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XPvP, a 'LinkedIn for Gamers', Launches in App Stores with Sights Set on a Fall Fundraise
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

In a dark bar at 3 a.m. in Amsterdam, about two years ago, the idea came to Phil Stover and Austin Stofer. Overseas for an esports conference, the jetlagged duo, who'd been working together in Southern California with early-stage startups in various capacities, sat at a high-top with two light brew tall-boys on the table.
As Stover recalls, almost out of the blue, Stofer said, "There's no LinkedIn for gaming."
Phil Stover is co-founder and CEO of PvP.com
"And I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, did you just say that?'" Stover told dot.LA. "We flipped the whole trip upside down. That started a two-year journey... that's how this whole thing happened."
That late night idea is now approaching 100,000 users. The platform, called PvP.com, is available on web and recently launched on app stores after a period of restricted access. It is hoping to ride its initial success, and the gaming industry's pandemic surge, toward a new round of funding.
"We're planning to raise a venture round in the fall," Stover said. The two founders and other investors have put in $1.2 million in what Stover called a pre-seed round, of which they have "spent a heck of a lot," he added. About 70% of that has paid for building a team of about 15, including part-timers.
The goal for that pre-seed round, Stover said, "was to make this thing good, get to market, build traction and be able to raise again. That was our strategy."
The company laid its first line of code in January 2019 and was ready for use by May. Consumer surveys had shown the founders that a profile and game stats were the most desired features.
"The first version we look back and say, 'Wow, what a piece of crap'," Stover said. So it often goes with a minimum viable product. Deciding on the right time to release new versions has been a frequently debated subject at PvP.
"We're constantly talking about when is enough," Stover said. "We constantly have a team with different opinions. Some people are perfectionists, some people like me want to get it out there and test it and learn it and put it in people's hands."
The initial launch-product got PvP.com to about 10,000 users.
Stover describes the average PvP user as a 20-year-old male, one of the 400 million or so "competitive gamers" globally (a smaller subset than the oft-cited 2 billion gamers, which includes simple mobile games like Candy Crush). Only a small percentage of that 400 million have professional aspirations.
"It's like pro golf," Stover said. "The number of pro golfers compared to all golfers is minimal."
But that doesn't mean the users aren't competitive. Stover says they "want to get better and want to win." He describes PvP.com as a platform for serious gamers.
"In gaming it (has been) very popular online and in chatrooms to have shit-talking," he said. "Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that...but we want to take it up a level."
Stover says PvP helps gamers find teammates with searches filtered by game, availability and skill level, among other factors. To showcase their skills, users can post highlight reels; some teams may even require a highlight reel for consideration.
"I always like to be really, really brutally honest," Stover said, "and the fact of the matter is what we really have right now is a social media app hyper-targeted at a niche of gaming."
That specific audience will be a key part of the pitch PvP hopes to make to investors this fall. Though the current user base is about 90% American, Stover says the company has global ambitions.
For now, two goals are primary: increase user engagement, which at 15-20 minutes per day on the mobile app compares favorably to Facebook's 40 minutes, Stover says; and grow the user base toward a fall goal of 1 million.
"(If) we find a good financial partner…we'd begin building in the advertising apparatus" to monetize the user base, Stover said. "We'll have a hyper-targeted advertising and brand engine to focus on this audience of gamers that exists anywhere in the world."
Like other gaming companies, the pandemic has hardly been detrimental to PvP. Stover said his team was already mostly remote, and gaming popularity has surged since safer-at-home orders set in.
To take advantage, Stover may prefer an incremental, under the radar approach.
"Part of my theory is to stay away from a big blast launch scenario, (but rather) constantly testing, improving, upgrading and on-boarding as you go. There was a point where I didn't want to have any press," he said.
As that attitude softens and his company grows, new features will continue to roll out. One such expected to launch later this month includes a "squad finder" that will allow users to integrate their Twitch contacts into the PvP platform.
Whatever may come, it will all stem from that one late night in Amsterdam. Proost!
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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California Debates Data Privacy as SCOTUS Allows Abortion Bans
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
The United States Supreme Court called a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks constitutional on Friday, overturning the country’s founding abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court also upheld that there cannot be any restriction on how far into a pregnancy abortion can be banned.
When Politico first broke the news months before SCOTUS’s final ruling, a slew of bills entered Congress to protect data privacy and prevent the sale of data, which can be triangulated to see if a person has had an abortion or if they are seeking an abortion and have historically been used by antiabortion individuals who would collect this information during their free time.
