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XEncantos' Plans for a More Diverse Future of EdTech
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

When Noramay Cadena opened the bilingual children's books she had been gifted after she gave birth to her son last year, she was quickly taken back to her own childhood in Mexico. The book featured a Spanish-language lullaby, "The Pin Pon Song", about a cute cardboard doll, which Cadena described as both extremely silly and culturally significant.
"That's when I knew this was content that was by the community, for the community," she said. "As a user, I was really blown away by how they combined entertainment with education." She also thought the quality of the books was far higher than what she'd expect from what was then an early-stage startup based in L.A.
That would be Encantos, a publishing firm-turned-content house set on becoming the next big thing in edtech.
In addition to being a mother, Cadena is also an investor. In 2015, she co-founded L.A.-based MiLA Capital, a seed-stage firm "that invests in tech you can touch." Smitten by the Encantos product, she was disappointed that the company didn't align with her fund's focus on tangible products. But earlier this month, after Encantos decided to extend its seed round, another fund Cadena helps lead – Portfolia – was able to get in on the action through its Raising America Fund, which is devoted to people of color and LGBTQ founders, along with companies that serve those populations.
Encantos, which raised over $2 million in February to expand its brands and product mix, recently launched its subscription app, which chief executive Steven Wolfe Pereira told dot.LA will lead the company's shift toward a "direct-to-learner" platform. Encantos extended that seed round to take advantage of the increased demand for edtech that's combined with kids and family entertainment, Wolfe Pereira said. He added that the company is at 120% of its fundraising goal and still waiting for a few investors to confirm their check amounts before the round closes in September.
"We believe we're building the most important, impactful and beloved entertainment edtech company on the planet," he said.
Cadena is bullish as well. "I see this brand becoming a billion-dollar business," she said.
Encantos' leaders and investors point to three factors they think will help it get there.
The Right Recipe of Entertainment, Education and Technology
"We start with character and story," said Encantos Chief Creative Officer Susie Jaramillo, who co-founded the company with Wolfe Pereira after becoming a mom and quickly recognizing the dearth of Latinx-oriented children's content. She took two years off "to literally just draw," and designed Encantos' flagship brand: Canticos, about three little chickens. Those pollitas – which stem from another beloved Spanish-lanugage lullaby – evolved from a children's board book to Emmy-nominated Nick Jr. television show.
"If you don't have a strong character and a strong story, you have nothing," she said. The growth of Canticos established the playbook for Encantos to build out its other brands.
The educational component follows the story, Jaramillo said. Her colleagues in charge of the learning design look at the story and characters. They then decide what skills it lends itself to, and strategize how to incorporate those skills and stories into lessons across the company's products.
"It's not a counting story every time," Jaramillo said. "It's problem-solving, creative thinking, skills that will help you in the workplace. We make sure we're checking the box on (a range of) character traits (across our suite of stories and products)."
Then comes the tech, namely in the form of the recently launched subscription app, which Wolfe Pereira said has over 200,000 subscribers so far. The hope is that as kids engage with the app and the various stories and characters over time, the company will be able to develop a "learning graph" personalized for each user.
"If we do this right, we can take the wonderful data visualization that exists in enterprise or consumer products like the Apple Watch and understand each kid's learning journey over time," Wolfe Pereira said.
Courtesy of Encantos
A Range of Physical and Digital Products
Along with shows like "Canticos", Encantos offers a variety of physical products including books, toys and games, in addition to its subscription app. This diversity of products is key to its strategy: according to a company pitch deck shared with dot.LA, the digital products are meant to drive revenue, while the books and other physical products build loyalty.
Marlon Nichols, partner at L.A.-based MaC Venture Capital, which has invested in Encantos, likes how "they have a number of monetization schemes and strategies and models that all center around a theme of creating high-quality children's content."
Cadena also points to the range of ages that the company can serve as a big draw, from both a user's and investor's perspective. Encantos is aiming to design products for kids aged 0-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12.
"There's no single company that owns a portfolio of products that appeal to kids throughout all these phases of childhood," Portfolia wrote in its press release about the recent investment.
