Day results. This tally will not include any absentee ballots.

  • July 6: An updated tally will be released with absentee ballots tabulated so far.

That, of course, leaves a lot of room for when we’ll know projected winners — many of the races are very competitive, and when you add in the RCV element, even the experts will tell you that your guess is as good as theirs on who will come out on top.  

If you still need to vote, get out there

!

. Polls close at 9pm. If you’re in line by then, you can vote.

Before tech companies officially begin putting their return-to-office plans in motion and calling employees back, many of them are giving them something else first: a break.

In acknowledgement of the roller coaster of a year it’s been, companies are making plans to close for a week this summer to give employees a chance to relax and de-stress, guilt-free.

  • Bumble is closed this week and Hootsuite will close for the full week after July 4, as well expand its mental health resources more broadly (more details here). They follow companies like LinkedIn, which did the same earlier this year, and several others that have introduced similar benefits throughout the pandemic.

Others are following the same idea, but in more piecemeal fashion — think Slack’s monthly “Fri-yay” day off, or Google and SAP’s company-wide “recharge and reset days. And who knows, maybe these trends will stick around: Kickstarter is trying out a permanent four-day workweek in 2022. (The Atlantic) 

The reset — this summer and beyond — is certainly something we’ll be watching.

Related reading:

  • Kill the 5-Day Workweek (The Atlantic)

  • America's top business leaders are trying to solve the country's burnout crisis. Workers say it's not enough. (Insider)

Among the 20 largest cities in the country, New York was hit with the highest job loss from the pandemic. The unemployment rate hovers in the double digits, far more than the state average, and the majority of office space in the central business districts has remained slow to fill back up. Has your company onboarded new team members this month? (This is a recurring question, responses help Tech:NYC track trends over time.)

  • Cleerly, a New York-based developer of coronary imaging tech, raised $43 million. Vensana Capital led, and was joined by LRVHealth, New Leaf Venture Partners, DigiTx Partners, the American College of Cardiology and Cigna Ventures. (BusinessWire)

  • eqtble, an HR data analytics platform, has raised $2.7M in seed funding from investors that include Initialized Capital, SB Opportunity Fund, and Root and Shoot Ventures. (TechCrunch)

  • Qwoted, a New York City-based platform for journalists and sources, raised $3 million in seed funding. Third Prime led the round and was joined by investors including Gaingels, Prosek Venture Partners, and Vested. (FinSMEs)

  • Ten Little, the platform and direct-to-consumer brand that optimizes fit for children for shoes ands accessories, has raised $5M in Seed funding from investors that include NextView Ventures, Scott Belsky, Kindred Ventures, 2048 Ventures, Michael Mignano, Dan Teran, and Roosh Ventures. (AlleyWatch)

  • WaitWhat, a New York City-based podcasting and digital production company, raised $12 million. Raga Partners led the round and was joined by investors including Emerson Collective, Lupa Systems, Capital One Ventures, Maywic Select Investments, GingerBread Capital, Burda Principal Investments, Cue Ball Capital, and Reid Hoffman. (TechCrunch)

  • June 23: Virtual: How I Raised My Seed, with Fairchain co-founder Charlie Jarvis, Carecard CEO David Hannon, and Grapevine AI CEO Andrew Reiner. Hosted by Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. Register here.

  • June 23: Virtual: Engaging Business Leaders on Cultivating Interest in Computer Science Education, with Cognizant Foundation Executive Director Kristen Titus, Ally.io Head of Strategic Services Michael Davis, and Bitwise Industries VP Kennan Scott. Hosted by the National Academies of Science. Register here.

  • June 29: Virtual: Redesigning the 9 to 5, with Zoom COO Aparna Bawa, Google Workspace GM Javier Soltero, Gusto Chief People Officer Danielle Brown, and others. Hosted by Protocol. Register here.

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