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Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Delivers Remarks at TechCrunch Disrupt

May 4, 2015

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you so much, everyone. I want to thank Jordan for the introduction. And Jordan is doing great work with TechCrunch, and also she is one of my favorite kinds of human beings. She is a Brooklynite. So, I thank you, Jordan, for all you do. Are there Brooklynites here? Brooklynites? Brooklynites?

[Applause]

Thank you. Well, I want to say it’s a great honor to be at TechCrunch Disrupt. This conference everyone knows is an extraordinary opportunity to talk about not just what’s happening today in our tech community, but to talk about where we are, going forward, and what it means for New York City. And we are so energized by the growth of the tech community in this city. We think it is quintessential to the future of this city. I believe there’s tremendous opportunity for further growth here, and great opportunity for the tech community not only to make us a stronger city economically, but also to make us a fairer and better city.  So I’m thrilled to talk to you about some of the things we’re doing and some of the ways I look forward to working together. 

I’m going to take a moment, though, to acknowledge some folks who have done a lot of great work, and are part of this growing community and deepening of the tech community’s involvement with the city as a whole. First of all, I think a great example are some of the schools represented today from our public school system. So, I’d like to shout-out the Academy for Software Engineering and the Ralph McKee CTE School on Staten Island. Give them a round of applause.

[Applause]

An extraordinary effort being made to pilot efforts in our schools around software engineering, and it is great to have young people from these schools here to connect with this industry and deepen their opportunities ahead because they, of course, will be the leaders of the tech industry in this city in the future.

I know you had the chairman of the FCC here earlier, Tom Wheeler, who I think has done extraordinary things to protect the freedom of the internet. And I give him a lot of credit for standing up for open access.

I also want to thank the members of my team – and we are very, very proud of the team that we have put together at City Hall who focus on the tech community and what it means for this city. I want to thank my counsel, Maya Wiley, who has spearheaded our broadband access efforts that we are very proud of. I want to thank our new CTO, Minerva Tantoco. I want to thank Jessie Singleton, our digital director, and the director of our Tech Talent Pipeline, Kristen Titus. They are all doing an extraordinary job linking this community to the broader work of the city.

Now, I will be quick, but I must start with a little bit of positive bragging. I like to brag about the glories of my city. Sometimes it’s tempting to feel a little competitive with other places that are well known for a technology presence. Maybe California would be an example? Well, this year, New York City has surpassed California in startup funding requests, and we are very proud of that fact.

[Applause]

The tech ecosystem here provides nearly 300,000 jobs, making it one of the very biggest employers in our economy – generates over $30 billion in wages annually. And it’s having a transformative effect on other quintessential New York City industries, including food, fashion and entertainment. So the impact is great and the speed with which this has happened is breathtaking and incredibly energizing, and a positive example of good change happening in this city. And I know, again, there’s a lot more where that came from.

I see the strength of this community as being the ability to open up opportunity for more and more New Yorkers, including many New Yorkers who have not had opportunity for the kind of quality of jobs that you provide, and have not had opportunity for the kind of career paths that you provide. I think that’s why this community is transcendent – not only the way we think and the way we do things – and helping us do things better, but also in creating a different economic paradigm that could open doors to so many more of our people.

From the beginning, we knew in our administration that we had to work with the tech community to make it truly a five-borough community – and I love what I’m seeing already in terms of the growth of this community all over the five boroughs. We knew we had to expand access to tech education in our public schools and universities. And we knew that if we were going to achieve our larger goals of combating income inequality, that the tech community would be a crucial ally – and from all I have seen, a willing and energized ally in the fight against income inequality.  

Let me talk very briefly – three key areas that we’re working on – talent first.

Our goal is to help this community by building an extraordinary pipeline of talent for the ever-growing needs of the community. Our hope and our belief is that if we do our work well and if we partner with you properly, over the next decade, a majority of tech jobs in the city will be filled by graduates of our public schools and universities – and that will be transcendent for this city.

We know, again, these are quality jobs that you create – jobs that actually define a middle class lifestyle, and that’s what we want for our people. And we want to make sure every kind of New Yorker knows that this community is for them in all five boroughs. We’ve been investing $10 million in public-private partnership to create the Tech Talent Pipeline – working directly with the industry to understand the industry’s needs so we can shape training programs that get young people the right skills and get them to the jobs.

