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- Tech:NYC Digest: March 9
Tech:NYC Digest: March 9
Tech:NYC Digest: March 9
Thursday, March 9, 2023
First, a happy 20th anniversary to NYC’s 311 service! In today’s digest, New York and the White House shake hands on public transit, why the taxi boss may be your next cabbie, and the offices hoping that amenities equals attendance.
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The MTA is revamping a program to spruce up the city’s subway stations with the help of 800 full-time cleaners. (Gothamist)
Pres. Joe Biden released his budget plan today, which includes $1.2 billion of funding for two of the biggest transit projects in NYC: the Second Avenue Subway extension and new train tunnels under the Hudson River. (New York Times)
NYC Council Speaker Adrienne Adams is renewing a yearslong push to permanently close Rikers Island by 2027. (New York Daily News)
And Daylight Saving Time is coming this weekend — beware.
In other reading:
The latest RTO strategy for companies in NYC: go all in on amenities, writes Axios.
Visits to Class A+ building in Manhattan — the swankiest places to work — far outpaced visits to Class B buildings, according to new data from the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY).
REBNY partnered with location intelligence startup Placer.ai to assess how many visits were made to 250 office buildings across Midtown, Midtown South, and downtown Manhattan — representing roughly one-third of Manhattan’s office stock — in 2019, 2021, and 2022:
In 2021, average office occupancy was around 45% regardless of building class status. In 2022, that number shot up to more than 66% for Class A+ buildings, but just 54% for Class B buildings.
Yes, but: The race to offer more and more workplace amenities predates the pandemic. The transition to remote and hybrid work just sped up the trend.
Tenants at One Madison, for example, will have access to an in-house catering service attached to celebrity chef Daniel Boulud.
Our take: These numbers are pretty intuitive and unsurprising, but they do reflect the reality that some pandemic-era trends haven’t faded away: Employers are still expected to go the extra mile if they want their workforce to comply with their in-person office rules.
In other reading:
Can AI predict if you’re going to quit? Probably. But so can humans (Fast Company)
Where Employees Think Companies’ DEIB Efforts Are Failing (Harvard Business Review)
Droit, a NYC-based computational law and regulation platform, raised $23 million in Series B funding. Pivot Investment Partners and UBS co-led the round and were joined by Goldman Sachs.
Masttro, a NYC-based provider of wealth management solutions, raised $43 million in growth equity funding. FTV Capital led the round and was joined by Citi Ventures.
Vantage, a NYC-based cloud infrastructure software provider, raised $21 million in Series A funding. Scale Venture Partners led the round and was joined by Andreessen Horowitz, Harpoon Ventures, and others.
March 14: In-person: How and When to Raise Venture Capital, with The Fund managing partner Jenny Fielding, Forum Ventures managing partner Michael Cardamone, NY Ventures investor Momo Bi. Hosted by Stacklist and betaworks. Register here.
March 15: In-person: NY Enterprise Technology Meetup, with Haystack partner Semil Shah, Cowboy Ventures partner Amanda Robson, Streamdal CEO Ustin Zarubin, and others. Hosted by Work-Bench. Register here.
March 15: In-person: NY Product Meetup, with Regal co-founder, CTO, and head of product Rebecca Greene. Hosted by Productboard. Register here.
March 16: Virtual: Fintech’s inflection point, with Bain Capital Ventures partner Matt Harris. Hosted by Axios. Register here.
March 29: Virtual: Exchange: A New Kind of Investor Conference, with A Starting Point co-founder Chris Evans, ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood, NYU Stern School of Business professor Scott Galloway, and others. Hosted by Public. Register here.
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