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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
The pandemic has hushed the music industry. Throbbing concert crowds have disappeared, artists' sales have plummeted and musicians' overall income has fallen precipitously. But a handful of Los Angeles-based tech startups are providing musicians with everything from socially-distanced collaborative recording to simplified back-office accounting.
"The L.A. music-tech scene is primed to drive this industry forward," says Ed Buggé, partner at L.A.-based entertainment law firm Hertz Lichtenstein & Young. "It's a hugely exciting time in the industry, with startup-driven disruption enabling new models for artists and media companies alike."
Buggé, who advises some of the world's leading tech and media companies, says the ecosystem of music-tech startups is poised to accelerate two big trends in the music industry.
One is the rise of independent artists. In 2018, indies – artists who own most or all of their material – earned 6.6% of total recorded music revenues. That's a 78% growth rate from 2015, which makes independent artists the fastest growing segment of the recorded music market. Entertainment research firm MIDiA says this change "could prove to be more impactful than even the rise of streaming."
The other trend startups are speeding up is the transformation of what a music company even is.
"Music is no longer just music," says Buggé, adding that audio is becoming inseparable from technologies spanning artificial intelligence, gaming, social media, as well as augmented and virtual reality.
Musicians today have far more access to high-quality production tools and capabilities than they once did.
Software packages like Logic Pro or Ableton have brought the recording studio's physical equipment and professional engineers right into an artist's living room, saving them thousands of dollars.
"In 2020, all you really need is the essentials – your phone, your laptop, and a good pair of headphones," says Americo Garcia, aka Boombox Cartel. Add in a good $100 microphone or two and an instrument and you've got a home studio.
"Back in the day you'd have to ship reels of tape and jump hoops and loops just to make a song happen. Nowadays you can email someone in Poland and say, 'hey man, let's start something,'" Garcia says. In addition to tools like Dropbox that enable file-sharing across the world, several companies have emerged to help musicians find and work with each other.
"If you think you need a label to blow up, you're wrong," Garcia says.
Musicians' Jammcard profiles help them to collaborate
L.A.-based Jammcard has been called the "LinkedIn for musicians." Founded in 2017 by professional drummer Elmo Lovano, the company has nearly 10,000 members and has raised around $2 million from Quincy Jones, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin and Lionsgate President Robby Melnick.
Lovano formed the company to streamline the process by which professional musicians find each other, rather than relying on word-of-mouth. He estimates that as many as 95% of Jammcard members are independent, and that their median income is around $70,000.
"A lot of the people that are on Jammcard are the people that support the big artists; Kendrick Lamar's not on Jammcard, but his entire band and crew are," Lovano says. "Sound engineers, stage managers, guitar techs – we like to say that it's for 'anyone that's on the bus or in the studio'."
Lovano says Jammcard is finalizing partnerships with Sony and Fender and has recently expanded its platform to enable digital payments to members for collaborating, performing and teaching. Jammcard also recently partnered with New York-based Splice, an online music production service that offers downloadable samples and plugins that make it "a lot more accessible and intuitive to start creating music," says Ankur Patel, Splice's head of corporate development. Jammcard's artists can host their sound samples on Splice and share in the proceeds.
Soundstorming is another L.A. company using tech to enable artistic collaborations. Users upload small segments of their self-produced audio files, allowing other members on the platform to provide feedback and even layer in their own bass grooves, vocal melodies, and drum beats to collectively compose a new track.
Former UTA agent Milana Lewis created Stem Disintermedia in 2015 to "alleviate back office work so an artist can eliminate those costs and release content more easily."
Stem co-founder and CEO Milana Rabkin Lewis
As an agent, Lewis saw how the complexities of music copyright were depriving musicians of opportunities to make money. "The administrative work was too burdensome for any individual artist to do," she told dot.LA. Artists would give up and say, ''I'm just going to put it up for free'" on sites like YouTube and Soundcloud.
