
David Dobrik Loses Sponsors After Sexual Assault Allegation Against Vlog Squad Member
Francesca Billington is dot.LA's editorial fellow. She's previously reported for KCRW, the Santa Monica Daily Press and local publications in New Jersey. Before joining dot.LA, she served as a communications fellow at an environmental science research center in Sri Lanka. She graduated from Princeton in 2019 with a degree in anthropology.
At least two companies have dropped their partnerships with YouTuber and Dispo co-founder David Dobrik in response to an investigation from Business Insider detailing allegations of sexual assault against a former member of the group Vlog Squad.
The crew propelled YouTuber Dobrik to Internet fame and helped him launch photo-sharing app Dispo, which last month raised $20 million in a Series A round led by Spark Capital. The venture capital firm headquartered in Boston could not immediately be reached for comment. Last October, Reddit co-founder Alex Ohanian's fund Seven Seven Six led a $4 million round.
But HelloFresh, a sponsor of Dobrik, confirmed to dot.LA that it is no longer working with Dobrik and or any member of the Vlog Squad. A spokesperson said by email the company does "not have any plans to work with them again in the future."
The Dollar Shave Club ended its partnership with Dobrik, who has promoted the Venice-based razor and shaving company on his Instagram, Insider reported. On Tuesday, SeatGeek, a ticket-selling platform, also told the outlet it was "reviewing" its partnership with Dobrik.
Earlier this week, Business Insider published a lengthy investigation by Kat Tenbarge in which a woman accused Vlog Squad member Dominykas Zeglaitis of sexually assaulting her while she was incapacitated by alcohol and could no longer consent.
A few days after the alleged assault, Dobrik uploaded a video titled "SHE SHOULD NOT HAVE PLAYED WITH FIRE!!" which includes clips of the woman entering Zeglaitis' bedroom. The woman confirmed the story to the New York Times in a story published Friday afternoon.
On Tuesday, Dobrik posted an apology on YouTube called "Let's talk." Dobrik does not directly address the rape allegation. But he said, "consent is something that's super, super important to me."
"Things like that won't happen again," he said. "I've learned from my mistakes and I also believe that actions speak a lot louder than words."
Let's talk
"With people in my life that I don't film with anymore, like Dom [Zeglaitis] ...I chose to distance myself because I don't align with some of the actions and I don't stand for any misconduct. I've been really disappointed by some of my friends."
The two-and-a- half minute video was posted on a YouTube channel that has 1.69 million followers that he shares with Jason Nash. The comments feature, which is usually open, was disabled.
During the video, Dobrik said he was "sorry" to Vlog Squad member Joseth "Seth" Francois. Last month, Francois told BuzzFeed News he was sexually assaulted during one of the squad's "prank" videos. Francois, the only Black member of the squad, said he was also "used as the punchline for racist jokes."
"I just want to make videos where everybody in it- whether you're participating or watching- is enjoying and having a good time," Dobrik said in his video. "And I missed the mark with that one."
Francois told BuzzFeed that people who spoke out were sidelined.
"It was an unwritten thing where you see a pattern of people saying, 'Yo, I'm uncomfortable with this,'" he told BuzzFeed. "All of a sudden they disappear and they're not in videos anymore."
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Francesca Billington is dot.LA's editorial fellow. She's previously reported for KCRW, the Santa Monica Daily Press and local publications in New Jersey. Before joining dot.LA, she served as a communications fellow at an environmental science research center in Sri Lanka. She graduated from Princeton in 2019 with a degree in anthropology.
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The virtual influencer Miquela Sousa, aka Lil Miquela, whose rise has garnered equal parts uproar and admiration, continued her foray into NFTs on Wednesday with part two of a five-part series that promises to "tell a special story over time."
Brud, the L.A. startup behind Miquela and a handful of other characters with fully fledged digital identities across social media, is doing the free drop to hype up their superstar avatar and expand her narrative. An announcement from the company said the underlying artwork, called "Unseen by eyes but forged in stone," can exist as a standalone piece or as part of a collection that will roll out over the next several months.
