Tech:NYC Digest: June 28

Tech:NYC Digest: June 28

June 28, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

Monday, June 28 2021

Happy Monday! In today’s digest, NYC is banking on a #SummerOfNYC season of tourists, how proximity bias can affect your company’s return to office plans, and want your employees back to the office? Let their pets come too.

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As New York City fully reopens, officials are hoping to revive a critical driver of the city's economy with one key strategy: bring back the tourists!

A record investment: NYC & Company, the city’s tourism promotion agency, is launching a $30 million campaign to bring both domestic and international visitors back. The agency has set a goal to lure 10 million visitors to the city for overnight stays or day trips between Memorial Day and Labor Day. (New York Times) 

Reminding travelers of their FOMO: A major ad campaign themed “It’s time for New York City” will start appearing to boast NYC’s unrivaled energy and lure Americans who might otherwise have gone to Europe or elsewhere overseas to consider spending time — and money — in New York instead. (Adweek) 

  • Starting today, eight million AAA members across the northeast will have access to special offers and travel packages in an effort to boost regional travel.

  • In early July, the campaign will kick off its second phase with the rollout of a new video spot. The video, which will ask viewers "Where Were You in the Summer of '21?," will run across national television and online channels in key travel hubs in and out of the city.

  • In the third and final phase, the focus is international, reaching would-be visitors in Mexico, Canada, and select countries throughout Latin America.

A strong summer season is projected, thanks to the city’s comparatively high vaccination rate and broad reopening, but it will still be a far cry from pre-pandemic levels. (MarketWatch) The hotels are slowly booking more and more rooms each week, but still below their operating costs — in the week that ended June 12, the occupancy rate of the 700,000 available hotel rooms in New York was about 62 percent, down from 88 percent in the comparable week of 2019.

  • The end of COVID-era restrictions earlier this month was a major help, and the September reopening of Broadway should give them — and the restaurants and retail businesses — another boost.

In other news:

  • A new study found that the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines could offer protection for years, adding to growing evidence that most healthy people immunized may not need boosters, so long as the virus and its variants do not evolve much beyond their current forms. (New York Times)

  • The City Council will reconvene for the first in-person meeting this week in 16 months to adopt the budget that is due by July 1. Mayor Bill de Blasio has proposed a $98.6 billion spending plan, which would be the biggest in city history if it is passed. (New York Post)

  • US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg toured the damaged Hudson River trail tunnels today and offered his support for an $11 billion Gateway Tunnel project to restore them. (NBC New York)

  • Beginning July 15, families across New York will gain access to new, expanded child tax credit benefits. Find more details here.

There’s broad consensus that the post-pandemic workplace will be hybrid and flexible, but now comes the hard part: figuring out exactly what that means for your team and company culture.

The challenge of proximity bias: There’s a difference between a hybrid model in which everyone is sometimes remote, sometimes in-office at the same time, versus a flexible model in which some workers are remote and others are in-office. That difference is where proximity bias can creep in, where employees with close physical proximity to their team and company leaders are seen as better workers and are more successful than their remote counterparts. (Protocol)

Some of the ways companies will try to level the playing field:

  • Divvy up the days, but equally: Establishing a calendar for when and on which days workers come into the office — and concentrating team meetings on those days — can help ensure everyone gets equal face-time week over week and leaves them to do individual work wherever they choose. (Wall Street Journal)

  • Streamline communication and collaboration tools: Having two work environments can be a lot. Constantly switching between work and home setups, and collaborating with team members in their own setups, can slow things down. Figure out which tools teams can use — from email to video calls — to more seamlessly stay connected, regardless of if they’re working at home or in the office. (New York Times)

  • Accept the remote future: According to experts, the best way to combat proximity bias, or an uneven workplace structure more broadly, may just be to go all in on remote work. Whatever policies your company puts in place, remote work can no longer be thought of as a benefit to be accommodated, but a real feature of the workplace to be intentionally built upon and supported.

Related reading:

  • Signing Bonuses, Airbnb Rentals and Bigger Paychecks: How Startups Are Competing for Top Talent in 2021 (Crunchbase News)

  • What we learned about wellness while WFH, and how to use those insights (Washington Post)

  • “Third workplaces”: Teleworking spots in cafes, hotels, and coworking spaces are the new alternative to offices and homes (Axios)

  • Facet, a New York City-based collaborative analytics platform dedicated to real-time business analytics agnostic to any cloud data warehouse, raised $8 million in seed funding. The round was led by Harrison Metal with participation from Bedrock and Breakpoint Capital. (FinSMEs)

  • JW Player, a New York-based online video software provider, raised $100 million from LLR Partners. (TechCrunch)

  • Kindbody, a New York City-based fertility company, raised $62 million in Series C funding.  Claritas Health Ventures, led the round and was joined by Bramalea Partners, Monashee Investment Management, Eldridge, GV, Perceptive Advisors, RRE Ventures, and Rock Springs Capital. (FinSMEs)

  • Novocardia, a New York City-based cardiovascular care delivery platform, raised $53.7 million in Series A funding. Deerfield Management Company led the round. (Cision)

  • Recycle Track Systems, a New York-based waste and recycling management company, raised $35 million in Series C funding. Citi Impact Fund led, and was joined by Edison Partners, Cue Ball, Greenspring Associates, Gaingels, and the Partnership for New York City. (FinSMEs)

  • Vantage, a New York-based service that helps businesses analyze and reduce their AWS costs, raised $4 million in seed funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round and a number of angel investors participated. (TechCrunch)

  • June 29: Virtual, REMOTE by GitLab, an event exploring the future of work and culture, with GitLab head of remote Darren Murph, Commsor CEO Mac Reddin, Global Workplace Analytics president Kate Lister, and others. Hosted by GitLab. 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.

  • June 29: Virtual: Cryptocurrency Goes Mainstream, with Grayscale Investments CEO Michael Sonnenshein, Rep. Bill Foster, and CoinFlip CEO Ben Weiss. Hosted by Axios. Register here.

  • July 8: Virtual: How to Pitch to VCs and Angel Investors, with New York Angels founder David S. Rose, Bread and Butter Ventures head of platform Stephanie Rich, AI Ventures managing partner Callum Bir, and others. Hosted by DownToDash. Register here.

You may have seen that pet adoptions soared during the pandemic. With background checks and all, getting a pet is a pretty serious and significant process. Companies should take note of just how serious and significant: a new survey says two in three dog owners would consider leaving their jobs if their companies no longer offered remote work. The takeaway: if it’s your job to restock the snack bins, don’t forget the dog treats.

(PS: if you’re a new pandemic pet parent, here’s

you should know about.)

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