COVID-19 created a new normal that has upended work, life and finances and the reality is that everyone is just going to have reshuffle how we live, recalibrating employee expectations and creating more space for family.
That's the takeaway from dot.LA's strategy session on Tuesday with clinical psychologist Crystal Clements, Advekit chief executive and cofounder Alison LaSov and venture capital firm Crosscut Venture's managing director Brian Garrett. The panelists admitted they have all suffered from some anxiety due to the economic downturn and have found themselves reprioritizing their lives and looking for comfort in routines.
They have all found hope in connecting remotely with friends, family and in the generosity of others — whether that's founders taking pay cuts, or merely realizing that everyone is in this together in Italy, England, New York or Los Angeles.
"Accepting this is half the battle, this is our new normal," LaSov said. "I know a lot of founders I speak to are really hard on themselves because they can't quite figure out how to make the adjustments quick enough. But I think the more that we can remind ourselves that we're doing the best that we can. This is unprecedented for all of us, this global anxiety that we're all experiencing, so just having some self compassion and acceptance during this time it's really important."
Clements said that because the crisis is still new, many of her clients are in triage mode figuring out what to do about money, their kids who are at home, and their own businesses as everyone is forced to stay home to avert the spread of the deadly disease. But, Clements said as the new reality sets she would advise people to find peace in their spirituality and look inward for direction during a very uncertain time.
"This period might last a few months. It might last — who knows, but there will be an end," she said. "You want to figure out who you want to be during this time, what are your values, what are you standing for, and strengthen them."
Garrett, whose Santa Monica-based firm is in the process of deploying $125 million in its fourth fund, said he isn't pushing as hard to raise funds now and is instead working with his portfolio companies and founders to weather the storm.
"My philosophy has been 'go with the flow and get as much done as I can but also realize right now'," he said. "Nothing else matters in my business world, in more than just taking care of my portfolio companies, taking care of those founders and trying to support them in any way I can."
Garrett could be an exception. Some managers react just the opposite, micromanaging their remote employees, fearing their productivity has dropped. Meanwhile employees are nervous they are going to lose their job, as unemployment skyrocketsin the midst of the recession.
"It's been very stressful for some people," Clements said. Mangers and their employees should be talking about what they need and in the meantime, she said, be a bit more forgiving.
"It's natural for an entrepreneur to potentially micromanage the situation or believe that they need to stay more on top of things (but) at the end of the day I don't think that's what employees want," Garrett said. "I think they want to believe that their bosses trust that they're contributing to the best they can to the success of the business."
While working from home can be a dream come true for some, it has also lengthened the work day for some.
According to NordVPN, a personal virtual private network service provider, U.S. workers have seen their average workday grow by 40%, adding an extra three hours to their days, or the largest jump worldwide. Meanwhile, the UK, France, Canada and Spain have seen a two hour increase in the length of their workdays.
Garrett said that it's key right now to for employers to be leaders and "facilitate a culture of trust" and empower their workers — "know that they're busting their butts" trying to do the best in this brand new world so that business can continue. He also recommended leaders be more empathetic to the fear and anxiety employees are facing and, as a leader, communicate what efforts are ongoing to extend runway and talk with investors.
"I've seen over the last week or so executive teams making a decision to take pay cuts across the board with a spirit of, 'we're all in this together so let's suffer slightly through our current income to get by, but not have to cut jobs, not have to give up X percent of our headcount,'" Garrett said. "And so we'll all suffer together to still try to achieve the goals."
Strategy Session: Coping During Quarantinewww.youtube.com
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During the discussion, Brian Garrett, managing director of Crosscut Ventures, shared a spreadsheet of free mental wellness offerings that individuals and companies can take advantage of.
Moderator: Tami Abdollah, Senior Reporter at dot.LA
Speakers:
Brian Garrett, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Crosscut
Brian Garrett, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Crosscut
Brian started Crosscut in early 2008 with a vision and conviction that the SoCal tech ecosystem would evolve into what it is today. He feels very lucky to have been involved with so many amazing entrepreneurs over the last 9 years that have become the foundation of LA Tech.
During the early days of CrossCut, Brian went back into a full-time operating role with a Public-company turnaround at Quepasa.com before co-founding vertical eCommerce brand StyleSaint.com. After surviving with the equivalent of two full-time jobs for roughly 6 years, he was ecstatic to see L.A. and CrossCut get the attention of institutional capital, which enabled CrossCut to scale into a "real" fund with $75M raised for CrossCut 3 in 2015. This milestone finally enabled Brian to do what he loves most - working full-time with early-stage entrepreneurs from conceptualization to scale, turning their ideas into products and companies.
