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Meet the Startups Joining the Long Beach Accelerator's New Cohort
Deirdre Newman
Deirdre Newman is an Orange County-based journalist, editor and author and the founder of Inter-TECH-ion, an independent media site that reports on tech at the intersection of diversity and social justice.
Long Beach has a long history of innovation. It’s one of the densest aerospace hubs on the West Coast. There’s a vital port there, and the city is home to several tech industries—including health care, space tech and cybersecurity. That, along with its colleges and universities, have made Long Beach an enticing destination for entrepreneurs.
It’s within this environment that the Long Beach Accelerator sprouted in 2019 and has grown since. To date, the accelerator has cycled 20 companies through its four-month program, helping them raise a total of over $12 million.
On July 5, the program will welcome its fourth cohort of startups from around the world, participating in a hybrid combo of virtual and in-person sessions. Each cohort includes between five to 10 companies.
Long Beach, along with Cal State University, Long Beach’s Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and capital provider Sunstone Management, are all partners in this public-private model of startup investment. The accelerator itself operates as a nonprofit.
Long Beach Accelerator Managing Director Andrea White-Kjoss
The city provides help with some funding, covering the costs for some low- to moderate income Long Beach-based founders whose companies are accepted into the accelerator.
The organization's partnership with CSULB enables it to help founders move from idea stage to execution at the institute, and then advance to business growth via the accelerator.
Sunstone Management, a private capital management and investment firm, provides funding for the incoming cohorts. The firm's venture capital fund typically invests $100,000 in the startups as soon as they join the accelerator and takes a 6% equity stake in return.
Sunstone had also been providing some follow-on funding on a case-by-case basis. It upped the ante earlier this year by promising an additional $500,000 to current cohort and alumni.
“It's a model that brings enormous resources to the table for our portfolio companies, as well as for economic development, acting as a growth engine for the region,” managing director Andrea White-Kjoss told dot.LA.
A serial entrepreneur who has served as CFO at several companies, White-Kjoss came aboard as the founding managing director in July 2020. Before that, she co-founded seed-stage funding platform ExtraVallis, based in Rancho Santa Fe, and founded Mobis Transportation, which was the product of a public-private partnership with the city of Long Beach.
She also happens to be a 17-year resident of the city.
“So I know intimately how attractive this city is to tech entrepreneurs, from the high-tech industries, to the culture and lifestyle, to the world-class workforce and institutions,” she said. “When you bring all of that together...the opportunity to build a tech accelerator, and more than that really, a tech ecosystem here in Long Beach, was natural and irresistible.”
The accelerator was originally intended to be in-person, but quickly had to pivot to remote sessions during the pandemic. It remains virtual, for the most part, “which has turned out to be a huge source of strength,” White-Kjoss said.
That’s because the founders come from all over the world. There’s no geographic restrictions on who’s accepted and no need to burden founders with moving to Long Beach to participate.
White-Kjoss said the move has fostered diversity, and enabled the accelerator to draw on an international network of mentors, instructors, advisors and investors.
They—along with the accelerator’s staff of three facilitators — get to know the companies and their founders “deeply” and provide individualized assistance, including building strategic partnerships with potential customers and/or marketing partners.
There is still an in-person aspect to the accelerator. All cohort founders fly into Long Beach for about two weeks during the program. While there, they attend in-person workshops and networking events. They also participate in a Demo Day, with investors present. This helps the companies get additional seed funding for continued growth once they graduate.
So far, five graduating startups have received acquisition offers—but none have taken them.
White-Kjoss said that’s because those founders “felt they had much further to take their companies, at least in some degree, due to the empowerment of the tools, resources and networks provided by the accelerator.”
Bump's Success
One success is Los Angeles-based Bump. Since graduating from the Long Beach Accelerator, Bump has raised more than $5 million, co-founder and CEO James Jones told dot.LA.
It’s currently participating in another accelerator, Snap’s in-house Yellow Accelerator, which is now a co-lead investor in Bump, along with Sunstone.
The company is working on an AI-fueled fintech platform for the creator economy, which hasn’t yet launched. It would help creators track revenue from multiple sources, monitor expenses, access credit and manage their crypto and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The company has started a waitlist, for access to its credit and financial management tools. Once the services are available users would pay about $400 per year.
The company also plans to integrate micro-advances into its platform, designed to enable creators to stay in full control of their finances and keep 100% of the rights to their work.
Jones said that participating in the Long Beach Accelerator’s very first cohort was a “great springboard” for the company.
