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The TikTok Stars You Follow Are Getting Hired As Social Media Directors for Major Companies
This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene. Some analysts estimate that the overall influencer marketing market has surpassed $7 billion. But as influencer marketing has evolved, so has the relationship between brands and creators. The latest trend? Hiring influencers as in-house staff.
GOAT Co-founder Eddy Lu On How His Sneaker Startup GOAT Achieved Unicorn Status
Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.
LA Tech ‘Moves’: SpaceX Taps Former NASA Human Spaceflight Official
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
How To Adapt and Overcome To Reach Success With Your Startup
What’s the best way to land a plane on a short runway? Maintain control of your descent. The same logic holds for early- to mid-stage startups that are facing harsh financial conditions in 2023. Research from the end of last year found that 81% of early stage start-ups have less than 12 months of runway left. Yikes. Pair that with the current post-SVB venture investment freeze, and it paints a stark picture of what’s ahead.
This Week in ‘Raises’: BuildOps Grabs $50M, BroadLight Capital Lands $225M
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
Why Cable TV is Quickly Becoming a Relic of the Past
This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene. According to a new report in The Wall Street Journal, Disney plans to transition ESPN from a cable network into an internet streaming service. The project, internally codenamed “Flagship,” remains in its early stages, with Disney contacting partners and leagues to hammer out new licensing deals, should the entire network pivot from cable to the cloud.
How Plenty is Using Vertical Farms to Bring Produce to Compton’s Food Desert
In the middle of downtown Compton, California, fresh produce is scarce. According to the Compton Chamber of Commerce, the city is both a food desert and also a food swamp. Drive through Alameda St. or Rosecrans Ave., and you’ll notice that grocery chains are sparse but fast food joints are numerous: Jack in the Box, McDonald’s, Popeye’s, IHOP. With the exception of a Walmart Supercenter off Long Beach Blvd., I couldn’t identify anywhere else to get fresh produce, unless it was a small, local corner store.
TikTok Invests $750,000 and $1M Respectively in the Hispanic Heritage Foundation and Black Girl Ventures
This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene. In 2020, TikTok invested $750,000 into a partnership with The Hispanic Heritage Foundation (HHF). The goal was to increase Latinx representation on the app by encouraging entrepreneurs to act as content creators.
Collide Capital Founder Aaron Samuels On The Importance of Storytelling
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
Collide Capital’s Aaron Samuels on Creating Blavity Media for Black Millennials and Gen Z
On this episode of the LA Venture podcast, Collide Capital founder and managing partner Aaron Samuels discusses the importance of storytelling and talks about how his career journey led him to venture capital. Collide Capital is a venture capital firm that just closed its first seed stage fund of $66...
Why Is Nasa Tracking And Mapping Dangerous Methane Plumes?
Multiple studies conducted by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena using both airborne and ground-based sensors have found that the overall rate of methane gas emissions in Southern California have fallen in recent years. From 2015 to 2020, one NASA study found that the LA Basin’s annual emissions fell...
AI’s Marketing Push Gets An Assist from Congress
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week about the promise and the potential drawbacks of AI, addressing concerns from lawmakers about whether the technology needs regulation and just what exactly that regulation might look like. Senators expressed some common fears about AI. As a...
Will Going Public Be Enough To Save Vinfast From Ongoing Negative Reviews?
This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene. Vinfast, the Vietnamese electric vehicle company operating out of Los Angeles, announced Friday that it would go public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in a deal valued at $27 billion. The company has been talking about going public in the United States for months now, and the massive valuation would make this the third largest SPAC deal ever, according to Bloomberg. Whether or not the merger with Hong Kong-based Black Spade Acquisition Co. is worth the price remains to be seen. But the news comes amid a torrent of negative reviews panning the company’s first electric vehicle for sale in the United States, the VF 8.
Why Neobanks Are Having Such a Difficult Time Making Money
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College and previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore. Santa...
InCharge Introduces V2X Technology: Turning EVs into Mobile Power Stations
Last week at the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo, Santa Monica-based InCharge unveiled a new family of bidirectional electric vehicle chargers. While a new charger might not have been the most jaw dropping tech unveiled at the expo, bidirectional charging–especially right now–offers the kind of cost saving solutions that should be extremely attractive to anybody that owns electric buses, delivery vans, or even tractor trailers in significant numbers. Basically, any fleet owner looking to save some money during their transition from diesel to battery would benefit from these chargers.
Will AI Make or Break Us? Google and Snap May Be Quick To Find Out
This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene. If you’ve noticed that the tech world has become somewhat single-minded about innovations in AI, we’ll, you’re not alone. It’s getting difficult to keep up with the non-stop flood of stories about new developments in the field, concerns around those developments, backlash to the concerns, rebuttals to the backlash, and on and on, until you practically need a bot just to scan through them all on your behalf. Here are just some of the AI stories we’ve been following this week.
Steven He and Ken Mok Want To Make YouTube Videos Cinematic
This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene. After graduating from Regent’s University London in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in acting, Steven He struggled to land roles in traditional media. So, he decided to take his creative energy to a space that offered him complete control—YouTube. Short skits and comedy bits led him to quickly amass over nine million YouTube subscribers and seven million TikTok followers.
LA Tech ‘Moves’: Riot Games and DermTech Welcomes New CEO
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
Writing TV Shows Isn’t Like Driving for Uber
As the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike caps off its second week, one trope keeps bubbling up from picket line videos and interviews with concerned TV writers: the concern that TV writing is transitioning from full-time work into the “gig economy.” There’s real fear that the multinational conglomerates and tech unicorns that currently own the major Hollywood studios plan to do away with the idea of screenwriting as its own career, turning it into more of a freelance position or even a side gig.
LA Tech ‘Moves’: Riot Games and DermTech Welcomes New CEO
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
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