Eric Garcetti Says L.A. in the Midst of a 'Once-in-a-Generation Moment'

Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles Mayor

Mayor Garcetti is a fourth generation Angeleno and the 42nd Mayor of Los Angeles. His Agenda is focused on creating a safe, livable, and prosperous city.

Eric Garcetti Says L.A. in the Midst of a 'Once-in-a-Generation Moment'

Los Angeles is in the midst of a once-in-a-generation moment.

Last year, Schroders Global Cities Index ranked Los Angeles as the most economically vibrant city in the world and the best city for investment. Our metropolitan economy is the world's third largest in economic performance. And in six years we have cut the unemployment rate by more than half.


So much of that momentum is because Los Angeles is a global tech capital — a place where the world comes to innovate and create. We're the number-one digital city in America, and Los Angeles is also creating tech jobs faster than any city in the country, and — in 2019 alone — brought in $8.3 billion in venture funding for startups. The city of angels is home to incredible talent too at some of the world's top universities, from Caltech to USC and UCLA.

We used to talk about L.A.'s startup scene as fledgling, but that's no longer the case. In 2019, we saw L.A.'s largest startup acquisition yet with PayPal purchasing Honey for $4 billion. Venture capital investment in the region has boomed with funding growing over three times from 2013 to 2019, and today Los Angeles attracts the second highest investment capital of any city in the U.S.

The startup and tech industry is a jobs creator, with 7.5 percent of region's workforce employed in the tech field. All told, 53,000 tech careers added to the economy since 2010, and tech contributes just over 10 percent to our local economy — that's $91 billion annually.

In 2014, I formed my Technology and Innovation Council, with the aim of convening the top L.A. CEOs, founders, venture capitalists, and others to propose initiatives to help L.A. grow the tech industry, focusing on attraction and retention of tech companies, capital, and talent; developing civic innovation and smart city solutions; and helping bridge the digital divide.

Over that period, we have been able to assist some of the largest names in tech, including Google, Netflix, and Apple, establish and grow their footprint here. We have helped exciting new startups like Quibi navigate city departments to ensure they are able to get up and running. And we have worked with homegrown unicorns like Snap, and Dollar Shave Club which was acquired by Unilever in 2016 for $1 billion.

As mayor of Los Angeles, I have worked to ensure that as tech grows, it reflects the diverse face of our city. Some of the finest minds in science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math live here, and it's on us to equip them with the tools they need to succeed in the industries and careers of tomorrow.

That's why three years ago I launched the L.A. Tech Talent Pipeline to create internship opportunities for low-income and minority youth in growing tech companies. These are internships that develop real skills and lead to real jobs, and last year we placed 216 interns — 40 percent of whom landed part- or full-time jobs with a tech company.

We haven't stopped there. Together with philanthropy, local venture capital firms as well as leading tech companies, we launched PledgeLA to ensure the conference rooms of start-ups and tech companies in this city are as diverse as our streets. PledgeLA members are also helping us find new ways of using technology to solve our toughest challenges — from traffic congestion to the need for more affordable housing.

And now, as we bravely and boldly begin into a new decade, we will have a media platform dedicated to covering tech's growth in Los Angeles — dot.LA. This next decade will be critical in so many ways — from our response to the global climate emergency to how this city comes together to confront the homelessness and housing crisis.

Tech is not at the margins of these moments — it's at the intersections. We are fortunate to have dot.LA chronicling how innovators and entrepreneurs in Los Angeles will make their mark on this city and world.

I look forward to the future Los Angeles and dot.LA will write together.

Eric Garcetti is mayor of the city of Los Angeles.

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“Millions of Dollars Completely Wasted”: Without Neuromarketing, Tech Firms’ Ads Get Lost in the Noise

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College and previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

“Millions of Dollars Completely Wasted”: Without Neuromarketing, Tech Firms’ Ads Get Lost in the Noise

At Super Bowl LVII, advertisers paid at least $7 million for 30–second ad spots, and even more if they didn’t have a favorable relationship with Fox. But the pricey commercials didn’t persuade everyone.

A recent report from advertising agency Kern and neuroscience marketing research outfit SalesBrain is attempting to answer that question using facial recognition and eye-tracking software.

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https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la

ComplYant Founder and CEO Shiloh Johnson on Why Tax Knowledge Is Her ‘Superpower’

Yasmin Nouri

Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.

Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.

ComplYant Founder and CEO Shiloh Johnson on Why Tax Knowledge Is Her ‘Superpower’

On this episode of Behind Her Empire, ComplYant founder and CEO Shiloh Johnson discusses her journey to building a multimillion dollar business and making knowledge of taxes more accessible.


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How Token and Tixr Plan To Take on Ticketmaster in L.A.

