Silicon Valley's top dealmaker Bill Gurley will keynote the second day of dot.LA's inaugural conference at 9 a.m., followed by two tracks of panels focused on L.A.'s growing startup and tech scene. dot.LA will also announce the winners of its first Startup Awards celebrating the region's most innovative people and companies.
Watch all the panels at the dot.LA Summit website. There's still time to sign up for the conference here.
The event will showcase the people, technology and ideas that shape how we live and have defined dot.LA's coverage since it launched in January. The organization was founded by former Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff and dot.LA's CEO Sam Adams with the goal of shining a light on Los Angeles' burgeoning and diverse tech scene.
Kevin Mayer, the former head of TikTok had been scheduled for the event's keynote speaker, but cancelled on the advice of his lawyers shortly before the summit. TikTok, owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance, is embroiled in a battle with the Trump administration that seeks to shut it down.
Sarah Harden, CEO of Hello Sunshine and Liz Jenkins, CFO will open up the summit on Tuesday with a discussion about how small celebrity-driven production companies are transforming the traditional Hollywood machine and adding diversity.
Other speakers include the electronic music duo The Chainsmokers who founded venture fund Mantis, Headspace CEO Rich Pierson. Blavity founder and CEO Morgan DeBaun, Sweetgreen co-founder and CEO Jonathan Neman, Suma Wealth co-founder and CEO Beatriz Acevedo and Jesse Jacobs, co-founder and partner of The Chernin Group.
dot.LA will hold its pitch competition finale for early-stage startups at the end of the first day of the Summit. More than 100 companies with a product and less than $1 million in hand competed to get in the final stage. The pitches will be judged by Anna Barber, Managing Director of Techstars Los Angeles, and Rascoff, who most recently helped establish Supernova Partners Acquisition Company. The winner will receive special access to Amazon Web Services, Fenwick, Full Stack Finance and Carta.
The full summit schedule can be found at dot.LA.
- The dot.LA 2020 Summit Takes Place October 27th and 28th - dot.LA ›
- GoodRx Is Named Startup of the Year at dot.LA Summit Awards - dot.LA ›
- dot.LA's Tech and Startup Summit Kicks Off In Santa Monica - dot.LA ›
- Event: Infinity Festival Hollywood - dot.LA ›
- Hello Sunshine’s Liz Jenkins on Disrupting Hollywood - dot.LA ›
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Snap’s parental controls.
Courtesy of Watchful.
Snapchat is planning to introduce Family Center, which would allow parents to see who their children are friends with on the app and who they’ve messaged within the last seven days, according to screenshots provided by Watchful, a product intelligence company. Parents would also be able help their kids report abuse or harassment.
The parental controls are still subject to change before finally launching publicly, as the Family Center screenshots—which were first reported by TechCrunch—reflect features that are still under development.
Santa Monica-based Snap and other social media giants have faced mounting criticism for not doing more to protect their younger users—some of whom have been bullied, sold deadly drugs and sexually exploited on their platforms. State attorneys general have urged Snap and Culver City-based TikTok to strengthen their parental controls, with both companies’ apps especially popular among teens.
A Snap spokesperson declined to comment on Friday. Previously, Snap representatives have told dot.LA that the company is developing tools that will provide parents with more insight into how their children are engaging on Snapchat and allow them to report troubling content.
Yet Snap’s approach to parental controls could still give teens some privacy, as parents wouldn’t be able to read the actual content of their kids’ conversations, according to TechCrunch. (The Family Center screenshots seen by dot.LA do not detail whether parents can see those conversations).
In addition, teenage users would first have to accept an invitation from their parents to join the in-app Family Center before those parents can begin monitoring their social media activity, TechCrunch reported.