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XOur Most-Read LA Startup and Tech Stories of 2020

This year was filled with pivots, pauses and restarts for L.A.'s tech and startup world. In our first year of chronicling it (we officially launched January27th), our most-read stories reflect the strangeness of 2020, and go some way in predicting some big questions for 2021. From gaming to biotech, movies to music, and transportation to education, the shifts have been dramatic. Where will we be when the dust settles from this year? As we head into our second year, we'll keep a close eye on the trends that have transformed some of L.A.'s core industries.
Take our survey below and help us as we get started with year two!
#1: Bird's Botched Layoffs
The early days of the pandemic, as companies scrambled to shore up cash and preserve their business, provided a number of examples of how to handle a crisis. L.A.-based scooter unicorn Bird, sadly, provided the world a lesson in how not to do it, calling over 400 employees into a glitchy virtual chat and summarily dismissing them all in a two-minute, no-question call that left employees feeling baffled, humiliated and betrayed. In a post that went viral, dot.LA spoke with employees and obtained a recording of the call.
#2: Ageism and Women in the Workplace
"When you're older you get discredited and when you're younger you get discredited." Our virtual discussion on how ageism affects women in the workplace struck a nerve with readers. Inclusology founder Cheryl Ingram, PhD and Cue Career founder Heather Wetzler discussed strategies for women to employ at every stage of their careers, and tools that companies can use to combat workplace discrimination.
#3. The Twentysomething Who Built LA's COVID Testing Response
Interest in our profile on Fred Turner, the 25-year-old college dropout who founded of Curative Inc., gathered over the course of the year, as more people became personally familiar with the testing system he helped deploy at Dodger Stadium and throughout the city (and, eventually, the country). "We are a strange company because our goal is to essentially put ourselves out of business," Turner told dot.LA at the time. Sadly, his startup has only grown since we published the story.
#4. The Rise and Collapse of LA's $164M Cannabis Startup
The killing of a well-connected Russian investor and the missteps of the twenty-something U.S. executives he hired to run his $164 million cannabis empire made for one of the most compelling stories we published this year. dot.LA spoke to dozens of former employees, as well as state and national law enforcement, to bring readers this 5-part series on the collapse of the Genius Fund.
#5. The Tech Startups Poised to Reshape How Music is Made
#6. Where Celebrities Meet the Gig Economy
In 2020, CEO Steven Galanis moved from Chicago to L.A. with a number of his Cameo cohorts. The app has increasingly found itself at the intersection of two mega-trends: the growth of gig work and the rise of the influencer economy. Social media stars have been leveraging their massive audiences and forcing the advertising industry — so often fixated on TV, film and sports celebrities — to take notice. Our profile of Galanis and his company revealed a world of celebrities eager to take hold of their audiences — and monetize them.
#7. The Investors Who Remained Unfazed
When the pandemic brought the economy to a standstill in March, many L.A. entrepreneurs found themselves staring down a frightening future. But investors were still spending. Inspired by a LinkedIn post from Luma Launch partner Laurent Grill, dot.LA published a list of local investors still looking to fund great ideas. The resulting post took off and so did the dealmaking.
#8. FAANG Reimagines LA Real Estate
Among the trends that have reshaped L.A. during the pandemic has been the rapid rise of streaming services and the equally stunning shift in audience habits for movies and TV. As the world emerges from the pandemic in 2021, it will find Netflix, Google and other FAANG companies have gobbled up real estate — especially on the Westside, where Netflix alone is poised to occupy 10% of commercial real estate by 2023.
#9. Sketchy's Product Plans and Edutainment's Rapid Rise
In 2020, Sketchy Medical grew from a cult startup that helped medical students efficiently memorize clusters of information into an edtech darling, with big raises, a new CEO lured from Disney and plans to leverage its foothold in education technology into a full-blown media empire that aims to make remote learning more effective and far more entertaining. Its story parallels the incredible disruption taking place in schools and homes globally, as parents, teachers and school districts confront the pandemic and rethink how education can happen.
#10. Karma's IPO Push and Electric Cars' Banner Year
dot.LA got the scoop on luxury electric car company Karma's moves to go public via SPAC, but it was far from the only SoCal electric vehicle startup to do so. In the wake of Tesla's turbocharged stock market rise, Canoo, Fisker, Xos, Envoy and many others sought their own IPOs or raised massive rounds. It's a trend we'll be watching closely as California ramps up its plans to go fossil fuel free by 2035.
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TikTok Content Moderators Allege Emotional Distress
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Content moderators reviewing TikTok videos have experienced psychological distress after exposure to graphic content, Business Insider reported Thursday.
Current and former moderators employed by Telus International, a contractor used by Culver City-based video-sharing app for content moderation, told BI that they were often assigned long, consecutive shifts overseeing graphic content—including beheadings, child sexual abuse and self-harm—and that requests to be reassigned to less demanding roles were often denied.
TikTok’s parent company, Chinese tech firm ByteDance, uses artificial intelligence to filter and separate inappropriate content into various categories, with human moderators assigned to review the content within those categories. As TikTok’s platform has grown—it is currently the most downloaded app in the world—employees said they were pressured to keep pace with the increase in content and were often denied discretionary wellness breaks, according to BI.
Additionally, while ByteDance has an emergency response team tasked with handling videos reported to law enforcement, one employee told BI that neither that team nor TikTok’s wellness team provided support to the moderators who reported such content. A Telus International spokesperson told BI that its own wellness team supported moderators, who have the option to skip difficult content. Telus employees, however, told BI that skipping videos resulted in disciplinary citations.
