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Inspectiv Raises $8.6M To Build a Better Cybersecurity Platform
Samson Amore
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
What do education startups, maternal care platforms and Minecraft servers have in common? They’re all susceptible to hacking.
Also, businesses in each industry use software created by Manhattan Beach-based Inspectiv, which announced Thursday that it’s raised an $8.6 million Series A round to continue developing its artificial intelligence that detects and wipes out security threats.
The new funds bring the total Inspectiv has raised to $16.6 million since its 2018 launch. Founder and chairman Joseph Melika told dot.LA the company’s recent growth has largely been steered by the pandemic as companies put a higher value on data security.
The heightened need for better security, according to Melika, is due to recent changes in how people work. “Just people, frankly, getting distracted,” he said, has made some businesses more vulnerable to hackers.
“They’re working remotely, their laptops are from home [with] no firewall,” he said, adding that has left a lot of systems potentially exposed to hacks.
Inspectiv’s risk management platform runs autonomously 24/7 and is constantly scanning for threats, Melika said. The software isn’t just run on A.I., it's also combined with a network of security researchers. Melika said part of Inspectiv’s intelligence comes from the input of thousands of researchers.
Once it finds a threat, the software alerts Inspectiv, whose vulnerability spot-checkers verify it and identify it to the client. Then, Inspectiv scans its other clients for the same threat, or similar invasions that could be lurking. There’s also the potential for the software to review backup files, in case a company wants to make sure no older resolved threats spring back to life.
Melika pointed out several current Inspectiv clients using its software are local, including GoGuardian, maternal care company Mahmee and Minehut, a platform for people to host custom “Minecraft” servers.
The funding round was led by StepStone Group, among a suite of existing Inspectiv investors including Westwood-based Fika Ventures, San Francisco’s Freestyle Capital and Santa Monica-based Mucker Capital.
CEO Ryan Disraeli (left) and Founder and Chairman Joseph Melika (right) Courtesy of Inspectiv
Inspectiv also announced a leadership transition this week alongside several new hires – former CEO and co-founder of fraud prevention service Telesign Ryan Disraeli will take the reins as CEO of Inspectiv, while Melika will remain on board as the company’s board chairman.
“Inspectiv is really helping secure the internet, and that was something that personally I could get passionate about,” Disraeli said. “To be able to work with a team of people that we brought in that also has that security background, but also experience scaling up organizations was a pretty exciting opportunity.”
The company also hired Karen Nguyen as chief revenue officer, Ray Espinoza as chief information security officer and Ross Hendrickson to be vice president of engineering. Disraeli said the Inspectiv team is currently 22 people but the company is “adding aggressively to that number” by expanding its product development team.
Disraeli wouldn’t disclose revenues but told dot.LA he’s confident he can grow Inspectiv quickly.
“There's a lot of companies raising money that don't have customers and don't have real growth,” Disraeli said. “This is a company that has real customers that are growing and growing with us.”
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Samson Amore
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la
'There Will be Drastic Changes to Come in Music Creation': Output Raises $46M to Change How Music is Made
04:36 PM | October 22, 2020
- L.A.-based Output, a bootstrapped business founded in 2013 to help musicians overcome writer's block, announced its first ever fundraise, of $45 million from Summit Partners.
- The company serves a range of musicians from hobbyists to professionals, providing them a library of loops and samples that they can then manipulate into unique songs of their own.
- Immediate plans are to nearly double its staff and expand its product platform, with future goals of leading the evolution of digital music production.
Gregg Lehrman was no stranger to music composition. He had worked under world-famous composers such as Hans Zimmer writing music for film and TV and had produced big projects with BMG music publishing. But after setting out on his own, he found himself suffering from writer's block.
So, he said, "I made a piece of software for myself, as a music-maker — with no intention of starting a company."
Lehrman's tool, however, ultimately became a music-tech company called Output. Based in L.A.'s Chinatown district, its mission is to help people start making music.
Seven years after it was created, Output has agreed to its first ever fundraise: a $45 million minority-stake investment from Summit Partners.
"I think there will be drastic changes to come in music creation," Lehrman said, "and we want to be at the forefront of it."
His investors agree.
"We believe Output has the potential to reinvent the digital music production market," said Andrew Collins, managing director at Summit and lead investor on the deal. Collins will now join Output's board.
"The holy grail in digital music-making is to make it super easy for musicians to find content that they like and then make it sound unique to them, and that's exactly what Output does," Collins told dot.LA.
The list of artists and projects that have used Output is impressive: Kanye West, Coldplay, Justin Bieber and Rihanna among them, as well as the soundtracks to "Game of Thrones," "Stranger Things" and "Black Panther."
The company broke $1 million in its first year with no advertising, Lehrman said: "just a viral video and a good product." That first product line – which included digital instruments and effects – was software geared toward professional musicians, who purchase it for an upfront fee.
Courtesy of Output
In 2018, the company added a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product, called Arcade, which became particularly popular among musical hobbyists and digital-music newcomers. For a $10 monthly subscription, users receive access to thousands of loops and samples created by Output, which they can then manipulate and turn into their own unique tracks.
Most customers today use Arcade in conjunction with a digital audio workspace like Logic, Ableton or ProTools. Songwriters, whether professional or amateur, can set their rhythm and key, pull from Output's library of sonic building blocks and mold them like musical clay. Users can also upload and work with their own digital audio files.
Over time, Output has seen both its user base and its revenue streams shift away from the pros – which Lehrman said is a customer base with a natural limit – and toward hobbyists and digital-production newcomers.
Arcade, its SaaS product, has seen a 300% increase in monthly recurring revenue over the past 12 months. In just two years, it's grown to generate about 60% of Output's income.
