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XDroneBase Raises $7.5M to Build on Efforts to Remotely Inspect Wind and Solar Farms
Tami Abdollah was dot.LA's senior technology reporter. She was previously a national security and cybersecurity reporter for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C. She's been a reporter for the AP in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times and for L.A.'s NPR affiliate KPCC. Abdollah spent nearly a year in Iraq as a U.S. government contractor. A native Angeleno, she's traveled the world on $5 a day, taught trad climbing safety classes and is an avid mountaineer. Follow her on Twitter.

DroneBase, a professional drone services and data analytics company, announced Wednesday that it has raised $7.5 million in Series C funding and is officially expanding into renewable energy markets with a new enterprise software platform.
The Santa Monica-based company also announced its founding of a new DroneBase Europe office, which will be based in Germany and hire locally there to serve its expanded customer base.
The round included new investors Valor Equity Partners and Razi Ventures who joined Union Square Ventures, Upfront Ventures, Hearst Ventures, Pritzker Group Venture Capital and DJI, bringing total funding for DroneBase to $32 million.
"As we have worked more and more renewable energy in North America, often those companies have a European headquarters too," said DroneBase founder and CEO Dan Burton, who noted the company has been active in the vertical for over a year.
DroneBase has seen months of record-setting revenue amid an economic recession due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, which forced business around the world to shut down for months.
Revenue has been up 20% on a month-over-month basis beginning in March and the company has seen 99.8% operational uptime for its drones across 10 different countries, with more drone-licensed pilots joining the network and their drones able to do inspection work, for example, in a contact-free manner, Burton said.
"This is a moment for both the technology and the way our company was built," Burton said. "This coronavirus has ultimately been an accelerator of trends and we think it's really accelerated this process, automation, digitization that drones can bring and how DroneBase is uniquely able to operate."
Courtesy DroneBase
Drone Inspection for Renewable Energy
DroneBase Inc. was founded in 2014 and incubated by Y Combinator. The drone-for-hire company works with businesses in industries that include insurance, construction, real estate, telecommunications and media, also boasts the largest drone-licensed pilot network in the world. Its pilots have completed over 100,000 commercial missions in over 70 countries and all 50 states. The company's board is also entirely white and male, though Burton said in a statement that "diversity at all levels are being considered" and that the company is looking to expand diversity both internally and at the board level.
The company began this new financing round in March with a focus on ensuring sustainability, strong revenue growth and an increased path to profitability, but given the widespread consolidation and acceleration in the industry, Burton said he's been "taking some incoming calls about going into a growth round as early as this year."
Due to COVID-19, many companies that utilized more traditional in-person methods for insurance-related or safety inspections have either had to pause or now cease to exist. That's also been the case for some of niche drone companies which recently closed.
Their newly unveiled enterprise software platform is called "DroneBase Insights for Wind and Solar." It enables customers to use drones to inspect a wind turbine's components through an autonomous flight system and offers data, actionable insights and lifecycle management. The software was trained on DroneBase's large database of turbine imagery, leveraging machine learning.
An image of DroneBase's software to remotely monitor renewable energy facilities.Courtesy DroneBase
"It's just a faster, more reliable, more affordable way to inspect physical stuff," Burton said, noting that wind turbines are among the most dangerous assets to physically inspect in the world.
DroneBase also has its own thermal pilot network that was trained by FLIR Infrared Training Center. FLIR Systems, Inc. is a DroneBase investor that develops, manufactures and resells thermal imaging technology. Though the company is based in Arlington, Virginia, much of its innovation occurs at its tech hub in Santa Barbara.
The trained network is able to provide accurate data under the platform's solar insights, for anomalies that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye, DroneBase said.
"DroneBase has been instrumental in helping us scale solar asset inspection and analysis across North America," said Jamie Mordarski, director of operations and maintenance, Americas at SMA, in a statement. The solar energy company is headquartered in Germany.
Sam Teller, a partner at Valor Equity Partners, who joined this round said in a statement that DroneBase's new work in renewables "will have a lasting impact on the future of energy by keeping infrastructure operational for generations."
Ties to China Drone-Maker
The company's official expansion into energy-related work and its close ties to Shenzhen, China-based DJI, the largest manufacturer of consumer drones worldwide, could pose some potential problems. DJI has attracted considerable concern over the years from U.S. government officials and lawmakers over its data security and potential cyber vulnerabilities because of its Chinese supply chain. The energy sector is one of 16 critical infrastructure sectors in the United States, which means its assets, systems and networks physically and virtually are crucial to national security, safety or public health.
"As we expand into energy, the data security, the chain of custody of the data, operational security, are all increasingly important factors," Burton said.
Burton said DroneBase has seen companies in the energy sector that do not allow the use of DJI drones per company policy. For such cases, DroneBase will need to have non-DJI alternatives, though the "vast majority" of drones its pilots now fly are DJI drones.