We are about to announce in our city budget on Thursday an additional investment in CUNY – in STEM programs for CUNY, especially for our two-year community colleges. $29 million will be invested in this upcoming year, and that will increase to $51 million the year after for STEM programs at CUNY. And we are very excited about what that will mean.

And I have to tell you, so much of the impetus for those investments came from leaders of this community who said, “We love some of the tremendous things that are happening, like Cornell-Technion – we need them. But we also need a broader approach that gets more and more people, especially young people, the skills that would give them opportunities of all kinds in this industry.” And CUNY is the perfect tool for realizing that vision quickly.

Second, we’re focused on giving all New Yorkers – I want to emphasize the word all New Yorkers – broadband access. We want to defeat the digital divide. So we are investing $70 million over the next ten years in broadband infrastructure – a much greater investment than you’ve seen in other places. We believe this is necessary.

One of the key realities is that we know this city can’t be a place of inclusion, can’t be successful if so many of our fellow New Yorkers don’t have access to the internet. So we’re building the world’s largest, fastest free municipal Wi-Fi network, in terms of the number of people who will have access, in terms of the devices that will be out there to connect people, in terms of the speed that it will allow them to connect. It will be the largest and fastest in the world – over 10,000 hotspots obviously connecting potentially all 8.5 million of us and growing.

We know this is something that has to happen.

To realize our vision, we just put out a plan in the last ten days called One New York. It is a plan for the future of the city, and it’s a plan that looks at everything from economic growth to resiliency to sustainability, but adds to that notion that we must also address income inequality – that a truly sustainable city is one that’s physically, environmentally sustainable, but also economically sustainable for its people. We need to hit both notes at once, and that’s what our plan addresses, and that’s why broadband is such a crucial piece of the equation.

Third, innovation – this community understands in a particularly powerful way that innovation has to be a constant. It can never be feared. It must be embraced. Well, I can safely say in government, we have not always had the best track record when it comes to innovation. In fact, a lot of us have been frustrated over the years with some of the bureaucratic roadblocks to necessary change – not just on a macro-policy level, but literally on how we do the work day to day. What we’ve found is, working with the tech community, we are figuring out quickly ways to do things a lot better, and we’re listening to the community when people say here’s how government can work better, but here’s how the community can help the government work better, and can be more of a partner. We’re trying to respond to that energetically, which is why we appointed the first-ever CTO for New York City, Minerva Tantoco; which is why my counsel, Maya Wiley, is spearheading our broadband expansion efforts – because we understand that we could do something different and better – and we want to be pushed by this community to be different and better, and to innovate.

The fact is, there are so many examples already – remember, the tech community have helped us to find a better way of doing things. We’ve pulled together a broadband taskforce, which we are really excited about – and we thank all the members of the taskforce who may be here or may be watching right now, because this is a group of experts who are going to help us close that digital divide. We’ve put out calls for innovation – places where we believe the community can help us to specifically solve nagging problems that government has not resolved.

We believe all of these efforts will help us reshape the city.

So, I’ll end where I began – the goal is a stronger city. Economically, the goal is a better city, and a city where this community grows, but we have to do it in a way that is more inclusive and more fair than the New York City of today or yesterday. That is our vision, and we see this community as one of the great allies in that effort to create a better city for all.

Thank you very much.

[Applause]

I’ll go there – 

Unknown: Why don’t you have a seat?

Mayor: All right!

Unknown: Yeah, another big round of applause for Mr. Mayor Bill de Blasio. We’re going to bring out Kim-Mai Cutler. She’s going to sit down with him for about 15, chat, and we’ll move on from there. You guys have fun.

Kim-Mai Cutler: Wow, thank you for coming.

Mayor: You’re very welcome.

Cutler: So mayor – former mayor Bloomberg was a big proponent of tech in New York, and after the financial industry [inaudible], after the crisis, you know, that strategy helped pay off in terms of the job markets in the rebound. How – what is your – what kind of mark do you want to leave on tech in New York, and how is that different from the Bloomberg Administration?