Specifically, sessions on customer personas and discovering addressable markets, as well as mentor meetings were “invaluable,” he added.
Meet the Startups In the Long Beach Accelerator's Latest Cohort:
Apsy: Creating the first true fully AI platform to build affordable elegant custom apps.
Crumbraise, Inc.: Fundraising made easy for creators, clubs & causes.
Educational Vision Technologies, Inc.: Automated video editing and content curation using A.I. to make online learning accessible, efficient and engaging.
Gift Pass App Inc.: Streamlining experiences around digital gifting & payments.
The Girls Co LLC: We are a women's health company that is currently focused on a solution to alleviate period cramp pain.
Intellitech Spa Inc.: Intellitech is a realtime telematics, predictive maintenance and driver behavior monitoring platform.
Kwema: Kwema provides an easy to scale Smart Badge Reel Duress Service that reduces incident response time without escalating the situation.
Pathloom, Inc.: Outdoor trip planning made easy!
Rotender: The world's fastest and most reliable bar.
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Deirdre Newman
Deirdre Newman is an Orange County-based journalist, editor and author and the founder of Inter-TECH-ion, an independent media site that reports on tech at the intersection of diversity and social justice.
Shahid VIP Streaming Service Gets Set to Launch in North America, with a Focus on LA
07:08 AM | November 13, 2020
Shahid VIP launched in the Middle East and North Africa in January 2020. The timing couldn't have been better. With so many people stuck at home during the pandemic, the Arabic streaming service racked up 1.4 million subscribers, making it serious competition for Netflix in the region. Now, it's eyeing the U.S. and Canadian market with its six million or so Arabic speakers.
Los Angeles, home to Tinseltown and where Netflix has a massive footprint, will be the epicenter for that effort, which began in November.
Owned by one of the Middle East and North Africa's largest broadcasters, Dubai-based media conglomerate MBC, the streaming service will carry live channels, regional versions of shows like "Arab Idol" and "The Voice," sports programming, movies and television series. It costs $8.99 per month or $79.99 per year and will be free for the first 30 days to U.S. subscribers who sign up in November.
Sadek Sabbah, chairman of Sabbah Brothers group, a media company started by his grandfather in the 1950s, will be one of the creators filling Shahid VIP's pipes. The service has an exclusive deal with Sabbah's production company, Cedars Art Production, which will include new seasons of two of MBC's most popular shows, "Al Hayba" and "Aswad Fateh"; past seasons of the former are already available on Netflix. Cedars shoots primarily out of Lebanon, Morocco and Egypt and has garnered awards from Cannes, Toronto and Venice film festivals.
In addition to serving the Arab diaspora, Sabbah hopes to reach non-Arabic speakers, particularly young adults, by sharing stories that have a ring of familiarity. He cites Aladdin, Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra and Ali Baba shouting "Open Sesame!" as examples of well-known storylines and themes rooted in the rich heritage of the region, which he hopes will be a complement to exposing viewers to the varied and exotic sceneries and communities of the Middle East.
As a niche service, it will have tough competition.
dot.LA: Tell me about what working with Shahid VIP does for you as a producer.
Shahid VIP platform has liberated us from the constraints of linear TV and catering to the taste of the majority. We now have the ability to unleash our aspirations by producing cutting-edge series and films that tell universal stories with a twist of exotic.
We'll also bring new ideas to better attract certain audiences, especially young adults in the U.S. and Canada. We have the opportunity to tell good, important stories that may be exotic for them but at the same time, especially for Arabs, stories that will remind them of their roots.
Sabbah Brothers chairman Sadek Sabbah will be producing several shows for Shahid VIP.
How does streaming on an international platform affect the types of messages your stories can carry?
With Shahid, we are in a better position to tell controversial stories. Our hands aren't tied anymore, and we are working hard on stories that will resonate in Arab countries, Arabs in the U.S. and Canada, as well as stories that might be of interest outside the Arab diaspora in the U.S. and Canada. We've already had several success stories of popular shows that were dubbed into Spanish and Portuguese. This is because we're telling stories that have a universal scope but with the taste of the Arabic countries where we are shooting. And now we are free; we have no border lines.
Can you give me an example of a new type of story you're now able to tell?
One of the ideas that came up a few weeks ago is talking about Jews that came from Arab countries.
Older families from our area remember how they were living door by door with the Jewish community – in Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq – and it's important to tell those stories because they are the stories of where those Jews who are now in the U.S. and Canada came from.