Stem has raised over $12 million in funding, including two rounds from L.A. firm Upfront Ventures. The startup also recently launched its own $100 million debt-financing arm to allow artists to borrow money against their existing catalogs.
Stem's interface helps artists and their managers track their finances
Create Music Group, another startup formed in 2015 that helps artists take control of their accounting and distribution, has a similar origin story.
"We realized the YouTube landscape was poorly mismanaged," recalls Sam Casucci, partner and senior vice president of digital strategy at Create, recently named the second-fastest growing company in the country in the annual Inc. 5000 list. Create employs about 120 people and serves over 10,000 clients – mostly indie artists and labels, the company says. "There was a lot of music and (rights holders) who weren't getting paid what they should be," Casucci says. Create has since built technology on top of YouTube's rights-management platform to help artists make money.
Create Music Group's Hollywood office
Independent artist and Create client Ray J told dot.LA, "They help you study everything that's going on and help you find money you might not have even known existed."
"When you sign to a major label you don't really get to see what's going on behind the scenes," says Ray J. "You can become your own record label now."
Create's dashboard to help musicians manage their copy rights
Elsewhere in L.A., Pex helps artists manage their monetization by following the data associated with their songs across the web. Wilson Hays, head of business development, says Pex monitors over 20 billion songs and videos on dozens of social media platforms.
The company indexes all that data – which comprises over three-times as much content as what's on YouTube, Hays says – and uses patented technology to allow the people behind the music to track and measure its online activity. It even allows artists to easily issue take-down notices if they wish.
Pex's song-tracking dashboard
"YouTube has Content ID and Facebook has Rights Manager, but outside those platforms, in the wild, you don't know how your content is being shared, moved, monetized, or pirated," Hays says. "We want to put control back in rights holders' hands."
That sort of control offers benefits to artists that they wouldn't necessarily have with a traditional label deal. One benefit is that payments come in faster. It also gives artists more freedom to manage their career trajectory.
And that freedom gives artists the choice in how they use the many emerging mediums by which they can share their music.
An artist who wants to interact directly with fans can post their songs on a host website like YouTube, TikTok, Soundcloud or Bandcamp and chat with their audiences on social media channels. But these platforms have limitations.
A post on Instagram, for example, carries no guarantee that it will reach an artist's fans; most followers do not see every post. Artists must also contend with the fact that the interests of social media platforms are not always aligned with their own.
Jake Udell, a music manager and entrepreneur with a reputation for digital wizardry, recognized social media's limitations early on.
"The thing I kept noticing was that the algorithms were making it really challenging for us to reach our audiences," Udell told dot.LA. "I didn't think there was a fix, though. We'd given up and sort of ceded our audiences to these social platforms."
Then he conducted an experiment. Tickets went on sale for an artist of his who had about twice as many fans in L.A. than New York. Not surprisingly, about twice as many purchases came in for the L.A. shows than the New York ones. Udell then decided to collect around 1,000 phone numbers from fans at a New York show.
"We found some random texting service online and just blasted them out," he recalls. "What happened next changed the way I thought about building audiences online forever."
7,000 tickets to two New York shows immediately sold out. Udell wrote about it on his blog, which is how he met Matthew Pelltier, chief executive of L.A.-based Community.com, where Udell is now head of activation.
"The algorithm has not really been an enabler" for musicians, Udell says. "What if we could just meet the fans where they're already at?"
That's exactly what Community does, he says, by providing artists (and other "Leaders") a SaaS platform for exchanging text messages with fans en masse.
"I think about it like this," Udell says. "How many social platforms have you joined over the last 10 years? Versus how many times did your phone number change?...The phone number is a true atomic unit of identity; it's not going anywhere."
What's more, Udell says 98% of text messages get opened in the first three minutes.
"On other platforms there's a guarantee of instant publishing, but there's no guarantee of instant distribution," he says. Whereas with Community, "the idea that you will always be able to reach your fans, this community, via text, is a really empowering thing not just for you personally but for your business."
