When the pandemic hit, the coffee shop sent workers home, and Mr. Atout’s salary was cut. Home all day and their income uncertain, the couple began to take the prospect of a music career more seriously. They set up a website and opened a business, Songlorious, writing custom songs for weddings, birthdays and similar events. Within weeks, they had more business than they could handle and began hiring other musicians to help out. Last fall, Mr. Atout quit his railroad job to work on the venture full time.

“I think the pandemic kind of forced us into this a little bit,” he said. “It gave us a nudge where I’ve always wanted to do something but I was too scared because I didn’t want to lose the stability of my job.”

Songlorious is in many ways typical of Covid-era start-ups. It is an online-only business in a field, performing arts, that was heavily disrupted by the pandemic. Its founders started the company at least partly out of financial necessity. And though it began in New York, they are building the business in a midsize city, Chattanooga, Tenn., where they moved in December looking in part for a lower cost of living. Early evidence suggests the increase in start-ups has been strongest outside the big-city downtowns that have been hit hard by the exodus of office workers.

The increase was probably driven, to some extent, by the layoffs that left millions of people out of work early in the pandemic. Researchers at the Kauffman Foundation found that about 30 percent of new entrepreneurs last year were unemployed when they started their businesses, roughly double the prepandemic rate.

The preceding recession, more than a decade earlier, also led to millions of job losses, but entrepreneurship, by a variety of measures, fell sharply and rebounded only slowly. It was accompanied by a financial crisis and a collapse in home values, which made it difficult to get capital to start businesses.

This time may have been different partly because would-be entrepreneurs were more likely to have the wherewithal to pursue their visions. Swift action by the Federal Reserve helped prevent a financial crisis, and home prices boomed.

The government also handed out hundreds of billions of dollars in unemployment benefits, direct checks to households and other aid. Mr. Atout said federal stimulus checks had helped him and Ms. Hodges make ends meet while they got their business running.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/business/startup-business-creation-pandemic.html

Alternative Music Sources

Consider live musicians. Quartets, guitarists, and other performers may be contracted through freelancer sites like Fiverr and Upwork.

“I would even consider scouting local spots that have live music, like a church or bookstore,” Ms. Goodwin said. “However, the absolute, most cost-effective method would be to rent a speaker from a local audio visual equipment rental service. Then, get your family and friends involved.”

Get acquainted with your venue’s sound system and ask about audio connectivity so you can plug in your own device and equipment, if necessary. Once these capabilities are confirmed, start curating on your preferred streaming service. Earlier this month, Tidal, a streaming music service, launched a Wedding Hub, a one-stop source for soundtracking all wedding-themed events, like the processional and the first dance.

Spotify tends to be the most popular. Don’t forget to sign up for a premium account to avoid awkward interruptions from ads during cocktail hour and dinner.

Hiring a Friend

Asking friends to flex their amateur spinning skills may be a suitable alternative, especially if the dance party is an absolute must-have. They should have “a basic instinct” for selecting music that’s fun for everybody, Mr. Hoffmann said. But even if they manage to get the party started, they might struggle to rein in over-enthused — and intoxicated — guests.

“This is a serious gamble,” Ms. Goodwin said. “If you trust your friend, yes. If you don’t trust your friend, listen to their samples. If they can’t curate six hours of music, then no.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/style/where-are-all-the-wedding-djs.html

There are ample signs that a resurgence has begun. Tables are packed at restaurants and bars across the city. Many places have expanded their capacity with new outdoor seating, thanks to the city’s Open Streets and Open Restaurant programs.

“It feels like every day is a weekend,” said Simone Tong, the chef of Silver Apricot, in the West Village. “The energy is back.”

With commercial retail rents in New York City at record lows, some restaurants are signing new leases. There have been 1,713 new restaurant permit applications from Jan. 1 through July 2, according to figures from the city health department (which also include renewals for existing restaurants).

Still, in 2019, the number of applications for roughly that same period was 2,388, and many owners say they’re a long way from the old normal.

“People think that because restaurants are allowed to be at 100 percent, and when they go into the restaurants, they’re full, that everything is fine,” said Jeffrey Bank, the chief executive of Alicart Restaurant Group, which owns Carmine’s and Virgil’s Real Barbecue. “And clearly it is not.”

