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XGermFalcon Strikes a Deal with Honeywell to Sell, Produce Its Anti-Viral 'Drink Cart' For Cleaning Airplanes
Rachel Uranga is dot.LA's Managing Editor, News. She is a former Mexico-based market correspondent at Reuters and has worked for several Southern California news outlets, including the Los Angeles Business Journal and the Los Angeles Daily News. She has covered everything from IPOs to immigration. Uranga is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and California State University Northridge. A Los Angeles native, she lives with her husband, son and their felines.

Industrial conglomerate Honeywell International snapped up the rights to produce, advertise and sell Long Beach-based Dimer's anti-viral UV-C light machine, the GermFalcon, in a licensing partnership agreement announced on Wednesday.
Created by Elliot Kreitenberg and his father, orthopedic surgeon Arthur Kreitnberg, in their garage seven years ago, the GermFalcon can sanitize a midsize airplane cabin full of germs in about 10 minutes and is being billed as an antidote in the age of COVID-19.
The GermFalcon will be renamed the Honeywell UV Cabin System.
"This offering is a big win for our airline customers, which are seeking affordable ways to clean their cabins effectively and quickly between flights," said Mike Madsen, Honeywell Aerospace president and chief executive. "Honeywell is working on a range of solutions to help make passengers more comfortable about flying."
Honeywell, a major supplier to Airbus and Boeing among others, is in discussions with several major airlines and service providers for the cabin system. The company has been hurt by the grounding of Boeing's 737 and further struck by plummeting airplane passenger traffic.
Honeywell is accepting orders and expects the first shipments in July. Pricing will vary, but Honeywell estimates that for midsize to large airlines with hundreds or more aircraft, the cost will break down to about $10 per use.
The North Carolina company has been bolstering their offerings of products aimed at making flying safer for passengers loathe to go in confined spaces where a virus might easily spread.
The size of a drink cart, Kreitenberg sees the GermFalcon as the antidote to the spread of viruses.
"Airlines play a direct role in the way that disease spreads around the world," Elliot Kreitenberg told dot.LA last month. "We see that here with coronavirus. It flew here on airplane."
Dimer is also continuing to further commercialize and deploy its germicidal UV technology platform known as UVHammer for healthcare. The UVHammer product will target public transportation, education, hospitality, buildings, theaters, arenas and small businesses alike. It's expected to be brought to market in July.
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- GermFalcon Designs Ultra Violet Light 'Drink Cart' for Planes - dot.LA ›
Rachel Uranga is dot.LA's Managing Editor, News. She is a former Mexico-based market correspondent at Reuters and has worked for several Southern California news outlets, including the Los Angeles Business Journal and the Los Angeles Daily News. She has covered everything from IPOs to immigration. Uranga is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and California State University Northridge. A Los Angeles native, she lives with her husband, son and their felines.
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Voyage SMS Lays Off Sales Staffers, COO As Tech Downturn Continues
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Text message marketing startup Voyage SMS has laid off more than 10% of its staff, including its chief operating officer, dot.LA has learned—as the Santa Monica-based company became the latest local venture to fall victim to worsening economic conditions.
Voyage cut eight people from its roughly 60-person workforce last week, co-founder and CEO Rev Reddy confirmed to dot.LA. Besides COO Dave Link, the cuts affected the company’s full-time sales department and some contractors, he said.
“It’s unfortunate to let people go—it’s never a fun thing,” Reddy said. “This is a multi-factor decision, but of course the macro[economic] climate affected [and] was an input in this decision.”
Reddy added that the company hopes the downsizing will be temporary and that Voyage plans to eventually hire more staff, specifically people in the Los Angeles area who have expertise in digital marketing. “We are prioritizing growth efficiency over growth at all costs,” he said.
The ongoing economic downturn has not spared the tech and venture capital sectors, spooking investors into pulling back funding and prompting a wave oflayoffs acrossthe industry. It’s a sudden change of winds of Voyage, which earlier this year raised a $10 million funding round and acquired rival SMS marketing startup LiveRecover. Voyage’s text-based marketing strategy is plugged into ecommerce platforms such as Shopify and ZenDesk—but as consumers have cut their discretionary spending to cope with rising inflation, they’re spending less on ecommerce, indirectly hindering Voyage’s business.
Link, Voyage’s outgoing COO, previously worked for LiveRecover and joined the company in February after the acquisition.
“Technically, [Link] wasn’t even an employee—it was a trial,” Reddy noted. “The title was internal and it was very much contingent upon execution of results. And candidly speaking, those results were just not hit.”