Big-timers like Jennifer Lopez use Community, as do aspiring local band types. Prices depend on audience size. One feature: ability to segment fan outreach so that, for instance, a band coming to a specific town can message only the locals – "See you at the show tonight?"
Wave turns performers into digital avatars and puts them on virtual stages where they can entertain and interact with fans, who tune in via VR headset, gaming console or web browser.
"We started the company four years ago to help musicians make money," Wave chief executive Adam Arrigo told dot.LA. "We've been touring musicians and we know how hard it is."
Wave has now hosted over 50 events. Its recent concert featuring The Weeknd in partnership with TikTok reportedly drew a digital audience of over 2 million fans.
A Wave concert of Swedish band Galantis
Arrigo says his former role as a designer for the Rock Band video game franchise showed him how novel technologies can empower musicians.
"From working on that game I learned that when you create new experiences you can create additional revenue streams for the industry," he says.
Building on a blueprint established in part by L.A.-based Brud (whose digital influencer and singer Lil' Miquela currently has 2.6 million Instagram followers and attracts millions of views on YouTube), Strangeloop Studios is currently designing a cast of animated characters of its own.
Co-founder and chief executive Ian Simon, who is also on the creative team at Wave, says, "the long-term vision is to be a studio; to bring in storytellers and visual artists and creators to tell stories using these characters. The characters are a medium in themselves."
A character from Strangeloop Studios' virtual artist label, Spirit BombStrangeloop Studios
Those characters present musicians with scalable creative opportunities. "You can play the same show with the same character in multiple places at the same time," Simon says. "They're vessels for human collaboration – multiple musicians contributing songs, various visual artists creating content and fans informing the narrative and aesthetic trajectory of the characters."
"People are already listening to music on screens, even if the screen isn't really being leveraged," says Simon, whose small team includes former visual designers for megastars like Kendrick Lamar and Flying Lotus.
ViRvii – a portmanteau of virtual, visual, and immersive – gives artists a new "paintbrush" for creating immersive fan experiences, says founder Juan Dueñas, who formerly founded My Mixtapez and was an early user of Oculus' development kit.
Dueñas says ViRvii will allow fans to "hang out" inside The Beatles' Yellow Submarine while the album plays in the background, for instance. Contemporary artists will be able to design VR experiences to accompany their releases. Despite the high-tech approach, Dueñas says he wants users to be able to get a homespun feeling of "sitting around a stereo or record player and smoking a joint and drinking a beer with friends and listening to your favorite album."
ViRvii's continuous VR world will immerse fans into albums
Formed in 2019 and now with a staff of 30, the L.A.-based startup recently announced a partnership with Facebook and its Oculus VR subsidiary.
Splashmob gives performers control of their audience's cell phone screens. They can preprogram the screens of anyone who opts in with features like polls, audiovisual media to accompany the main show, and merchandise sales portals. The screens can also be controlled in real-time, not unlike an effects technician manipulating phone screens rather than lights and sound.
Founder Blaise Thomas was formerly a sound engineer in London, where his work in recording studios and live performances got him thinking about how to enhance concerts, whether in-person or streamed.
Splashmob's control panel gives performers the power to curate audience members' phone screens
"The flashlight on the phone is all well and good," Thomas says, "but how far can that go?"
Splashmob has collaborated with Dani Van de Sande and her L.A. startup, ULO, which along with Splashmob and Strangeloop was part of the 2020 Techstars Music cohort.
"Imagine you're wandering around Melrose Avenue on your way to dinner," Van de Sande writes, "and out of the corner of your eye you spot a bright, iridescent light. It looks otherworldly, like something from another universe."
These cocoon-like walk-in installations, called ULOs ("unidentified landing objects"), offer immersive, interactive experiences for the adventurous souls who enter. ULO plans to dot them around city-scapes.
"We're another avenue where artists can do something beyond releasing a video – by creating an experience for people," says Van de Sande, who formerly worked on augmented reality at L.A.-based Snap.
The Pandemic Has Changed the Music Industry Forever. Meet the LA Music-Tech Startups Poised to Reshape It.
