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Ben Bergman is the newsroom's senior finance reporter. Previously he was a senior business reporter and host at KPCC, a senior producer at Gimlet Media, a producer at NPR's Morning Edition, and produced two investigative documentaries for KCET. He has been a frequent on-air contributor to business coverage on NPR and Marketplace and has written for The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review. Ben was a 2017-2018 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism at Columbia Business School. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, playing poker, and cheering on The Seattle Seahawks.
In 2018, Brian Garrett, burned out from a decade running Crosscut Ventures, embarked on a month-long summer road trip. He packed up his old minivan with nothing but a mattress, some golf clubs and a fly fishing pole. He had just turned 45 years old and felt he was halfway through life. This was his vision quest.
It was the first time Garrett had stopped to contemplate his own mortality and the seed fund's future, and he decided he needed to make drastic changes to improve himself and his company.
"The realization I had was what got me here may not serve me well in the next half of my life and what got Crosscut here may not serve us well as a firm, so let's re engineer everything," Garrett told dot.LA.
Today, as Garrett and his partners deploy $125 million in its fourth fund, the firm is taking on wellness. Crosscut will commit 1% or more of all capital invested in their portfolio companies toward programs for team and individual coaching and development.
Garrett realizes this gentler approach might seem too touchy feely for some founders, but he's ok with that.
"There will be a self selection," Garrett said. "The people who are interested in health and wellness will self select Crosscut."
Sitting in a sunny conference room in Crosscut's Main Street Santa Monica office, Garrett was candid about his new approach to life and business. He also opens up about his own wakeup call, and how his job has gotten much harder than when he first started Crosscut 12 years ago.
Why do you feel that this wellness initiative is something you wanted to do?
It was really watching the chest-thumping "I'm killing it" culture of tech, the way certain people were behaving in the venture industry, the way certain entrepreneurs were thinking that a round of financing was the success milestone, as opposed to just a chance to keep proving that their ideas were worthy. But what I was always blind to was my own frameworks and methodology. There's always something else to do. it was always late nights and there was always one more LP to communicate with and always one more deal to review. I wasn't able to see how that was impacting the way I was received by others in the ecosystem. So I came off a little too distracted or aloof. I came off a little too transactional walking into an event or meeting with entrepreneurs, and that's not good. That's not a positive for Crosscut's brand.
How did you realize that?
We do surveys across the ecosystem and we get feedback from entrepreneurs. When you hear that, and you know how you want to be experienced in the world, it's a wake-up call. The way I want to experience the world is to be open hearted, and to have deep connections with people. That's how I live my personal life or try to live my personal life, but I wasn't doing that in my work because I was so overwhelmed and there was so much to do. And I think it led to some flat experiences with me, which is my own fault.
It's interesting because it seems like this is very much about your own personal well being, but also the firm's performance. And you see this as very intertwined?
For sure. The realization I had is when we were here from 2008 to 2012 the market was so nascent that we could see everything that L.A. was doing. Because we were the only seed fund in the market (and) we had leverage. If you look at where the market has moved, there are 25 to 30 funds all chasing deals in L.A. now and there is a ton of Silicon Valley money down here hunting. To think that we could just sit in our office and still see everything is a foolish notion. So then how do we re-engineer our firm to be more competitive and to have a stronger brand and reputation to compete for the entrepreneurs that we think are worthy of backing?
It sounds like your job is a lot harder now than it was when you started?
For sure. It was much easier to generate multiples on a $5 million fund than it is to generate multiples on $100 million-plus fund. We have a pretty clear point of view around small checks, small ownership investing and what doesn't work. If you're managing institutional money it has to be high conviction, high ownership. And then you have to get lucky. You have to end up being in a Honey and own a material amount of that business to generate the types of returns that come from those exits. What I'm confident about is that L.A. is going to start producing more and more of those types of deals.
What percentage of your founders have wanted to go through the program?
We just rolled it out and we haven't closed a lot of deals in the last four months. We were sort of cautious at the end of the year, so we're working it into a deal that we're doing diligence on right now and using it as a differentiator of our capital. If you really look at the game of venture, we are salesmen of capital in a very competitive ecosystem with a lot of really good funds that are raising more capital and chasing opportunities. We have to go out there and use our brand and reputation and constantly defend that brand and reputation as ideally being better faster, etc. So we have to continue to look at different programmatic services and things that we can offer up to differentiate our capital from everybody else.
So this is part of your pitch to differentiate you?
