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XKnowledge Creator Platform Kajabi Raids TikTok for New President
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
- The Irvine-based startup has lured TikTok’s head of product, Sean Kim, as it looks to grow its content platform for “knowledge economy” entrepreneurs.
Kajabi, a platform for “knowledge economy” entrepreneurs and content creators, has looked to the most influential influencer platform of all for a new leader.
Irvine-based Kajabi has hired former TikTok executive Sean Kim as its president and chief product officer, the company announced Wednesday. Kim served as head of product at Tiktok as the Culver City-based social media giant became the most visited website on the internet, with over 1 billion monthly active users. He now joins Kajabi, which raised $550 million last year to grow a content platform that allows entrepreneurs, coaches and influencers to build online courses, newsletters and membership websites.
“For me, it was like jumping off one rocket ship onto another,” Kim, who started in his new role on Monday, told dot.LA.
Kim joined TikTok in September 2019 and helped launch initiatives like its Creator Fund and features like Stitch, which allows users to attach part of someone else’s video to their own. More recently, he oversaw the development of TikTok’s new smart TV app. Prior to joining TikTok, Kim was the global head of product at Amazon Prime.
While he described TikTok as an “incredible” company, Kim called Kajabi an “amazing opportunity” to build new products and scale the business globally. He’s the second TikTok executive to depart the company in recent weeks, after it reportedly ousted marketing chief Nick Tran. The timing is coincidental, Kim said.
“Sometimes in life you're presented with an amazing opportunity, and the timing is just right,” he said.
Founded in 2010, Kajabi sells a subscription software service for people who want to monetize their expertise—offering tools to publish, market and sell digital products like newsletters and podcasts. The company, which charges users a monthly fee, says it has helped its customers generate $3 billion in sales from more than 60 million people globally. Creators on the platform have instructed on topics ranging from how to sleep-train babies to how to forage for mushrooms.
“You can think of it as a build-your-own, personalized MasterClass,” Kim said, referring to the online education subscription platform.
In a statement, Kajabi CEO Ahad Khan noted that Kim joins during a period of “rapid expansion [for] both our business and the knowledge economy.” The firm said it “significantly expanded” its customer base in 2021 and reached its highest-ever annual recurring revenue, while still remaining profitable. Kajabi declined to share its revenue or employment figures, but said its number of monthly transactions and average order values are growing. Its employee headcount is 2.5-times higher than in January 2020, according to a company spokesperson.
Investment giant Tiger Global led Kajabi’s $550 million funding round last May, which valued the company at more than $2 billion. Kajabi had previously secured an undisclosed minority investment from growth equity firm Spectrum Equity Partners in 2019—the first outside capital raised by the company since its inception.
Kim declined to share details on what he’ll be working on at Kajabi, but said the company is focused on building “some really great tools for knowledge creators.”
“They're leading the knowledge economy space,” Kim said of his new firm. “However, I saw that there's a huge opportunity for us to continually grow in the U.S. as well as globally, and this business model can ultimately apply to many types of creators.”
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
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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.
Snapchat’s Attempt to Protect Young Users From Third-Party Apps Falls Short
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.
Some Snap Kit platform developers have skirted guidelines meant to make the app safer for children.
A new report from TechCrunch released Tuesday found that some third-party apps that connect to users’ Snap accounts have not been updated according to new guidelines announced in March. The restrictions, which target anonymous messaging and friend-finding apps, are meant to increase child safety. However, the investigation found a number of apps either ignore the new regulations or falsely claim to be integrated with Snapchat.
The Santa Monica-based social media company announced the changes after facing two separate lawsuits related to teen suicide allegedly caused by the app. Over 1,500 developers integrate Snap features like the camera and Bitmojis. Snap originally claimed the update would not affect many apps.
Developers had 30 days to revise their software, but the investigation found that some apps, such as the anonymous Q&A app Sendit, were granted an extension. Others blatantly avoided the changes—the anonymous messaging app HMU, which is now meant for adult users, is still available to users "9+" in the App Store. Certain apps that have been banned from Snap, like Intext, still advertise Snapchat integration.
“First and foremost, we put the privacy and safety of our community first and expect the products built by our developer community to adhere to that standard in addition to bringing fun and positive experiences to people,” Director of Platform Partnerships Alston Cheek told TechCrunch.
The news is a blow to Snap’s recent efforts to cast itself as a responsible social media platform The company recently announced Colleen DeCourcy would take over as the company’s new chief creative officer and CEO Evan Spiegel to recently made a a generous personal donation to graduates of Otis College of Art and Design. The social media company currently faces a lawsuit from a teenager who claims it has not done enough to protect minors from sexual exploitation. In April, 44 attorney generals sent a letter to Snap and TikTok urging the companies to strengthen parental controls.
Lawmakers are considering new policies that would hold social media companies accountable for the content on their platforms. One such bill would require social media companies to share data with independent researchers.
Snapchat recently rolled out augmented reality shopping features and influencer-led original content to grow its younger base of users.
Snap Inc., Snapchat's parent company, is an investor in dot.LA.
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.