Get in the KNOW
on LA Startups & Tech
X
Courtesy of Afterparty.
Afterparty Raises $4 Million to Launch NFT Ticketing Platform
Samson Amore
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
Web3 startup Afterparty has raised $4 million to launch an NFT-based ticketing platform for live events, with plans to use its Utopian NFTs as event tickets after a trial run at a Las Vegas music festival last month.
Afterparty landed the new capital—which it described as an extension of its $3 millions seed round from last fall—from more than two dozen investors, including angel investors like Paris Hilton and Jason Calacanis and VC firms like early-stage crypto fund Blockchange. Existing investors Acrew Capital and TenOneTen Ventures also participated. (Disclosure: dot.LA co-founder and chairman Spencer Rascoff is an investor in Afterparty and contributed to the round.)
Afterparty has now raised $7 million in total funding since launching in August 2021, co-founder and CEO David Fields told dot.LA. Fields, a former executive at Michael Eisner’s investment firm The Tornante Company, said Afterparty is “building technology to enable creators and music artists to build direct connections with their fans and realize the full potential of Web3.”
The startup trialed its NFT ticketing technology in Las Vegas last month, at what it called the “first NFT-gated festival ever”—meaning nobody could get in unless they owned one of Afterparty’s Utopian NFTs or were a guest of an NFT holder. Fields said over 6,000 people attended the event.
The Utopian NFT collection features 1,500 pieces of art depicting headshots of futuristic, cyberpunk-esque robots. On NFT exchange OpenSea, the NFTs are listed at prices ranging from 5.35 ETH (roughly $16,400) to 50 ETH (upwards of $153,000).
Owning one of these NFTs—some of which the company minted earlier this year at a party at its Afterparty House in the Hollywood Hills—comes with perks, including access to future Afterparty festivals. Afterparty is now planning a Los Angeles festival for this coming October—with access coming through its upcoming Guardian NFT collection, which will provide holders with “lifetime festival membership,” it said.
Afterparty’s venture into event ticketing is an attempt to disrupt services like Ticketmaster, which often charge hefty transaction fees. Local startups like Granted, which raised a $3 million seed round this February, are also looking to use cryptocurrency and NFTs to wrest power away from ticketing brokers.
Fields noted that blockchain technology also makes it impossible to scalp an NFT ticket. He added that Afterparty is involved in discussions with other festivals interested in integrating its NFT ticketing system, but wouldn’t disclose specifics.
“The ability to buy a ticket every subsequent year… if you had that in the first year of Coachella or the first year of Burning Man, that would be something that'd be really valuable,” Fields said.
Afterparty also plans to allow music artists to mint their own NFTs through the company and use those as tickets for their own events and festivals.
“Collectively, [artists] get 0% of secondary sales today,” Fields said. “$10 billion-plus of global secondary sales in concerts are going to other parties, and I believe NFTs are going to be a really big part of the story about how artists and venues can recapture a lot more of the value in that market.”
From Your Site Articles
- Afterparty - dot.LA ›
- Afterparty's New Tool Aims to Make It Easier to Create NFTs - dot.LA ›
- International NFT Day Roundup - dot.LA ›
- How House of Pitch is Helping Connect VC's and Journalists - dot.LA ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Samson Amore
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la
DogVacay Founder Aaron Hirschhorn Dies in Miami Boating Accident
03:48 PM | March 31, 2021
Aaron Hirschhorn, a well-known investor and entrepreneur in the Los Angeles tech scene who founded the pet sitting startup DogVacay died Sunday in a boating accident near Miami Beach, Fla. He was 42.
Hirschhorn started DogVacay with his wife Karine Nissim in 2012. The Santa Monica, Calif.-based company raised nearly $50 million and was a leading competitor in the pet services industry before being acquired by Rover in 2017.
Hirschhorn moved from Los Angeles to Miami Beach about three years ago, according to the Miami Herald.
Hirschhorn held a seat on Rover's board for a year. A month ago on LinkedIn, he called news of Rover's plans to go public via a SPAC deal "an amazing day."
"All of us at Rover were saddened to learn of Aaron's sudden passing. Our thoughts are with his family, friends, and colleagues during this painful time," Rover said in a statement provided to GeekWire on Wednesday. "His love of animals and commitment to pet parents was exemplified in his founding and leadership of DogVacay and Gallant, but his vision for what was possible in the pet industry went well beyond what he already had accomplished."
In 2018 Hirschhorn founded another pet-focused startup called Gallant, which stores dog stem cells so that they're accessible for future treatments.
The Miami Herald reported that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the U.S. Coast Guard reported a crash on Sunday between a 38-foot Chris-Craft motorboat and a personal watercraft.
Hirschhorn was reportedly riding his electric foil surfboard and died at the scene. In an Instagram post on Monday, his wife wrote: "My beloved husband of ten years died yesterday in an accident. We are broken and will never be the same."