Alison LaSov, Co-Founder & CEO at Advekit
Alison LaSov, Co-Founder & CEO at Advekit
Alison is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and CEO of Advekit, an online platform that makes Mental Health treatment accessible and affordable for patients seeking therapy. Advekit is changing the way people access mental health treatment, by matching clients with therapists best suited to their needs and helping them pay for therapy. As a licensed clinician, Alison is dedicated to the mission of de-stigmatizing mental health and simplifying the process of finding a therapist. Alison is a Los Angeles native and earned her B.A. from UCLA and her M.A. from Pepperdine University. www.advekit.com
Dr. Crystal Clements, Clinical Psychologist with Here Counseling
Dr. Crystal Clements, Clinical Psychologist with Here Counseling
Dr. Crystal Clements is a Clinical Psychologist with Here Counseling, a co-practicing community of independent therapists. Her teletherapy and in-person Downtown LA practice focuses on high-functioning individuals experiencing anxiety and depression. She has worked with hundreds of executives and emerging professionals across Los Angeles. Prior to working at Here Counseling, Dr. Clements worked with Sync Counseling Center, Cal State Fullerton, and Biola University. She also taught psychology courses at Antioch University and East LA Community College.
Dr. Clements received her PhD in Clinical Psychology with a focus on Family Studies. She completed her dissertation on understanding the relationship between resilience, childhood trauma, attachment style and coping skills. She received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in Communications.
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At a time when the clinical health care workforce is suffering from burnout and attrition in the wake of the pandemic, Regard’s technology looks to alleviate some of the pressure on health care workers. The startup’s AI-enabled software is integrated directly into a provider’s system and uses an algorithm to analyze patients’ medical records, allowing physicians to more easily diagnose them.
Since launching its flagship product in 2020, Regard’s technology has been used on more than 30,000 patients, according to the company. The startup charges health care providers around $500 to $700 per month for access, co-founder and CEO Eli Ben-Joseph told dot.LA, with its customers including Torrance Memorial Medical Center, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and roughly a dozen other hospitals across the U.S.
“We’re building something that’s a game-changer for doctors,” Ben-Joseph said. “It’s helping them catch medical conditions that they would have missed. So regardless of market conditions, we’re able to have value and I think investors saw that and got excited.”
Co-founders from left to right: CEO Eli Ben-Joseph, CTO Thomas Moulia, and COO Nate Wilson. Courtesy of Regard
Founded by pre-med students Ben-Joseph, Nate Wilson and Thomas Moulia in 2017, Regard got its start through Cedars Sinai’s Techstars-backed accelerator program. It was at the accelerator program that Ben-Joseph observed physicians’ workflows and saw the need for a product like Regard’s; he recalled noticing how doctors would constantly pop in and out of a patient’s room, shuttling between the patient and a computer where they could enter data and notes.
“I think that’s why so many doctors are burning out now, as they just don’t have software that really enables them,” Joseph said.
Ben-Joseph—who coupled a bachelor’s degree in bioengineering from MIT with a master’s in computer science from Stanford—noted that Regard’s technology can automatically detect up to 50 of the most common medical conditions, including heart failure, diabetes, obesity, depression and anxiety.
“We have a 90% accuracy rate at the minimum,” he said. “Physicians will look at our software and accept it, but it’s not perfect. We tell physicians to treat it like the relationship [with a] medical student.”
This year’s focus will be different from the typical accelerator: Startups in this group will test their products directly with companies active in the ocean economy for four months, collecting data on what works, what doesn’t and further developing proof of concept. Braid Theory will help these startups come up with their business plan and pitches, and connect them to investors and potential partners in the field. In return, it takes an equity warrant that can be converted after three years.
The startups joining Braid Theory typically span industries like port logistics, aquaculture and energy, all of them aiming to test their technologies and untapped opportunities of the burgeoning industry. The accelerator’s goal is to bring those companies from pre-revenue into commercialization.
And all of them are looking to solve challenges within the blue economy ecosystem, many of which have also been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. With 31% of all goods floating across the ocean to and from the U.S. pass through the Port of L.A. and the Port of Long Beach, COVID-19 strangled supply chains and increased the volume of goods handled at L.A. 's premiere dock by nearly 16% between 2020 and 2021. This created numerous logistical challenges for the dwindling workforce at the nation’s busiest ports while increasing emissions.