StillVika
These new visually oriented channels for sharing music may help to shrink the gap between the ear and the eye that Spotify founder Daniel Ek often invokes when he describes the growth potential for his company. Why, he has publicly wondered, is the total video market worth around 10-times more than audio, even though consumers spend about equal time with each?
Cameo offers anybody with over 20,000 Instagram followers the opportunity to build a profile on its platform and set a price for which they will record a personalized video message. The company was formed in Chicago, but its chief executive Steven Galanis recently moved to L.A. With his move, Cameo's center of gravity has shifted.
"L.A. is the best place for me to be for Cameo right now," Galanis recently told dot.LA. "I've been focused on being the tech company to work for in Chicago and I think that's mission accomplished in many ways. Now my objective is to make Cameo that place in L.A."
L.A. was once the destination for artists with a guitar case and a dream. Now, many of them can pursue those dreams from home. Music-tech companies, however, are flocking in.
"It's not an accident that Techstars Music is in L.A.," says Bob Moczydlowsky, who runs the accelerator, which recently opened its 2021 cohort application, with an emphasis on attracting a diverse candidate pool. Moczydlowsky attributes L.A.'s centrality in this flourishing wave of music and tech innovation to two main factors. First is the access to an ecosystem of artists, managers, labels and touring companies. Second is the venture money in Silicon Valley.
"L.A. is less than an hour from the money and down the street from the culture," he says.
The growing entrepreneurial energy in L.A. looks set to provide Angelenos a front-row seat to a new, lasting stage for entertainment technology innovation.
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Sam Blake primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Follow him on Twitter @hisamblake and email him at samblake@dot.LA
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
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.
According to a Forbes report last April, both the viewership and dollars behind women’s sports at a collegiate and professional level are growing.
In 2022, the first 32 games of the NCAA tournament had record attendance levels, breaking records set back in 2004, and largely driven by the new and rapidly growing women’s NCAA tournament. WNBA openers this year saw a 21% spike in attendance, with some teams including the LA Sparks reporting triple-digit ticket sales growth, about 121% over 2022’s total. In 2023, the average size of an LA Sparks crowd swelled to 10,396 people, up from 4,701 people.
Women make up half the population, but “also 50% of the folks that are walking into the stadium at Dodger Stadium, or your NFL fans are just about 50% women,” noted Erin Storck, a panelist and senior analyst at Los Angeles-based Elysian Park Ventures.
Storck added that in heterosexual households, women generally manage most of the family’s money, giving them huge purchasing power, a potential advantage for female-run leagues. “There's an untapped revenue opportunity,” she noted.
In the soccer world, Los Angeles-based women’s soccer team Angel City FC has put in the work to become a household name, not just in LA County but across the nation. At an LA Tech Week panel hosted by Athlete Strategies about investing in sports, Angel City head of strategy and chief of staff Kari Fleischauer said that years before launching the women’s National Women’s Soccer League team, Angel City FC was pounding the pavement letting people know about the excitement ladies soccer can bring. She noted community is key, and that fostering a sense of engagement and safety at the team’s home venue, BMO stadium (formerly Banc of California Stadium), is one reason fans keep coming back.
Adding free metro rides to BMO stadium and private rooms for nursing fans to breastfeed or fans on the spectrum to avoid sensory overload, were just some of the ways ACFC tried to include its community in the concept of its stadium, Fleischauer said. She noted, though, that roughly 46% of Angel City fans are “straight white dudes hanging out with their bros.”
“Particularly [on] the woman's side, I'd like to think we do a better job of making sure that there's spaces for everyone,” Fleischauer told the audience. “One thing we realize is accessibility is a huge thing.”
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.
L.A. Tech Week has brought venture capitalists, founders and entrepreneurs from around the world to the California coast. With so many tech nerds in one place, it's easy to laugh, joke and reminisce about the future of tech in SoCal.