Mayor: I think Mayor Bloomberg built a good foundation.

Cutler: Yeah.

Mayor: I think he was focused. Obviously, it was very native to him with the work he had done previously in the private sector, but he built a strong foundation. He reoriented government policies towards the tech community and towards the growth of the community. I think that was fantastic and he certainly gets tremendous credit for Cornell-Technion, which we’re very excited about. But I think at the same time, we take a more populist approach. We are trying to build on that on foundation, but build out. Build to all five boroughs. Build to people who have not yet been included. We want to see a much more diverse tech sector in every sense. We want to see the opportunities that are in the tech sector available to every kind of New Yorker. So we have a muscular effort in terms of training, in terms of the efforts we want to undertake in our public schools and universities. It all adds up to creating a much bigger talent pool. And we’re proud of the fact that we believe the only way we get there is with a strong government role working with the industry. But the goal is to make this industry – this community, this industry – a transcendent part of the efforts to fight income inequality, and that’s a supreme focus for us.

Cutler: One of the things that – one of the differences between the finance industry and the tech industry is the finance industry favors, like, a lot of office space, maybe in the Midtown area, but tech tends to, like, you know, there’s tech offices popping up in, like, Bushwick and Gowanus – and how much are you thinking about rezoning these other boroughs for commercial office development?

Mayor: I think, to begin with, it’s crucial to be truly a five-borough industry, and that is it’s – one of the things I’m thrilled with is that’s idea. That’s becoming, as you say, a really present reality, and we want to support that. I think in the first instance there’s a lot we can do within our current rezoning. I think there may be some specific areas where there’d be smart be rezoning around, for example, live-work space, which there’s been a great demand for. And we’re trying to build a superstructure around that in terms of the creation of affordable housing, and creating better transit options. But I would say, right now, we can accommodate a great expansion of this industry in a lot of our communities without even needing to get to a rezoning.

Cutler: Okay. So, speaking about this populist approach to tech, I mean, since Google released its diversity numbers basically this month a year ago – I mean, we’ve seen the data for lots and lots of companies. It’s very obvious – it’s predominantly – it’s predominantly white, it’s predominantly male. And when I talk to tech industry leaders, you know, the sort of truism is that, well, it’s a pipeline problem. To what extent do you think that the racial make-up of the tech industry and gender make-up of the tech industry has to do with, you know, cultural short-comings of the industry itself in the way that it hires and promotes people, versus what’s coming out of our K through 12 system?

Mayor: Look, I think that – that moment a year ago was a wake-up call for all of us. And I think it was – a lot of soul-searching occurred, which is good and healthy. I think part of the approach we’ve taken in government, where you could argue some of the same historic issues have been raised, in terms of pipeline – you know, I’m very much in the if-you-build-they-will-come school, meaning if you send a message from the beginning of inclusion, if you insist in the hiring process that there be maximum opportunity for inclusion, you find a lot more success at inclusion. Our entire tech team happens to be women, including some women of color. Our administration –

[Applause]

Thank you. Our administration as a whole, in terms of senior jobs in our administration, across all agencies, is 53 percent women in senior management roles, for the entire New York City government. So I think it is quite available if the mindset of what is valued changes. I would argue this is not just about social responsibility or building a more inclusive society. I think it’s smart in terms of recognition of markets. Who are going to be the biggest markets going forward? The majority of our people are women, obviously. We are in a society that is increasingly people of color – increasing percentage of our communities. So I think the further integration of the sector is good for everyone in every sense. We’re going to try and do all we can through our public schools, our public universities, our training programs to really improve that pipeline, but I think one of the things that people in the tech community can do is meet us in that process, help us figure out how we can do that well, but then really lean in to hiring people that come out of our public schools, our public universities, and our training programs.

Cutler: So you’ve done this Tech Talent Pipeline. It’s a $10 million dollar effort. When I – when I look at a lot of the – over the past several months in the year, I’ve gotten to know a lot of different community groups and organizations in different parts of the San Francisco Bay area, and then also organizations here, like Coalition for Queens, and they’re often run by really dedicated, invested, wonderful community leaders, but the [inaudible] they’re graduating seem so small relative to, you know, the kinds of needs of needs and the skills that these employers have. Like, I mean, $10 million seems small in the face of what tech companies want to hire, if you’re going to, you know, ask them to hire locally.

