Posts from NYC

Funding Friday: Honk NYC! 2021

I just backed this project to support a festival of street musicians in NYC in late October.

Street bands have been picking up the slack for the last year in NYC, performing for outside diners and more throughout the city. This festival celebrates them and puts them front and center.

Email readers can see the video here.

#crowdfunding#NYC

Pier 76

For as long as I can remember, Pier 76 on the west side of Manhattan has been home to the west side tow pound. Some of my worst moments as a NYC resident have been there retrieving a car or a scooter, something I’ve done more than I want to remember. It was pure misery to have to go there and I think that was intentional.

So over the last four months on my morning bike rides up the west side bike path, I have been watching the city tear down the west side tow pound and replace it with an urban park.

I believe Pier 76 opened last week and is hosting one of the outdoor locations for the Tribeca Film Festival which is going on in NYC right now.

So today on my morning ride, I took a slight detour and visited the new Pier 76.

It is so great to see the city making itself nicer. The entire west side park along the Hudson in Manhattan has been a slow but steady version of that and it just got a little bit nicer. Well done NYC.

#NYC

Early Voting

NYC has a primary next week (June 22nd) in which parties will pick their nominees for Mayor, City Council races, Borough President races, and Manhattan will pick candidates for Attorney General. Because NYC is overwhelmingly Democratic, the primary is the main event. Most of the time, Democratic candidates prevail in the General Election in November.

So this is a big election for NYC and everyone who cares about the future of NYC should make it a point to vote in this primary.

Early voting started last Saturday and I made my way to my early voting location (which is different from the regular voting location) yesterday morning and was in and out in two minutes. It was the smoothest voting experience I have had in NYC since we moved here almost 40 years ago.

If you live in NYC want to do early voting this week, go here and enter in some address info and you will be shown your early voting location.

Early voting is such an awesome addition to the election process. It makes it way easier for many people to get out and vote. And I hope you all do.

And make sure to vote for five people, not just one, as NYC is doing rank choice voting this year. Pick a slate of your favorite candidates from one to five and fill in all of the columns. Hopefully one of your top five will win.

#NYC

Funding Friday: Beach Lovers: A NYC Summer Love Story

One of the many things I love about Kickstarter is when a friend backs a project, I am alerted. My friend Kirk went on a binge yesterday and backed a half dozen photo book projects and I followed him on that binge.

I thought I’d blog about one of the projects we backed today.

NYC is many things, and one of them is a beach town. In the summer, the beaches of south Brooklyn and Queens (Rockaway) fill up with NYers of all ages and ethnicities. It is like the subway, a total melting pot.

This photo book project celebrates those beaches and the couples who fill them up in the summer months.

Email readers can see the video here.

#crowdfunding#NYC

Citibiking

Long-time readers know that I am a big Citibike fan. Citibike is the name of NYC’s bike-share program. I have been blogging about it since it launched in the spring of 2013, eight years ago now. I wrote this at the time.

Since it started getting warm in NYC about a month ago, I have been Citibiking to work, to home, to dinner, etc. And I must say that the Citibike experience in NYC has gotten a lot better in the last few years.

There are now a lot of electric bikes. I don’t use them because I prefer to get the workout, but I see a lot of people using them.

The newer bikes are really easy to ride. They keep improving the bikes and the latest lot of them are terrific.

The Citibike app has also improved. It now starts with a navigation map and you can easily see where to get your bike and where to drop it off.

And finally, NYC keeps adding bike lanes and making them better. I rode all around lower manhattan yesterday and was always in a bike lane, feeling safe and that I belonged there.

Biking is a great way to get around NYC and Citibike makes it so simple. Get a bike, ride somewhere, drop it off. It is one of the great things that has happened to NYC in the almost forty years we have lived here.

#NYC

Commercial Real Estate

With new Covid cases down 30% in the last two weeks and partially vaccinated people approaching 50%, NYC seems ready to start getting back to work.

I have been going to the office several days a week for the last two weeks and will be there again today. As my USV colleagues get fully vaccinated, they are joining me and our office is starting to fill up.

But our Flatiron neighborhood still feels empty and there is not one good restaurant open for lunch during the week.

As we head back to work, what will the new normal be?

That is a huge question looming over the commercial real estate sector in NYC and around the country.

According to this NYT piece from last week, the vacancy rate in commercial office space in NYC is almost 20% and that number is north of 15% across the largest cities in the US. And in the face of these historically high vacancy rates, more new office buildings are coming to market increasing the supply of space.

We have surveyed our portfolio companies and we understand that many will reopen their offices this summer and fall, but most will not expect their employees to be back in the office five days a week. Some will not expect their employees to be in the office at all.

I think this Jamie Dimon quote I read in the NYT piece is about right:

Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, the largest private-sector employer in New York City, wrote in a letter to shareholders this week that remote work would “significantly reduce our need for real estate.” For every 100 employees, he said, his bank “may need seats for only 60 on average.”

We used to have 10,000 square feet in our old office that we left last month. We moved into 6,000 square feet and it feels like plenty. I think many/most companies will feel that way too.

Many of our portfolio companies let their leases expire during the pandemic, as did we. And they are now thinking about what to do going forward. I have a few suggestions:

1/ Take something temporary for the next year or two. Figure out what the new normal is before entering into a long term lease. This is what USV did. We took a nine month sublet to allow us to figure things out.

2/ Shop around and be aggressive in your offers to sublet or lease space. Many landlords will not engage in your bottom fishing. But some will, particularly in the sublease market.

3/ Avoid expensive office buildouts and focus on spaces that are extremely flexible. We have invested in office and conference pods in our sublet to reduce the need for expensive office buildouts. And the Gotham Gal and I made an entire co-working space in Brooklyn with office pods.