Andria Moore

Andria is the Social and Engagement Editor for dot.LA. She previously covered internet trends and pop culture for BuzzFeed, and has written for Insider, The Washington Post and the Motion Picture Association. She obtained her bachelor's in journalism from Auburn University and an M.S. in digital audience strategy from Arizona State University. In her free time, Andria can be found roaming LA's incredible food scene or lounging at the beach.

How Token and Tixr Plan To Take on Ticketmaster in L.A.
Evan Xie

When Taylor Swift announced her ‘Eras’ tour back in November, all hell broke loose.

Hundreds of thousands of dedicated Swifties — many of whom were verified for the presale — were disappointed when Ticketmaster failed to secure them tickets, or even allow them to peruse ticketing options.

But the Taylor Swift fiasco is just one of the latest in a long line of complaints against the ticketing behemoth. Ticketmaster has dominated the event and concert space since its merger with Live Nation in 2010 with very few challengers — until now.

Adam Jones, founder and CEO of Token, a fan-first commerce platform for events, said he has the platform and the tech ready to take it on. With Token, Jones is creating a system where there are no queues. In other words, fans know immediately which events are sold out and where.

“We come in very fortunate to have a modern, scalable tech stack that's not going to have all these outages or things being down,” Jones said. “That's step one. The other thing is we’re being aggressively transparent about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. So with the Taylor Swift thing…you would know in real time if you actually have a chance of getting the tickets.”

Here’s how it works: Users register for Token’s app and then purchase tickets to either an in-person event, or an event in the metaverse through Animal Concerts. The purchased ticket automatically shows up in the form of a mintable NFT, which can then be used toward merchandise purchases, other ticketed events or, Adams’s hope for the future — external rewards like airline travel. The more active a user is on the site, the more valuable their NFT becomes.

Ticketmaster has dominated the music industry for so long because of its association with big name artists. To compete, Token is working on gaining access to their own slew of popular artists. They recently entered into a partnership with Animal Concerts, a live and non-live event experiences platform that houses artists like Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg and Robin Thicke.

“You'll see they do all the metaverse side of the house,” Jones said. “And we're going to be the [real-life] web3 sides of the house.”

In addition, Token prides itself on working with the artists selling on their platform to set up the best system for their fanbase, devoid of hefty prices and additional fees — something Ticketmaster users have often complained about. Jones believes where Ticketmaster fails, Token thrives. The app incentivizes users to share more data about their interests, venues and artists by operating on a kind of points system in the form of mintable NFTs.

“We can actually take the dataset and say there’s 100 million people in the globe that love Taylor Swift, so imagine she’s going on tour and we ask [the user], ‘Would you go to see her in Detroit?’ And imagine this place has 30,000 seats, but 100,000 people clicked ‘yes,’” he explained. “So you can actually inform the user before anything even happens, right? About what their options are and where to get it.”

Tixr, a Santa-Monica based ticketing app, was founded on the idea that modern ticketing platforms were “living in the legacy of the past.” They plan to attract users by offering them exclusive access to ticketed events that aren’t in Ticketmaster’s registry.

“It melts commerce that's beyond ticketing…to allow fans to experience and purchase things that don't necessarily have to do with tickets,” said Tixr CEO and Founder Robert Davari. “So merchandise, and experiences, and hospitality and stuff like that are all elegantly melded into this one, content driven interface.”

Tixr sells tickets to exclusive concerts like a Tyga performance at a night club in Arizona, general in-person festivals like ComplexCon, and partners with local vendors like The Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach to sell tickets to the races. Plus, Davari said it’s equipped to handle high-demand, so customers aren’t spending hours waiting in digital queues.

Like Token, Tixr has also found success with a rewards program — in the form of fan marketing.

“There's nothing more powerful in the core of any event, brand, any live entertainment, [than] the community behind it,” Davari said. “So we build technology to empower those fans and to reward them for bringing their friends and spreading the word.”

Basically, if a user gets a friend to purchase tickets to an event, then the original user gets rewarded in the form of discounts or upgrades.

Coupled with their platforms’ ability to handle high-demand events, both Jones and Davari believe their platforms have what it takes to take on Ticketmaster. Expansion into the metaverse, they think, will also help even the playing field.

“So imagine you can't go to Taylor Swift,” Jones said. “What if you could purchase an exclusive to actually go to that exact same show over the metaverse? An artist’s whole world can expand past the stage itself.”

With the way ticketing for events works now, obviously not everyone always gets the exact price, venue or date they want. There are “winners and losers.” Jones’s hope is that by expanding beyond in-person events, there can be more winners.

“If there’s 100,000 people who want to go to one show and there's 37,000 seats, 70,000 are out,” he said. “You can't fight that. But what we can do is start to give them other opportunities to do things in a different way and actually still participate.”

Jones and Davari both teased that their platforms have some exciting developments in the works, but for now both Token and Tixr are set on making their own space within the industry.

“We simply want to advance this industry and make it more efficient and more pleasurable for fans to buy,” Davari said. “That's it.”

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