The damage the pandemic has already done is coming into focus. Just before the state shut down indoor dining in March 2020, New York had more than 27,000 restaurants, according to the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The department doesn’t yet have current figures, but Yelp, which tracks restaurant openings, shows there are now about 2,000 fewer. The city had 173,500 restaurant employees in June, a 38 percent drop from the 280,000 who were working in December 2019, according to the New York State Department of Labor.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/07/dining/new-york-restaurants-covid-reopenings.html

I am constantly furious about this system that seems to force start-ups to shoot for the moon, or else. WeWork had a basically smart, if not entirely original, idea to remove many of the headaches of commercial office leasing. But that wasn’t enough, and I almost don’t blame Neumann for that.

Disproportionate rewards go to the entrepreneurs and companies that can sell a vision of billions of users and values in the trillions of dollars. This is why Airbnb doesn’t merely say that it lets people rent a home in an app. The company says that Airbnb helps “people satisfy a fundamental human need for connection.” It’s why delivery companies like Uber and DoorDash are aiming to deliver any possible physical product to anyone, and companies think they have to make virtual reality become as popular as smartphones. Merely earthbound ambitions aren’t good enough.

Those conditions tempt people to skirt the edges of what’s right and legal. But I also wonder if curtailing the excesses would also curb the ambition that we want. Sometimes the zeal to imagine ridiculously grand visions of the future brings us Theranos. And sometimes it brings us Google. Are these two sides of the same coin?

Elon Musk shows both the good and the bad of what happens when technologists dream outlandishly big. Perhaps more than any single person, Musk has made it possible for automakers, governments and all of us to imagine electric cars replacing conventional ones. This is a potentially planet-transforming change.

But Musk has also endangered people’s lives by overhyping driver-assistance technology, has repeatedly over-promised technology that hasn’t panned out and has skirted both the law and human decency.

I used to half-jokingly ask a former colleague: Why can’t Musk just make cars? But maybe it’s impossible to separate the reckless carnival barker who deludes himself and others from the bold ideas that really are helping to change the world for the better.

I hate thinking this. I want to believe that technologies can succeed without aiming to reprogram all of humanity and without the associated temptations to engage in fraud or abuse. I want the good Musk without the bad. I want the wonderful and empowering elements of social media without the genocide. But I just don’t know if we can separate the wonderful from the awful.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/technology/innovation-invites-hucksters.html

Un ecosistema de empresas emergentes cada vez más grande intenta comercializar el espacio al construir todo, desde la tecnología de lanzamiento más barata hasta los satélites más pequeños y la infraestructura que conforma los “picos y palas” de la fiebre del oro del espacio, como lo describe Meagan Crawford, socia administrativa de la empresa de capital de riesgo SpaceFund.

“La gente mira a su alrededor y dice: ‘Vemos esta sólida industria espacial. ¿De dónde salió?’”, comentó Crawford. “Bueno, ha sido construida de manera metódica y con determinación, y llegar hasta aquí ha implicado muchísimo trabajo durante los últimos 30 años”.

Los inversionistas gastaron 7000 millones de dólares en la financiación de nuevas empresas espaciales en 2020, el doble de la cantidad de los dos años previos, según Bryce Tech, una firma de análisis espacial.

“Lo que todos estamos tratando de hacer es lo que hicieron Jeff, Richard y Elon hace 20 años: construir grandes negocios. La diferencia es que estamos construyendo negocios en el espacio y ellos construyeron sus negocios en la tierra”, dijo Chris Kemp, director ejecutivo de Astra, una empresa emergente centrada en ofrecer lanzamientos más pequeños, más baratos y más frecuentes.

La primera carrera espacial, que se extendió a lo largo de los años sesenta y luego se agotó en los setenta, enfrentó a un gobierno estadounidense temerario y audaz contra una Unión Soviética malévola y sin encanto alguno. Los estadounidenses ganaron esa competencia, aunque los críticos alegaron que todo era un error en una época en que tantas cosas dentro del país requerían atención y dinero.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/es/2021/07/23/espanol/bezos-branson-musk-espacio.html

Smaller space ventures are even more wide open to entrepreneurs.