Building on Cultural and Demographic Trends
Wolfe Pereira says the growing generation of millennial parents want more culturally relevant, useful education for their kids. He looks at the fact that Latinx characters appear in about 5% of childrens' books even though Latinx youth comprise over 25% of the U.S. population under 16 – and how their parents' purchasing power is growing. Wolfe Pereira also sees the pandemic driving up homeschooling, remote learning and video streaming, as well as the value of animated content — which is safer for studios to produce in a pandemic. These trends lead him to conclude that "we check all the boxes in an interesting way."
Jaramillo pointed to the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement as further evidence that the demand for new, diverse characters is here to stay.
Encantos' next brand, Issa, is slated to launch on "a major streamer," probably in late 2021, according to Aliya LeeKong, who created the character whose magic cookbooks help her to travel the world to share food and culture with new friends. LeeKong said Issa was inspired by a realization she had, when she had her own daughter, that there were few places for children to learn about food and nutrition, and even fewer children's characters who looked like her kid.
Encantos' diversity permeates its leaders and investors. As a public benefit corporation, it is beholden to stakeholder value, not just shareholders. Cadena says this authentic incorporation of diverse perspectives at the highest level enables content and products that other, less diverse funders and executives might overlook – like her old lullaby buddy, the cardboard doll who goes by the name of Pin Pon.
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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
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Greater Good Health Raises $10 Million To Fix America’s Doctor Shortage
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
The pandemic highlighted what’s been a growing trend for years: Medical students are prioritizing high-paying specialty fields over primary care, leading to a shortage of primary care doctors who take care of a patient’s day-to-day health concerns. These physicians are a cornerstone of preventative health care, which when addressed can lower health care costs for patients, insurers and the government. But there’s a massive shortage of doctors all over the country, and the pipeline for primary care physicians is even weaker.
One local startup is offering a possible answer to this supply squeeze: nurse practitioners.
On Wednesday, Manhattan Beach-based Greater Good Health unveiled a $10 million Series A funding round led by LRVHealth, which adds to the startup’s $3 million seed round last year. The company employs nurse practitioners and pairs them with doctor’s offices and medical clinics; this allows nurse practitioners to take on patients who would otherwise have to wait weeks, or even months, to see a doctor.
“This access and equity issue is just going to become more pervasive if we don't do things to help people gain more access,” Greater Good founder and CEO Sylvia Hastanan told dot.LA. “We need more providers to offer more patients appointments and access to their time to take care of their needs. And in order to do that, we really need to think about the workforce.”
There has been a growing movement in the medical industry to use nurse practitioners in place of increasingly scarce primary care physicians. California passed a law in 2020 that will widen the scope of nurse practitioners and allow them to operate without a supervising physician by 2023. Amid a shortage of doctors, there’s also the question of what will become of the largest and longest-living elderly population in recent history, Baby Boomers. Public health officials are already scrambling for ways to take care of this aging demographic’s myriad health needs while also addressing the general population.
“By the time you and I get old enough where we need primary care providers to help us with our ailments and chronic conditions, there aren't [going to be] enough of them,” Hastanan said. “And/or there just isn't going to be enough support for those nurse practitioners to really thrive in that way. And I worry about what our system will look like.”
Nurse practitioners function much like doctors do—they can monitor vitals, diagnose patients, and, in some cases, prescribe medication (though usually under the supervision of a doctor). Nurse practitioners need to get either a master’s degree or higher in nursing and complete thousands of hours of work in a clinical setting. All told, it usually takes six-to-eight years to become a nurse practitioner, compared to 10-to-15 years to become a practicing physician.
Greater Good Health’s platform puts nurse practitioners in often years-long care settings where they manage patients—most of whom are chronically ill, high-risk patients that need to be seen regularly and thoroughly. This allows them to follow up more carefully on patients they have managed for years, instead of catching up on a new patient’s history and treating them in the moment. Patients, meanwhile, don’t have to see a rotating door of clinicians and can talk to a provider they already have an established rapport with.
