Made of medical-grade silicone, Dame’s vibrators are designed to maximize pleasure and connection, not to mimic the male anatomy or get in the way of an intimate experience. The Fin, for example, is a small vibrator designed to feel “like a natural extension of your fingers,” said Ms. Fine, 29. People don’t like the feeling that a vibrator is doing all the work, she explained. “They still want to feel connected.”

Connection is important in business, too. When Mia Davis, 25, tried to get investors and others in Silicon Valley interested in Tabú, the sex education app, she grew frustrated. A lot of men “just sort of tensed up” and “couldn’t get past the discomfort of the subject,” she recalled.

Image The Fin, part of Dame Products, is a small vibrator worn between fingers to feel like a “natural extension.” Credit... Danny Ghitis for The New York Times

Last February in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, however, Ms. Davis had a different experience. When she participated in the Women of Sex Tech’s pop-up marketplace there, men and women asked how they could get involved in the company, offered to spread the word, and promised to tell their little sisters about the app, she recalled. A man who worked at a sexual health clinic talked to her about the kinds of questions patients tend to have.

Investors and others in the New York business community are more comfortable with consumer products than their counterparts in Silicon Valley, who tend to focus on business-to-business companies, said Liz Klinger, the co-founder and chief executive of Lioness, which makes a vibrator that collects data on women’s sexual responses. Ms. Klinger, 29, whose company is based in Berkeley, Calif., concurs that Silicon Valley can be difficult because it’s so male-dominated. She has been told that female-friendly products are less interesting because “women are only half the population.” Products for men, she said, somehow avoid the same scrutiny. Ms. Klinger recalled one male investor who was unimpressed with her ideas but excited about a device to treat male incontinence.

“Silicon Valley welcomes innovation and disruption in literally every other area except this one,” said Ms. Gallop, the founder of Make Love Not Porn. While there is a sex tech scene in California, she said, so far it lacks a “unifying force” like Women of Sex Tech.

For Ms. Davis, New York’s economic diversity is part of its appeal. “It is refreshing to live in a city where not every single person you meet is in some way, shape or form working in tech,” she said. It also doesn’t hurt that many renowned sex educators live or have lived in New York, from Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who first became famous in the ’80s with her radio show “Sexually Speaking,” to Mal Harrison, founder of the Center for Erotic Intelligence, to Ms. Dodson, who still gives workshops and now offers private sex coaching sessions.