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XMitu Co-Founder Launches Fintech Company Aimed at Latinos
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

After seeing the pandemic's disproportionate impact on lower-income minorities, Beatriz Acevedo, the co-founder of digital media company mitú, felt compelled to return to the startup world.
On Thursday, the L.A.-based entrepreneur and three-time Emmy-winning producer announced the launch of SUMA Wealth, a fintech company that will seek to provide U.S-born Latinos with financial-inclusion tools and resources.
In 2012, Acevedo launched her L.A.-based digital media company, which is oriented toward Latino youth. It raised over $50 million and boasts a monthly audience of nearly 100 million users. In 2018, Acevedo stepped down as president, and mitú was acquired this year by GoDigital Media Group for an undisclosed amount.
Acevedo will be applying much of the playbook that she used to grow mitú into what is arguably the leading digital media brand among Latino youth to her new venture.
"What mitú did was touch this audience that felt nobody saw them, and nobody got them," she told dot.LA. "That's what I plan to do with SUMA."
L.A.-based entrepreneur and three-time Emmy-winning producer Beatriz Acevedo is the co-founder of SUMA Wealth
SUMA sought a $500,000 pre-seed round but has more than doubled that. The round remains open.
Every funder in SUMA's round is female; most of them are Latina. At a panel on diversity hosted this week by dot.LA, Acevedo noted that her investors were easier to work with than the more traditional set of white male venture capitalists.
The pre-seed round was led by Chingona Ventures, with participation from The Fund, 2045 Ventures, Vitalize VC, Portfolia Rising America, Backstage Capital and OVO Fund, among others.
"I didn't have to explain to any of them why SUMA was important for our community," she said. "All of them come from that same background: where we grow up not talking about money, not talking about investment, being very confused. No matter if you went to an Ivy League school or you are somebody that did not go to college, we're all in the same boat. So it was very personal to them and they fully understood the problem."
In addition to a personal connection, the Latino community also represents a big economic market.
A 2020 study from the Latino Donor Collaborative, for instance, found that if Latinos living in the U.S. were considered a country, it would have the eighth-highest GDP in the world – larger than South Korea, Italy or Brazil.
It's also a rapidly growing segment: from 2010 to 2018, the group's GDP expanded 21% faster than India's and 30% faster than China's, according to the study.
Acevedo emphasized that SUMA is targeting U.S.-born Latinos, a group that she says has felt as if it doesn't quite belong.
Marketers tend to lump this U.S.-born Latino sector either into a general, English-speaking audience or a more traditional, Spanish-speaking group, Acevedo said.
By contrast, what mitú did and what SUMA plans to do is focus on the nuances that make this segment unique.
"The secret sauce (at mitú) was everything that we did was in-culture," she said. "It's nothing special that I did, but see them."
Acevedo said that rather than building a product and hoping to attract users to it, SUMA will start by building a brand that conveys it is "by Latinos for Latinos."
For example, the chupacabra – a mythical beast prominent in Latino folklore – is reprised on SUMA as the money-sucking "chupalana," which accompanies instructional content on topics like lowering debt, budgeting, taxes, investing and deciding whether to buy or lease.
The platform also aims to tap into what Acevedo describes as a different financial ethos. In contrast to the American reverence for self-reliance, for instance, she says, "my mother will tell you she has no money to save and invest, but if it was for someone in her family, she'd give all the money in the world. We're taking those nuances into account."
Acevedo believes developing trust among her target market is a key component to SUMA's brand. She says many Latinos harbor a deep-seated skepticism of traditional financial institutions, in large part due to a history of currency devaluations by Latin American governments that wiped out people's savings without warning.
"There's post-traumatic stress," Acevedo says, which has carried forward into today's younger generations.
Data from SUMA's 30-day beta period suggest this hypothesis has some merit. Acevedo said the company saw engagement rates 20-times higher than a composite benchmark of fintech company engagement rates. And the top questions SUMA has gotten from its users have centered around which institutions are trustworthy.
"They're hungry for this information and [they want] to do better, but they're incredibly confused on how to do it," Acevedo said.
"There are lots of Latino-led and -driven fintech offerings," she added, "but nobody has really built it at scale. I hope to build that."
SUMA is co-founded by Xavier Gutiérrez, president and CEO of the Arizona Coyotes hockey team – the first Latino to lead an NHL franchise.
"The economic success of the United States and its recovery from the current pandemic rely on the economic empowerment of this community. We exist to provide that empowerment," he said in a statement.
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Sam Blake primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Find him on Twitter @hisamblake and email him at samblake@dot.LA
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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
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Mother Blames TikTok For Daughter’s Death in ‘Blackout Challenge’ Suit
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
The mother of a 10-year-old girl who died after allegedly trying a dangerous online “challenge” has sued Culver City-based TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance, claiming the social media app’s algorithm showed her videos of people choking themselves until they pass out.
