
Get in the KNOW
on LA Startups & Tech
XPresence Fit Expands to Bring Live Fitness Classes to Your Phone
Leslie Ignacio is dot.LA's editorial intern. She is a recent California State University, Northridge graduate and previously worked for El Nuevo Sol, Telemundo and NBC and was named a Chips Quinn Scholar in 2019. As a bilingual journalist, she focuses on covering diversity in news. She's a Los Angeles native who enjoys trips to Disneyland in her free time.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, gyms across the country were forced to close without knowing when they would reopen. Presence Fit is hoping to fill that void by launching their application to create interactive remote workouts.
Presence Fit has trainers working in two-way live high intensity interval training classes which uses your smartphone's camera and audio. No need for any other equipment.
The Los Angeles-based company had a soft launch in June, but today announced it has raised $1 million in seed funding and will soon be expanding. The raise is backed by angel investor Michael Stoppelman and Tom Masonry, among others.
The company relies on AI technology, biomechanics and health tracking data allows the trainer to know how your body is responding to each workout in order to monitor what can be improved. Using the depth sensors used in your phone, their app monitors your form, pace and vitals to be able to give the trainers insight on your progress.
Robert Jadon is a co-founder of Presence Fit.
"There's no bulky hardware. You don't have to go buy a big Peloton bike. You don't have to get a big expensive piece of equipment with a 36-month contract," said co-founder Robert Jadon. "All of this can be done with your phone."
Co-founders Robert Jadon and Dr. Masaki Nakada bring expertise in business and technology, with years of experience in research and development at UCLA's accelerator program and computer graphics and vision lab. That combined experience was the foundation for the app.
"It sort of came about as a combination of his background in computer vision and biomechanics, and my interest in finding a convenient, effective workout as a busy husband and dad of three, without buying some big piece of equipment," said Jadon.
Dr. Masaki Nakada is a co-founder of Presence Fit.
"We've known each other for years now and both worked in technology and [wondered] 'is there is a way that we can leverage technology and sort of evolve the remote workout experience?'"
Popular in-person fitness centers such as Orange Theory start their basic packaging at $59 per month for four classes. Presence Fit's monthly fees are $50 for unlimited live classes.
A report by Nielson in May found that sales in home workouts increased tremendously in the early days of the pandemic, up 130%. That included fitness equipment sales and all its categories including cardio machines, free weight equipment, home gym weight machines, strength training products, as well as yoga and Pilates essentials.
The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the fitness industry. Presence Fit believes it may have permanently shifted how people exercise.
"You know, people might not otherwise have looked at it that way. They were sort of forced to look for new options," said Jadon, adding that he was surprised to see their product appealed to an older demographic "who initially we weren't seeing would necessarily be the target demographic for us, who really liked it, and are excited about this concept."
The app also records streaming content for those whose routines don't work with the scheduled live classes. Presence Fit believes the option gives consumers the best of both worlds.
- Zwift's Raises $450M to Build Fitness Hardware - dot.LA ›
- FitOn Fitness App Raises $7 Million in Funding - dot.LA ›
- FightCamp Raises $90 Million, Adds Virtual Sparring - dot.LA ›
- Fitness app Masters Allows Users to Train with Pro Athletes - dot.LA ›
Leslie Ignacio is dot.LA's editorial intern. She is a recent California State University, Northridge graduate and previously worked for El Nuevo Sol, Telemundo and NBC and was named a Chips Quinn Scholar in 2019. As a bilingual journalist, she focuses on covering diversity in news. She's a Los Angeles native who enjoys trips to Disneyland in her free time.
Subscribe to our newsletter to catch every headline.
TikTok Content Moderators Allege Emotional Distress
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.
Content moderators reviewing TikTok videos have experienced psychological distress after exposure to graphic content, Business Insider reported Thursday.
Current and former moderators employed by Telus International, a contractor used by Culver City-based video-sharing app for content moderation, told BI that they were often assigned long, consecutive shifts overseeing graphic content—including beheadings, child sexual abuse and self-harm—and that requests to be reassigned to less demanding roles were often denied.
TikTok’s parent company, Chinese tech firm ByteDance, uses artificial intelligence to filter and separate inappropriate content into various categories, with human moderators assigned to review the content within those categories. As TikTok’s platform has grown—it is currently the most downloaded app in the world—employees said they were pressured to keep pace with the increase in content and were often denied discretionary wellness breaks, according to BI.
Additionally, while ByteDance has an emergency response team tasked with handling videos reported to law enforcement, one employee told BI that neither that team nor TikTok’s wellness team provided support to the moderators who reported such content. A Telus International spokesperson told BI that its own wellness team supported moderators, who have the option to skip difficult content. Telus employees, however, told BI that skipping videos resulted in disciplinary citations.
In a lawsuit filed against ByteDance in December, former content moderator Candie Frazier alleged that her work resulted in post-traumatic stress disorder and symptoms of severe psychological distress. Two other content moderators have since filed a lawsuit with similar claims.
The lawsuits are part of the growing legal pressure facing TikTok. In California, a bill that would allow parents to sue social media companies for addicting their children to apps passed the State Assembly and awaits the State Senate. The company is also facing renewed pressure from federal regulators over data privacy issues.