Ideally, yeah. I think there are a set of entrepreneurs that gravitate towards big ego, capital sources and big-branded names that think give them gravitas. Our approach has always been to treat the entrepreneur fairly and support them in their journey and try to win with a nice set of partners that do the right thing and act the right way and really support you both personally and professionally.
But this is an industry where you hear about Elon Musk sleeping in his office every night and VCs wanting to squeeze out every last drop…
I don't believe that's healthy in the long term. I think there's a time and a place and I've certainly put in my nights. But I think what I've experienced is that a little bit of balance goes a long way towards actually working smarter and making better decisions. I used to work until two or three in the morning every night. There's always something to do when you're running a venture firm. But eventually you get to a place where you burn out and realize you have to work smarter, not harder. I want to bring that dialogue to the table right out of the gate. I want to arm the entrepreneurs that we back with the mindset and the tools that better enable them to realize there's a finite period of time that you're able to sustain that kind of effort, but it's not something that you can keep doing for the long term and it's never to the advantage of the business long term.
Do look back now and see instances where you rode your founders too hard?
We as a firm have never needed to ride our founders hard because they're self motivated. I just think what's happened in our industry is that there's almost a fear of speaking candidly and telling the truth to your investor set for fear of disappointment and fear of failure, and not wanting to let them see that you're struggling. I want to change that dynamic in our ecosystem here in L.A. because I don't think that's a healthy dynamic. You have to have real transparency at the inception of the relationship. We want to be your first text when good or bad happens to the business. We're patient and we'll help you navigate through the problems, we're not going to lose our shit, and we're here to help you build business. No one setback is going to make us waver in our commitment to helping you succeed.
It seems like this is easier for you to do as someone who's now on their fourth fund and been doing this a long time. It would be harder for someone who wasn't established because there's probably more pressure to show that you can work 24 hours and not admit your mistakes.
Yeah, I think that's the way our entrepreneurial culture has been trained but it doesn't mean it's right. I'm willing to stick my neck out there now and say it doesn't matter how experienced you are, it is not the right path to success – the burnout mindset. I wish I had known what I know now, and I'm happy to bring that framework into younger entrepreneurs that are enthusiastic and high energy and have been trained to believe that it's got to be 24/7. And by the way, there will be a set of entrepreneurs that believe that and they won't be interested in Crosscut. That's okay. I think as venture capitalists in this industry we have to act and behave in the way that we want to see our entrepreneurs to behave.
You said earlier you were making fewer deals at the end of last year. Is that because you're not able to find as many attractive deals at valuations that you find reasonable?
We have an ebb and flow to our business over any 12-18 month period. Whether you're distracted with things happening in your portfolio or whether you're fundraising, those are all things that impact a partnerships ability to move quickly and find things they have conviction around. I wouldn't read too much into anything that happened at the tail end of last year. We're writing checks now. We finished our LP meeting in January. The entire team is oriented towards finding the last four or five deals in this fund and making them meaningful ones. So I think we just happen to be slightly cautious about what's coming in 2020. For us, it's high conviction, high ownership, strong syndicates, and maybe over-capitalize a little bit to protect ourselves if there's a downturn and the next round capital is hard to find. That's the approach that we take when we're headed into uncertainty.
Ben Bergman is the newsroom's senior finance reporter. Previously he was a senior business reporter and host at KPCC, a senior producer at Gimlet Media, a producer at NPR's Morning Edition, and produced two investigative documentaries for KCET. He has been a frequent on-air contributor to business coverage on NPR and Marketplace and has written for The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review. Ben was a 2017-2018 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism at Columbia Business School. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, playing poker, and cheering on The Seattle Seahawks.
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.
According to a Forbes report last April, both the viewership and dollars behind women’s sports at a collegiate and professional level are growing.
In 2022, the first 32 games of the NCAA tournament had record attendance levels, breaking records set back in 2004, and largely driven by the new and rapidly growing women’s NCAA tournament. WNBA openers this year saw a 21% spike in attendance, with some teams including the LA Sparks reporting triple-digit ticket sales growth, about 121% over 2022’s total. In 2023, the average size of an LA Sparks crowd swelled to 10,396 people, up from 4,701 people.
Women make up half the population, but “also 50% of the folks that are walking into the stadium at Dodger Stadium, or your NFL fans are just about 50% women,” noted Erin Storck, a panelist and senior analyst at Los Angeles-based Elysian Park Ventures.