Mayor: I think it’s one of a number of pieces we’re putting into play. Look, the – the investment in CUNY – again, $29 million this coming year, $51 million the year after that – and it continues – we continue investing more deeply to ensure that the City University system is a constant generator of talent for this community. I would say, if you think about all of our private universities, if you think about all the training programs, not just the ones that we’re sponsoring, but others as well, if you think about the impact that mentorship programs would have, internship programs, summer jobs – and we’re really going to emphasize we want people in the community to participate in all those – I think it builds a very healthy and sizeable pipeline. Now, one of the things we want to do, in the spirit of this community and in the best sense of the word disruption, is we want to constantly see if it’s working, because this is really one of the greatest opportunities to get our people good, quality jobs. If we think there’s more investment necessary to achieve that goal, you know, that’s going to be something we’re very open to.

Cutler: How – how are you looking to get that feedback? What’s the best way that tech companies can do that?

Mayor: Well, certainly the Tech Talent Pipeline is an example, and the working groups we’ve put together with the community to give us that constant feedback about what kind of training is needed that will actually maximize the likelihood that people going through the training will get to a job. So we’re thrilled that our tech team is in constant dialogue with the folks doing the hiring, and we want to constantly adjust the training approach to the literal and specific needs of the community. And that’s something I think was not the way government handled things in the past. We – I am a firm believer – look at the jobs of today and try and look at the jobs of tomorrow and reorient – I mean, we do a half-billion in training, so, just to give you a little perspective – each year, a half-billion dollars in training programs previously not well enough oriented to the real economy. We want to do that now.

Cutler: So I actually – so I grew up in the Bay area, I grew up in the tech industry. I’ve been reporting in tech for many, many years. And I think about, you know, when I started I remember, you know – when I started coming and working in tech journalism, it was about, like, real-time search and social, and every year it’s literally changed so much. I mean, it’s – you know, one year, it’s drones and Bitcoin, and the next it’s the on-demand economy. And I have a hard time understanding, like, how public educational institutions can be as flexible as, say, some of the vocational schools that have come up, like General Assembly or Flatiron. Like, how much – how do you think about your allocation of time and resources between some of these, like, boot-camp like programs versus the CUNY system?

Mayor: Well, I think it’s a great point, and I – I don’t pretend that we will always be, you know, at the exact cutting edge, but I think the question is how we are increasingly improving our approach. I think if you look at it in terms of the core skills people need and the connection to the tech community they need, that does not necessarily imply that we’re doing everything perfectly or we’ve got people calibrated to the exact most recent trend. It does suggest, if you churn out, you know, generation upon generation of young people with the basic skills and the orientation in the community and the sense that they belong and the exposure, which is why I emphasize internships and mentorship and summer jobs, I think that will achieve a lot of the outcome. I think within the community itself, what I would call the fine-tuning can occur.

Cutler: One of the other things that has been a central piece of your administration is this focus on affordable housing.

Mayor: Yes.

Cutler: You have this incredibly ambitious plan – 200,000 units preserved or built. Both our cities – I’m from San Francisco – have this incredibly crazy, crazy, crazy housing crisis.

Mayor: Yes.

Cutler: Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Mayor: Sure. You know, San Francisco, obviously, had to deal with some of these challenges ahead of us, and we have learned from some of the struggles. We have the most ambitious affordable housing program in the history of any city – 200,000 units built and preserved over the next ten years. That’s enough for about half of a million people. So far, we’re actually very much on schedule to achieve that. It’s wildly ambitious, but what we’re finding is we’re getting a great response from the private sector meeting us, and also our investments, as we’re going to show in a few days, are going to continue to increase to support that plan. I think if you find enough housing for half-a-million people in the five boroughs, it’s one of the transcendent pieces in terms of keeping this a city for everyone, a city for every kind of economic group. But the work, in effect, never ends, because we – we need a lot more market-rate housing as well, which we’re working on. And one of the challenges is we have to make sure that the highest percentage possible is for folks at the lowest income level, because a very substantial quantity of people in this city are living below the poverty level, and we need to ensure they have affordable housing options. But again, I’d like to get them out of poverty, which is why our plan – our OneNYC plan, just published – literally puts a goal to that. We say we want 800,000 people out of poverty in the next ten years. It will require a substantial increase in the minimum wage, which I think is long overdue, and I think the state needs to work more aggressively on that front, plus the affordable housing programs, plus the training programs – a whole host of things. But as a city, we are committed not only to building the affordable housing, but to matching it with a specific poverty reduction goal.