"In the world of SaaS, it is incredibly rare to see both exceptional growth and capital efficiency." Collins said. "You don't see SaaS software growing this fast, profitably, fully bootstrapped. There's not a lot of those out there."
ARCADE by Output - Walkthroughwww.youtube.com
As the popularity of Arcade has grown, Output's user base has shifted to about one-third professional musicians, one-fourth digital-music newcomers, and the rest hobbyists who are "really into making [digital] music."
Collins also likes the market tailwinds that Output is riding — namely, the democratization of music ideation and distribution. Output enables musicians to create new sounds, while platforms like Spotify and Soundcloud allow anyone to publish their tunes with just a few clicks.
The company's technology stack is a combination of digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms written in C++ and some machine learning. "We're going to see that continue to expand," Lehrman said.
Output also has a line of furniture and hardware products designed to help music-makers build out their home studios. It is currently working with Barefoot Sound – which Lehrman called "the Rolls Royce of speakers" – to manufacture a new speaker line.
With its new cash, Output plans to grow its staff, which currently numbers about 60. "We'll grow to north of 100," Lehrman said.
It will also build out its product offering, adding new tools to Arcade like digital instruments and expanding its mobile capabilities.
Output founder Gregg Lehrman has worked under world-famous composers such as Hans Zimmer writing music for film and TV.Courtesy of Output
"We feel strongly we can build a unified ecosystem that once you're in, you're familiar with everything," Lehrman said. "You don't have to learn 100 different applications; it can do 100 different things but you won't feel lost."
Collins pointed to several competitors, including Splice, LANDR, iZotope and Native Instruments, but noted that "nobody else has integrated a very robust curated library of content – sounds, loops, well-organized beats – that musicians can pull from and pull into a workflow engine (the software) and manipulate those sounds to create something that is completely unique."
Lehrman and Collins separately emphasized the Output team's passion for music. 50 of the 60 employees today make music on a daily basis, Lehrman said.
Summit primarily focuses on founder-led bootstrapped companies, which it provides with on-demand services like marketing and engineering.
"Management sets the agenda," Collins said.
For Lehrman, that'll be to further leverage technology: not to create music itself, but to help people create, just like it helped him overcome his own writer's block those years ago.
"From the first product to the last product," he said, "it's been about helping people be creative."
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Sam Blake
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
https://twitter.com/hisamblake
samblake@dot.la
Here's How To Get a Digital License Plate In California
03:49 PM | October 14, 2022
Photo by Clayton Cardinalli on Unsplash
Thanks to a new bill passed on October 5, California drivers now have the choice to chuck their traditional metal license plates and replace them with digital ones.
The plates are referred to as “Rplate” and were developed by Sacramento-based Reviver. A news release on Reviver’s website that accompanied the bill’s passage states that there are “two device options enabling vehicle owners to connect their vehicle with a suite of services including in-app registration renewal, visual personalization, vehicle location services and security features such as easily reporting a vehicle as stolen.”
Reviver Auto Current and Future CapabilitiesFrom Youtube
There are wired (connected to and powered by a vehicle’s electrical system) and battery-powered options, and drivers can choose to pay for their plates monthly or annually. Four-year agreements for battery-powered plates begin at $19.95 a month or $215.40 yearly. Commercial vehicles will pay $275.40 each year for wired plates. A two-year agreement for wired plates costs $24.95 per month. Drivers can choose to install their plates, but on its website, Reviver offers professional installation for $150.
A pilot digital plate program was launched in 2018, and according to the Los Angeles Times, there were 175,000 participants. The new bill ensures all 27 million California drivers can elect to get a digital plate of their own.
California is the third state after Arizona and Michigan to offer digital plates to all drivers, while Texas currently only provides the digital option for commercial vehicles. In July 2022, Deseret News reported that Colorado might also offer the option. They have several advantages over the classic metal plates as well—as the L.A. Times notes, digital plates will streamline registration renewals and reduce time spent at the DMV. They also have light and dark modes, according to Reviver’s website. Thanks to an accompanying app, they act as additional vehicle security, alerting drivers to unexpected vehicle movements and providing a method to report stolen vehicles.
As part of the new digital plate program, Reviver touts its products’ connectivity, stating that in addition to Bluetooth capabilities, digital plates have “national 5G network connectivity and stability.” But don’t worry—the same plates purportedly protect owner privacy with cloud support and encrypted software updates.
5 Reasons to avoid the digital license plate | Ride TechFrom Youtube
After the Rplate pilot program was announced four years ago, some raised questions about just how good an idea digital plates might be. Reviver and others who support switching to digital emphasize personalization, efficient DMV operations and connectivity. However, a 2018 post published by Sophos’s Naked Security blog pointed out that “the plates could be as susceptible to hacking as other wireless and IoT technologies,” noting that everyday “objects – things like kettles, TVs, and baby monitors – are getting connected to the internet with elementary security flaws still in place.”
To that end, a May 2018 syndicated New York Times news service article about digital plates quoted the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which warned that such a device could be a “‘honeypot of data,’ recording the drivers’ trips to the grocery store, or to a protest, or to an abortion clinic.”
For now, Rplates are another option in addition to old-fashioned metal, and many are likely to opt out due to cost alone. If you decide to go the digital route, however, it helps if you know what you could be getting yourself into.
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Steve Huff
Steve Huff is an Editor and Reporter at dot.LA. Steve was previously managing editor for The Metaverse Post and before that deputy digital editor for Maxim magazine. He has written for Inside Hook, Observer and New York Mag. Steve is the author of two official tie-ins books for AMC’s hit “Breaking Bad” prequel, “Better Call Saul.” He’s also a classically-trained tenor and has performed with opera companies and orchestras all over the Eastern U.S. He lives in the greater Boston metro area with his wife, educator Dr. Dana Huff.
steve@dot.la
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