Storck added that in heterosexual households, women generally manage most of the family’s money, giving them huge purchasing power, a potential advantage for female-run leagues. “There's an untapped revenue opportunity,” she noted.
In the soccer world, Los Angeles-based women’s soccer team Angel City FC has put in the work to become a household name, not just in LA County but across the nation. At an LA Tech Week panel hosted by Athlete Strategies about investing in sports, Angel City head of strategy and chief of staff Kari Fleischauer said that years before launching the women’s National Women’s Soccer League team, Angel City FC was pounding the pavement letting people know about the excitement ladies soccer can bring. She noted community is key, and that fostering a sense of engagement and safety at the team’s home venue, BMO stadium (formerly Banc of California Stadium), is one reason fans keep coming back.
Adding free metro rides to BMO stadium and private rooms for nursing fans to breastfeed or fans on the spectrum to avoid sensory overload, were just some of the ways ACFC tried to include its community in the concept of its stadium, Fleischauer said. She noted, though, that roughly 46% of Angel City fans are “straight white dudes hanging out with their bros.”
“Particularly [on] the woman's side, I'd like to think we do a better job of making sure that there's spaces for everyone,” Fleischauer told the audience. “One thing we realize is accessibility is a huge thing.”
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.
L.A. Tech Week has brought venture capitalists, founders and entrepreneurs from around the world to the California coast. With so many tech nerds in one place, it's easy to laugh, joke and reminisce about the future of tech in SoCal.
Here's what people are saying about the fifth day of L.A. Tech Week on social:
#LATechWeek has been on 🔥🔥🔥. Yes the events are super cool at amazing venues. But, I’m blown away by the people. I’ve met so many founders building generative AI companies from the ground up. I’m so bullish on LA right now🥳. LA is for builders #longLA
Thanks @rpnickson 📸 pic.twitter.com/B6rT2jJYIs
— Dr. Kelly O'Brien (@Kvo2013) June 8, 2023
Successful LatinxVC Avanza Summit 2023 in LA! It’s been an amazing few days near the beach w great company. Thank you to our panelists & participants.
Huge thanks to our incredible sponsors SVB, Chavez Family Foundation, Annenberg Foundation, PledgeLA, Fenwick & West, Countsy! pic.twitter.com/oVuGIgFurk
— LatinxVC (@LatinxVCs) June 9, 2023
30+ gaming startups presented at the A16z Speedrun Demo Day in LA yesterday. Great thanks to the @a16zGames team for an awesome day of events! #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/DKq8IFo5QZ
— Grace Zhou (@graceminzhou) June 9, 2023
📣🤩 What’s the buzz? It’s #LATechWeek from @TechstarsLA & @TechstarsHealth joint demo day with the #Techstar HC team where our @fyelabs founder/CEO Suvojit Ghosh mentored both cohorts! #TechStars demo day highlighted 12 amazing emerging #startups in #healthtech #innovation. 🩺 pic.twitter.com/0RXClCtfDQ
— FYELABS (@fyelabs) June 9, 2023
Another successful Coffee On Slauson in the books for #LATechWeek.
Special thanks to the good people at Pledge LA, SVB and @GundersonLaw for the ongoing support and the @findyourhilltop staff for providing the space, eats & vibes. ♻️ pic.twitter.com/51cMDoEn30
— Slauson & Co. (@SlausonAndCo) June 9, 2023
The perfect combo to start #LATechWeek Day 5: pastries, coffee, and great convos with industry founders ✨
Fireside chats with @enriquealle, @wp, and @robynpark pic.twitter.com/booYPdekVV
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 9, 2023
Of course @designerfund has the most amazing pastries at their event. #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/PjyWlGTQI4
— Jesse Pickard (@jessepickard) June 9, 2023
My favorite event from @Techweek_ has to be "Modern Storytelling & Business Building." Hosted by @STHoward #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/SV1eexMJ4k
— JonnyZeller (@JonnyZeller) June 9, 2023
And the finale of the night was courtesy of the one and only @zedd for an unforgettable end to the "City of Games" party! Hosted by @a16zGames and @100Thieves #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/hliI9yLKse
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 9, 2023
Excited to be at the @a16zGames Speedrun Demo Day! Loved the energy and excitement from the companies that pitched there. It was also great to see @Tocelot and @ndrewlee at this amazing #LATechWeek event pic.twitter.com/NfLQO5lR27
— Andy Lee | andypwlee.bit (@andypwlee) June 9, 2023
Thank you to everyone who joined the Sony Venture Fund US team at #LATechWeek for our screening of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Last summer, we started building a presence in LA. Today, it's exciting to host such an event with the @Sony family and the LA VC community. pic.twitter.com/wdDm6qtHdL
— Sony Innovation Fund (@Sony_Innov_Fund) June 9, 2023
Time to eat, connect and build while @remi_rodney provided the vibes. 🙏🏽#LATechWeek @BuildOnBase @developer_dao @WeAreRazorfish pic.twitter.com/QIPh1gjvoA
— Hola Metaverso-Blockchain & New Web Tech Events 🎪 (@holametaverso) June 9, 2023
@Lux_Capital at #LATechWeek advancing the impossible to inevitable, from..