In a lawsuit filed against ByteDance in December, former content moderator Candie Frazier alleged that her work resulted in post-traumatic stress disorder and symptoms of severe psychological distress. Two other content moderators have since filed a lawsuit with similar claims.
The lawsuits are part of the growing legal pressure facing TikTok. In California, a bill that would allow parents to sue social media companies for addicting their children to apps passed the State Assembly and awaits the State Senate. The company is also facing renewed pressure from federal regulators over data privacy issues.
TikTok has also been scrutinized for its corporate workplace culture—with severalemployees claiming they were pressured to work long hours and accommodate the schedule of ByteDance’s China office.
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Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Relativity Space Surpasses $1 Billion in Contracts, Inks New Deal with Satellite Maker OneWeb
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He 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 at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Rocket maker Relativity Space soared past a milestone today, surpassing $1 billion worth of contracts for launches on its 3D-printed Terran R rocket.
Long Beach-based Relativity agreed to a multi-launch agreement with broadband satellite maker OneWeb on June 30. CEO Tim Ellis posted on Twitter that following the deal, Relativity now had over $1.2 billion in binding launch contracts secured by five different customers — even though the startup still has yet to send a rocket to orbit.
Ellis called the deal a “huge vote of confidence and we can’t wait to deliver.”
Relativity aims to send the OneWeb satellites by 2025. The OneWeb launch could be one of the first commercial launches sent into space by the rocket maker’s reusable Terran R craft.
OneWeb was previously using Russian Soyuz rockets to launch, but sanctions imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine forced it to look to other alternatives. Ellis told TechCrunch Relativity was already looking to court OneWeb as a customer before the war, though, noting the deal “has been in the works for quite some time.”
OneWeb wants its broadband service to be operational by 2023, and to do that it has to launch at least 648 satellites into orbit. Relativity has two rockets under construction – Terran 1 and Terran R.
The smaller Terran 1 rocket has already secured a $3 million contract to launch small satellites for the Department of Defense. The Terran 1 will make its first flight in a mission nicknamed “Good Luck, Have Fun” (GLHF) which is expected to take off this summer and won’t carry any payloads. Assuming the GLHF mission is a success, Relativity will then launch the DoD mission.
The Terran R is Relativity’s 95%-reusable rocket and its answer to competitor SpaceX’s Falcon 9, with which OneWeb is also launching payloads.
In an interview with ArsTechnica earlier this year, Ellis said the craft could take off as soon as 2024, though it’s still being built at Relativity’s 1 million-square-foot factory headquarters in Long Beach.
Last June Relativity raised a $650 million Series E funding round led by its backer Fidelity Management & Research. At that time, Ellis told dot.LA the Terran R rocket was still under development and added, “Ever since Relativity's early days in Y Combinator, we've planned to manufacture a large reusable rocket.”
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He 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 at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Goop’s Noora Raj Brown On Having the Hard Conversations That Make Change
Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
On this week’s episode of the Behind Her Empire podcast, host Yasmin Nouri talks with the executive vice president of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, Noora Raj Brown.
Brown started working at Goop when the company was still in the early, hectic stages, moving from a weekly newsletter Paltrow would send out to her friends to a multinational publishing and lifestyle brand.
At the time, Goop’s advice, guides and features about beauty style and wellness, were tackling difficult issues like divorce, sexuality and health in very personal terms.
“So much of what we do at Goop is to push conversations into the mainstream and to talk about things that, frankly, people don't always want to talk about,” she said. “And these are hard conversations, right?”
Brown, a daughter of immigrants, grew up in Silicon Valley and always considered herself a creative, even though her parents were hopeful she’d take a more conventional professional route. “It was like, very much medicine and tech, and I wasn't interested in either,” she says. Instead, her interest veered toward fashion.
After earning her degree, she moved to New York City to work at a fashion magazine called Details, where she got to learn quickly about how designers function and how garments are produced and promoted — but the job didn’t come easy.
“A lot of it was really like finding your path, feeling really lost for a long time. And I think I also had this idea that I would come to New York and I would start interviewing and get a job,” says Brown. “And that would sort of be it. And I didn't realize how insanely competitive it was.”
Brown moved on to work in talent PR where she organized photo shoots, coordinated the angles of stories and then at a fashion and style publication called InStyle during a time when it was in the process of being sold to a new owner.
“There was a feeling of like, you couldn't win,” Brown says. “You're operating from a place of fear; you're not able to be your best self, right?, and you're not able to produce your best work.”
In 2016, when Brown made her way to Goop, there was no in-house communications or legal team, no HR, piles of debt and, from Brown, terror. “I sort of felt like, I was the first line of defense for anything negative that happened to the business,” she says.
The experience left her feeling unqualified, but she said Paltrow’s confidence in her made Brown more confident in her own abilities.
“I think we all just need to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt a little bit,” she says.
Brown’s personal journey, in many ways, mirrored Goop’s mission to push unconventional conversations into the mainstream. Brown says Goop has faced some backlash for its stories, but she says she feels strongly that important topics shouldn't be taboo, and adds that it takes honesty and courage to make change.
“If you're really going to, as we say, [...] milk the shit out of life, you need to do that,” she says. “As I said, operating from a place of real pride, but also real bravery is super important.”
Engagement and Production Intern Jojo Macaluso contributed to this post.
Hear more of the Behind Her Empire podcast. Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radioor wherever you get your podcasts.
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Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.