Here's what people are saying about the fifth day of L.A. Tech Week on social:
#LATechWeek has been on 🔥🔥🔥. Yes the events are super cool at amazing venues. But, I’m blown away by the people. I’ve met so many founders building generative AI companies from the ground up. I’m so bullish on LA right now🥳. LA is for builders #longLA
Thanks @rpnickson 📸 pic.twitter.com/B6rT2jJYIs
— Dr. Kelly O'Brien (@Kvo2013) June 8, 2023
Successful LatinxVC Avanza Summit 2023 in LA! It’s been an amazing few days near the beach w great company. Thank you to our panelists & participants.
Huge thanks to our incredible sponsors SVB, Chavez Family Foundation, Annenberg Foundation, PledgeLA, Fenwick & West, Countsy! pic.twitter.com/oVuGIgFurk
— LatinxVC (@LatinxVCs) June 9, 2023
30+ gaming startups presented at the A16z Speedrun Demo Day in LA yesterday. Great thanks to the @a16zGames team for an awesome day of events! #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/DKq8IFo5QZ
— Grace Zhou (@graceminzhou) June 9, 2023
📣🤩 What’s the buzz? It’s #LATechWeek from @TechstarsLA & @TechstarsHealth joint demo day with the #Techstar HC team where our @fyelabs founder/CEO Suvojit Ghosh mentored both cohorts! #TechStars demo day highlighted 12 amazing emerging #startups in #healthtech #innovation. 🩺 pic.twitter.com/0RXClCtfDQ
— FYELABS (@fyelabs) June 9, 2023
Another successful Coffee On Slauson in the books for #LATechWeek.
Special thanks to the good people at Pledge LA, SVB and @GundersonLaw for the ongoing support and the @findyourhilltop staff for providing the space, eats & vibes. ♻️ pic.twitter.com/51cMDoEn30
— Slauson & Co. (@SlausonAndCo) June 9, 2023
The perfect combo to start #LATechWeek Day 5: pastries, coffee, and great convos with industry founders ✨
Fireside chats with @enriquealle, @wp, and @robynpark pic.twitter.com/booYPdekVV
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 9, 2023
Of course @designerfund has the most amazing pastries at their event. #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/PjyWlGTQI4
— Jesse Pickard (@jessepickard) June 9, 2023
My favorite event from @Techweek_ has to be "Modern Storytelling & Business Building." Hosted by @STHoward #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/SV1eexMJ4k
— JonnyZeller (@JonnyZeller) June 9, 2023
And the finale of the night was courtesy of the one and only @zedd for an unforgettable end to the "City of Games" party! Hosted by @a16zGames and @100Thieves #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/hliI9yLKse
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 9, 2023
Excited to be at the @a16zGames Speedrun Demo Day! Loved the energy and excitement from the companies that pitched there. It was also great to see @Tocelot and @ndrewlee at this amazing #LATechWeek event pic.twitter.com/NfLQO5lR27
— Andy Lee | andypwlee.bit (@andypwlee) June 9, 2023
Thank you to everyone who joined the Sony Venture Fund US team at #LATechWeek for our screening of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Last summer, we started building a presence in LA. Today, it's exciting to host such an event with the @Sony family and the LA VC community. pic.twitter.com/wdDm6qtHdL
— Sony Innovation Fund (@Sony_Innov_Fund) June 9, 2023
Time to eat, connect and build while @remi_rodney provided the vibes. 🙏🏽#LATechWeek @BuildOnBase @developer_dao @WeAreRazorfish pic.twitter.com/QIPh1gjvoA
— Hola Metaverso-Blockchain & New Web Tech Events 🎪 (@holametaverso) June 9, 2023
@Lux_Capital at #LATechWeek advancing the impossible to inevitable, from..
..defense primes partnering with cutting edge defense tech startups, to..
..hardware x LLMs improving mental health.
