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XCulver City-Based Envoy Gets $11M to Make Electric Cars an Apartment Perk
Francesca Billington is a freelance reporter. Prior to that, she was a general assignment reporter for dot.LA and has also reported for KCRW, the Santa Monica Daily Press and local publications in New Jersey. She graduated from Princeton in 2019 with a degree in anthropology.

The transportation tech company Envoy, which rents out electric cars to apartment buildings and offices, closed an $11 million Series A round on Thursday.
The boost represents just a fraction of a $81 million financing bundle that includes debt financing from Macquarie Specialized and asset finance to grow its fleet of Teslas and Chevy Bolts across the country.
The Culver City-based startup was founded in 2017 by two ex-real estate investors who saw a space to introduce mobility as new apartment amenity.
"You have a pool, you have a gym, now you have a car you can access," said co-founder and executive chairman Ori Sagie. His previous startups include an instant messaging platform he built in Israel, which sold to the online learning platform Smart Online. "Mobility will become an amenity in every building, like a laundry room."
Sagie said the startup supplies 27 of the top 50 real estate companies with cars and charging stations exclusively reserved for their residents.
Envoy also works with developers looking to downsize parking structures, said co-founder and CEO Aric Ohana, who previously worked in property tech. He said that every shared vehicle takes about 10 cars off the road.
In 2016, he and Sagie were working on a student housing development in Arlington, Texas when they noticed a disconnect between apartment amenities tenants said they wanted and the ones developers were building.
Their model lets apartment tenants or employees at work access their community car through an app that charges them a fee of 15 to 45 cents per minute. Envoy charges real estate companies an initial fee for each vehicle. Typically, it deploys one car for every 100 apartment units.
Unlike on-demand rental companies like Zipcar, Envoy's model doesn't let just anyone pick up a set of keys and borrow a car for the day.
Their fleet of purchased cars currently stands at 200, but the company has hopes of reaching 1,000 in 12 to 14 months, Ohana said.
Envoy has cars deployed in 10 states including L.A., Seattle, D.C. and Las Vegas. And their clients include drivers of delivery services to families that need transportation to buy groceries, "all the way to people who go to the Hamptons for the weekend," said Sagie.
As the pandemic keeps many working from home, Ohana says he's noticed more families that previously owned two cars are downsizing. Some don't need a car at all.
"There's no question that personal car ownership will continue for a long time, but we are helping communities get rid of cars. It helps people not renew a lease on a car or not buy a new car," he said. "Uber and Lyft obviously did a great job previously, showing us we might not need to own a car. But the issue is, it wasn't as affordable."
The startup has seen a surge in usage by clients since April. And 73% of users said they hadn't tried driving electric before Envoy, according to an internal company survey published in April.
With the raise, Sagie said the company will look to expand its fleet in more cities. That also means offering the service to people without affordable access to transportation.
They've already distributed 30 electric cars in 15 disadvantaged communities across Sacramento with a $1 million grant from the California Energy Commission in 2018. With a second grant from the Los Angeles Clean Incubator, they deployed two Nissan Leafs in both San Pedro and Pacoima, where cars are charged by solar panels.
Tenants in those areas pay the lowest rate per minute, Sagie said.
Thursday's round was led by Shell Ventures and Building Ventures and backed by DENSO, Goodyear Ventures, GroundBreak Ventures and the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator Impact Fund.
**This story has been updated to reflect that Envoy's co-founders were former real estate investors, not agents.
Francesca Billington is a freelance reporter. Prior to that, she was a general assignment reporter for dot.LA and has also reported for KCRW, the Santa Monica Daily Press and local publications in New Jersey. She graduated from Princeton in 2019 with a degree in anthropology.
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Plus Capital Partner Amanda Groves on Celebrity Equity Investments
On this episode of the L.A. Venture podcast, Amanda Groves talks about how PLUS Capital advises celebrity investors and why more high-profile individuals are choosing to invest instead of endorse.
As a partner at PLUS, Groves works with over 70 artists and athletes, helping to guide their investment strategies. PLUS advises their talent roster to combine their financial capital with their social capital and focus on five investment areas: the future of work, future of education, health and wellness, the conscious consumer and sustainability.
“The idea is if we can leverage these people who have incredible audiences—and influence over that audience—in the world of venture capital, you'd be able to help make those businesses move forward faster,” Groves said.
PLUS works to create celebrity partnerships by identifying each client’s passions and finding companies that align with them, Groves said. From there, the venture firm can reach out to prospective partners from its many contacts and can help evaluate businesses that approach its clients. Recently, PLUS paired actress Nina Dobrev with the candy company SmartSweets after she had told them about her love for its snacks.
