West Hollywood-based staycation company AvantStay is booming as its short-term rentals outpace the hotel industry's recovery. This week, AvantStay raised $160 million in a Series B round of funding to help the platform decorate – called “kitting out” in industry parlance -- its palatial homes and list the properties owned by others to rent out for vacations or other short-term stays. Read more >>
Here's what else we're reading in the news:
- Amazon Web Services went down again earlier Wednesday morning, just days after its network failure led to many websites to stop functioning.
- The Los Angeles Police Department tapped a Polish firm to monitor social media and collect millions of tweets related to Black Lives Matter and “defund the police,” The Guardian found.
- Los Angeles ranked third in StartupBlink's list of top U.S. cities for startups.
- A former Netflix executive was sentenced to more than two years in federal prison and ordered to pay back $700,000 for taking bribes and kickbacks.
- California is failing to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions fast enough, a new report found.
- A new poll finds 65% of Americans support government regulation of social media companies.
Short-Term Rental Startups Rise During the Pandemic
For short-term rental businesses like AvantStay, business is doing well despite COVID restrictions in travel and public spaces. Jamie Lane, vice president of research with AirDNA, a Denver-based short-term rental data and analytics company, said that travelers want to escape the crowds and not worry about catching COVID-19 or wearing masks.
OpenX to Pay $2M for Collecting Data on Children
OpenX, a Pasadena-based ad tech company, agreed to pay $2 million to settle allegations that it amassed troves of data on children as it flaunted regulations intended to protect data privacy. The venture-backed firm used code to “inadvertently” pull location specific data from users even when they opted out and sold children’s data to third party advertisers.How GTLA Aims to Make Manufacturing in LA More Equitable
The Los Angeles-based fashion design studio GTLA is the creation of Guadalupe Tlatenchi, an alum of Grid110's entrepreneurial program. Fashion journalist Camay Abraham speaks to Tlatenchi on her ambitions for GTLA and how to make fashion more equitable and sustainable.