From the rich and diverse LA ecosystem stems generational companies: pic.twitter.com/v5S5r8JtbU
— Shahin Farshchi (@Farshchi) June 9, 2023
LA Tech Week has been a blast! Met some amazing creators, founders and investors from all over the world! #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/AAh9JFELhe
— Chris Germano (@netslayer) June 9, 2023
Had such a blast at LA Tech Week and hosting events for @brexHQ
Top highlights were collabing with @pulley on an Emerging Managers / Founder mixer at the @poplco House, rooftop event in Venice, creator panel with @thechangj & proper Korean food with in KTown.
Exhausted is an… pic.twitter.com/mGQnSYGPdg
— Τyler Robinson (@TyyRob3) June 9, 2023
Did you have fun at @sophiaamoruso’s launch party for @trustfundvc? #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/gbrbXRQ9Xx
— Kay (@KaySnels) June 9, 2023
y00tilty in every city with @KaylaLor3n & @cryptochrisg813.
Welcome to the LA @y00tsNFT fam! #LATechWeek #3XP week. pic.twitter.com/6wWKlsTacx
— VanG0xH (@CryptoVanGoghs) June 9, 2023
Really enjoyed #LATechWeek. Here are some observations I made 👇
— s.personal.ai (Suman Kanuganti) (@SumanPersonalAI) June 9, 2023
Thank you @TheKofiAmpadu for including me in #demoday with the latest @a16ztxo cohort! It was a real full circle moment to witness the brilliance of both @ChrisLyons & @ZMuse_ & #PledgeLA very own. She’s why we’re #LongLA 🚀💕 #LAtechweek pic.twitter.com/itkKXMxQRb
— Qiana Qiana! (@Q_i_a_n_a) June 9, 2023
@upfrontvc Gaming Founders Podcast #iLOVELA #LATechWeek @Techweek_ @KatiaAmeri @mucker @fikavc @bonfire_vc @TenOne10 @WatertowerGroup @ganasvc @IAmRobRyan @john_at_stonks @eva_ho @dereknorton pic.twitter.com/LCbaGXCoW7
— Sean Goldfaden (@seangoldfaden) June 9, 2023
Hosts Kevin Zhang, Partner at @upfrontvc, and Eden Chen, CEO of @pragmaplatform, interviewed two special guests from @raidbaseinc Stephen Lim, Co-Founder & Product Director, and Trevor Romleski, Co-Founder & Game Director. 🎙 #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/hxHEAoELZ6
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 9, 2023
Kicking off @a16zGames @100Thieves City of Games party at #LATechWeek 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/zQcZedG15f
— Jon Lai (@Tocelot) June 9, 2023
Yesterday at @socinnovation I got to have this AWESOME conversation with @iamwill — musician, producer, technology entrepreneur, and Founder & CEO of https://t.co/D60y1e2JOu #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/KBxK6rXyTG
— Anna Barber (@annawbarber) June 9, 2023
I absolutely love this game. Proud moment for the team @investwithatlas. #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/fPZvKXU7TC
— Tobias Francis (@TobiasFrancis) June 9, 2023
Had a blast at LA Tech Week this year with @brexHQ
From hosting & moderating my first creator panel featuring @BlakeMichael14, to a fun rooftop night in Venice, and to attending some amazing events such as Watertower’s emerging manager panel and a VC/founder tennis tournament pic.twitter.com/udjfmLHE0L
— Jonathan Chang (@thechangj) June 8, 2023
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.
At Lowercarbon Capital’s LA Tech Week event Thursday, the synergy between the region’s aerospace industry and greentech startups was clear.
The event sponsored by Lowercarbon, Climate Draft (and the defunct Silicon Valley Bank’s Climate Technology & Sustainability team) brought together a handful of local startups in Hawthorne not far from LAX, and many of the companies shared DNA with arguably the region’s most famous tech resident: SpaceX.
Here’s a look at the greentech startups that pitched during the Tech Week event, and how they think what they’re building could help solve the climate crisis.
