- Tech:NYC Digest
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- Monday, June 23, 2025
Monday, June 23, 2025
Monday, June 23, 2025
In today’s digest, Primary Day approaches, infinite workdays, and the NY tick population… well, ticks up. 🆙
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Primary Day is tomorrow! 🗳️ While a record 380,000+ early voters have turned out already, New Yorkers will gather en masse Tuesday to cast their votes for the Democratic mayoral candidate, among other races. Here’s how it will all play out:
Polls are open from 6am to 9pm on Tuesday, June 24. Find your polling site here.
The city uses ranked choice voting in these elections. Here’s how it works.
While the polls close Tuesday night, we may not know the primary winner right away. There will be unofficial results tomorrow, but official results may not happen until at least a week later.
Then there’s the heat wave. 🥵 The Primary may hinge on early voters, but if you’re casting your vote in-person tomorrow, bring a water bottle, a hat, an umbrella, and a fan because not all polling places are air-conditioned.
Just in time: New York State Governor Kathy Hochul signed a law allowing voters to receive water while waiting in line to vote. 🚰
Governor Hochul announced plans for New York to build a large zero-emission nuclear power plant upstate, the first major new U.S. nuclear plant undertaken in over 15 years. The New York Power Authority will develop at least one new nuclear energy facility with 1 gigawatt of nuclear-power generation, which is enough to power about 1 million homes. (Wall Street Journal)
If you’re planning a local hike this summer, be sure to watch out for ticks, especially this year. Thanks to a bumper crop of tick-favorite acorns two years ago, the tick population in NY is exploding, and the Fordham Tick Index, which gauges the risk of encountering ticks outdoors in the New York area, has reached a 10/10 risk level. (New York Times)
To combat ticks, officials recommend using an insect repellent that says it is effective against ticks, not just mosquitoes. 🦟
They also recommend checking for ticks when you come in from outside, and putting clothing in the dryer for 10 minutes on high heat to kill any ticks you may have picked up.
In other reading:
Work, work, work, work, work, work. Somewhere, Rihanna is smiling. 🎤
If you feel like the workday never ends, you’re not alone. More and more employees are working outside of the usual 9-5 business hours as the flexibility from the pandemic has carried over into employees starting work earlier, ending it later, and even working on the weekends, according to a new report from Microsoft.
Before work: By 6am, 40% of people online are looking at their emails for the day’s priorities.
After work: Meetings after 8pm are up 16% year-over-year. The average employee sends or receives 50 messages outside of business hours.
The reason some employees have to work these odd hours is because they feel like they can’t get everything done during the day, which has also led to an increase in burnout rates.
🔢 By the numbers:
117: The average number of emails an employee sends per day, most of them skimmed in under 60 seconds.
2 minutes: The average time between interruptions by a meeting, email, or message.
57%: The number of meetings per day that are ad hoc.
🔑 Other key takeaways:
Focus time? What focus time? Half of all meetings happen at peak productivity hours (9–11am & 1–3pm).
Tuesday, newsday: Tuesdays now carry the heaviest meeting load (23%), while Fridays taper to just 16%.
Going global: Nearly a third of meetings now span multiple time zones — up 35% since 2021.
The solution? In today’s environment it’s not simply not enough to draw a hard line and stop working outside of business hours. If only we had something that could help… (cough, AI, cough) 🤖
The implementation of AI during work helps streamline the mundane and routine tasks, freeing employees up to focus on their other work.
And with more companies asking for AI skills and requiring employees to increasingly use AI, it’s a win-win.
But just implementing AI isn’t enough. Dig deeper into the report to check out some other solutions and best practices to use to limit the “infinite workday.”
In other reading:
Tech companies double down on remote work as America returns to the office (Newsweek)
The bottom rung of Gen Z’s job ladder isn’t breaking because of AI — but it’s evolving, says top LinkedIn exec (Fortune)
Why don’t more people wear shorts to work? (New York Times)
Profound, an NYC-based AI visibility platform for brands, raised $20 million in Series A funding. Kleiner Perkins led the round and was joined by NVentures, Khosla Ventures, Saga VC, angel investors, and others.
Project Eleven, an NYC-based quantum technology company, raised $6 million in seed funding. Variant and Quantonation led the round and were joined by Castle Island Ventures, Nebular, and Formation.
Tennr, an NYC-based provider of patient referral automation tools, raised $101 million at a $605 million valuation led by IVP, with participation from new backers ICONIQ and GV, plus insiders Lightspeed, a16z, Foundation Capital, and YC.
Traversal, an NYC-based AI site reliability engineering agent, raised $48 million in seed and Series A funding rounds, led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, with participation from NFDG and Hanabi.
June 25: Techie Tapas, to give techies a space to network, collaborate, and build community. Register here.
June 25-26: Fundraising Strategy & Storytelling, a two-day workshop for early-stage founders to tighten their pitch, refine their deck, and get live feedback on fundraising strategy from top investors and operators. Register with promo code BRDERLESS20 here.
June 26: When AI Meets Affordable Housing – Justice Through Code Graduation Showcase, a virtual showcase featuring four affordable housing AI solutions developed by fellows from Columbia’s Justice Through Code program. Register here.
June 26: 2025 AI Hot 100 Annual Summit, bringing together some of the world’s most cracked AI startup founders from across the globe. Register here.
July 1: Build Games Meetup, an evening of gaming, networking, and sharing use cases on building with AI developer tools. Register here.
July 2: AI Builders Lunch w/ Next Wave NYC, an intimate lunch bringing together NYC-based AI founders, engineers, and product builders. Register here.
July 8-9: What Businesses & Communities Need to Know about the NY Health Information Privacy Act, a free, virtual webinar series featuring expert panelists who will explain the potential implications of New York State Bill S929 on your organization, should the legislation be enacted. Register here.
Any feedback or suggestions of things to add? Get in touch here.
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