NYC Recovery Challenge

This challenge began in spring 2021 when three leaders in New York City’s tech ecosystem, Cornell Tech, Tech:NYC and Google for Startups came together with the shared goal of helping New York City’s business recovery. The strategy was to focus on ways that technologies were being used by New York-based tech startups to support small businesses and the workers most directly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Challenge was also looking to spur diverse and resilient job growth and retention in the city to address New York’s still high unemployment rate, which was still two times that of the rest of the country.

In December, ten companies were selected out of more than 175 submissions. In addition to $165,000 in cash prizes to the top four finalists, all ten founders were dubbed “NYC Recovery Challenge Fellows” and enrolled in a mentorship program created by Google for Startups and Cornell Tech. This bespoke eight-week program gave winners three months of equity-free support, including 1) training on product, marketing, sales, fundraising and leadership; 2) access to Google and Cornell Tech’s network of industry experts; and 3) support with company and product strategy.

Like any good educational partnership, the project sponsors learned as much from the diverse cohort as they gained from the curriculum. We learned that technology is helping to empower workers like never before, using new tools such as AI, machine learning and data science to invert traditional power structures that kept many workers from taking full control of their careers. And with the advent of Web 3.0 this devolution of power will only accelerate as users gain more agency in the workplace, empowering workers like never before.