Arbor: Based in El Segundo, this year-old startup is working to convert organic waste into energy and fresh water. At the same time, it also uses biomass carbon removal and storage to remove carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in an attempt to avoid further damaging the earth’s ozone layer. At the Tech Week event Thursday, Arbor CEO Brad Hartwig told a stunned crowd that Arbor aims to remove about five billion tons of organic waste from landfills and turn that into about 6 PWh, or a quarter of the global electricity need, each year. Hartwig is an alumni of SpaceX; he was a manufacturing engineer on the Crew Dragon engines from 2016-2018 and later a flight test engineer at Kitty Hawk.
Antora: Sunnyvale-based Antora Energy was founded in 2017, making it one of the oldest companies on the pitching block during the event. Backed by investors including the National Science Foundation and Los Angeles-based Overture VC, Antora has raised roughly $57 million to date, most recently a $50 million round last February. Chief operating officer Justin Briggs said Antora’s goal is to modernize and popularize thermal energy storage using ultra-hot carbon. Massive heated carbon blocks can give off thermal energy, which Antora’s proprietary batteries then absorb and store as energy. It’s an ambitious goal, but one the world needs at scale to green its energy footprint. According to Briggs, “the biggest challenge is how can we turn back variable intermittent renewable electricity into something that's reliable and on demand, so we can use it to provide energy to everything we need.”
Arc: Hosting the panel was Arc, an electric boating company that’s gained surprising momentum, moving from design to delivering its first e-boats in just two years of existence. Founded in 2021, the company’s already 70 employees strong and has already sold some of its first e-boats to customers willing to pay the luxury price tag, CTO Ryan Cook said Thursday. Cook said that to meet the power needs of a battery-powered speedboat, the Arc team designed the vehicle around the battery pack with the goal of it being competitive with gas boats when compared to range and cost of gas. But on the pricing side, it’s not cheap. Arc’s flagship vessel, the Arc One is expected to cost roughly $300,000. During the panel, Cook compared the boat to being “like an early Tesla Roadster.” To date Arc Boats has raised just over $35 million, according to PitchBook, from investors including Kevin Durant, Will Smith and Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Clarity Technology: Carbon removal startup Clarity is based in LA and was founded by Yale graduate and CEO Glen Meyerowitz last year. Clarity is working to make “gigaton solutions for gigaton problems.” Their aim? To remove up to 2,000 billion pounds of carbon from the atmosphere through direct air capture, a process which uses massive fans to move chemicals that capture CO2. But the challenge, Meyerowitz noted in his speech, is doing this at scale in a way that makes an actual dent in the planet’s emissions while also efficiently using the electricity needed to do so. Meyerowitz spent nearly five years working as an engineer for SpaceX in Texas, and added he’s looking to transfer those learnings into Clarity.
Parallel Systems: Based in Downtown LA’s Arts District, this startup is building zero-emission rail vehicles that are capable of long-haul journeys otherwise done by a trucking company. The estimated $700 billion trucking industry, Parallel Systems CEO Matt Soule said, is ripe for an overhaul and could benefit from moving some of its goods off-road to electric railcars. According to Soule, Parallel’s electric battery-powered rail vehicles use 25% of the energy a semi truck uses, and at a competitive cost. Funded in part by a February 2022 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, Parallel Systems has raised about $57 million to date. Its most recent venture funding round was a $49 million Series A led by Santa Monica-based VC Anthos Capital. Local VCs including Riot Ventures and Santa Monica-based Embark Ventures are also backers of Parallel.
Terra Talent: Unlike the rest of the startups pitching at the Tech Week event, Terra Talent was focused on building teams rather than technology. Founder Dolly Singh worked at SpaceX, Oculus and Citadel as a headhunter, and now runs Terra, a talent and advisory firm that helps companies recruit top talent in the greentech space. But, she said, she’s concerned that all the work these startups are doing won’t matter unless we very quickly turn around the current trendlines. “Earth will shake us off like and she will do just fine in 10,000 years,” she said. “It’s our way of living, everything we love is actually here on earth… there’s nothing I love on Mars,” adding that she’s hopeful the startups that pitched during the event will be instrumental in making sure the planet stays habitable for a little while longer.
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.