..defense primes partnering with cutting edge defense tech startups, to..
..hardware x LLMs improving mental health.
From the rich and diverse LA ecosystem stems generational companies: pic.twitter.com/v5S5r8JtbU
— Shahin Farshchi (@Farshchi) June 9, 2023
LA Tech Week has been a blast! Met some amazing creators, founders and investors from all over the world! #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/AAh9JFELhe
— Chris Germano (@netslayer) June 9, 2023
Had such a blast at LA Tech Week and hosting events for @brexHQ
Top highlights were collabing with @pulley on an Emerging Managers / Founder mixer at the @poplco House, rooftop event in Venice, creator panel with @thechangj & proper Korean food with in KTown.
Exhausted is an… pic.twitter.com/mGQnSYGPdg
— Τyler Robinson (@TyyRob3) June 9, 2023
Did you have fun at @sophiaamoruso’s launch party for @trustfundvc? #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/gbrbXRQ9Xx
— Kay (@KaySnels) June 9, 2023
y00tilty in every city with @KaylaLor3n & @cryptochrisg813.
Welcome to the LA @y00tsNFT fam! #LATechWeek #3XP week. pic.twitter.com/6wWKlsTacx
— VanG0xH (@CryptoVanGoghs) June 9, 2023
Really enjoyed #LATechWeek. Here are some observations I made 👇
— s.personal.ai (Suman Kanuganti) (@SumanPersonalAI) June 9, 2023
Thank you @TheKofiAmpadu for including me in #demoday with the latest @a16ztxo cohort! It was a real full circle moment to witness the brilliance of both @ChrisLyons & @ZMuse_ & #PledgeLA very own. She’s why we’re #LongLA 🚀💕 #LAtechweek pic.twitter.com/itkKXMxQRb
— Qiana Qiana! (@Q_i_a_n_a) June 9, 2023
@upfrontvc Gaming Founders Podcast #iLOVELA #LATechWeek @Techweek_ @KatiaAmeri @mucker @fikavc @bonfire_vc @TenOne10 @WatertowerGroup @ganasvc @IAmRobRyan @john_at_stonks @eva_ho @dereknorton pic.twitter.com/LCbaGXCoW7
— Sean Goldfaden (@seangoldfaden) June 9, 2023
Hosts Kevin Zhang, Partner at @upfrontvc, and Eden Chen, CEO of @pragmaplatform, interviewed two special guests from @raidbaseinc Stephen Lim, Co-Founder & Product Director, and Trevor Romleski, Co-Founder & Game Director. 🎙 #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/hxHEAoELZ6
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 9, 2023
Kicking off @a16zGames @100Thieves City of Games party at #LATechWeek 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/zQcZedG15f
— Jon Lai (@Tocelot) June 9, 2023
Yesterday at @socinnovation I got to have this AWESOME conversation with @iamwill — musician, producer, technology entrepreneur, and Founder & CEO of https://t.co/D60y1e2JOu #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/KBxK6rXyTG
— Anna Barber (@annawbarber) June 9, 2023
I absolutely love this game. Proud moment for the team @investwithatlas. #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/fPZvKXU7TC
— Tobias Francis (@TobiasFrancis) June 9, 2023
Had a blast at LA Tech Week this year with @brexHQ
From hosting & moderating my first creator panel featuring @BlakeMichael14, to a fun rooftop night in Venice, and to attending some amazing events such as Watertower’s emerging manager panel and a VC/founder tennis tournament pic.twitter.com/udjfmLHE0L
— Jonathan Chang (@thechangj) June 8, 2023
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.
At Lowercarbon Capital’s LA Tech Week event Thursday, the synergy between the region’s aerospace industry and greentech startups was clear.