Democratic lawmakers led by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo called on Google to stop collecting location data. The chair of the Federal Trade Commission has long voiced plans for the agency to prevent data collection. A week after the news, California Assembly passed A.B. 2091, a law that would prevent insurance companies and medical providers from sharing information in abortion-related cases (the state Senate is scheduled to deliberate on it in five days).
These scattered bills attempt to do what health privacy laws do not. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, was established in 1996 when the Internet was still young and most people carried flip phones. The act declared health institutions were not allowed to share or disclose patients’ health information. Google, Apple and a slew of fertility and health apps are not covered under HIPAA, and fertility app data can be subpoenaed by law enforcement.
California’s Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (or CMIA), goes further than HIPAA by encompassing apps that store medical information under the broader umbrella of health institutions that include insurance companies and medical providers. And several how-tos on protecting data privacy during Roe v. Wade have been published in the hours of the announcement.
But reproductive rights organizations say data privacy alone cannot fix the problem. According to reproductive health policy think tank Guttmacher Institute, the closest state with abortion access to 1.3 million out-of-state women of reproductive age is California. One report from the UCLA Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy estimates as many as 9,400 people will travel to Los Angeles County every year to get abortions, and that number will grow as more states criminalize abortions.
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
LA Tech ‘Moves’: Adtech Firm OpenX Lures New SVP, Getlabs and DISQO Tap New VPs
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.
“Moves,” our roundup of job changes in L.A. tech, is presented by Interchange.LA, dot.LA's recruiting and career platform connecting Southern California's most exciting companies with top tech talent. Create a free Interchange.LA profile here—and if you're looking for ways to supercharge your recruiting efforts, find out more about Interchange.LA's white-glove recruiting service by emailing Sharmineh O’Farrill Lewis (sharmineh@dot.la). Please send job changes and personnel moves to moves@dot.la.
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Advertising technology company OpenX Technologies appointed Geoff Wolinetz as senior vice president of demand platforms. Wolinetz was most recently senior vice president of growth at Chalice Custom Algorithms.
Remote health care infrastructure provider Getlabs hired Jaime LaFontaine as its vice president of business development. L.A.-based LaFontaine was previously director of business development for Alto Pharmacy.
Customer experience platform DISQO tapped Andrew Duke as its vice president of product, consumer applications. Duke previously served as Oracle’s senior director of strategy and product.
Media company Wheelhouse DNA named Michael Senzer as senior manager of Additive Creative, its newly launched digital talent management division. Senzer was previously vice president of business development at TalentX Entertainment.
Fintech lending platform Camino Financial hired Dana Rainford as vice president of people and talent. Rainford previously served as head of human resources at Westwood Financial.
Kourtney Day returned to entertainment company Jim Henson’s Creature Shop as senior director of business development. Day mostly recently served as business development manager for themed entertainment at Solomon Group.
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.
This Week in ‘Raises’: Miracle Miles Lands $100M, Fintech Startup Tapcheck Hauls $20M
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.
In this week’s edition of “Raises”: An L.A.-based footwear company closed $100 million to boost its expansion into the global market, while there were Series A raises for local fintech, biotech and space startups.
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Venture Capital
Miracle Miles Group, an L.A.-based footwear company, raised a $100 million Series A funding round co-led by IDG Capital and Sequoia Capital China.
Deno, a San Diego-based software development startup, raised a $21 million Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital.
Tapcheck, an L.A.-based financial wellness startup that helps workers access their paycheck before payday, raised a $20 million Series A funding round led by PeakSpan Capital.
Gemelli Biotech, an L.A.- and Raleigh, N.C.-based biotech startup focused on gastrointestinal diseases, raised a $19 million Series A financing round led by Blue Ox Healthcare Partners.
Epsilon3, an L.A.-based space operations software startup, raised a $15 million Series A funding round led by Lux Capital.
Global Premier Fertility, an Irvine-based fertility company, raised an $11 million Series C funding round led by Triangle Capital Corporation.
Vamstar, an L.A.- and London-based medical supply chain platform, raised a $9.5 million Series A funding round co-led by Alpha Intelligence Capital and Dutch Founders Fund.
System 9, an L.A.-based digital asset market-making firm focused on the crypto altcoin market, raised a $5.7 million Series A funding round led by Capital6 Eagle.
Myria, an L.A.-based online marketplace of luxury goods and services, raised a $4.3 million seed round from Y Combinator, Backend Capital, Cathexis Ventures and other angel investors.
Binarly, an L.A.-based firmware cybersecurity company, raised a $3.6 million seed round from WestWave Capital and Acrobator Ventures.
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).
- Vamstar Raises $9.5M For Its Medical Supply Chain Platform - dot.LA ›
- MaC Venture Capital Eyes $200 Million For Its Second Fund - dot.LA ›
- Los Angeles Venture Capital News - 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.