Hirschhorn's Instagram shows numerous family images and scenes from his active lifestyle. "I play sports and get hurt a lot," his profile description reads.
The photo feed also illustrates his love for dogs.
After the Rover acquisition, Hirschhorn called the growing of DogVacay "an incredible journey."
"Our goal has always been to make quality pet care accessible to everyone, and with Rover and DogVacay's experience and expertise, we will continue to create the best solution for our host community, our pet parents and most importantly, our pets that we love as family," he said at the time.
According to the Gallant website, Hirschhorn founded that company "after experiencing the power of regenerative medicine for himself" when he underwent a single stem cell treatment "to heal a debilitating back injury."
Hirschhorn pitched Gallant in a 2019 episode of the ABC TV series "Shark Tank" and snagged an investment from Lori Greiner and Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of 23andMe.
The Miami Herald reported that Hirschhorn is survived by his wife and their three young children: a daughter in kindergarten, a son in first grade and a son in second grade.
From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web
Read moreShow less
Kurt Schlosser, GeekWire
Kurt Schlosser covers the Geek Life beat for GeekWire. A longtime journalist, photographer and designer, he has worked previously for NBC News, msnbc.com and the Seattle P-I.
Amazon Now Employs More People in California than Any Other State
12:33 PM | February 18, 2021
live.staticflickr.com
Amazon surpassed 153,000 full- and part-time employees in California in the fourth quarter of 2020, rapidly outpacing the more than 80,000 Amazon employees in the company's home state of Washington, the latest numbers from the company show.
Driving the trend: While Amazon has tech, engineering and product development operations in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles, the surge coincides with the build-out of its distribution network, Prime Now Hubs, Amazon Pantry and Fresh facilities, and physical retail stores. California is also one of the first states where Amazon is opening last-mile delivery stations in rural areas.
Larger implications: In this new phase of growth, the company's employment promises to more closely mirror population patterns, beyond tech and engineering hubs. With 40 million residents, California is the nation's most populous state. The trends also show the magnitude of Amazon's growth beyond the Seattle region.
- The updated total in California represents an increase of nearly 70% from the 91,000 employees reported by Amazon in the state earlier in 2020. The surge makes California the company's largest state for employment by far.
- Washington state, home to the company's Seattle headquarters, had been its largest state for employment prior to 2020. Amazon's latest total of more than 80,000 employees in Washington state is up 8% from 74,000 earlier in 2020.
- In Virginia, where Amazon has established its second headquarters, or HQ2, the company employed more than 27,000 people as of the fourth quarter, up 46% from more than 18,500 employees earlier in the year.
Data source: The numbers come from an Amazon page that documents the company's economic impact across the country. The company updated the numbers along with its fourth-quarter earnings release. The numbers reflect direct Amazon employment, not contractors or workers employed through third-party firms or agencies. GeekWire has been tracking data from the page for five years, and we filled in the gaps using snapshots captured by the Internet Archive.
Reality check: Amazon is growing so rapidly that its official numbers are often quickly out of date. (The company puts a "+" sign by each employment number in recognition of this fact.) By Amazon's official count, for example, it has 25 fulfillment and sortation centers and 19 delivery stations in California, which would be the most in the nation. However, data maintained by logistics consultancy MWPVL International shows more than 30 Amazon fulfillment and sortation centers in California, and as many as 60 delivery stations in the state.
Global context: Amazon employed nearly 1.3 million people worldwide as of the end of 2020, growing by 500,000 people in one year. The numbers do not include seasonal workers. About 950,000 of those were in the United States, according to Amazon's economic impact map. By comparison, Walmart has about 2.2 million employees globally, 1.5 million of them in the U.S.
This story first appeared on GeekWire.
From Your Site Articles
- Amazon Unveils its New Go Grocery Stores - dot.LA ›
- Amazon Warehouse Worker in L.A. Tests Positive, As Company ... ›
- Warehouse Workers Sue Amazon Over COVID-19 Exposure - dot.LA ›
- Amazon Warehouse Worker in L.A. Tests Positive, As Company ... ›
- Amazon unveils its own smart grocery cart, in new effort to automate ... ›
- Amazon Is Hiring More Than 800 Workers in LA - dot.LA ›
- Amazon Adding 150,000 Seasonal Jobs ›
- Amazon Faces Global Strikes on Black Friday - dot.LA ›
- Amazon To Add 2,500 Corporate and Tech Jobs in Expansion of Southern California Tech Hubs - dot.LA ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Read moreShow less
Todd Bishop, GeekWire
Todd Bishop is GeekWire's co-founder and editor, a longtime technology journalist who covers subjects including cloud tech, e-commerce, virtual reality, devices, apps and tech giants such as Amazon.com, Apple, Microsoft and Google. Follow him @toddbishop, email todd@geekwire.com, or call (206) 294-6255.
RELATEDTRENDING
LA TECH JOBS