How did Arabic television limit the stories you could tell?
Linear television, in addition to being made for all the family, is mostly governmental, and the government likes to be on the safe side, always. So we always have to be careful. We've come up with many stories that we couldn't do for many reasons: religious reasons, political reasons; We had to be careful.
With Shahid, we can present any type of series, and any type of dimension. For example, in the Arab world we have Ramadan, a holy month that is also very important for viewership because everyone is at home, fasting, and most of them are watching television from the early morning on. Because it's 30 days, for many years we had to do 30 episodes – even if the story could be done in 20 episodes, we had to stretch it out to make it 30.
2021 and the years to come – but especially 2021 – will be a real test for us because we're putting all our efforts as a group to make great productions. We know that we have a responsibility, especially as a group with so much time in this business.
Do you see that as a responsibility to pave a path for other Arab storytellers and creators to follow your footsteps into these broader storylines and wider audiences?
One hundred percent. We have a fairly big industry in the Arab world, and we work with many countries in the region. We see ourselves leading this industry in this new direction. I'm sure many of our friends in the media sector are preparing as well, and some are already leading with us, or they will soon.
What do you hope to achieve with success on Shahid VIP?
My hope is to bring the world near each other – to bring the people of the world together and to know more about their stories. It's very important to know a little bit about other people's lives. Also, we hope we can contribute to a U.S. co-production soon. If we can really prove ourselves on Shahid VIP, this will open our possibilities to work on a bigger scale. And I hope that we will end up making the media sector in the Arab world bigger. This is the beginning. We are really on the first word of the first sentence on the first page.
---
Sam Blake primarily covers media and entertainment for dot.LA. Find him on Twitter @hisamblake and email him at samblake@dot.LA
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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
A Breakdown of the Data Snapchat Collects on Users
09:46 AM | November 14, 2022
Sebastian Miño-Bucheli
Santa Monica-based app developer Snap calls itself a camera company, but it’s really in the business of social media – and more specifically, advertising.
What Data Does Snapchat Collect?
Snapchat, their primary application, collects a myriad of data on its roughly 363 million daily active users, from basics like device information to detailed location tracking. "From day one, we’ve embraced data minimization, and believed that the best way to protect user privacy is to not store data at all, and if we do have to store it, to do so for a short and fixed period of time," Snap spokesman Pete Boogaard told dot.LA.
As such, like most tech companies’ privacy policies and terms of service, the verbiage is intentionally vague or full of legalese designed to make the user gloss over and click “agree.” But Snapchat does have to provide its users some details of how it collects, stores, and uses the data it gains from interacting with the app.
Bill Budington, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told dot.LA that the common phrase, “necessary to provide service,” is particularly concerning.
“These are very vague ways to basically give a green light to very permissive practices in terms of your data,” Budington explained. He pointed out the ambiguous nature of the word “necessary,” adding, “[tech companies] can deem all sorts of things necessary, [including] using your location at every moment to better tailor their services to your life.”
While Snapchat’s terms of service haven’t changed since last November, the company most recently updated its privacy policy on July 29. Let’s dive into the various types of data Snapchat collects, how it stores it (and for how long), and perhaps most importantly, how Snapchat says it’s used.
Why Does Snapchat Collect Your Location Data?
Snapchat is very invested in collecting users’ precise location data, if users allow it. Its Snap Maps feature launched in 2017 lets users opt-in to showing their Bitmoji avatar on a map corresponding to their location and also allows them to track other friends who have opted in. It’s not dissimilar to Apple’s FindMy app.
In the past, the feature has raised concerns for its ability to make it easier for bullies and stalkers to find targets. Snap Map location, however, isn’t public information. Snapchat says location on Snap Maps will disappear after 24 hours, or when a user deliberately goes into “ghost mode” to hide from friends – but that doesn’t mean the app still isn’t tracking their movements. The company noted that unless you opt-in to live location sharing, the Snap Map won’t update with your location when you’re not actively using it.
Boogaard told dot.LA that while many of Snapchat’s core features do require location tracking, “location-sharing is off by default for all users” and “Snapchatters have complete control over their location sharing.” Snapchat added that there is no option to share your location with any user you aren’t friends with and that users have to individually select friends to share their location with.
Snapchat clarified that it does use location data to provide its Geofilters – custom photo and video filters often themed around specific places or events – and show people what’s nearby (also useful for ad purposes).
“We don’t share personal data about the users of the Snapchat app with data analytics providers,” Boogaard said.
