Essential City + Tech Stories: 6.30.22

5 Urban Tech Stories You Need to Know

Jun 30, 2022

Hey everyone!

Welcome back to UrbanTech. Today’s edition includes 5 stories you need to know about the urban tech landscape.

A reminder to check out my interview from this week with Parth Shah, the CEO of Polimorphic. We chatted about how Polimorphic is helping cities manage their increasing workload and building constituent services online.

Here’s an excerpt from my conversation with Parth:

JT: How can cities become better constituent support/service organizations?
PS: The first step to getting better at something is prioritizing it. If cities want to get better at constituent services, they need to make it a core focus. I often compare government to healthcare. Both are extremely high-impact on people's lives but also full of bureaucracy and under-appreciated complexity. It’s important for cities to realize that a lot of their day-to-day issues are just symptoms of a deeper problem: poor constituent management systems. While it’s easy to get caught up on those symptoms, sometimes taking a step back can reveal that the underlying cause is a lack of capacity to focus on constituent service.

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Last week’s most popular stories:

🥇 Fortune: The housing market 'correction' intensifies as layoffs hit Redfin and Compass. This interactive map explains why

🥈TechCrunch: Amid real estate tech industry layoffs, HomeLight raises $60M and acquires lending startup Accept.inc

🥉 The Washington Post: Teslas running Autopilot involved in 273 crashes reported since last year

Essential City + Tech Stories: 6.30.22

Axios: Ride-sharing and e-scooters are growing twice as fast as mass transit
Marketplace: How the tech landscape could change if abortion laws do
TechCrunch: Sequoia Capital India and Founders Fund back UAE-based proptech startup Huspy in its $37M round
LinkedIn: Whatever the future holds …..
Amogy: Amogy Raises $46 Million in Funding to Accelerate the Commercialization of its Ammonia-to-Power Technology Across Heavy Duty Transportation

Axios: Ride-sharing and e-scooters are growing twice as fast as mass transit

Since COVID started, public transportation has been thrown for a loop. Axios’ Joann Muller reports:

A new study finds that alternative mobility services, from ride-sharing to e-scooters, will grow twice as fast as traditional public transit annually through 2030.

This means congestion on roads could continue to worsen and public transportation will continue to feel the impact of COVID for many years after.

Marketplace: How the tech landscape could change if abortion laws do

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has been the biggest story of the last week. It’s devastating for many reasons and in my opinion goes against our values as a country. I hope everyone angered and hurt by the decision is taking the space they need to process the unjust decision.
Marketplace did a story before the decision that analyzed how tech hubs, including Austin, could be hurt by the decision.

While many tech companies located in these states have offered to pay for employees to travel out of state for abortions, the cultural climate could especially deter women in tech, said Sarah Kunst, a VC investor in Silicon Valley.
“For me when I look in the mirror and say ‘I am a Black woman in America, do I want to go live in a state that … is pretty openly hostile to so many facets of my identity?’ It’s a pretty easy no,” she said.

TechCrunch: Sequoia Capital India and Founders Fund back UAE-based proptech startup Huspy in its $37M round

“Founders Fund has made its first investment in the Middle East by backing UAE-based proptech startup Huspy. The $37 million Series A round, one of the largest at this stage in MENA, was led by Sequoia Capital India.
The round also welcomed participation from Fifth Wall, the largest VC firm backing real estate and proptech startups.”
“Real estate continues to be an in-demand asset class worldwide, with 2021’s global commercial sales volumes exceeding the 2020 total by 59%. While the startups above are focused on the U.S. and Latin America, Jad Antoun and Khalid Ashmawy launched Huspy in 2020 to tap into the home-buying opportunity in the Middle East.”

LinkedIn: Whatever the future holds …..

Space as a service was a trend I really believed in previously. I think the concept will look very different in a post-pandemic world. Here is a section of an essay that I enjoyed that examined what the trend could look like:

First [employees] will want flexibility of time, so that they can work the hours that suit them best, that enable them to maximize their productivity.
Secondly they will want flexibility of location, so that they can work wherever makes sense for them.
And thirdly, they will want flexibility of space, so that they can work in a physical environment that is best suited for their ‘job to be done’. Different tasks are best undertaken in different spaces.
And every individual, team or company is going to require a different mix of the above. There is no generic office answer anymore. Anyone telling you that ‘return to the office’ will mean X, Y and Z is a fool. The fundamental reason why flexibility is such a valuable thing is exactly because everyone will have different needs.

Amogy: Amogy Raises $46 Million in Funding to Accelerate the Commercialization of its Ammonia-to-Power Technology Across Heavy Duty Transportation

Shipping continues to see strides and the energy used to power the sector are shifting as well. These gains can be realized outside of just shipping.
Here are some details on a startup, Amogy, that raised $46 million to make hydrogen a reality:

Amogy Inc., a pioneer of emission-free, energy-dense ammonia power solutions, today announced it has raised $46 million in additional capital to further scale its highly efficient ammonia-to-power technology, with plans to apply its systems to an 18-wheel tractor trailer as well as an ocean cargo ship. Following momentum from recent successful demonstrations of the first-ever, ammonia-powered, zero-emission farming tractor and aerial drone, Amogy will use the funds from the bridge round to accelerate the commercialization of its energy-dense power solution that will decarbonize heavy-duty transportation and enable leading cargo and fleet owners to eliminate fossil fuels and reduce emissions from their supply chain.