LA Venture: Act One Ventures' Alejandro Guerrero on Bringing More Diversity to Venture Capital
On this episode of the LA Venture podcast, Alejandro Guerrero talks about transitioning from running his own startup to entering the venture capital world.
Guerrero met his soon-to-be business partner, Michael Stilton, at UCLA. Soon after, Stilton invited him to start a venture capital fund even though neither were looking to be venture capitalists.
Guerrero became a partner at Act One Ventures, a community focused early-stage fund leading pre-seed and seed rounds in ecommerce infrastructure, vertical SaaS and fintech companies.
"I got here because at some point in my life, in multiple points in my life, somebody who didn't owe me anything saw something in me that I didn't see in myself and opened the door for me. And not only did they open the door, they walked me through the door. They told me how to think when I got through the other side," Guerrero said.
For Guerrero, entering the world of venture capital was hard because of the lack of people in the industry who looked like him. He was a first-generation kid who came from a low-income home. He wanted to bring other underrepresented communities in.
Guerrero said he was deeply moved by the death of George Floyd, which inspired him to author the "diversity rider," a promise that VCs add language to their term sheets that states the startup and lead investor will make every effort to bring on traditionally underrepresented individuals on as co-investors.
"If we're sitting here hoping that someone is going to come and save us or save our community for us, we're tripping," Guerrero said. "If that was going to happen, it would have happened by now and it's not happening. I just didn't want this moment to be like a gun shooting in America where it's like thoughts and prayers," he added.
Guerrero noted that founders actually have more control than they think about who they bring into their rounds.
He also shared insights on how Act One Ventures operates: They are light touch investors and believe in mostly getting out of the way of the entrepreneur, but also leaning heavily on bringing in their network of advisors and LPs to work with portfolio companies as needed.
dot.LA Audience Engagement Intern Joshua Letona contributed to this post.
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College Savings App UNest Taps New President As It Dives Into Crypto
Since its founding in 2018, UNest has focused on helping parents save money for their kids. Offering customers flexible accounts to go toward things like college tuition, wedding expenses or a down payment on a house, the North Hollywood-based fintech startup might seem like more of a low-risk institution.
Yet in the next few weeks, UNest is jumping headfirst into the world of cryptocurrencies.
On Thursday, the company announced it has hired Jon Walker as president to help lead the app’s expansion as it looks to hire more people, grow its product offerings and raise more funding. In the newly created post, Walker will work alongside UNest founder and CEO Ksenia Yudina.
In an interview with dot.LA, Walker said his first job is to spearhead the launch of UNest Legacy—its upcoming product allowing users to invest in crypto and individual stocks—as well as expand the company’s presence in Utah, where he resides.
“Our goal is to help families build a lasting financial legacy,” Walker said. “Crypto investors tend to be younger and more diverse than retail stock investors, and we believe that this is becoming more and more mainstream.”
Before joining UNest—which counts former NBA player Baron Davis and actress Laura Dern among its investors—Walker served on the leadership team at KPMG Spark, the accounting giant’s bookkeeping and tax preparation service for small- and mid-sized businesses. He joined the firm after KPMG’s 2018 acquisition of Salt Lake City-based online bookkeeping startup Bookly, where he was a board member and part of the founding team.
He also participated in exits at Utah-based startups EcoScraps and GroSocial, and held positions at venture capital firms Signal Peak Ventures and Kickstart Seed Fund—all based in the “Silicon Slopes” area south of Salt Lake City, which earned that moniker thanks to its booming tech startup scene.
Walker hopes to poach from the region’s deep tech talent base as part of a hiring binge for UNest this year. The startup plans to double the size of its workforce to 70 employees by the end of 2022, including new engineering, marketing and operations personnel.
“Utah has become quite the vibrant ecosystem in regards to startups and the VC community,” Walker said, adding that there are no plans to move UNest’s headquarters there.
UNest is aiming to grow from 400,000 users currently to 1 million by the end of the year. The company is fresh off a $26 million Series B funding round last fall, led by Houston-based The Artemis Fund, which took its total capital raised to $40 million.
Walker said he is tasked with executing an even larger Series C raise by the end of 2022, and laying the foundation for a possible IPO in the years to come. “That’s definitely on our roadmap,” he said of a public offering.
Walker said that UNest also plans to partner with one of its investors, asset management giant Franklin Templeton, to introduce a product focused on ESG (environmental, social and governance) stocks.
UNest isn’t the only family savings startup on the fintech scene; its competitors include Chicago-based EarlyBird and San Francisco-based Backer. After it bought out two similar apps—San Francisco-based Littlefund and New York-based Kidfund—in recent years, Walker didn’t rule out more acquisitions for UNest.
