Former Snapchat Employees Move to Genies Engineering Team
Virtual avatar company Genies wants to be the go-to option for online personas and it's targeting the wealth of talent and seasoned executives from the area's biggest tech firm, Snap Inc., to help make that goal a reality.
Genies' latest hire from the Venice-based social camera company is George "YJ" Tu, a former senior engineer who worked on its Snapchat app and Spectacles camera glasses. Prior to working at Snap, Tu worked for three and a half years as a senior engineer at Facebook and specialized in developing the company's mobile infrastructure.
Tu joins Genies as its director of engineering. Genies CEO and founder Akash Nigam told dot.LA Tu's main mandate is hiring engineers to continue developing its avatar creation platform and digital marketplace, where users can buy and sell digital collectibles and wearable items for their virtual selves.
Tu is the first engineering executive the company's hired since its launch in 2017, but it plans to devote a big chunk of its recent $65 million Series B raise to attracting new talent.
"I think we've landed quite a few Snap employees for a few reasons," Nigam said. "Genies and Snap are probably the two biggest social companies on the Westside in LA, so I think that's an attraction for people that are already local."
The company already has some big celebrity names using its tech to make and share avatars -- including Justin Bieber, Rihanna and hip-hop tycoons Migos -- and the next step is to bring in more users.
George "YJ" Tu is Genies' new director of engineering.
Nigam said the company's hired close to 30 new employees in the last three months, with about 80% of those hires being engineers. He added that roughly 90 people work at Genies, and estimated that 10% of them are ex-Snap employees.
"I think from a product perspective, we share a lot of philosophies and we're very similar in the way that we scheme and we game plan. Snap always is kind of shooting a few years in advance specifically within the social category."
Matt Sibka, Genies' vice president of recruiting, spent three and a half years at Snap creating a team for its CEO Evan Spiegel and was hired to do the same at Genies earlier this year. Genies competes with Snap's Bitmoji avatars, which got a 3D upgrade this July.
"Eighty percent of new spend after our fundraise, and anything moving forward for the next two years, is all going to be on engineering to become an engineering powerhouse," Nigam said. Genies has raised $110 million to date and Nigam previously told dot.LA the company wants to make "Ninety nine point nine percent of its revenue from selling digital goods.
Nigam said that the synergy between Genies and Snap wasn't a conscious choice, but noted that both companies have a similar vision – to advance augmented reality and encourage people to adopt virtual avatars that they can increasingly use as an extension of how they express themselves online.
Nigam's plan is to integrate Genies avatars into as many applications as possible. Currently the company has a deal with Facebook's Giphy that will let users bring their avatar with them to platforms where Giphy is integrated, like Facebook, TikTok or Snapchat – but Nigam said it wants to bring its avatars to popular games like "Roblox" too.
"That's the first API partnership, but we want to have hundreds of those," Nigam said. "So all of a sudden if you get ported into 'Roblox,' you can get any avatar."
Genies' next big goal is getting Generation Z to buy into the NFT hype by creating unique items for their avatars and then trading them. Genies is working with Dapper Labs, which operates NBA Top Shot and CryptoKitties, two of the most popular NFT exchanges, to create its own blockchain-based system for creating, verifying and selling digital goods.
Genies plans to make the marketplace available by the end of this year. Right now it's only accessible to celebrities, but Nigam said it'll open a beta version to customers by year's end.
"It almost becomes like a login authentication button, where you can port your Genie and your digital goods associated with it from one environment to the next, and in that case, we're kind of creating a new digital identity layer," Nigam said.
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Photo courtesy of Curie
"I just jumped in the car; my fiancé was driving, and he brought me home as fast as possible in the carpool lane," Moret told dot.LA. "I curled my hair, got ready in 20 minutes and did my makeup in the passenger seat of his car for a primetime TV show."
Sarah Moret at the top of her hike, moments before she received a call from the producers of "Shark Tank."
Photo courtesy of Curie
Moret first applied to be on “Shark Tank” in 2020, but didn't receive a callback. She heard back from the show after reapplying the following year, with initial plans to film in July—but the producers bumped her filming date and put her on standby until September.
"I compare it to being like an understudy in a play," she explained. "I didn't have a set filming date. I was just told that I would get a phone call if there was space in the schedule for me to film.”
But Moret was confident she had a product worth waiting for, and the entrepreneurial know-how to scale it into a successful business. Most conventional antiperspirants in the market are made out of aluminum that can cause armpit irritation; while there are natural, aluminum-free deodorant brands, Moret said they also irritated her skin or left her smelling like a gym bag. Curie, her solution to these problems, uses sage oil and probiotics to beat the stink, arrowroot powder to absorb the sweat, and chamomile and aloe to soothe the armpits.
Prior to launching Curie in 2018, Moret worked as an associate at Santa Monica-based venture capital firm Crosscut Ventures, where she earned a spot on the investing team. There, she learned the ins and outs of the startup world.
“Curie started from a personal need,” Moret said. “I'm an athlete and at the time was a marathon runner, and just couldn't find anything that worked.”
Curie generated revenues of $125,000 in its first year of selling deodorant sticks. The following year, the startup had $700,000 in sales. At the start of 2020, she raised $1 million through a convertible note capped at $5 million to continue growing the brand. It has gradually expanded its product offerings to include body wash, moisturizing body oil, a detox mask and hand sanitizers.
Before appearing on “Shark Tank,” Curie’s body products were already sold in over 300 stores nationwide including Nordstrom, Anthropologie and fitness gym Soulcycle. It had also frequently appeared on shopping network QVC.
Fast forward to September 2021, and Moret finally entered “the Tank” with her eyes set on Corcoran and Greiner. She wanted to make a deal with one or both of them because, as Moret put it, “I just gravitate towards female investors or founders.”
Curie's line of deodorant sprays in three scents. Photo courtesy of Curie
When Moret’s episode of “Shark Tank” finally aired last month, she was surprised to find herself the first one up. Moret confidently introduced Curie on national television without a hint of sweat on her face or dirt from the hiking trail. She charmed the Sharks with her background and solid numbers—her opening pitch was for a $300,000 investment in exchange for a 5% equity stake—but four out of the five Sharks didn’t bite, saying she had raised too much money early on and had too many products.
This wasn’t new to Moret: Her first efforts at pitching Nordstrom and QVC had been rebuffed as well. “Rejection is a part of being an entrepreneur,” she said. “You're always going to get no’s; you can't let those no’s stop you or discourage you.”
It all came down to the final Shark, Daymond. When he produced an offer—$300,000 for 20% equity—that Moret deemed too low, she shot back: “I know my worth, I know the company's worth and I'm not backing down.”
After Moret countered with $300,000 for 12% equity, Cuban and Corcoran combined on an offer of $300,000 in exchange for 14% equity. Moret took the deal, as Cuban quipped: “I never thought I would be in a women’s deodorant business, ever.”
After the show aired, Curie sold out all of its deodorant products in 24 hours and now has some 5,000 customers on its waitlist. Moret said the company has plans to roll out further products, but supply chain issues have impacted their progress.
“Our biggest hurdle right now is just getting back in stock quickly, so we can get people their deodorant,” she said.
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