The one-year-old startup will use the funding to provide learning and development opportunities for its nurse practitioners and also connect them with each other through virtual support groups. Burnout has been an issue across health care during the pandemic, spurring an exodus of nursing and support staff and leaving health care facilities woefully understaffed. Greater Good hopes that keeping nurse practitioners in more stable, years-long care situations and offering them career development opportunities will help retain them and keep them in the workforce longer.
“We want them to be well-rounded and balanced both in work and life, and we see that returns us healthier, more engaged and ready nurse practitioners,” Hastanan said.
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
Plus Capital Partner Amanda Groves on Celebrity Equity Investments
On this episode of the L.A. Venture podcast, Amanda Groves talks about how PLUS Capital advises celebrity investors and why more high-profile individuals are choosing to invest instead of endorse.
As a partner at PLUS, Groves works with over 70 artists and athletes, helping to guide their investment strategies. PLUS advises their talent roster to combine their financial capital with their social capital and focus on five investment areas: the future of work, future of education, health and wellness, the conscious consumer and sustainability.
“The idea is if we can leverage these people who have incredible audiences—and influence over that audience—in the world of venture capital, you'd be able to help make those businesses move forward faster,” Groves said.
PLUS works to create celebrity partnerships by identifying each client’s passions and finding companies that align with them, Groves said. From there, the venture firm can reach out to prospective partners from its many contacts and can help evaluate businesses that approach its clients. Recently, PLUS paired actress Nina Dobrev with the candy company SmartSweets after she had told them about her love for its snacks.
Celebrity entrepreneurship has shifted quite a bit in recent years, Groves said. While celebrities are paid for endorsements, Groves said investing allows them to gain equity from the growth of companies that benefit from their work.
“Like in movies, for example, where they're earning a residual along the way, they thought, ‘You know, if we're going to partner with these brands and create a tremendous amount of enterprise value, we should be able to capture some of the upside that we're generating, too’,” she said.
Partnering in this way also allows her clients to work with a wider range of brands, including small brands that often can’t afford to spend millions on endorsements. Investing allows high-profile individuals to represent brands they care about, Groves said.
“The last piece of the puzzle was a drive towards authenticity,” Groves said. “A lot of these high-profile artists and athletes are not interested, once they've achieved some sort of level of success, in partnering with brands that they don't personally align with.”
Hear the full episode by clicking on the playhead above, and listen to LA Venture on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
dot.LA Editorial Intern Kristin Snyder contributed to this post.
Rivian Stock Roller Coaster Continues as Amazon Van Delivery Faces Delays
David Shultz is a freelance writer who lives in Santa Barbara, California. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside and Nautilus, among other publications.
Rivian’s stock lost 7% yesterday on the back of news that the company could face delays in fulfilling Amazon’s order for a fleet of electric delivery vans due to legal issues with a supplier. The electric vehicle maker is suing Commercial Vehicle Group (CVG) over a pricing dispute related to the seats that the supplier promised, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The legal issue could mean that Amazon may not receive their electric vans on time. The dispute hinges on whether or not Commercial Vehicle Group is allowed to raise the prices of its seats after Rivian made engineering and design changes to the original version. Rivian says the price hike from CVG violates the supply contract. CVG denies the claim.
Regardless, the dispute could hamper Rivian’s ability to deliver electric vans to Amazon on time. The ecommerce/streaming/cloud computing/AI megacorporation controls an 18% stake in Rivian as one of the company’s largest early investors. Amazon has previously said it hopes to buy 100,000 delivery vehicles from Rivian by 2030.
The stock plunge marked another wild turn for the EV manufacturer. Last week, Rivian shares dropped 21% on Monday after Ford, another early investor, announced its intent to sell 8 million shares. The next few days saw even further declines as virtually the entire market saw massive losses, but then Rivian rallied partially on the back of their earnings report on Wednesday, gaining 28% back by Friday. Then came yesterday’s 7% slide. Today the stock is up another 10%.
Hold on tight, who knows where we’re going next.
David Shultz is a freelance writer who lives in Santa Barbara, California. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside and Nautilus, among other publications.