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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.
LA’s Upgrade in Travel and NBA Viewing
08:41 AM | July 26, 2024
Image Source: Los Angeles World Airports
🔦 Spotlight
Exciting developments are underway for Los Angeles as the city prepares for major upgrades in both travel and entertainment. The Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners has approved an additional $400 million for the Automated People Mover (APM) at LAX, increasing its total budget to $3.34 billion. This boost ensures the elevated train’s completion by December 8, 2025, with service starting in January 2026. For Angelenos, this means a significant improvement in travel convenience. The APM will streamline connections between parking, rental car facilities, and the new Metro transit station, drastically cutting traffic congestion around the airport. Imagine a future without the dreaded 30-minute traffic delays at LAX! The APM will operate 24/7, reducing airport traffic by 42 million vehicle miles annually and carrying 30 million passengers each year, while also creating thousands of local jobs and supporting small businesses.
Meanwhile, the NBA is also making waves with its new broadcasting deals. The league has signed multi-year agreements with ESPN, NBC, and Amazon Prime Video, marking a notable shift in media partnerships. ESPN will maintain its long-standing role, NBC returns as a network broadcaster after years away, and Amazon Prime Video will provide NBA games through its streaming platform. Starting with the 2025-2026 season, these deals will enhance the league's reach and revenue, aligning with the NBA's goal to expand its audience and adapt to evolving viewing habits. Whether you're catching the action on TV or streaming online, these changes promise to elevate the fan experience and bring more basketball excitement to Los Angeles.
🤝 Venture Deals
LA Companies
- Pearl, a startup that makes AI-powered software that assists dentists in identifying cavities, gum disease, and other dental conditions, raised a $58M Series B funding led by Left Lane Capital with Smash Capital, and others also participating. - learn more
LA Venture Funds
- Fulcrum Venture Group participated in a prior $3.5M Pre-Seed Round for Code Metal, a developer tools startup. - learn more
- B Capital co-led a $12.5M Seed Round for Star Catcher, a startup that aims to develop a space-based grid that captures solar energy in space and distributes it to satellites and other space assets. - learn more
- Mantis VC and Amplify participated in a $140M Series C for Chainguard, an open source security startup. - learn more
- Prominent LA venture capitalist, Carter Reum and wife, Paris Hilton, participated in a $14M Seed/Series A for W, the men’s personal care brand from Jake Paul. - learn more
LA Exits
- Warner Bros. Games acquired Player First Games, developer of the recently launched MultiVersus free-to-play platform fighter videogame. - learn more
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A New LA Company Aims to Give Fans a Way to Invest, Literally, in the Musicians They Love
02:35 PM | November 05, 2020
- AmplifyX launches next week to offer shares in musicians' future royalty income
- Its first tranche is two Detroit-based musicians, each of whom are offering 20% of future royalties for $10,000 at an effective $25 share price
- In the future, Amplify plans to build out a secondary trading market and hopes to expand beyond music and into the broader creator economy
Rising Detroit rapper and singer Rocky Badd has always been about the street, but soon she and her manager Curtis McKinnon will be going public.
Next week, they'll be selling shares worth 20% of Rocky's future royalty income for $10,000. In doing so, they're also hoping to gain a legion of super fans financially and emotionally invested in her success.
The exchange will be powered by L.A.-based AmplifyX, one of a growing number of online investment platforms made possible by 2015 regulatory changes around crowdfunding. An extension of President Obama's 2012 JOBS Act, the new rules eased restrictions on fundraising and investing, enabling the budding democratization of fractional ownership. Non-accredited investors can now add to their portfolios shares of vintage cars, collectibles like sneakers and trading cards, famous artworks and more.
"Music hasn't really changed from a financing perspective in decades," said Adam Cowherd, Amplify's co-founder and chief executive. His platform aims to address that.
Detroit rapper and singer Rocky Badd, aka September Briyonna-Michelle.
Badd, whose real name is September Briyonna-Michelle, is using Amplify to offer 400 shares tied to her upcoming album, "Respect the Writer 2," for $25 each. Each share is effectively a claim on 0.25% of the streaming and digital download royalties generated by the new release and a few additional songs. Jay Vinchi, another musician from Detroit, is also putting up shares for his upcoming album as part of Amplify's first tranche of offerings.
In L.A., Cowherd has been hard at work. A former physicist turned investment banker, he and his small team had built the infrastructure to run a securities exchange by the end of last year. They waited, though, to complete what would be an 8-month gauntlet to gain regulatory authorization from FINRA, a private financial regulator, and the SEC, its public sector counterpart. The company finished that process in August, and is now awaiting final approval to open its first offering, which Cowherd expects to arrive early next week.
