Tech:NYC Digest: November 3

November 03, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Friday, November 3, 2023

Early voting for Tuesday’s general election ends on Sunday. Make a plan to vote (and be sure you account for daylight saving time too)!

Here’s another Friday edition of the Tech:NYC Digest, featuring our top five highlights in New York tech this week.

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Pilot: New York City, a new initiative to advance NYC as an urban innovation hub (NYC)

NYC’s Economic Development Corporation and Cornell Tech undertook a nine-month research collaboration to put a new urban innovation roadmap into action. Our president Julie Samuels was a proud member of the project’s advisory group, because as we’ve called out before: Tech is powering the fastest-growing segments of NYC’s economy overall. We’re committed to pressing on this advantage to spur New York’s leadership in combating climate change, improving urban mobility, charting a path for safe and beneficial use of drones, and much more. Get the new report here.

City’s tech unicorns hold strong in a sluggish market (Crain’s New York Business)

It’s no secret that achieving a coveted unicorn status was exceedingly challenging in this year’s market, but there's one reason for optimism: NYC’s existing unicorns have maintained their valuations. The Crain’s list of top NYC-headquartered unicorns by valuation employ more than 17,000 workers and includes cloud security platform Wiz, blockchain data platform Chainalysis, and finance automation platform Ramp.

Tech startup incubator heralded as sign of things to come (City & State)

A round of applause to the Civic Hall team on its grand opening this week! While NYC’s tech sector is the most diverse in the country — it has more than double the percentage of Black and Hispanic workers than the other two leading tech hubs, San Francisco and Boston, combined — we know there’s more work to do. Civic Hall will be a key partner in getting more New Yorkers, across all five boroughs, ready to fill tech jobs right here at home.

Investors Like New York Subways. San Francisco’s BART? Not So Much. (Wall Street Journal)

Investors remain concerned in cities where the ratio of transit debt to revenue is growing while fares lag. In NYC, the picture is much more optimistic: Thanks to new sources of revenue from payroll taxes and plans to implement congestion pricing, the MTA in July projected a balanced budget for five years in a row, a first in more than 20 years. It also helps that, as of August 2023, metro-area ridership is back up to 75% of August 2019 levels.

Michelin’s 2023 Affordable Restaurant List Is Here (Eater NY)

On this year's “Bib Gourmand” list, a collection of top restaurants where a customer can order two courses and a drink or dessert for about $50, NYC earned 11 new spots!

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