“Right now, our focus really is on hyper-growth mode,” he said. “If the right opportunity comes along that makes sense for both parties, I think it’s our fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to look at opportunities that present themselves.”
TikTok Stars Like the D’Amelio Sisters and Addison Rae Are Earning More Than Many S&P 500 CEOs
Eat your hearts out, CEOs: TikTok stars like the D’Amelio sisters and Addison Rae are banking more money than many of the S&P 500’s chief executives.
A recent Forbes ranking placed sisters Charli and Dixie D’Amelio as the top-earning content creators on TikTok, after they raked in $17.5 million and $10 million, respectively, in 2021 through sponsored content, brand endorsement deals and other business endeavors. As the Wall Street Journal noted this week, that puts the sisters’ earnings on par with most S&P 500 CEOs, whose median earnings were $13.4 million in 2020.
As the highest-paid TikToker, Charli D’Amelio made more last year than Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods ($15.6 million) and Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson ($14.7 million) earned in 2020, according to the Journal, while her sister Dixie banked more than Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly ($9.2 million). Fellow influencer Addison Rae—who like the D’Amelio sisters became a viral sensation for her dancing videos—made $8.5 million last year, more than Costco CEO Craig Jelinek ($8.3 million).
Culver City-based TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, now has over 1 billion monthly active users. The social media giant curates recommendations using a cryptic algorithm that pushes certain content to the top of a user’s “For You” page. The D’Amelio sisters’ and Rae’s highly aestheticized content—which ranges from silly dances, to provocative lip-syncing, to vlog-style “unpack with me” videos—have drawn tens of millions of followers, if not more, to their TikTok accounts. (Charli D’Amelio is by far the most followed TikToker with more than 133 million subscribers.)
Outside of TikTok, the app’s top earners have begun monetizing their cult followings in the form of lucrative sponsorships. In 2020, coffee chain Dunkin’ partnered with Charli D’Amelio to create a drink called “The Charli”, while Rae has parlayed her massive following into her own makeup line, ITEM Beauty and a starring role in the 2021 Netflix movie “He’s All That.”
As TikTok has grown, so have the earnings reaped by its highest-paid stars. Forbes noted that the highest-paid TikTokers on its list collectively earned $55.5 million last year—up 200% from the 2020 edition of its ranking.
Still, even Charli D’Amelio’s bank account can’t compare to very wealthiest Hollywood celebrities or S&P 500 CEOs. Kardashian clan celebrity Kylie Jenner reportedly made $590 million in 2020 after selling a controlling stake in her cosmetics brand, while Apple CEO Tim Cook earned nearly $99 million last year.
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Trendy Wellness Brand Moon Juice Is Raising $7 Million As It Targets Middle America
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Harrison is dot.LA's senior finance reporter. They previously worked for Gizmodo, Fast Company, VentureBeat and Flipboard. Find them on Twitter: @harrisonweber. Send tips on L.A. deals to harrison@dot.la. Pronouns: they/them.
Moon Juice—the Los Angeles wellness brand known for its juices, skin care products and adaptogenic Sex Dust—is in the process of raising $7 million in new funding.
The Culver City-based company recently secured $5.1 million in fresh capital and intends to raise another $1.9 million, according to an SEC filing. In October, Moon Juice landed a $10 million Series C round from New York venture firms DGNL Ventures and Able Partners, according to PitchBook data. That previous round is being used to fund the brand’s expansion and marketing efforts targeting the “interior of the U.S.,” the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.
Founded by CEO Amanda Chantal Bacon in 2011, Moon Juice has evolved from a Venice juice spot into a trendy supplements purveyor stocked on shelves in Sephora beauty stores. In an Insider profile of Bacon last week, former staffers criticized the founder—who has become a prominent lifestyle guru—for her management style.
Moon Juice, DGNL and Able Partners did not immediately respond to a requests for comment.
Though loosely defined, adaptogenic supplements are herbs, botanicals and mushrooms that are believed to relieve stress, boost focus and improve your mood. While ingredients such as ashwagandha and ginseng have roots in traditional medicine, some experts say the broader adaptogenic industry lacks evidence to support its claims.
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Do you know something we should know about L.A. tech or venture capital? Reach out securely via Signal: +1 917 434 4978.
Harrison is dot.LA's senior finance reporter. They previously worked for Gizmodo, Fast Company, VentureBeat and Flipboard. Find them on Twitter: @harrisonweber. Send tips on L.A. deals to harrison@dot.la. Pronouns: they/them.