Brud appears to be gamifying the collection of tokens to unlock a unique, surprise reward.
"This NFT is part of a larger series featuring Miquela," the company wrote in a Google doc linked in Miquela's tweet announcing the drop. "Each NFT in this series serves as a piece to a larger puzzle. Each piece will work together to tell a special story over time. The only way to access the story before anyone else is to own each NFT and connect them together along the way."
New NFT drops NOW! First 1500 people to reply to THIS TWEET with their wallet address will BE BLESSED and the FULL… https://t.co/7XZdblfZbd— lilmiquela (@lilmiquela)1617814863.0
Users could claim one of the available 1,500 NFTs by replying to Lil Miquela's tweet with the address to their crypto wallet.
Brud, valued at $144 million, said it will deliver the tokens within 24 hours. Users had to agree to let the company contact them in the future for marketing purposes.
Within three hours the post had received nearly 4,000 comments and been retweeted over 1,600 times.
Upon validation of users' addresses, Miquela's Twitter would post a response.
"Obsessed with u, there's 1481 left!"
"We're making history, TYYY!! there's 1377 left!"
"We're making history, TYYY!! there's 1203 left!"
And so on.
Since debuting on Instagram in 2016, Lil Miquela has picked up three million followers and sponsorship deals from the likes of Supreme and Barney's. Her curated digital identity ostensibly makes her less of a risk than human influencers for brands.
Last year, the digital teenager was estimated to have earned more than $12 million. She's repped by CAA, alongside many real celebrities, and has appeared on a billboard in Times Square.
In November, Brud released her first NFT, tied to a digital artwork entitled "Rebirth of Venus" that sold via SuperRare for 159.5 Ether. At the time, that was worth about $82,000; Ether's value has since nearly quadrupled. The winning bidder of that token appears to be linked to crypto investment fund Divergence Ventures, based on the link in the buyer's SuperRare profile.
It has been a common refrain as NFTs have gone mainstream: the investor behind last month's headline-grabbing $69 million NFT tied to a digital artwork by Beeple also had a financial interest in propping up the legitimacy of cryptocurrency.
The latest Miquela offering is part of an ongoing spree of creative NFT offerings that provide buyers more than just a certificate of digital ownership tied to the blockchain. It also expands the storyline of a 19-year-old who blurs the lines between fantasy and reality as a racially ambiguous, socially conscious teenager.
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Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake
Though Silicon Valley is still very much the capital of venture capital, Los Angeles is home to plenty of VCs who have made their mark – investing in successful startups early and reaping colossal returns for their limited partners.
Who stands out? We thought there may be no better judge than their peers, so we asked 28 of L.A.'s top VCs who impresses them the most.
The list includes many familiar names. Dana Settle, founding partner of Greycroft, and Mark Mullen, founding partner of Bonfire Ventures, garnered the most votes.
Settle manages West Coast operations for Greycroft, a New York firm with $1.8 billion in assets under management. She is one of only nine of the top 100 VCs nationally who are women, according to CB Insights.
Mullen is a founding partner of Bonfire Ventures, which closed a $100 million second fund in September to continue funding seed stage business-to-business (B2B) software startups. Mullen has also been an angel investor and is an LP in other funds focusing on other sectors, including MaC VC and BAM Ventures.
Below is the list of the top ranked investors by how many votes each received from their peers. When there was a tie, they appear in alphabetical order according to their last name:
Mark Mullen, Bonfire Ventures
Mark Mullen is a founding partner of Bonfire Ventures. He is also founder and the largest investor in Mull Capital and Double M Partners, LP I and II. A common theme in these funds is a focus on business-to-business media and communications infrastructures.
In the past, Mullen has served as the chief operating officer at the city of Los Angeles' Economic Office and a senior advisor to former Mayor Villaraigosa, overseeing several of the city's assets including Los Angeles International Airport and the Los Angeles Convention Center. Prior to that, he was a partner at Daniels & Associates, a senior banker when the firm sold to RBC Capital Markets in 2007.