“If you look at where space is today, especially with respect to lower Earth orbit activities, it really is similar to the early days of the internet,” said West Griffin, chief financial officer of Axiom, a start-up aiming to build the first commercial space station.

The commercialization of space began during the 1990s dot-com boom but took much longer to reach fruition. The flights this month hark back to 1996, when the nonprofit organization X Prize announced a contest: $10 million to the first nongovernmental organization to build a reusable spacecraft that could take someone to an altitude of 100 kilometers, or 62.5 miles, and then do it again in less than two weeks.

The winning design in 2004 turned out to be SpaceShipOne in an effort led by Burt Rutan, an aerospace engineer who previously designed the Voyager airplane that flew around the world without stopping or refueling. It was financed by Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft who died in 2018.

The X Prize piqued Mr. Branson’s interest, too. He trademarked “Virgin Galactic Airways” in 1999, and licensed the SpaceShipOne technology. Mr. Branson hoped that a larger version could begin commercial flights within three years. It took 17 years instead.

A swelling ecosystem of start-ups is attempting to commercialize space by building everything from cheaper launch technology to smaller satellites to the infrastructure making up the “pickaxes and shovels” of space’s gold rush, as Meagan Crawford, a managing partner at the venture capital firm SpaceFund, puts it.

“People are looking around going: ‘There’s this robust space industry. Where did that come from?’” Ms. Crawford said. “Well, it’s been built methodically and purposefully, and it’s been a lot of hard work over the last 30 years to get us here.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/technology/the-amazonification-of-space.html

During the pandemic, restaurant workers “were interested in organizing in a way they weren’t before,” said Sheigh Freeberg, the secretary and treasurer of Unite Here Local 17.

What’s distinct about many of these fledgling drives, Mr. Freeberg added, is that they are not taking on corporations worth millions of dollars. Most independent restaurants operate on slim profit margins. For those workers, “it is about respect on the job, or being able to have your schedule ahead of when it comes out,” he said. “Stuff that doesn’t cost any money.”

Still, many recent organizing efforts stalled or failed.

After working at N7, a French bistro in New Orleans, for more than three years, Luna Vicini was fired last October from her job as floor manager, with a note saying that the business needed a manager who prioritized profitability. She believes it was because she had organized workers around concerns about pay, transparency and safety protocols. (The company did not respond to requests for comment.)

Following Ms. Vicini’s exit, she said, nine employees went on strike; the restaurant shut down for several days before the owners, Aaron Walker and Yuki Yamaguchi, reopened with a mostly new staff. Ms. Vicini hoped to get her job back and help unionize N7, but the strike fizzled as some employees returned to work or took jobs elsewhere.

“I think that people left the strike because they couldn’t see what it would be like if it worked out,” said Ms. Vicini, 31. “And they could see what it would be like if it didn’t work out.”

At American Beauty, a steakhouse in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, six servers and two former employees picketed the restaurant last March after the owners reduced the percentage of the tip pool allocated to servers and other front-of-the-house workers. The restaurant said the move was intended to give the kitchen staff a bigger share of that pool; the picketers said the business should simply raise wages for kitchen workers.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/dining/labor-union-restaurants.html

Others had doubts. Marco Moreira, the chef and owner of 15 East at Tocqueville in New York, said he was skeptical.

“I wouldn’t oppose it, but again, I’m a little bit of a traditionalist,” said Mr. Moreira, who has several dishes containing foie gras on his menu. “Why mess with something that’s perfect as it is?” Still, he said he was open to trying it.

Investors have poured money into food technology start-ups in recent years amid concerns about food shortages in the coming decades as the global population grows. Cell-cultivated meat does not yet have regulatory approval in most countries, but last year, in a first for the laboratory meat industry, a San Francisco company, Eat Just, won government approval by the city-state of Singapore to sell cultured chicken as an ingredient in chicken nuggets.

One of the biggest obstacles for cell-cultured meat has been its cost. Mr. Morin-Forest says Gourmey’s lab-grown foie gras costs less than $1,180 (1,000 euros) per kilogram. Made in the traditional way, foie gras costs about €100 to €200 a kilogram.

