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Bitwarden Raises $100M to Meet Online Security Demand
Christian Hetrick
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
Bitwarden, an open-source password manager, has raised $100 million as the rise of remote work and our increasingly online lives boosts demand for digital security tools.
Growth equity firm PSG led the funding round and was joined by Battery Ventures, an existing investor in Bitwarden. The raise is Bitwarden’s first publicly-disclosed external funding since the Santa Barbara-based company launched in 2015.
Between work and personal needs, people must manage a growing number of online credentials. Too often, people reuse the same passwords across several accounts, putting consumers and businesses at risk of fraud and cyberattacks. Bitwarden offers free and paid tools to more safely store unique credentials, generate hard-to-guess passwords and transfer sensitive data to other people.
The 125-person company competes against incumbents like LastPass and 1Password in a market that’s expected to nearly quintuple to more than $7 billion by 2030, according to Straits Research. Tech titans like Apple and Google also offer password management tools within their browsers and devices—with Apple recently announcing plans to eventually ditch passwords altogether.
Bitwarden aims to stand apart by offering free and cheaper plans than its rivals, with premium subscriptions starting at $10 per year for individuals and $5 per month per user for enterprises. The company also makes its software open-source, so people can examine the security of the platform themselves. Bitwarden pays for third-party audits and partners with a company to regularly scrutinize the code, all in an effort to showcase to customers that the software is sound, Chief Customer Officer Gary Orenstein told dot.LA.
“[Open-source] is the only way that you can provide 100% transparency, to get you to the maximum amount of trust in the relationship of customers using your software,” Orenstein said. “If it's not open source, how do you know it's secure?”
The company plans to use the fresh funds to develop its tools, grow its global customer base and secure more with partnerships with tech resellers and other third-parties. In addition to password management, the firm has expanded into services like Bitwarden Send, which lets people send encrypted text and files that can self-delete. Bitwarden is also among the companies working to expand passwordless security options, such as using fingerprints or codes sent to devices instead of remembering a single password.
Orenstein said Bitwarden saw a boost in business when companies sent their employees home to work remotely during the pandemic. That trend, along with high-profile data breaches, has businesses and individuals seeking out security tools like Bitwarden’s, Orenstein said.
“We've seen recognition from the business IT teams that we're dealing with people who are going to be in different places, connecting over different networks, and we need to enable them to provide the most appropriate security,” Orenstein said.
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Christian Hetrick
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
LAPL TikTok
BookTok—the subsect of TikTok users dedicated to literature—has been credited with bringing young readers back into bookstores. 2021 saw a 9% increase in print book sales, with many suggesting the increase in purchases is directly correlated to TikTok recommendations. Barnes & Noble saw its sales skyrocket last year. And indie bookstores have benefited from using the platform as a marketing tool even going to far as to stock titles that trend on the app.
But perhaps most importantly, it’s the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) that’s best figured out how to leverage its 5,000 followers on TikTok to take advantage of free books as well as some of the library’s other offerings.
“Our goal was just to reach the younger crowd since so many of Gen Z are on Tik Tok,” says LAPL’s public relations specialist Krystal Ruiz, who helps run the library’s social media accounts. “We wanted to get them informed about the resources that are available through the library.”
One way LAPL has leveraged TikTok is by sharing their hot takes for 2023. In one video from the LAPL, librarians suggest that their team could quickly become the influencers of 2023. Another featured the boat green screen effect to poke fun at people who claim no one uses libraries. The effect is often used to sarcastically respond to TikTok users’ unwarranted comments.
The LAPL’s most popular video, however, which has over 76,000 views, highlights the library’s lack of late fees. The video skit shows a woman squeamishly attempting to return her books only to be told that she’s “good to go.” Though the different branches don’t have individual TikTok accounts, Ruiz says she intends to collaborate more with individual libraries to expand their content.
LAPL TikTok
Not every video performs well, of course, and engagement can vary drastically. Still, Ruiz says committing to the platform even when previous videos haven’t gotten many views can help inform future content.
“TikTok is kind of a free for all,” she says. “People post really random stuff and it starts to take off.”
Still, the LAPL isn’t alone in leveraging TikTok to remind young people that there’s such a thing as a public library. The Fowlerville library in Michigan has amassed over 100,000 followers through its one-star series, in which librarians read bad reviews of popular books. The Milwaukee Public Library went viral in November by using a digital cutout of the rapper Saweetie walking around the premises.
Even within the BookTok community, library-centric content is growing in popularity. Many BookTok creators film their recent purchases, many of which are done from libraries. One user—a self-proclaimed “library stan”—showed off eleven different books she was hoping to read, complete with the squeaky sounds from the library binding. Others use library apps like Libby and Hoopla to list all of their e-book loans.
Even the physical act of going to the library has been transformed into viral content. At the Beverly Hills location, users highlight the black and white mural in the reading room. The Huntington Beach library’s indoor fountain and greenery are often the stars of day-in-the-life videos. LAPL’s account has also drawn attention to the Central Library’s iconic pyramid and rotunda.
That said, for all of BookTok’s power, Ruiz says the LAPL isn’t solely interested in promoting physical books on their social media platforms. Instead, she wants to expose people to the different resources available through the library. Using a raccoon puppet—which Ruiz says will likely become a recurring character on their TikTok—the LAPL hopes to further inform the public of the library’s technology rental program, its mobile charging station and its California State Park Pass program. Adding that, “We want to utilize this online space to let people know what we have available to the community.”
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Kristin Snyder
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db
LA Tech Week: Six LA-Based Greentech Startups to Know
11:47 AM | June 09, 2023
Samson Amore
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.
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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
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