Snapchat employees can also allegedly access all this information, and more – in 2019 Motherboard reported on a tool called SnapLion that it claimed was abused by employees to “spy on users.” In response to the report, Boogaard told dot.LA, “Any perception that employees might be spying on our community is highly troubling, and wholly inaccurate." Boogaard added, "Protecting privacy is paramount at Snap. We keep very little user data, and we have robust policies and controls to limit internal access to the data we do have, including data within tools designed to support law enforcement. Unauthorized access of any kind is a clear violation of the company's standards of business conduct and, if detected, results in immediate termination."
How Does Snapchat Use Your Content?
Snapchat can see the snaps you send, who is receiving them, and how often you’re online, as well as the metadata in each image.
Snapchat’s Streak feature (which tracks how long you and friends have regularly been sending and opening each other’s content) is one reason why the app also collects data on how often you and your friends open messages or capture screenshots.
It also tracks and scans the content users upload to its Memories feature. This is to train its AI to recognize the content of user images. In its privacy policy Snapchat notes that “if there’s a dog in your photo, it may be searchable in Memories by the term ‘dog,’” as part of its goal to make image search more accessible.
Snap’s policy also dictates that any public content a user generates on Snapchat is also fair game for the company to share though it doesn’t say how it will share this content.
What Data Does Snapchat Collect From Accessing Your Camera?
Besides the typical use for taking pictures, Snapchat can also access information from Apple’s TrueDepth camera – the front-facing, high-powered cameras that Apple’s iPhone X uses to record Face ID and Memoji data.
Snapchat says it uses this data “to improve the quality of Lenses”—its filter and augmented reality feature. But it also said it doesn’t collect biometric information, much less store the data on its servers or give it to any third parties.
Still, that’s a practice that’s come under scrutiny recently. In August, Snap was sued, accused of violating Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act by collecting and storing users’ biometric data without their consent. That $35 million case is expected to head to settlement next week, after a judge couldn’t rule in favor of either party. "Snap continues to vehemently deny that Lenses violate BIPA, which was designed to require notice and consent before collecting biometric information used to identify people," Boogaard told dot.LA.
How Does Snapchat Use Your Data?
Now that we know all the information Snapchat collects, what is the company doing with it?
The main use case is advertising. Snapchat has a myriad of advertisers on its platform and they are all eager to turn users into sales by showing them the most relevant ads. Ad pricing starts at a modest $5 per day, so theoretically anyone with a marketing budget and the right connections could use Snap’s tools to market to its growing audience of Gen Z and Millennials.
Snapchat promises advertisers “advanced targeting capabilities,” and the benefit of finding a target audience using its location, demographics, interest and device data.
But who’s getting this information? That’s where things get vague. Snapchat doesn’t have to tell users specifically which companies are getting access to their data. The company notes it may share information with service providers that it contracts for services like ad analytics or payments. The company also says it might share user information with “business partners that provide services and functionality” for Snapchat, but again, doesn’t elaborate any further.
Snapchat also says it will share information about users if it could help “detect and resolve any fraud or security concerns, comply with any investigations, legal processes or regulations and to investigate potential terms of service violations.”
Snapchat doesn’t have to tell users when it turns over this data, though. In fact, most apps don’t.
How Does Snapchat Store Your Data?
Snap’s Support site notes Snapchat servers are designed to delete all Snaps automatically after they’ve been viewed by every recipient; the app’s trademark fleeting quality. The servers will delete unopened Snaps between two people after 31 days, and unopened Snaps sent to a group chat after 7 days. Snaps sent to your story are wiped from the servers 24 hours after posting.
Snapchat also says that when you delete a Snap in chat, it deletes it from its servers and will “make our best attempt” to wipe it from your friends’ devices.
If you post a Snap to Memories, though, Snapchat’s servers will back them up forever – unless you delete them, in which case they’ll be erased ASAP.
So what’s the safest way to protect your personal information on Snapchat? Well, Budington recommends an easy fix: simply don’t use it. But for people who are determined to keep their account but want to access what Snapchat collects, there are ways to download your Snapchat data.
You can also opt-out of audience and activity-based ads and third-party ad networks. This will mean the ads on your Snapchat will be less relevant, but the trade-off is that the app will use less of your personal data for marketing purposes.Snap is an investor in dot.LA.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Snap Map's location tracking feature. The feature needs to be enabled first, and Snapchat offers the ability to turn off the feature in Map settings.
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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.
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