Celebrity entrepreneurship has shifted quite a bit in recent years, Groves said. While celebrities are paid for endorsements, Groves said investing allows them to gain equity from the growth of companies that benefit from their work.
“Like in movies, for example, where they're earning a residual along the way, they thought, ‘You know, if we're going to partner with these brands and create a tremendous amount of enterprise value, we should be able to capture some of the upside that we're generating, too’,” she said.
Partnering in this way also allows her clients to work with a wider range of brands, including small brands that often can’t afford to spend millions on endorsements. Investing allows high-profile individuals to represent brands they care about, Groves said.
“The last piece of the puzzle was a drive towards authenticity,” Groves said. “A lot of these high-profile artists and athletes are not interested, once they've achieved some sort of level of success, in partnering with brands that they don't personally align with.”
Hear the full episode by clicking on the playhead above, and listen to LA Venture on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
dot.LA Editorial Intern Kristin Snyder contributed to this post.
Rivian Stock Roller Coaster Continues as Amazon Van Delivery Faces Delays
David Shultz is a freelance writer who lives in Santa Barbara, California. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside and Nautilus, among other publications.
Rivian’s stock lost 7% yesterday on the back of news that the company could face delays in fulfilling Amazon’s order for a fleet of electric delivery vans due to legal issues with a supplier. The electric vehicle maker is suing Commercial Vehicle Group (CVG) over a pricing dispute related to the seats that the supplier promised, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The legal issue could mean that Amazon may not receive their electric vans on time. The dispute hinges on whether or not Commercial Vehicle Group is allowed to raise the prices of its seats after Rivian made engineering and design changes to the original version. Rivian says the price hike from CVG violates the supply contract. CVG denies the claim.
Regardless, the dispute could hamper Rivian’s ability to deliver electric vans to Amazon on time. The ecommerce/streaming/cloud computing/AI megacorporation controls an 18% stake in Rivian as one of the company’s largest early investors. Amazon has previously said it hopes to buy 100,000 delivery vehicles from Rivian by 2030.
The stock plunge marked another wild turn for the EV manufacturer. Last week, Rivian shares dropped 21% on Monday after Ford, another early investor, announced its intent to sell 8 million shares. The next few days saw even further declines as virtually the entire market saw massive losses, but then Rivian rallied partially on the back of their earnings report on Wednesday, gaining 28% back by Friday. Then came yesterday’s 7% slide. Today the stock is up another 10%.
Hold on tight, who knows where we’re going next.
David Shultz is a freelance writer who lives in Santa Barbara, California. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside and Nautilus, among other publications.
Snapchat’s Attempt to Protect Young Users From Third-Party Apps Falls Short
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.
Some Snap Kit platform developers have skirted guidelines meant to make the app safer for children.
A new report from TechCrunch released Tuesday found that some third-party apps that connect to users’ Snap accounts have not been updated according to new guidelines announced in March. The restrictions, which target anonymous messaging and friend-finding apps, are meant to increase child safety. However, the investigation found a number of apps either ignore the new regulations or falsely claim to be integrated with Snapchat.
The Santa Monica-based social media company announced the changes after facing two separate lawsuits related to teen suicide allegedly caused by the app. Over 1,500 developers integrate Snap features like the camera and Bitmojis. Snap originally claimed the update would not affect many apps.
Developers had 30 days to revise their software, but the investigation found that some apps, such as the anonymous Q&A app Sendit, were granted an extension. Others blatantly avoided the changes—the anonymous messaging app HMU, which is now meant for adult users, is still available to users "9+" in the App Store. Certain apps that have been banned from Snap, like Intext, still advertise Snapchat integration.
“First and foremost, we put the privacy and safety of our community first and expect the products built by our developer community to adhere to that standard in addition to bringing fun and positive experiences to people,” Director of Platform Partnerships Alston Cheek told TechCrunch.
The news is a blow to Snap’s recent efforts to cast itself as a responsible social media platform The company recently announced Colleen DeCourcy would take over as the company’s new chief creative officer and CEO Evan Spiegel to recently made a a generous personal donation to graduates of Otis College of Art and Design. The social media company currently faces a lawsuit from a teenager who claims it has not done enough to protect minors from sexual exploitation. In April, 44 attorney generals sent a letter to Snap and TikTok urging the companies to strengthen parental controls.
Lawmakers are considering new policies that would hold social media companies accountable for the content on their platforms. One such bill would require social media companies to share data with independent researchers.
Snapchat recently rolled out augmented reality shopping features and influencer-led original content to grow its younger base of users.
Snap Inc., Snapchat's parent company, is an investor in dot.LA.
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.