The global market for drone technologies is expected to reach $43.1 billion by 2024, up from $14.1 billion in 2018, according to a June 2019 study by the Computing Technology Industry Association that did not take into account the novel coronavirus outbreak.
As the pandemic continues, the majority of the business operation has transferred successfully to remote work, Burton said, and there is discussion as to whether in-person interactions will return and in what manner.
The company had just moved into a new Santa Monica headquarters in February, weeks before the pandemic's spread forced all non-essential businesses in California to close and DroneBase went fully work-from-home. Now, Burton said the company is trying to determine whether its staff will ever return to the office or whether in-person get-togethers will be less frequent and more intentional.
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Tami Abdollah was dot.LA's senior technology reporter. She was previously a national security and cybersecurity reporter for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C. She's been a reporter for the AP in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times and for L.A.'s NPR affiliate KPCC. Abdollah spent nearly a year in Iraq as a U.S. government contractor. A native Angeleno, she's traveled the world on $5 a day, taught trad climbing safety classes and is an avid mountaineer. Follow her on Twitter.
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This Week in ‘Raises’: Improvado Hauls $22M, Clearlake Launches $14B Fund
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.
This week in “Raises”: A pair of Web3 platforms for gamers landed funding, as did a Manhattan Beach medical startup looking to bolster primary care via nurse practitioners. Meanwhile, a Santa Monica-based investment firm launched its seventh fund with more than $14 billion in dry powder.
Venture Capital
Improvado, a marketing data aggregation platform, raised $22 million in a Series A funding round led by Updata Partners.
Web3 gaming platform FreshCut raised $15 million in funding led by Galaxy Interactive, Animoca Brands and Republic Crypto.
Medical startup Greater Good Health raised $10 million in a funding round led by LRVHealth.
Joystick, a Web3 platform for gamers and creators, raised $8 million in seed funding.
Open source data protection company CipherMode Labs raised $6.7 million in seed funding led by Innovation Endeavors .
Mobile phone charging network ChargeFUZE raised $5 million in seed funding led by Beverly Pacific, TR Ventures, VA2, Jason Goldberg and Al Weiss.
Polygon, a startup aiming to better diagnose children with learning disabilities, raised $4.2 million in seed and pre-seed funding led by Spark Capital and Pear VC.
Pique, a virtual women's sexual health clinic, raised $4 million in a seed funding round led by Maveron.
Psudo, a sneaker startup that utilizes recycled water bottles and 3D sublimation printing to create its shoes, raised $3 million in a seed funding round led by SternAegis Ventures.
Funds
Santa Monica-based investment firm Clearlake Capital Group raised $14.1 billion for its seventh flagship fund.
Raises is dot.LA’s weekly feature highlighting venture capital funding news across Southern California’s tech and startup ecosystem. Please send fundraising news to Kristin Snyder (kristinsnyder@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.
LA Tech ‘Moves’: New Head of Originals at Snap, New President at FaZe Clan
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.
“Moves”, our roundup of job changes in L.A. tech, is presented by Interchange.LA, dot.LA's recruiting and career platform connecting Southern California's most exciting companies with top tech talent. Create a free Interchange.LA profile here—and if you're looking for ways to supercharge your recruiting efforts, find out more about Interchange.LA's white-glove recruiting service by emailing Sharmineh O’Farrill Lewis (sharmineh@dot.la). Please send job changes and personnel moves to moves@dot.la.
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FaZe Clan brought on Zach Katz as the gaming and media company’s new president and chief operating officer. Katz was previously the chief executive officer of the music tech investment fund Raised in Space Enterprises.
TikTok brand factory LINK Agency promoted Dustin Poteet to chief creative officer. Poteet was previously creative director at the firm.
Livestream shopping platform Talkshoplive hired Tradesy co-founder John Hall as its chief technology officer. Universal Music Group Nashville's former vice president of digital marketing, Tony Grotticelli, also joins the company as vice president of marketing.
Anjuli Millan will take over as head of original content at Snap after three years of overseeing production for the division.
Tech and media company Blavity hired Nikki Crump as general manager of agency. Crump joins the company from Burrell Communications Group.
O'Neil Digital Solutions, which provides customer communications and experience management for the health care industry, hired Eric Ramsey as national account sales executive. Ramsey joins from T/O Printing.
Investment firm Cresset Partners named Tammy Funasaki as managing director of business development. Funasaki previously served as head of investor relations for Breakwater Management.
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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.
Snapchat’s New Controls Could Let Parents See Their Kids’ Friend Lists
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.
Snapchat is preparing to roll out enhanced parental controls that would allow parents to see who their teenagers are chatting with on the social media app, according to screenshots of the upcoming feature.
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.
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.