Cutler: Inclusionary housing is a key component of your platform. It’s also a practice that we have in San Francisco, and we’re always debating about what’s the appropriate share that we say is devoted, you know, to being permanently affordable. But it – you know, it seems to me, like, I get why we’re doing it, there’s just not as much federal or state funding for affordable housing as there used to be, but it seems to exacerbate the preexisting trend in the job market, which is a hollowing-out of the middle class. And when you do inclusionary, the cost of those permanently affordable units gets passed onto the market-rate buyers. And so I – it just feels like there’s a tension – there’s a tension there, and we’re grappling with it in SF – should we do 12 percent? 20 percent? 25, 35 percent? And what does that do to our housing stock, and –

Mayor: It – these are real issues, but I’d say, given the income inequality crisis and the depth of it – one of the statistics I cite is that, you know, effectively, since the end – quote-unquote “end” of the Great Recession, which is quote-unquote because it’s still being deeply felt by so many Americans – but since the recovery officially began, the vast, vast majority of the gains of the recovery have gone to the top 1 percent in terms of income. And I think what it means is that we – we have to recognize how intensive our efforts are going to have to be to address income inequality. So we have a very aggressive approach to inclusionary zoning, and if some of those costs are passed on to the private sector and to the highest-income buyers, I don’t think that’s unfair, because we don’t have the federal funding – I agree with you, it’s going to be a long time before we see fair federally – fair federal funding again – it’s something – say that ten times fast – it’s something we’re going to work on very energetically in Washington. But right now, you know, a society that stops working for middle class people and for hardworking, lower-income people, that society stops working. If people literally have nowhere to go, it’s just not a healthy society. We think that the affordable housing efforts done aggressively can actually be a profoundly powerful solution. It’s the number one expense in people’s lives, but we think we have to address it aggressively.

Cutler: Last thing – so, earlier today, Fred Wilson and Ron Conway were talking about ways that the tech industry can get involved and how they can work with local government. And do you have specific recommendations or asks for the tech industry here today?

Mayor: I sure do. Thanks for asking. Well, I really appreciate what Fred Wilson has done, particularly in terms of education. I’m a big fan of Ron Conway and I appreciate that they are putting forward real models for this community, and real community-wide levels of commitment that they think make sense. I think that’s healthy. That shows an engagement. If you think in terms of economic sectors, that shows a level, if you will, of enlightenment and engagement from the tech community we don’t see from every sector of our communities. So I think it’s very, very healthy. But I would say this – two things – we have our center for youth employment as part of the mayor’s office – it’s part of the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, which my wife chairs. The idea is to, over the next few years, by 2020, reach a level of 100,000 high school students each year who are either in a summer job or an internship or a mentorship program – 100,000 each year. We want to start that aggressively this summer, and we’ll give you a quick deadline of May 15 – we’re asking – 

[Applause]

– no time like the present. We want to start that this summer, reaching towards that bigger goal. But this summer, what we’re asking everyone in this room to do, and everyone who’s watching to do is, if you can create a summer job for a young person, if you can create an internship or a mentorship effort, we want you to start doing that now so we can plug in a lot of our young people this summer and then build out over the next few years. That’s one. Second, in terms of our Tech Talent Pipeline and all of the efforts to train young people, and not necessarily young people for opportunity in the community, we really beseech you to work with us to ensure you’re hiring the maximum number of employees who come out of those efforts. So we’re, you know, constantly adding training resources and we’re aligning the training to the community’s needs, but we really want to push people to engage us in how to do it best, but then be very focused on hiring those who come through these training and these educational efforts.

Cutler: Okay. Thank you so much.

Mayor: Thank you. Thanks, everyone.

[Applause]

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