TikTok has also been scrutinized for its corporate workplace culture—with severalemployees claiming they were pressured to work long hours and accommodate the schedule of ByteDance’s China office.
- TikTok is The Most Downloaded App - dot.LA ›
- Ex-Employees Criticize TikTok's Demanding Workplace Culture - dot ... ›
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.
Relativity Space Surpasses $1 Billion in Contracts, Inks New Deal with Satellite Maker OneWeb
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He 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 at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Rocket maker Relativity Space soared past a milestone today, surpassing $1 billion worth of contracts for launches on its 3D-printed Terran R rocket.
Long Beach-based Relativity agreed to a multi-launch agreement with broadband satellite maker OneWeb on June 30. CEO Tim Ellis posted on Twitter that following the deal, Relativity now had over $1.2 billion in binding launch contracts secured by five different customers — even though the startup still has yet to send a rocket to orbit.
Ellis called the deal a “huge vote of confidence and we can’t wait to deliver.”
Relativity aims to send the OneWeb satellites by 2025. The OneWeb launch could be one of the first commercial launches sent into space by the rocket maker’s reusable Terran R craft.
OneWeb was previously using Russian Soyuz rockets to launch, but sanctions imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine forced it to look to other alternatives. Ellis told TechCrunch Relativity was already looking to court OneWeb as a customer before the war, though, noting the deal “has been in the works for quite some time.”
OneWeb wants its broadband service to be operational by 2023, and to do that it has to launch at least 648 satellites into orbit. Relativity has two rockets under construction – Terran 1 and Terran R.
The smaller Terran 1 rocket has already secured a $3 million contract to launch small satellites for the Department of Defense. The Terran 1 will make its first flight in a mission nicknamed “Good Luck, Have Fun” (GLHF) which is expected to take off this summer and won’t carry any payloads. Assuming the GLHF mission is a success, Relativity will then launch the DoD mission.
The Terran R is Relativity’s 95%-reusable rocket and its answer to competitor SpaceX’s Falcon 9, with which OneWeb is also launching payloads.
In an interview with ArsTechnica earlier this year, Ellis said the craft could take off as soon as 2024, though it’s still being built at Relativity’s 1 million-square-foot factory headquarters in Long Beach.
Last June Relativity raised a $650 million Series E funding round led by its backer Fidelity Management & Research. At that time, Ellis told dot.LA the Terran R rocket was still under development and added, “Ever since Relativity's early days in Y Combinator, we've planned to manufacture a large reusable rocket.”
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He 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 at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Goop’s Noora Raj Brown On Having the Hard Conversations That Make Change
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.
On this week’s episode of the Behind Her Empire podcast, host Yasmin Nouri talks with the executive vice president of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, Noora Raj Brown.
Brown started working at Goop when the company was still in the early, hectic stages, moving from a weekly newsletter Paltrow would send out to her friends to a multinational publishing and lifestyle brand.
At the time, Goop’s advice, guides and features about beauty style and wellness, were tackling difficult issues like divorce, sexuality and health in very personal terms.
“So much of what we do at Goop is to push conversations into the mainstream and to talk about things that, frankly, people don't always want to talk about,” she said. “And these are hard conversations, right?”
Brown, a daughter of immigrants, grew up in Silicon Valley and always considered herself a creative, even though her parents were hopeful she’d take a more conventional professional route. “It was like, very much medicine and tech, and I wasn't interested in either,” she says. Instead, her interest veered toward fashion.
After earning her degree, she moved to New York City to work at a fashion magazine called Details, where she got to learn quickly about how designers function and how garments are produced and promoted — but the job didn’t come easy.
“A lot of it was really like finding your path, feeling really lost for a long time. And I think I also had this idea that I would come to New York and I would start interviewing and get a job,” says Brown. “And that would sort of be it. And I didn't realize how insanely competitive it was.”
Brown moved on to work in talent PR where she organized photo shoots, coordinated the angles of stories and then at a fashion and style publication called InStyle during a time when it was in the process of being sold to a new owner.
“There was a feeling of like, you couldn't win,” Brown says. “You're operating from a place of fear; you're not able to be your best self, right?, and you're not able to produce your best work.”
In 2016, when Brown made her way to Goop, there was no in-house communications or legal team, no HR, piles of debt and, from Brown, terror. “I sort of felt like, I was the first line of defense for anything negative that happened to the business,” she says.
The experience left her feeling unqualified, but she said Paltrow’s confidence in her made Brown more confident in her own abilities.
“I think we all just need to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt a little bit,” she says.
Brown’s personal journey, in many ways, mirrored Goop’s mission to push unconventional conversations into the mainstream. Brown says Goop has faced some backlash for its stories, but she says she feels strongly that important topics shouldn't be taboo, and adds that it takes honesty and courage to make change.
“If you're really going to, as we say, [...] milk the shit out of life, you need to do that,” she says. “As I said, operating from a place of real pride, but also real bravery is super important.”
Engagement and Production Intern Jojo Macaluso contributed to this post.
Hear more of the Behind Her Empire podcast. Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radioor wherever you get your podcasts.
- Seed Health, Known for Its Daily Synbiotic Pills, Gets $40M - dot.LA ›
- Meet Snap's New Class of Yellow Accelerator Program Startups ... ›
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.