Thursday, July 24, 2025

July 24, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Thursday, July 24, 2025 

In today’s digest, Delacorte Theater 2.0, get to the Chinatown Night Market, and VC Dorothy Chang on what she looks for in founders. 💡

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  • The Delacorte Theater in Central Park has received a much-needed glow-up. 💅 The theater will reopen next month after an 18-month, $85 million renovation with Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.” 🎭 (New York Times)

    • With the upgrades, the Public Theater intends to extend the play’s run, which boasts performances from Lupita Nyong’o, Sandra Oh, Peter Dinklage, and other stars.

    • Tickets are free and can be acquired in several different ways detailed here. 

  • This Saturday marks the beginning of the annual car-free streets event, where pedestrians and cyclists can traverse 22 miles of roads without the fear of being hit by oncoming traffic. The program kicks off in Queens and Staten Island this weekend, and heads to Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx throughout August. (PIX 11)

    • The streets will be filled with performances, art projects, face painting, photo booths, and giveaways. 💃🕺

  • Temperatures are set to be over 90 degrees Friday, and a heat advisory will be in effect in NYC with heat index readings up to 104 degrees. 🥵 (NBC New York)

    • Partially adding to the heat? “Corn sweat,” or when growing corn and other produce give off moisture through evapotranspiration (say that 10x fast). 🌽

In other reading:

  • An unlimited sushi festival is returning to NYC this fall — and it's been expanded to two days (TimeOut New York)

  • Interborough Express could turn neglected neighborhoods into a developers’ paradise (Crain’s New York)

  • Get to the Chinatown Night Market before it ends this summer (Gothamist)

Dorothy Chang, Venture Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, knows a thing or two about storytelling. 📚

Her career started at a tech PR agency and has included a number of stops in comms and marketing roles while working with startups.

So it may come as no surprise that one of the key elements she looks for in founders is whether they can tell a good story.

  • “Great storytelling can make an unbelievable difference for a startup’s trajectory,” she told us.

Dorothy is also the cofounder of Lynx Collective, which connects NYC founders, investors, and the startup ecosystem through events and insights shared in its weekly newsletter. 

  • Connecting startup founders looking for knowledge sharing opportunities with investors who want to meet the next great entrepreneur, is, as Dorothy says, a “win-win.” 🥇

For our latest VC Spotlight, we caught up with Dorothy to discuss her career, how the NYC startup ecosystem has evolved over the last decade, her efforts to cultivate the NYC startup community, and much more.

Here’s a preview of what Dorothy had to say:

🤔 On the most common mistake she sees from founders when pitching to investors: 

  • “Founders today need to recognize that AI makes it easy for everybody to build everything. When they pitch, they really need to show that they’re building a venture-scale business, and why they might win.”

🤩 On some recent investments she’s excited by:

  • “Covenant is taking a really focused approach to legal AI by focusing specifically on private markets, that’s an investment we made out of our main fund. Out of Next Wave NYC, CivicReach is applying the best of AI-powered customer service to local governments and Hopscotch Labs’ Beebot is Dennis Crowley’s latest startup in the location space, with audio as the main interface.” 

🤖 On her favorite AI tool:

  • “I default to ChatGPT for a lot; when I want quick answers that are going to be a bit deeper, more informed, more customized to me than Google.”

🍕 And, of course, on the best slice in the city:

  • “I’m going to add to the controversial claim the New York Times once made that the best pizza in NYC is actually in New Jersey, when it named Razza as the winner. Well before opening up Razza, the owner had co-founded Arturo’s, which is now Artie’s, in Maplewood, NJ, and there is no pizza I enjoy more.”

In other reading:

  • Working while honeymooning (New York Times)

  • Looking to retain top talent? Invest in employee education (Fast Company)

  • Our favorite management tips on communicating like a leader (HBR)

➕ One more thing: Empire State Development is hiring a project manager to lead the planning, execution, and delivery of a cloud-based SaaS platform for ESD’s Division of Minority and Women’s Business Development (DMWBD). Learn more and apply here.

  • Courtyard, an NYC-based collectibles marketplace, raised $30 million in Series A funding. Forerunner Ventures led the round, joined by the company’s existing investors NEA and Y Combinator.

  • Hypernatural, an NYC-based AI video making platform, raised $9.2 million across two rounds. AIX Ventures and Underscore VC, respectively, led the rounds and were joined by Adverb, Character.vc, and 43 VC.

  • Journey, an NYC-based enterprise mental health platform, raised $8 million in Series A funding. Cambrian Growth Partners led the round and was joined by Manchester Story, Canaan Partners, J-Ventures, J-Impact, Life Science Angels, HealthTech Capital, and others.

  • Volca, an NYC-based AI-powered marketing platform designed for home service businesses, raised $5.5 million in seed funding. Pathlight Ventures led the round and was joined by MetaProp, GTMFund, Recall Capital, and others.

  • July 27: Tech AI Founders & Creators Power Walk, where you can get your steps in and meet peers, without wasting time. Register here.

  • July 29: AI CFO Roadshow, ​an exclusive evening with New York’s senior finance leaders shaping the future of AI in the CFO suite. Register here.

  • July 31: Healthcare x AI Agents Hack & Learn, ​a hands-on sprint to build safer, smarter AI agents for healthcare. Register here.

  • August 5: Fashion & Fashion-tech Mixer, where you can connect with fashion-tech innovators and disruptors. Register here.

  • August 6: How to Raise a Pre-Seed Round in 2025, to learn what investors are actually looking for in 2025, how other founders broke through the early-stage wall, and who you should be talking to next whether for advice, feedback, or funding. Register here.

  • August 7: August Founder Breakfast, a private breakfast for a curated group of pre-seed to series A founders. Register here.

  • August 8: Deep Dive Into LLMs Watch Party, an all-day watch party and discussion of Andrej Karpathy’s video on LLMs. Register here.

  • September 10: NYC Summit, Primary’s annual invite-only conference, bringing together 2,000 top founders, VCs, and LPs. This year’s speakers include Larry Fitzgerald (Arizona Cardinals), David Karp (Tumblr), Toyin Ajayi (Cityblock Health), Lina Khan (FTC), Kareem Amin (Clay), and more. Apply to attend here.

  • September 23: Deep Tech Forum + Startup Showcase in NYC, bringing together deep tech startups from across the globe alongside corporate innovation leaders, investors, and ecosystem partners, for a full day of mainstage sessions and startup exhibitions. Register with promo code TECHNYC for a 20% discount here.

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