Nylah Anderson, an intelligent child who already spoke three languages, was “excruciatingly asphyxiated” and found unconscious in her bedroom on Dec. 7, according to a complaint filed Thursday in federal court in Pennsylvania. She spent five days in pediatric intensive care until succumbing to her injuries.
The lawsuit, filed by her mother Tawainna Anderson, claims TikTok’s algorithm had previously shown Nylah videos depicting the “Blackout Challenge,” in which people hold their breath or choke themselves with household items to achieve a euphoric feeling. That encouraged her to try it herself, the lawsuit alleged.
“The TikTok Defendants’ algorithm determined that the deadly Blackout Challenge was well-tailored and likely to be of interest to 10-year-old Nylah Anderson, and she died as a result,” the suit said.
In a previous statement about Nylah’s death, a TikTok spokesperson noted the “disturbing” challenge predates TikTok, pointing to a 2008 warning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about deadly choking games. The spokesperson claimed the challenge “has never been a TikTok trend.” The app currently doesn’t produce any search results for “Blackout Challenge” or a related hashtag.
“We remain vigilant in our commitment to user safety and would immediately remove related content if found,” the TikTok statement said. “Our deepest sympathies go out to the family for their tragic loss.”
At least four other children or teens have died after allegedly attempting the Blackout Challenge, according to the Anderson lawsuit. TikTok has grappled with dangerous challenges on its platform before, including one in which people tried to climb a stack of milk crates. That was considered so dangerous that TikTok banned the hashtag associated with it last year. In February, TikTok updated its content rules to combat the dangerous acts and other harmful content.
The Anderson lawsuit comes as lawmakers and state attorneys general scrutinize how TikTok and other social media can be bad for teens and younger users, including by damaging their mental health, causing negative feelings about their body image and making them addicted to the apps.
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Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
Netflix Updated Its Culture Memo for the First Time in 5 Years to Address Censorship, Secrecy
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Netflix promised change after its poor first-quarter earnings. One of the first targets: the Netflix Culture document.
The changes, which Variety reported on Thursday, indicate a new focus on fiscal responsibility and concern about censorship. While promises to support honest feedback and open decision-making remain, the memo’s first update in almost five years reveals that the days of lax spending are over. The newly added “artistic expression” section emphasizes Netflix’s refusal to censor its work and implores employees to support the platform’s content.
The “artistic expression” section states that the company will not “censor specific artists or voices” and specifies that employees may have to work on content “they perceive to be harmful.” The memo points to ratings, content warnings and parental controls as ways for users to determine what is appropriate content.
Censorship has been a contentious issue within Netflix. Last year, employees walked out in protest after the company stood by comedian Dave Chappelle’s special, “The Closer,” which many said was transphobic. The streaming service has since announced four more specials from the comedian, who was attacked on stage at Netflix’s first comedy festival. The show will not air on the platform, as Netflix did not tape the event.
The reaction to Chappelle’s 2021 special ripples further in the updated memo. After firing an employee who leaked how much the company paid for the special, the new “ethical expectations” section directs employees to protect company information.
The memo also reflects pressure borught by poor first-quarter earnings. Employees are now instructed to “spend our members’ money wisely,” and Variety reported that earlier passages that indicated a lack of spending limits were cut. Variety also found that the updated memo removed promises that the company would not make employees take pay cuts in the face of Netflix’s own financial struggles.
These updates come as employee morale has reportedly dropped and editorial staffers at the Netflix website TuDum were laid off en masse. Those employees were offered two weeks of severance pay—and Netflix has now cut a section in the memo promising four months of full pay as severance.
As the company that literally wrote the book on corporate culture faces internal struggles, it's unlikely that making employees take on more responsibility while prioritizing corporate secrecy and discouraging content criticism will improve morale.
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
‘Raises’: Mahmee Secures $9.2M, Wave Financial Launches $60M Fund
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
Venture Capital
Mahmee, an integrated care delivery platform for maternal and infant health that connects patients, health professionals, and healthcare organizations to increase access to prenatal and postpartum care, raised a $9.2 million Series A funding round led by Goldman Sachs.
FutureProof Technologies, a climate risk analytics platform, raised $6.5 million in capital led by AXIS Digital Ventures along with Innovation Endeavors and MS&AD Ventures.
Anja Health, a doctor-backed cord blood banking company, raised $4.5 million led by Alexis Ohanian's Seven Seven Six.
Funds
Wave Financial LLC, a digital asset investment management company, is launching a $60 million fund to deploy capital via cryptocurrency.
Raises is dot.LA’s weekly feature highlighting venture capital funding news across Southern California’s tech and startup ecosystem. Please send fundraising news to Decerry Donato (decerrydonato@dot.la).
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.