The event sponsored by Lowercarbon, Climate Draft (and the defunct Silicon Valley Bank’s Climate Technology & Sustainability team) brought together a handful of local startups in Hawthorne not far from LAX, and many of the companies shared DNA with arguably the region’s most famous tech resident: SpaceX.
Here’s a look at the greentech startups that pitched during the Tech Week event, and how they think what they’re building could help solve the climate crisis.
Arbor: Based in El Segundo, this year-old startup is working to convert organic waste into energy and fresh water. At the same time, it also uses biomass carbon removal and storage to remove carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in an attempt to avoid further damaging the earth’s ozone layer. At the Tech Week event Thursday, Arbor CEO Brad Hartwig told a stunned crowd that Arbor aims to remove about five billion tons of organic waste from landfills and turn that into about 6 PWh, or a quarter of the global electricity need, each year. Hartwig is an alumni of SpaceX; he was a manufacturing engineer on the Crew Dragon engines from 2016-2018 and later a flight test engineer at Kitty Hawk.
Antora: Sunnyvale-based Antora Energy was founded in 2017, making it one of the oldest companies on the pitching block during the event. Backed by investors including the National Science Foundation and Los Angeles-based Overture VC, Antora has raised roughly $57 million to date, most recently a $50 million round last February. Chief operating officer Justin Briggs said Antora’s goal is to modernize and popularize thermal energy storage using ultra-hot carbon. Massive heated carbon blocks can give off thermal energy, which Antora’s proprietary batteries then absorb and store as energy. It’s an ambitious goal, but one the world needs at scale to green its energy footprint. According to Briggs, “the biggest challenge is how can we turn back variable intermittent renewable electricity into something that's reliable and on demand, so we can use it to provide energy to everything we need.”
Arc: Hosting the panel was Arc, an electric boating company that’s gained surprising momentum, moving from design to delivering its first e-boats in just two years of existence. Founded in 2021, the company’s already 70 employees strong and has already sold some of its first e-boats to customers willing to pay the luxury price tag, CTO Ryan Cook said Thursday. Cook said that to meet the power needs of a battery-powered speedboat, the Arc team designed the vehicle around the battery pack with the goal of it being competitive with gas boats when compared to range and cost of gas. But on the pricing side, it’s not cheap. Arc’s flagship vessel, the Arc One is expected to cost roughly $300,000. During the panel, Cook compared the boat to being “like an early Tesla Roadster.” To date Arc Boats has raised just over $35 million, according to PitchBook, from investors including Kevin Durant, Will Smith and Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Clarity Technology: Carbon removal startup Clarity is based in LA and was founded by Yale graduate and CEO Glen Meyerowitz last year. Clarity is working to make “gigaton solutions for gigaton problems.” Their aim? To remove up to 2,000 billion pounds of carbon from the atmosphere through direct air capture, a process which uses massive fans to move chemicals that capture CO2. But the challenge, Meyerowitz noted in his speech, is doing this at scale in a way that makes an actual dent in the planet’s emissions while also efficiently using the electricity needed to do so. Meyerowitz spent nearly five years working as an engineer for SpaceX in Texas, and added he’s looking to transfer those learnings into Clarity.
Parallel Systems: Based in Downtown LA’s Arts District, this startup is building zero-emission rail vehicles that are capable of long-haul journeys otherwise done by a trucking company. The estimated $700 billion trucking industry, Parallel Systems CEO Matt Soule said, is ripe for an overhaul and could benefit from moving some of its goods off-road to electric railcars. According to Soule, Parallel’s electric battery-powered rail vehicles use 25% of the energy a semi truck uses, and at a competitive cost. Funded in part by a February 2022 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, Parallel Systems has raised about $57 million to date. Its most recent venture funding round was a $49 million Series A led by Santa Monica-based VC Anthos Capital. Local VCs including Riot Ventures and Santa Monica-based Embark Ventures are also backers of Parallel.
Terra Talent: Unlike the rest of the startups pitching at the Tech Week event, Terra Talent was focused on building teams rather than technology. Founder Dolly Singh worked at SpaceX, Oculus and Citadel as a headhunter, and now runs Terra, a talent and advisory firm that helps companies recruit top talent in the greentech space. But, she said, she’s concerned that all the work these startups are doing won’t matter unless we very quickly turn around the current trendlines. “Earth will shake us off like and she will do just fine in 10,000 years,” she said. “It’s our way of living, everything we love is actually here on earth… there’s nothing I love on Mars,” adding that she’s hopeful the startups that pitched during the event will be instrumental in making sure the planet stays habitable for a little while longer.
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.