Thursday, October 1, 2026
Welcome to Q4! In today’s digest, affordable housing gets a fast track, NYC’s rent freeze takes effect, and a spotlight on M13’s Karl Alomar. 💡
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Affordable housing projects are getting a fast lane in some of NYC’s lowest-producing neighborhoods. Starting January 1, developments in 12 community districts — including the Upper East and Upper West Sides, Bay Ridge, Canarsie, and Maspeth — can use a new 90-day approval process instead of the traditional months-long review. 🏗️ (The City Reporter)
Together, the districts produced just 724 affordable homes over the past five years, about 1% of the citywide total.
The change could lower costs and shorten wait times for developers, though some Councilmembers worry it could reduce their say over projects in their districts.
NYC’s historic rent freeze officially takes effect today. Rents will remain flat on one- and two-year leases signed through September 2027 for the city’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments — the first 0% increase on two-year leases in city history. 🏠 (Crain’s New York Business)
The freeze could still be overturned by an ongoing lawsuit challenging the Rent Guidelines Board’s June vote.
A judge allowed the freeze to take effect while the case proceeds, but his eventual ruling could leave it in place or require the board to restart the process.
Gen Z is giving New York’s moving numbers a boost. New U-Haul data ranked New York the No. 3 net-gain state for Gen Z movers — and NYC was the No. 1 metro destination nationwide. 🚚 (CBS New York)
Younger movers are gravitating toward dense markets with colleges, entry-level jobs, and plenty of apartments, with Texas and California joining New York atop Gen Z’s list.
The pattern flips for older generations: Florida and Texas led among Gen X and Millennials, while Boomers overwhelmingly headed south.
In other reading:
Where to eat in October (Eater)
This New York airport lounge was just named the best in the world (Time Out New York)
NYC Diet Coke diehards declare ‘emergency’ as beloved soda disappears from grocery deliveries (NY Post)
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VC Spotlight: Karl Alomar, Managing Partner, M13
Karl Alomar knows what it’s like to sit on both sides of the table.
Before becoming Managing Partner at M13, Karl spent years building and operating technology companies himself. It’s that experience that still shapes how he evaluates founders today.
“Operating is far more nuanced than a balance sheet,” Karl told us. “It requires real empathy for the founder’s journey, where day-to-day decisions ripple across the entire organization.”
For this month’s VC Spotlight, we caught up with Karl to discuss his path from founder to investor, what he looks for before the rest of the market catches on, where the AI stack is still underbuilt, why founders need to truly master their businesses, and much more.
Here’s a preview of what Karl told us:
🧑💻 On why founders choose New York City:
“New York puts founders close to the people they’re building for. If you’re selling into banks, media companies or retailers, your buyer is often a subway ride away. That makes it easier to test whether you’re solving a problem someone will actually pay to fix.”
💰 On the signals that give him confidence in an investment:
“A founder who understands the problem, learns quickly, and keeps making tangible progress. You can learn a lot more from watching someone build than from a polished pitch.”
🤔 On the most common mistake he sees founders make when pitching:
“Founders must be prepared: practice your pitch and anticipate the questions investors are likely to ask. Don’t recite prewritten answers — speak from genuine understanding and knowledge, so both your personality and your mastery of the category come through.”
👻 On a recent investment he’s excited about:
Baselayer is an agentic verification platform, starting with KYA (Know Your Agent) and agentic payment verification. Makora is a GPU optimization and deployment platform that optimizes the deployment of any workload, on any model, onto any GPU — extracting orders-of-magnitude better performance out of existing hardware.
📚 On what resources he recommends to founders just starting out:
“If I'm honest, the single highest-leverage resource isn’t a book or a course — it’s other people. Building relationships with a handful of experienced operators or founders a stage or two ahead of you tends to beat any written resource, because the advice is timely and specific to the exact problem you’re facing, not generic.”
🍕 And, of course, on the best slice in the city:
“For pizza — Lucali, in Brooklyn.”
In other reading:
Kargo launches Karlo: AI media buying for small businesses (Sourcing Journal)
Report: 89% of small businesses using AI report positive impacts (Revenue Brew)
An AI “mind-reading” tool can reconstruct what you’re looking at from a brain scan (MIT Technology Review)
Daptic, an NYC-based compliance software startup, raised $15 million in Series A funding. Canvas Ventures led the round, joined by IA Ventures and 8VC.
Destro AI, an NYC-based AI software provider for warehouse robots, raised $8 million in seed funding. Base10 Partners and Bonfire Ventures led the round and were joined by CoFound Partners.
Featured events:
⭐ October 14: POLITICO New York Outlook, a deep dive into the affordability, economic, and policy challenges shaping New York City under Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Join in person or watch virtually beginning at 3pm ET. Register here.
Interested in sponsorship opportunities? Ping Politico here.
⭐ October 29: Crain’s Tech Summit, bringing together leaders across tech, business, policy, academia, and workforce development to explore how New York is building the infrastructure, talent, and partnerships needed to lead in the AI economy. Register here with promo code FRIENDSOFTECHNYC for 15% off.
Other great events:
October 2: Community Led Growth “CLG” Conference, bringing together 50 of the top Heads of Community, Community Leads, and Community Founders who are focused on building a community full-time. Register here.
October 5: NYC Cybersecurity HH: Pints & Pentests — come for a great Guinness pour, stay for some good convo with security community folks & the Cotool and Pensar teams. Register here.
October 6: Tech x Market Decoders, a salon-style, small curated weekly meetup for operators, investors, and builders across New York. This week’s topic is about an AI startup called Jev that just went viral for doing the opposite of what every other AI company is doing — it doesn't chat at all. Register here.
October 6: Grid Futures: Powering New York’s Energy Transition, a panel discussion bringing together innovation leaders from the public and private sectors to explore what it will take to modernize New York’s grid. Register here.
October 6: Brooklyn Tech Expo, featuring AI seminars, emerging technologies, and real-world applications, along with valuable networking opportunities and free professional headshots. Register here.
October 9: Real-Time Video Agents Hack – NYC, a three-city technical event series bringing together founders and engineers across New York, London, and San Francisco to build production-ready AI systems. Register here.
October 10: Civic Tech’ish: Island Edition, a happy hour on Governors Island for people working across civic and urban tech, with optional volunteering with the Billion Oyster Project. Register here.
October 13: Secure Software Factory Show and Tell, a panel and live demo event for engineering and AI teams exploring how to build production-ready agentic systems that stay secure, observable, and within approved boundaries. Register here.
October 13-15: EdTech Week, where the brightest minds and the boldest innovators gather in a technological playground dedicated to transforming education. Register here.
October 21: New York’s Annual Entrepreneurship Assistance Centers Conference is open to the public for the very first time! Expand your network, learn practical tech skills, and connect with state-level resources designed to help your business grow. Register here.
November 4: The Serica Initiative’s 2026 AAPI Trailblazers Conference, bringing together leaders across technology, business, academia, media, arts, education and the nonprofit sector for an afternoon of provocative conversation, practical learning and meaningful connection. Register here.
December 9-10: The AI Summit New York, Javits Center. Now in its 11th year, this event is an established gathering of the global AI ecosystem. Join over 7,000 attendees using the code TECHNYC20 to claim 20% off Delegate or VIP All Access passes. Register here.
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