Tech:NYC Digest: March 4

Tech:NYC Digest: March 4

March 04, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Friday, March 4, 2022 

Happy National Day of Unplugging (which we recommend you begin observing right after you finish reading this). In today’s digest, Key to NYC rules to end Monday, how you could be doing recycling all wrong, and why the first lesson for tech offices is that they’ll never be the same.

Was this digest forwarded to you? Subscribe here.

By the numbers:  

  • New positive cases statewide: 1,985 

    • New positive cases, NYC: 701

  • NYC Positivity Rate: 1.0 percent (-0.1 percent)

  • NYC Hospitalizations: 576 (-57)

  • Statewide Vaccine Progress: 

    • New Yorkers with at least one dose: 89.1 percent

    • New Yorkers who are fully vaccinated: 75.6 percent

In today’s latest:

  • Mayor Eric Adams today announced that NYC will follow statewide guidance and make mask wearing optional for all K-12 public school students and staff starting Monday, March 7. (Gothamist)

    • However, students under the age of five (including 3K and 4K programs) and kids not currently eligible for COVID vaccines will be required to continue wearing masks in class.

  • Key to NYC rules will also be suspended beginning March 7. Proof of vaccination will no longer be required to enter indoor venues like restaurants, bars, gyms, and movie theaters, but businesses can continue enforcing vaccine requirements if they choose. (Gothamist)

  • With mandates being lifted, city officials announced a new color-coded alert system to inform New Yorkers about risk levels. Currently the city is in the lowest level; you can learn more about the new system here.

  • Black New Yorkers were hospitalized with COVID-19 at more than twice the rate of white New Yorkers during the Omicron wave, an indication that pandemic-era health disparities are in some respects deepening. (New York Times)

  • And lastly, you’re probably overthinking NYC recycling rules, which may be the reason half of the city’s recyclables just get trashed. Here’s some surprising guidance on what to do with that greasy pizza box and other items. 

In other reading:

  • Get Out of Your Pajamas, the Pandemic Is Over (Or At Least That’s the Hope) (New York Times)

  • How Humans of New York Found a New Mission (New York Magazine)

  • Inside Veselka: A Restaurant Rallying Point for Ukraine (Eater NY)

The list of major tech employers releasing (what they hope are) final office reopening plans continues to grow by the day.

After an announcement from Google earlier this week, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal sent a memo to employees about their RTO plans, stressing that flexibility will be the guiding principle:

  • The company is reopening all of its offices in full on March 15, but employees can choose how often to use them — if at all. (Protocol) Agrawal is keeping in place the option to WFH forever previously announced by founder Jack Dorsey.

  • Agrawal also announced all business travel and company-related events would resume effective immediately.

As Agrawal pointed out in his memo, “Distributed working will be much, much harder.” And, especially in the current hiring environment, working in tech has likely changed forever, writes the Wall Street Journal.

Hybrid or asynchronous work will be much more widespread, but how those models trickle into day-to-day workplace norms — the imbalance of joining a meeting on Zoom while others are gathered in a conference room, for example — will be the next frontier of challenges for HR, people, and culture teams to address.

  • Twitter is hiring a lead for a new “Future of Work Innovation” team to help manage that process as smoothly as possible. (Protocol) Google and Meta have also recently made hires in similar roles.

The takeaway: There’s a lot of energy — and some anxiety — to “going back” to the office, but what we’re going back to won’t be the same. Companies can’t just hit the ‘restore and reboot’ button; most of them are trying new workplace models for the first time. But optimism around RTO has never been higher, and so now, the real work begins.

In other reading:

  • Aether Diamonds, a NYC-based diamond creator made from atmospheric carbon, raised $18 million in Series A funding. Helena and TRIREC co-led the round and were joined by SOUNDWaves, Khosla Ventures, and Social Impact Capital. (The Verge)

  • Daybase, a NYC-based hybrid work company, raised $9.6 million in seed funding. True Ventures led the round and was joined by Company Ventures, Good Friends (the early-stage firm started by the founders of Allbirds, Harry’s, and Warby Parker), and a group of individual NYC real estate owners. (Newswire)

  • Decipad, a NYC-based no-code tool for spreadsheet data modeling, raised $5 million in seed funding. Entrée Capital and Target Global co-led the round and were joined by Flybridge Capital, Founder Collective, Shilling VC, Angel Invest Ventures, and angel investors. (TechCrunch)

  • Flume Health, a NYC-based “Health-Plan-as-a-Service” platform, raised $30 million in Series A funding. Optum Ventures led the round and was joined by Cigna Ventures, as well as existing investors Crosslink Capital, Route 66 Ventures, Accomplice, Founder Collective, Primary Venture Partners, and ERA’s Remarkable Ventures Fund. (Axios)

  • Rarify, a NYC-based NFT application programming interface (API) platform, raised $10 million in Series A funding. Pantera Capital led the round. (Forbes)

  • March 5 – 6: In-person and virtual: NYC School of Data 2022, with Council Member Gale Brewer, Cornell Tech Urban Tech Hub director Michael Samuelian, and others. Hosted by BetaNYC with the NYC Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics. Register here.

  • March 7: Virtual: March Fundraising Workshop, with On Deck Fractional COO Eric Friedman. Hosted by Silicon Valley Bank. Register here.

  • March 9: Virtual: Beyond Decentralization: Designing for Equity, Democracy, and Human Rights in Web3, with Reach Capital partner Jomayra Herrera, Metalabel founding members Austin Robey, and Polaris CTO Anjana Rajan. Hosted by Betaworks Studios. Register here.

  • March 21: Virtual: #newtovc: Developing Your Fund Thesis, with Union Square Ventures partner Brad Burnham and Brooklyn Bridge Ventures founder Charlie O’Donnell. Hosted by Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. Register here.

Any feedback or suggestions of things to add? Get in touch here. Was this digest forwarded to you? Sign up to receive it directly here.