Dana Settle, Greycroft
Dana Settle is a founding partner of Greycroft, heading the West Coast office in Los Angeles. She currently manages the firm's stakes in Anine Bing, AppAnnie, Bird, Clique, Comparably, Goop, Happiest Baby, Seed, Thrive Market, Versed and WideOrbit, and is known for backing female-founded companies.
"The real change takes place when female founders build bigger, independent companies, like Stitchfix, TheRealReal," she said this time last year in an interview with Business Insider. "They're creating more wealth across their cap tables and the cap tables tend to be more diverse, so that gives more people opportunity to become an angel investor." Prior to founding Greycroft, she was a venture capitalist and startup advisor in the Bay Area.
Erik Rannala, Mucker Capital
Erik Rannala is a founding partner at Mucker Capital, which he created with William Hsu in 2011. Before founding Mucker, Rannala was vice president of global product strategy and development at TripAdvisor and a group manager at eBay, overseeing its premium features business.
"As an investor, I root for startups. It pains me to see great teams and ideas collapse under the pressure that sometimes follows fundraising. If you've raised money and you're not sure what comes next, that's fine – I don't always know either," Rannala wrote in a blog post for Mucker.
Mucker has a portfolio of 61 companies, including Los Angeles-based Honey and Santa Monica-based HMBradley.
William Hsu, Mucker Capital
William Hsu is a founding partner at the Santa Monica-based fund Mucker Capital. He started his career as a founder, creating BuildPoint, a provider of workflow management solutions for the commercial construction industry not long after graduating from Stanford.
In an interview with Fast Company, he shared what he learned in the years following, as he led product teams at eBay, Green Dot and Spot Runner, eventually becoming the SVP and Chief Product Officer of At&T Interactive: "Building a company is about hiring correctly, adhering to a timeline, and rigorously valuing opportunity. It's turning something from inspiration and creative movement into process and rigor."
These are the values he looks for in founders in addition to creativity. "I like to see the possibility of each and every idea, and being imaginative makes me a passionate investor."
Jim Andelman, Bonfire Ventures
Jim Andelman is a founding partner of Bonfire Ventures, a fund that focuses on seed rounds for business software founders. Andelman has been in venture capital for 20 years, previously founding Rincon Venture Partners and leading software investing at Broadview Capital Partners.
He's no stranger to enterprise software — he also was a member of the Technology Investment Banking Group at Alex. Brown & Sons and worked at Symmetrix, a consulting firm focusing on technology application for businesses.
In a podcast with LA Venture's Minnie Ingersoll earlier this year, he spoke on the hesitations people have about choosing to start a company.
"It's two very different things: Should I coach someone to be a VC or should I coach someone to enter the startup ecosystem? On the latter question, my answer is 'hell yeah!'"Josh Diamond, Walkabout Ventures
Josh Diamond founded Walkabout Ventures, a seed fund that primarily focuses on financial service startups. The firm raised a $10 million fund in 2019 and is preparing for its second fund. Among its 19 portfolio companies is HMBradley, which Diamond helped seed and recently raised $18 in a Series A round.
"The whole reason I started this is that I saw there was a gap in the funding for early stage, financial service startups," he said. As consumers demand more digital access and transparency, he said the market for financial services is transforming — and Los Angeles is quickly becoming a hub for fintech companies. Before founding Walkabout, he was a principal for Clocktower Technology Ventures, another Los Angeles-based fund with a similar focus.
Kara Nortman, Upfront Ventures
Kara Nortman was recently promoted to managing partner at Upfront Ventures, making her one of the few women – along with Settle – to ascend to the highest ranks of a major VC firm.
Though Upfront had attempted to recruit her before she joined in 2014, she had declined in order to start her own company, Moonfrye, a children's ecommerce company that rebranded to P.S. XO and merged with Seedling. Upfront invested in the combination, and shortly after, Nortman joined the Upfront team.
Before founding Moonfrye, she was the SVP and General Manager of Urbanspoon and Citysearch at IAC after co-heading IAC's M&A group.
In an interview with dot.LA earlier this year, she spoke on how a focus for her as a VC is to continue to open doors for founders and funders of diverse backgrounds.