He thinks the wait for that regulatory compliance will pay off by helping Amplify to compete with other platforms that offer similar services, such as Royalty Exchange and Vezt, which also allow fans to buy shares of artist royalty streams.
This first fundraise will be open for 60 days and royalty payments will be distributed to shareholders annually; eventually that could shift to quarterly, Cowherd said.
For artists like Rocky Badd and Jay Vinchi, one obvious appeal to selling shares in their future royalties is earning instant cash – not exactly easy to come by for a musician today.
Rocky Badd's deep connection to her fanbase gives her manager McKinnon and Cowherd confidence she'll have no trouble raising the $10,000. In May, she hosted a livestream concert on Zoom that sold over 1,000 tickets. The YouTube video for her song "Vindictive" has over 8 million views.
With the money raised, McKinnon will look to further spread Rocky Badd fever.
"Rocky can post something and easily get thousands of streams and likes, but now we're trying to get to the millions," he said.
The Amplify offering also has the potential to inspire a squadron of fans to become a de-facto marketing department.
"If we get multiple fans [to buy shares], we now have promoters for a lifetime, because the better that album does, the more revenue share for them," said McKinnon, who — in addition to managing Briyonna-Michelle — runs CrowdFreak, an online platform that helps up-and-coming artists find performance and exposure opportunities.
A rising number of artists are eschewing record labels in favor of ad-hoc, artist-support services, many of which are enabled by technology. Cowherd sees AmplifyX one day building further on that trend, morphing into an entire "record label á la carte."
"Long term, it would basically be a record label in your pocket. We'd like to build that into the native mobile app from the artist perspective, where not only do they have their investor data, and their streaming and social data, but they could also say, 'I'm looking for PR', and we give them three options that have already been vetted through us, and they can make those connections and bookings right through the application," Cowherd said.
AmplifyX co-founders Bobby Kamaris (L) and Adam Cowherd.
Even if Amplify remains solely a financing platform, he sees expansion opportunities in working with more artists and eventually selling shares in legacy catalogs.
"How cool would it be for somebody who's part of the KISS Army to actually own a fractional piece of 'Detroit Rock City' or something like that?"
The company also plans to build a secondary market for trading shares, he said.
For investors, getting in on the streaming market could be attractive. From 2014 - 2019, revenue from streaming saw a 43% compound annual growth rate, and Goldman Sachs projects the $11 billion market to quadruple by 2030. And since streaming royalties are generally uncorrelated with investment returns elsewhere, they provide a means for investors to reduce risk across their investment portfolio.
Given these factors, Cowherd expects investment to come from cryptocurrency investors and the growing crowd of young traders, along with artists' super fans.
"There's a growing demand among Gen Z for investing," Cowherd said. "My uncle is the principal of a school in Michigan, and he actually had to ban Robinhood because so many kids were day-trading."
Down the road, Cowherd expects to see a lot of engagement from that younger generation. They may have the chance to invest not only in musical projects but also in other content creators as well, and the businesses those creators and influencers may start.
"I really want to power the entire creator and influencer economy," Cowherd said.
Amplify has raised about $250,000 in pre-seed funding and plans to raise a $2-3 million seed round in Q1 or Q2 next year.
For now, it'll generate revenue by taking a percentage of the capital raised from the revenue-share offering. Later, it plans to take an affiliate fee for its record label á la carte service, and a small fee for transactions through its secondary market. It may also offer debt financing, such as for underwriting concert tours.
Other companies will be competing to provide innovative forms of artist financing. L.A.-based Stem, for example, recently opened a $100 million debt-financing arm to loan artists advances against their future royalty income. Kobalt, a London-based firm, is also in the competitive mix.
Hipgnosis, which has been on a spending spree of late to allow investors to buy rights to songs and musical IP, represents the broader bubbling activity in the acquisition of music publishing rights.
Cowherd said one key way he aims to differentiate Amplify is by facilitating direct connections between fans and artists.
For Briyonna-Michelle, that connection is about more than a financial transaction.
"For a lot of people, especially people in my city, we don't really invest in nothing. You buy jewelry, you buy clothes, you buy cars or whatever and you just keep up, but it's like, at some point, when we get older, you're just gonna say you had it," she said. "I feel like no matter what the album does, it's still, like, at least you tried to invest in something, whether it worked or it didn't. I feel like it motivates people to start putting some money behind something where later on in life you can get something out of it."
Come next week, a new set of fans will begin hoping one day to get something out of their investment in her.
---
Sam Blake primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Find him on Twitter @hisamblake and email him at 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
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