The European Commission and France’s public bank, Bpifrance, have also provided subsidies to support Gourmey, which was started in 2019 and has about 20 employees.

Mr. Morin-Forest said Gourmey was seeking regulatory approval from food safety agencies and hoped to enter the market by late next year or early 2023. Its focus will be on markets like Singapore and the United States, where there is increasing acceptance of lab-grown meat, he said.

Stéphane Chambon, the chef of Le Pont de l’Ouysse, a Michelin-starred restaurant in southwest France known for its foie gras, said that the movement against foie gras on animal rights grounds was misguided and that the process of raising ducks or geese for foie gras by overfeeding them mimicked a natural one: Centuries ago, when geese and duck crossed the Mediterranean from Egypt, they would eat a lot for energy, causing their livers to engorge, he said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/business/smallbusiness/foie-gras-lab-grown.html

With the blessing of China’s leaders, finance arms began sprouting out of internet companies of all kinds, including the search engine Baidu, the retailer JD.com and the food-delivery giant Meituan. Between 2014 and 2019, consumer credit from online lenders nearly quadrupled each year on average, by one estimate. Nearly three-quarters of such platforms’ users were under the age of 35, according to iiMedia Research.

Last year, when Ant filed to go public, the company said more than $260 billion in credit was being extended to consumers on Alipay. That meant Ant alone was responsible for more than 12 percent of all short-term consumer lending in China, according to the research firm GaveKal Dragonomics.

Then in November, officials torpedoed Ant’s I.P.O. and got to work taking apart the plumbing that had connected Alipay with China’s banks.

They ordered Ant to make it less convenient for users to pay for purchases on credit — credit that was being largely funded by banks. They barred banks from offering deposits through online platforms and restricted how much banks could lend through them. At some banks, deposits offered through digital platforms accounted for 70 percent of their total deposits, a central bank official said in a speech.

In a news briefing last week, Fan Yifei, deputy governor at the central bank, said regulators would soon be applying the full Ant treatment to other platforms.

“On the one hand, the speed of development has been astonishing,” Mr. Fan said. “On the other hand, in the pursuit of growth, there have arisen monopolies, disorderly expansion of capital and other such behaviors.”

Ant declined to comment.

As Ant and Tencent scramble to meet regulators’ demands, they have pared credit services for some users.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/13/technology/china-fintech-ant-group.html

Internet infrastructure operators like Didi must now prove their political and legal legitimacy to the government, Ma Changbo, an online media start-up founder, wrote on his WeChat social media account.

“This is the second half of the U.S.-China decoupling,” he wrote. “In the capital market, the model of playing both sides of the fence is coming to an end.”

Didi, Ms. Liu and Mr. Liu didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

China’s internet companies have benefited from the best of two worlds since the 1990s. Many received foreign venture funding — Alibaba, the e-commerce giant, was funded by Yahoo and SoftBank, while Tencent, another internet titan, was backed by South Africa’s Naspers. They also copied their business models from Silicon Valley companies.

The Chinese companies gained further advantages when Beijing blocked almost all big American internet companies from its domestic market, giving its home players plenty of room to grow. Many Chinese internet firms later went public in New York, where investors have a bigger appetite for innovative and risky start-ups than in Shanghai or Hong Kong. So far this year, more than 35 Chinese companies have gone public in the United States.

Now the Didi crackdown is changing the calculations for many in China’s tech industry. One entrepreneur who has set her sights on a listing in New York for her enterprise software start-up said it would be harder to go public in Hong Kong with a high valuation because what her company did — software as a service — was a relatively new idea in China.

A venture capitalist in Beijing added that because of China’s data security requirements, it was now unlikely that start-ups in artificial intelligence and software as a service would consider going public in New York. Few people were willing to speak on the record for fear of retaliation by Beijing.

At the same time, the United States has become more hostile to Chinese tech companies and investors. As Washington has ramped up its scrutiny of deals that involve sensitive technologies, it has become almost impossible for Chinese venture firms to invest in Silicon Valley start-ups, several investors said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/06/technology/china-business-politics-didi.html