"Once you're a woman or a person of color in a VC firm, it is making sure other talented people like you get hired, but also hiring people who are not totally like you. You have to make room for different kinds of people. And how do you empower those people?"
Brett Brewer, Crosscut Ventures
Brett Brewer is a co-founder and managing director of Crosscut Ventures. He has a long history in entrepreneurship, starting a "pencil selling business in 4th grade." In 1998, he co-founded Intermix Media. Under their umbrella were online businesses like Myspace.com and Skilljam.com. After selling Intermix in 2005, he became president of Adknowledge.com.
Brewer founded Santa Monica-based Crosscut in 2008 alongside Rick Smith and Brian Garrett. His advice to founders on Crosscut's website reflects his experience: "Founders have to be prepared to pivot, restart, expect the unexpected, and make tough choices quickly... all in the same week! It's not for the faint of heart, but after doing this for 20 years, you can spot the fire (and desire) from a mile away (or not)."
Eva Ho, Fika Ventures
Eva Ho is a founding partner of Fika Ventures, a boutique seed fund, which focuses on data and artificial intelligence-enabled technologies. Prior to founding Fika, she was a founding partner at San Francisco-based Susa Ventures, another seed-stage fund with a similar focus. She is also a serial entrepreneur, most recently co-founding an L.A. location data provider, Factual. She also co-founded Navigating Cancer, a health startup, and is a founding member of All Raise, a nonprofit that supports and provides resources to female founders and funders.
In an interview with John Livesay shortly before founding Fika, Ho spoke to how her experience at Factual helped focus what she looks for in founders. "I always look for the why. A lot of people have the skills and the confidence and the experience, but they can't convince me that they're truly passionate about this. That's the hard part — you can't fake passion."
Brian Lee, BAM Ventures
Brian Lee is a co-founder and managing director of BAM Ventures, an early-stage consumer-focused fund. In an interview with dot.LA earlier this year, Lee shared that he ended up being the first investor in Honey, which was bought by PayPal for $4 billion, through investing in founders and understanding their "vibe."
"There's certain criteria that we look for in founders, a proprietary kind of checklist that we go through to determine whether or not these are the founders that we want to back…. [Honey's founders] knew exactly what they were building, and how they were going to get there."
His eye for the right vibe in a founder is one gleaned from experience. Lee is a serial entrepreneur, founding LegalZoom.com, ShoeDazzle.com and The Honest Company.
Alex Rubalcava, Stage Venture Partners
Alex Rubalcava is a founding partner of Stage Venture Partners, a seed venture capital firm that invests in emerging software technology for B2B markets. Prior to joining, he was an analyst at Santa Monica-based Anthem Venture Partners, an investor in early stage technology companies. It was his first job after graduating from Harvard, and during his time at Anthem the fund was part of Series A in companies like MySpace, TrueCar and Android.
He has served as a board member in several Los Angeles nonprofits and organizations like KIPP LA Schools and South Central Scholars.
"Warren Buffett says that he's a better businessman because he's an investor, and he's a better investor because he's a businessman. I feel the same way about VC and value investing. Being good at value investing can make you good at venture capital, and vice versa," Rubalcava said in an interview with Shai Dardashti of MOI Global.
Mark Suster, Upfront Ventures
Mark Suster, managing partner at Upfront Ventures, is arguably L.A.'s most visible VC, frequently posting on Twitter and on his blog, not only about investing but also more personal topics like weight loss. In more normal years, he presides over LA's biggest gathering of tech titans, the Upfront Summit. Before Upfront, he was the founder and chief executive officer of two software companies, BuildOnline and Koral, which was acquired by Salesforce. Upfront backed both of his companies, and eventually he joined their team in 2007.
In a piece for his blog, "Both Sides of the Table," Suster wrote about the importance of passion — not just for entrepreneurs and their businesses, but for the VCs that fund them as well.
"On reflection of the role that I want to play as a VC it is clearly in the camp of passion. I really want to start my journeys only with people with whom I want to work closely with for the next 5–7 years or more. I only want to work on projects in which I believe can produce truly amazing change in an industry or in the world."
Lead art by Candice Navi.
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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.