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On the heels of a record-setting year for Southern California’s startup environment, we asked more than 30 leading Los Angeles-based investors for their take on the city’s top venture capitalists. (Specifically, we prompted: “Which L.A.-based VCs impress you the most?”) They responded with the names of 45 peers that they admire—14 of whom made the following list by receiving two or more votes.
The results offer an insider’s view of the L.A.’s startup scene in 2022—which, even as it rapidly expands, remains an insular world led by a handful of key dealmakers, like the venture capital industry at large. This year, TenOneTen partner Minnie Ingersoll and Bonfire Ventures managing director Mark Mullen tied for the top spot, with five votes apiece; they were followed by Wonder Ventures managing partner Dustin Rosen, who received four votes. Behind them, five VCs tied for third place with three votes each, while another six investors round up the list with two votes apiece.
Like last year’s list (which also featured Bonfire’s Mullen in the top spot), the below results are sorted by the number of votes each VC received; where there were ties, we list the investors alphabetically by their last names. As always, we asked survey participants not to vote for any of their colleagues—and vetted the list to ensure they stuck to that rule.
Without further ado ado, here are LA’s top VCs of 2022, as judged by their peers.
Minnie Ingersoll, TenOneTen Ventures
Minnie Ingersoll is a partner at early-stage venture firm TenOneTen, whose recent investments include crypto travel rewards startup FlyCoin. Prior to TenOneTen, she co-founded Shift Technologies, an online marketplace for buying and selling used cars. Ingersoll also spent more than a decade at Google, where she focused on the tech giant’s fiber optic, advertising and charitable efforts. (She also hosts dot.LA’s LA Venture podcast.)
Mark Mullen, Bonfire Ventures
Mark Mullen is co-founder and managing director of Bonfire Ventures, an early-stage venture firm that backs business-to-business (B2B) software startups. (Recent investments include cloud communications startup Telgorithm.) Mullen previously managed venture funds Double M Partners and Mull Capital. In January, an SEC filing revealed that Bonfire aimed to raise $165 million for its third fund. (Disclosure: Mullen is an investor in dot.LA.)
Dustin Rosen, Wonder Ventures
Dustin Rosen is the founder and managing partner of Wonder Ventures, an early stage investor in companies including L.A.-based unicorns Whatnot and Bird. Earlier in his career, Rosen founded the fashion app Pose and was a senior associate at the Mail Room Fund. Last month, Wonder launched a $31 million fund focused exclusively on early-stage L.A. startups.
Jim Andelman, Bonfire Ventures
Alongside Mark Mullen, Jim Andelman is a co-founder and managing director at Bonfire Ventures, an early-stage venture firm focused on B2B software startups. Previously, he oversaw software deals for Bay Area investment firm Broadview Capital Partners.
Anna Barber, M13
Anna Barber is a partner at M13, a venture firm focused on early-stage consumer tech companies. (Recent investments include NFT startup Unblocked.) Barber is also an advisor to the USC Marshall Venture Fund. She previously led Techstars LA as its managing director and co-founded Scribble Press, a New York-based book publishing startup. (Disclosure: M13 is an investor in dot.LA.)
Eva Ho, Fika Ventures
Eva Ho is a general partner at Fika Ventures, a seed-stage firm that focuses on sectors including AI, automation and big data. Ho formerly worked at Google and served as entrepreneur-in-residence for the city of Los Angeles.
Jeff Morris, Chapter One
Jeff Morris is the founder and managing partner of Chapter One, a venture firm targeting early-stage web3 startups. The former Tinder executive’s previous investments include Dapper Labs, Lyft, Cameo and PearPop.
Dana Settle, Greycroft
Dana Settle is a co-founder and managing partner at Greycroft, which has backed consumer-focused startups including Acorns, Goop and Bumble. The Lehman Brothers alum helped Greycroft close two funds worth nearly $700 million combined in late 2020. (Disclosure: Greycroft is an investor in dot.LA.)
Josh Diamond, Walkabout Ventures
Josh Diamond is a general partner at Walkabout Ventures, a seed-stage venture firm that primarily targets fintech startups. Diamond previously served as a principal investor at Clocktower Technology Ventures.
Buck Jordan, Wavemaker Labs
Buck Jordan is the founder and CEO of Wavemaker Labs, which funds and incubates startups in partnership with larger corporations. Wavemaker has especially targeted the food industry supply chain space—backing automated technologies at both the agricultural and food preparation stages that deploy AI and robotics.
Kara Nortman, Upfront Ventures
Kara Nortman is a managing partner at Upfront Ventures. An alum of IAC, Battery Ventures and Microsoft, Nortman previously co-founded children’s ecommerce startup Moonfrye and also helped launch women’s professional soccer club Angel City FC. Upfront raised $177 million for a new fund in January; local portfolio companies include GOAT, Creator Now and Endgame. (Disclosure: Upfront Ventures is an investor in dot.LA.)
