Tech:NYC Digest: May 11

Tech:NYC Digest: May 11

May 11, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Thursday, May 11, 2023

In today’s digest, the data that confirms New York tech hiring isn’t slowing down, the latest push to spur more affordable housing, how local leaders are planning for a city beyond pandemic rules.

  • Just announced: The next edition of our Cornell Tech @ Bloomberg series is happening live and in-person on May 30, featuring Duolingo co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn. Register here.

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  • Now more than 1,100 days since the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in New York, we officially say goodbye to the federal COVID emergency today. Here’s a good roundup on what that means for NYC, including the protections and programs that remain.

  • Title 42, another pandemic-era policy that limited new arrivals at the border, also expires today. A new influx of asylum-seekers is expected in NYC as a result. (NPR) 

    • County executives across the state are expected to have a call with Mayor Adams and Gov. Hochul today to discuss the city’s efforts to house migrants in other parts of the state. (Politico)

  • With other housing proposals still being reviewed, the City Council unveiled its own efforts to spur the development of more affordable housing by requiring specific targets in all 59 NYC community districts. (Gothamist)

In other reading:

  • Gotham, Manhattan’s newest retail “cannabis and cultural store” from tech investor Joanne Wilson, is open (Time Out New York) 

  • A Tik-Tok Famous Pastry That’s Worth the Trip to Staten Island (Grub Street)

  • Harlem Shake, Where the Milkshakes Are Served with a Celebration of Black Culture (New York Times)

Roger Lee, who started the widely-references job layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi hasn’t lost faith that the tech sector will “100 percent” bounce back — so much so that he followed up it with another tool: Comprehensive.io, which tracks compensation in jobs postings, as an inverse to Layoffs.fyi focused on opportunities, not cuts.

We saw the same opportunity right here at home: We launched a centralized jobs board six weeks ago for every role at every Tech:NYC member company, and already, we’ve seen thousands of roles pass through the portal:

  • Today, there are 4,800+ openings on the board, at global tech companies and new startups alike, in everything from product, design, marketing, HR, and more.

  • Each one is validated by the companies’ own recruiting platforms and the board makes daily updates as new ones come online or get filled.

  • Users can also subscribe to get alerts based on their own industry area and job function preferences.

Despite lingering doubts, New York tech is hiring: Between January 2022 and March 2023, NYC completely caught up with the Bay Area in the number of new tech job openings.

And if the analytics from our own jobs board are any indication, we have no reason to expect them to slow down.

To that end, we’ll start sharing a list of featured roles in New York tech each week. Check out a handful that went online just today…

  • Antimetal, a NYC-based cloud cost optimization platform, raised $4.3 million in seed funding. Framework Ventures led the round and was joined by Chapter One, IDEO CoLab Ventures, and others.

  • Overplay, a NYC-based user-generated gaming platform, raised $1.2 million in funding from retail investors via Wefunder.

  • Petal, a NYC-based credit card fintech company, raised $35 million in funding. Valar Ventures led the round and was joined by Synchrony, Samsung Next, Story Ventures, Core Innovation Capital, RiverPark Ventures, and others.

  • Werewool, a Brooklyn-based sustainable performance fibers company, raised $3.7 million in seed funding. Material Impact and Sofinnova Partners co-led the round.

  • Zamp, a NYC-based managed sales tax solution platform for online sellers, raised $4 million in funding. Participating investors include Valor Equity Partners, Soma Capital, Day One Ventures, and a group of angels.

HackGPT NYC, a hackathon organized by students from Cornell Tech, NYU, and Columbia University, invites teams and individuals to get together to ship LLM projects. Mentors and judges include Everywhere Ventures co-founder Jenny Fielding, Hugging Face researcher Alexander Rush, and others. Learn more and apply to join on May 13-14 here.Betaworks is accepting applications for its AI Camp: Augment accelerator program. The three-month program offers 8-10 pre-seed/seed applied machine learning and generative AI companies a $500,000 investment, as well as mentorship and programming opportunities. Learn more and apply by May 22 here.Samvid Ventures, in partnership with Techstars, is accepting applications for its Economic Mobility Accelerator program. The program is seeking entrepreneurs with solutions focused on generating greater economic mobility for low- and moderate-income Americans. Learn more and apply by June 7 here.The NYU Tandon Future Labs is accepting applications for its Keystone program, a no-cost, virtual 8-week entrepreneurship training program for early-stage founders in New York. Learn more and apply by June 14 here.The Grand Central Tech Residency Program is accepting applications for its Fall 2023 cohort. Selected startups receive free office rent for a year, as well as other community and programming benefits. Learn more and apply by July 15 here.

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