“The thing that we're trying to think about are ways in which we can leverage biological systems and software to make more immediate changes in markets that have a low barrier to entry,” Braid Theory co-founder Jim Cooper said of accelerator’s approach to addressing a wide range of climate and logistical issues.
Cooper founded Braid Theory with his colleague Ann Carpenter after the pair left PortTechLA, a maritime and logistics incubator that shuttered in 2016. The two wanted to create an accelerator for port and ocean startups that went beyond logistics and took into account other promising sectors of the ocean economy, including sustainable fish and plant cultivation as well as tools to make the shipping sector more efficient.
Jim Cooper co-founded Braid Theory with his former colleague from PortTechLA, Ann Carpenter.Image courtesy of Braid Theory
Accelerators like Braid Theory are attempting to fill a void in the blue economy ecosystem. Despite being home to several universities with robust maritime research centers and a giant port infrastructure that could be better optimized, few startups survive in Los Angeles due to a lack of early stage funding, according to a 2020 report from the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation. The accelerator provides funds and lab space and investor connections to nascent startups tackling a wide range of ocean-related problems.
The same report found that ocean startups, particularly early-stage ones, have a difficult time getting funding to accommodate the need for expensive lab equipment like centrifuges, chillers and pipettes. Startups in the blue economy space are primarily funded through federal and state dollars, NGOs and philanthropies, and competitions. But while angel funding has historically been slow to trickle into blue economy startups, some are starting to take note of the size of the market. In the first cohort, eight out of 12 startups received federal funding and investor funding with the help of Braid Theory.
The accelerator’s first graduating class included Florida-based Tampa DeepSea Xplorers, which makes seafaring autonomous vehicles that can scrape the bottom of the ocean and collect data faster for researchers to use as they study climate change impact or source for different medicines. Irvine-based ReCreate Energy is another graduate, which sources algae to create a more sustainable bio-crude oil that can be used at gas and oil refineries. While FlashQ, a Canada-based AI platform, is trying to reduce truck congestion and the emissions caused by them at the port by creating a scheduling platform that optimizes waiting and shipment times.
“The key is the opportunity, the opportunity was there,” Mimi Carter, a biotech investor with the Pasadena Angels, said of the business opportunities in the ocean market. “We saw a market that was unaddressed and is still an emerging market.”
A cluster of cranes at the Port of Long Beach.Photo by DJANA 575/ Shutterstock
To Carter’s credit, L.A. County boasts 75 miles of coastline that the LAEDC expects by 2023 will produce more than $80 billion in regional output, make roughly $50 billion in gross county product, and create over 200,000 direct and indirect jobs, according to a 2020 report. And, according to the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, economic and job growth in this sector relies heavily on the creation and implementation of new technologies, making angel investors necessary players in bolstering the ocean economy.
“Not only do we want to be investing in a sustainable product, but someone we count as a first mover,” Carter said of her investment approach. Already, groups like the Pasadena Angels and Techstars L.A. have made investments in the space. Reece Pacheco, a blue economy angel investor, is quietly working on a new venture fund around the blue tech space that hasn’t been announced yet.
“What we're starting to see is there are entrepreneurs who are either coming up through these research firms, or there are entrepreneurs who have cut their teeth elsewhere but care about the ocean,” Pacheco said.
There’s also Braid Theory’s neighbor (and landlord), AltaSea, the nonprofit research hub that has facilitated a number of partnerships with companies across the world.
“We do want to become the leading destination for the blue economy in terms of technology, finance, the education pathways it takes for students to get into these jobs in the future, and then the actual workforce development for the jobs of the future,” said Terry Tamminen, the new CEO of AltaSea.
Braid Theory’s makeshift shipping container-turned-lab is next door to a slew of other startups and projects in the blue economy space. USC researchers are incubating bubbling cauldrons of kelp that could create biofuels and alternative food sources. While Oceanographer Robert Ballard, who found the Titanic wreckage in 1985, set up a sea exploration program a few doors down.
“The ocean is more than a destination for tourists and a place for Jacques Cousteau and David Attenborough to go diving,” Tamminen said. “It's actually something right at our doorstep that we need to protect for our own survival, but it’s also an economic opportunity.”
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