Spencer Rascoff, 75 & Sunny
Spencer Rascoff is a co-founder and general partner at 75 & Sunny, a venture firm and startup incubator. Focused on sectors including proptech and ecommerce, Rascoff previously co-founded Zillow, Hotwire.com and real estate platform Pacaso (Disclosure: Rascoff is the co-founder and executive chairman of dot.LA.)
Adriana Saman, Clocktower Technology Ventures
Adriana Saman is a principal at Clocktower Technology Ventures, a venture firm investing in early-stage fintech startups across the U.S., Europe and Latin America. Saman was previously an analyst at JPMorgan Chase.
Sara Zayani, Global Founders Capital
Sarra Zayani is a partner at Global Founders Capital. The Greycroft alum has led Global Founders’ investments in local startups including Cann, Universal Hydrogen and Pacaso.
NASA’s footprint in California is growing as the agency prepares for Congress to approve its proposed 2024 budget.
The overall NASA budget swelled 6% from the prior year, JPL deputy director Larry James told dot.LA. He added he sees that as a continuation of the last two presidential administrations’ focus on modernizing and bolstering the nation’s space program.
The money goes largely to existing NASA centers in California, including the Pasadena-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory run with Caltech, Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base.
California remains a hotspot for NASA space activity and investment. In 2021, the agency estimated its economic output impact on the region to be around $15.2 billion. That was far more than its closest competing states, including Texas ($9.3 billion) and Maryland (roughly $8 billion). That same year, NASA reported it employed over 66,000 people in California.
“In general, Congress has been very supportive” of the JPL and NASA’s missions, James said. “It’s generally bipartisan [and] supported by both sides of the aisle. In the last few years in general NASA has been able to have increased budgets.”
There are 41 current missions run by JPL and CalTech, and another 16 scheduled for the future. James added the new budget is “an incredible support for all the missions we want to do.”
The public-private partnership between NASA and local space companies continues to evolve, and the increased budget could be a boon for LA-based developers. Numerous contractors for NASA (including CalTech, which runs the JPL), Boeing, Lockheed Martin, SpaceX and Northrop Grumman all stand to gain new contracts once the budget is finalized, partly because NASA simply needs the private industry’s help to achieve all its goals.
James said that there was only one JPL mission that wasn’t funded – a mission to send an orbital satellite to survey the surface and interior of Venus, called VERITAS.
NASA Employment and Output ImpactEvan Xie
Much of the money earmarked in the proposed 2024 budget is for crewed missions. Overall, NASA’s asking for $8 billion from Congress to fund lunar exploration missions. As part of this, the majority is earmarked for the upcoming Artemis mission, which aims to land a woman and person of color on the Moon’s south pole.
While there’s a number of high-profile missions the JPL is working on that are focused on Mars, including Mars Sample Return project (which received $949 million in this proposed budget) and Ingenuity helicopter and Perseverance rover, JPL also received significant funding to study the Earth’s climate and behavior.
JPL also got funding for several projects to map our universe. One is the SphereX Near Earth Objects surveyor mission, the goal of which is to use telescopes to “map the entire universe,” James said, adding that the mission was fully funded.
NASA’s also asking for more money to maintain the International Space Station (ISS), which houses a number of projects dedicated to better understanding the Earth’s climate and behavior.
The agency requested roughly $1.3 billion to maintain the ISS. It also is increasing its investment in space flight support, in-space transportation and commercial development of low-earth orbit (LEO). “The ISS is an incredible platform for us,” James said.
James added there are multiple missions outside or on board the ISS now taking data, including EMIT, which launched in July 2022. The EMIT mission studies arid dust sources on the planet using spectroscopy. It uses that data to remodel how mineral dust movement in North and South America might affect the Earth’s temperature changes.
Another ISS mission JPL launched is called ECOSTRESS. The mission sent a thermal radiometer onto the space station in June 2018 to monitor how plants lose water through their leaves, with the goal of figuring out how the terrestrial biosphere reacts to changes in water availability. James said the plan is to “tell you the kind of foliage health around the globe” from space.
One other ISS project is called Cold Atom Lab. It is “an incredible fundamental physics machine,” James said, that’s run by “three Nobel Prize winners as principal investigators on the Space Station.” Cold Atom Lab is a physics experiment geared toward figuring out how quantum phenomena behave in space by cooling atoms with lasers to just below absolute zero degrees.
In the long term, James was optimistic NASA’s imaging projects could lead to more dramatic discoveries. Surveying the makeup of planets’ atmospheres is a project “in the astrophysics domain we’re very excited about,” James said. He added that this imaging could lead to information about life on other planets, or, at the very least, an understanding of why they’re no longer habitable.