Link could not immediately be reached for comment. Other former Voyage employees confirmed on LinkedIn that they were laid off and looking for new work.
While Voyage is not yet profitable, Reddy said he believes the company is on a “path to profitability in a reasonable timeframe.” Still, he acknowledged that the startup’s backers—which include former Airbnb executive James Beshara and venture firms RiverPark and Guild Capital—will be eager to see progress if Voyage is to “attract the capital we need” moving forward.
“Limited partners now look at their portfolio and their allocations, and since the public markets have dropped so much, they look overweight in venture,” York IE managing partner Joe Raczka, whose New Hampshire-based investment firm is among Voyage’s investors, told dot.LA. “So they course-correct a little bit in terms of where their allocations are going, so you see some hesitancy.”
York IE Managing Partner Joe Raczka.
Credit: York IEStill, Raczka said York IE plans to stick with Voyage. “I think the company has a massive market that they play in [and] they have a really strong product,” he said. “I remain very confident in the business.”
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Entrepreneur Camille Styles on Adapting... and Adapting Again
Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
Camille Styles thought she had her dream job — until she started to crave more creativity.
On this episode of Behind Her Empire, the serial entrepreneur talks about how she learned to take risks, dealing with burnout and gaining the confidence to pursue her passions.
Styles runs Camille Styles, a digital publication that grew out of a blog she created as a hobby and, over time, became a business.
Styles says she grew up adapting. As a young girl, she lived in Fort Worth Texas where her mother exposed her to art, nature and cooking. When she turned eight, her family moved to a small town in Missouri. Eventually, her family moved once more, leaving Styles to once again find her footing in a new environment.
“I can remember screaming at my parents that they were destroying my life,” she says. “But in hindsight, I am so thankful for those experiences that really started to build that sense of independence and determination to kind of find my own path and carve out a place for myself.”
That skill of adaptability helped Styles to stay afloat through her professional life — from New York, where she worked in the fashion industry as a college student, to Texas, where she got her start in event planning, to her journey into becoming an entrepreneur at 24.
“I talked to basically every small business owner that I knew, I asked for their advice and to talk to them about some of the mistakes they made,” she says.” “And I launched Camille Styles Events with one intern and myself working out of the basement of our little 1,000-square-foot bungalow.”
She didn’t stop there; “On the side, I launched a blog,” she adds.
That blog has been the focus of her career for over a decade. Throughout that time, Styles had to adapt to keep up with the rapidly-evolving internet, growing her audience, monetizing her content and refining it for social media platforms– all while being a mother to her two children.
Styles says she avoids feeling overwhelmed by doing what feels natural to her—changing.
“Instead of quitting, I pivoted and I changed,” she says, “which I think is really important when anyone feels burnout—to not just keep doing what you're doing.”
Thirteen years after starting her blog, Styles is once again changing route. Her new business hasn’t yet been named or announced, but Styles says she is learning how to build and ship physical products to customers, something she has never done before. But starting from scratch is nothing new for Styles.
“It's nice to be able to kind of let it unfold naturally and take my time with each step of the process,” she says.
Engagement and Production Intern Jojo Macaluso contributed to this post.
Hear more of the Behind Her Empire podcast. Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radioor wherever you get your podcasts.
Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
Valence, a Network for Black Professionals, Acquired by Fintech Firm Greenwood
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.
Valence, a Los Angeles-based networking platform for Black professionals, has been bought by digital banking platform Greenwood, the company announced Wednesday.
Atlanta-based Greenwood—which provides services intended to boost financial opportunities for Black and Latino people and businesses—said it will use Valence’s network to connect its community with professional development tools. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Since launching in 2019, Valence has raised more than $7 million in funding from investors including GGV Capital and Upfront Ventures. (Valence co-founder and chairman Kobie Fuller is a general partner at Upfront.) The startup has built features into its platform such as Pipeline, a database to help corporate recruiters find Black candidates, and BONDS, a mentoring program it launched last year to foster leadership skills in Black professionals.
“We’re being very targeted in how we can drive economic opportunity and wealth creation in the Black community," Fuller said in a statement. “Joining with Greenwood is a commitment to our community and accelerates our mission towards creating new paths to success for Black professionals and fuels our efforts towards closing the racial wealth gap.”
Fuller will join Greenwood’s advisory board, while Valence CEO Guy Primus will retain his role and take on the new title of vice president at Greenwood.
The deal comes after Greenwood acquired The Gathering Spot, a private membership network for the Black community, last month. The fintech company said it hopes the new acquisitions will help it build tools to close the racial wealth gap.
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.