Happy Spooky Season Los Angeles!

🎉 We are launching a BRAND NEW referral contest this month! Legendary Zillow, Hotwire, Pacaso, and dot.LA co-founder Spencer Rascoff is looking to get coffee with a dot.la reader, so we’re going to help him out. 🎉

The contest is simple: whoever refers the most friends to dot.LA using our referral program by October 31st will get a coffee and conversation with Spencer Rascoff, where you can pitch him, get business advice, or just shoot the breeze. This is a great opportunity for any current or future entrepreneur, so good luck referring! ☕️☕️☕️

P.S. If you’re not based in LA, you can hop on a Zoom instead 💻

🔦 Spotlight

LA-based parking tech startup Metropolis is set to buy parking operator SP Plus at a share price of $54.00 per share, a premium of roughly 52% over SP Plus's closing stock price on October 4, 2023, and about 28% above its 52-week high. This acquisition amounts to an estimated aggregate enterprise value for SP Plus of $1.5 billion. 🅿️📲🤝

To finance this acquisition, Metropolis has secured $1.7 billion in a mix of equity and debt, with Eldridge Capital and 3L Capital leading the equity portion. As for deal structure, Metropolis will take on $650 million in debt and $1.05 billion in Series C preferred stock financing. This move represents a significant step towards vertical integration for Metropolis, which is already a major player in the parking industry following its acquisition of Premier Parking in the previous year.

Metropolis, founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneur Alex Israel, enhances existing parking structures with a computer vision system that allows seamless entry and exit for customers without the need for physical payment methods. The acquisition of SP Plus, a publicly traded business with a vast parking footprint across the U.S. and Canada, provides Metropolis with a well-established partner for further growth. The combined entity aims to revolutionize the parking experience by introducing checkout-free payment solutions and expanding its technology to various physical locations beyond parking facilities, including gas and electric vehicle-charging stations, drive-thrus, car washes, and retail stores. Here’s to a future of less congested, more efficient parking structures (looking at you Westfield Century City 👀).🚀🚙💰

🤝 Venture Deals

LA Startups

• Grow Credit, a platform designed to help users build credit, raised a $10M Series A led by USAA. - learn more
• Cove, the sustainable packaging startup, raised an oversubscribed $6.6M Series A extension led by Valor Siren Ventures joined by Lupa Systems, Litani Ventures and others.- learn more

LA Funds

• Morpheus Ventures led a $40M Series C for Albo, a Mexico City challenger bank. - learn more
• Acre Venture Partners led a $10.5M Seed Round for Bonsai Robotics, a startup outfitting heavy farming equipment with machine vision capabilities. - learn more
• M13 participated in a $3.5M Funding Round for Humata AI, AI platform to summarize and answer questions about documents. - learn more
• Slauson & Co participated in a $5.6M Seed Round for Lex, a LGBTQIA+ social network and dating site. - learn more
• TenOneTen and Alpha Edison participated in a $6.5M Series A for CoPilot, a remote fitness coach startup. - learn more

📅 LA Tech Calendar

Sunday, October 8th

• Hack Sunday: Machine Learning Together - Join other AI builders this week at Hack Sunday to explore artificial intelligence! We will discuss some technical topics, work on in-progress projects, and speculate on new ideas for exploration and collaboration.

Monday, October 9th

• Adobe Max - Hangouts & Meetups - Are you going to Adobe Max in person? Interested in meeting Designers from all over the world? Join us to geek over Adobe products and hangout during the conference!
• LABioTechWeek - Join BioscienceLA for a week of events with the mission to generate regional momentum for collaboration and innovation in the life science and biotech space!

Tuesday, October 10th

• Adobe MAX— The Creativity Conference - Partake in the three-day annual gathering at the Los Angeles Convention Center of graphic, web, and multidisciplinary designers; creative and art directors; social media content creators; film, video, and motion graphics pros; photographers; and creative leaders.
• Pasadena Tech Happy Hour - Join other tech enthusiasts at an event where an entrepreneur can find their next lead investor, a designer can showcase their artistry and a developer can demonstrate their technical expertise. This gathering is an opportunity where anyone looking to get involved in their local tech community can find resources to further their vision.

Wednesday, October 11th

• Founder Fest LA - Join Kamp Wednesday night in Downtown Los Angeles for an event designed for early stage founders to learn, network and pitch their startups.

Thursday, October 12th

• Designers, Founders, & Creators Meetup @ Adobe MAX - Join Design Buddies, Freepik, and Exhilo for a fun social hangout in Los Angeles on the last day of Adobe MAX near the convention center. This is also open to anyone not attending Adobe MAX.

Thursday, October 26th

• Expert DOJO Fall 2023 Cohort Demo Day! - Join Expert Dojo’s fall demo day to learn about the investment opportunities in their 10 newest investments! Sectors vary from artificial intelligence to gaming!

📙 What We’re Reading

• Listen to (or read) an engaging conversation between Minnie Ingersoll, Partner at TenOneTen, and Brian Frank, founding general partner at FTW Ventures. In this episode, Brian talks about how everything in the food system can be improved, and how VCs are investing with a technology lens instead of a problem solving perspective. - listen here
• Amazon, among other prominent enterprises are collaborating with Downtown Los Angeles-based CarbonCapture Inc. in an effort to reduce their carbon footprint. - read more
• Gently, a Santa Monica-based startup, aims to revolutionize last-mile delivery by establishing localized "nanofulfillment centers" and partnering with brands to offer same-day delivery within a mile, disrupting traditional logistics and gig economy models. - read more
• Chipotle is exploring food making automation, ‘bot-rrito’ if you will. - read more