4/ Figure out how to integrate remote workers into your office environment. We have been investing a lot more in our conference rooms/video setups. I even suggested that we put some webcams in our office so our remote colleagues could see who is in the office at any time. I am not sure we will do that. Some feel it is creepy. But I think it’s a good idea.

5/ Offer perks to encourage your employees to be in the office. We have been ordering in great food for everyone in the office the last few weeks and everyone seems to appreciate and enjoy that.

I think occupancy expense will be a smaller percentage of our portfolio companies’ P&Ls in the future and those savings can be invested in our teams instead. That feels like a great trade and one that will lead to better companies and happier employees. And that is a very good thing.

#Current Affairs#management#NYC

My New Metrocard

For years, one of my prized possessions has been my MTA EasyPayXpress Metrocard.

It’s a little worn down from a lot of use because it auto refills itself. It is a Metrocard that is connected to a “card on file” and it automatically refills itself so that it always has money on it and you never miss a train because your Metrocard has run out of funds. I’ve had one of these for something like twenty years. And yet many NYers don’t know that this product exists.

But last week, I realized that my Metrocard’s days are numbered. I walked into one of the subway stations I use the most and saw that the turnstiles now accept Google Pay and Apple Pay.

You just wave your phone and the turnstile lets you in.

This has been in the works for a while and I knew it was coming but seeing it in place and using it was great.

When we moved to NYC in the early 80s, we used metal tokens. Then we moved to Metrocards. And now we use our phones.

It is exciting to see NYC adopt technology in ways that makes life in the city a bit easier.

#NYC

Tech:NYC's Mayoral Forum

Tech:NYC is the industry association for NYC’s tech sector. I am the Chair of the organization. I am excited about Tech:NYC’s work to bring the ongoing NYC Mayoral race to the tech sector.

On Thursday, April 8th (tomorrow) at 4pmET, Tech:NYC will host a webinar with the top mayoral candidates that is open to all NYC tech employees. The candidates participating are Eric Adams, Shaun Donovan, Kathryn Garcia, Ray McGuire, Scott Stringer, Maya Wiley, and Andrew Yang. The forum will be moderated by Josh Barro. The NYC Mayoral Forum is hosted by Tech:NYC and Warby Parker and is co-hosted by AT&T, Bowery Farming, Etsy, Harry’s, Via, WeWork, Zola, and more.

Tech:NYC did a poll of NYC tech employees earlier this year and it showed that the New Yorkers who work in tech largely care about the things that all New Yorkers care about. People are attracted to NYC because of its diversity, cultural institutions, subway, etc. – the things that make NYC NYC. And they care about their neighborhoods, schools, parks, quality of life, etc.

The poll also showed that lots of people in tech care about the mayoral race – 87% said they plan to vote in the primary.

So the NYC Mayoral Forum is a great way for tech employees to get engaged in a race that really matters to the future of our city as we look to recover from COVID. If you work in tech in NYC and want to attend the Mayoral Forum tomorrow, you can register here.

#NYC

Taxing Airbnb Stays In NYS and NYC

I guess the theme of this week is taxes. But today’s post is about something completely different. A Company wants to collect and remit taxes to NYS and NYC and lawmakers don’t want the money. I’ve written about this sad tale before but the story continues.

Back in February, NYS Governor Cuomo put a provision into the NYS budget that would allow/require Airbnb to collect NYS and NYC applicable taxes when Airbnb hosts collect revenues from their tenants.

If NYS and NYC were able to fully collect taxes on these Airbnb stays, it is estimated that a total of $130mm would be generated in new revenues; $75mm to NYC, $45mm to NYS, and about $10mm to various other counties in NYS.

Given that the NYS State Legislature wants to raise around $7bn in new tax revenues in this budget session, you would think tapping into this source of tax revenues would be a slam dunk.

But no. NYS legislators who are friends to the hotel industry and sworn enemies of Airbnb have pushed for the removal of this provision and it is likely to be out of the final budget.

It is time for everyone to grow up, recognize that Airbnb is never going away, treat them like the important service provider (to hosts and guests) that they are, and tax this process appropriately. I encourage NYS legislators to do that in this current session. The budget issues are too important to play silly politics anymore.

#NYC#policy#Politics

Stockton's Basic Income Experiment

I have been interested in the concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI) since first hearing about it from my partner Albert years ago. I’ve mentioned it on and off here at AVC a bunch since then.

NYC will get its own UBI experiment if front-runner Andrew Yang is elected Mayor. Yang proposes to spend $1bn a year (out of an almost $90bn annual budget) providing $2k a year to 500k of NYC’s neediest citizens.

The theory of UBI is that giving people direct cash payments is more efficient and more effective than providing services to them via third parties. For example, if giving someone $2k a year keeps them in their apartment, the cost of operating homeless shelters and other housing for the homeless goes down. There are many more examples.

Skeptics of UBI point to the welfare system of the “Great Society” and other efforts to suggest that it won’t work and can’t work. They believe it will lead to idleness, drug use, gambling, and other societal ills.

So I read with interest of an experiment the city of Stockton CA did where they gave 125 randomly selected individuals making less than $46k a year a monthly stipend of $500.

The results are interesting. Researchers at the University of Tennessee and University of Pennsylvania concluded that this sample group saw many benefits including helping people get better jobs, better living situations, and better self worth. There was no evidence of increased drug use, gambling, joblessness, or any of the other concerns expressed by opponents of UBI.

I look forward to more experiments with UBI. One of the reasons that Andrew Yang’s candidacy for Mayor of NYC interests me is the opportunity to do a much larger experiment in a city that has a massive social infrastructure and lots of diversity. If UBI works in NYC, that will be very telling.

#NYC#policy