Rear Admiral Wettlaufer on Creating a Culture of Excellence

Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.

Rear Admiral Wettlaufer on Creating a Culture of Excellence

Earlier this year, Spencer had an opportunity through the Navy's Distinguished Visitors Program to visit the USS John C. Stennis, an aircraft carrier. During his time aboard the ship, Spencer met Rear Admiral Michael Wettlaufer, who's spent 32 years serving in the Navy. Throughout his career, Admiral Wettlaufer has received multiple medals for his service, logged 3,500 flying hours, flown 49 different aircraft types and made over 800 arrested landings. To say he's a brave and accomplished leader is an understatement. In this episode, Spencer returns to the USS Stennis for a conversation with Admiral Wettlaufer about leadership. The two cover a lot of ground, including the Admiral's impressive career in the Navy, the importance of teamwork and how to build a culture that's committed to excellence.


Press Play to hear the full conversation or check out the transcript below. You can also subscribe to Office Hours on Apple Podcasts.

Rear Admiral Michael Wettlaufer:So the opinions that I may give are my own and not those of the United States government, the United States Navy or the Department of Defense. How about that.

Spencer Rascoff: All right. The lawyers are satisfied. Admiral, it's amazing to be back here. I was here for, I guess, two nights a couple months ago, somewhere in the Pacific at an undisclosed location. You never did tell me where we were exactly, but we were at sea, and I had an extraordinary time getting to know you a little bit, getting to know your staff, and speaking with so many sailors. I felt like I learned more about leadership and management in those two days at sea than anyone could learn sometimes in a career. I'm grateful that you let me come back here and get some of these learnings on tape, so thank you.

Admiral Wettlaufer: Well, I'm happy to have you back, and it's great that you had some time between then and now as well so you can think about maybe what you saw and the fact that as you came out, and I described earlier to some of the folks in the room, as you come out and you go to the aircraft carrier you think, “I'm gonna see the coolest, this cool giant machinery," right?

But in the end, none of the machinery works without all those young leaders who are at various stages of learning to lead, which part of that is learning how to follow, right? It's an amazing experience, and I am honored every single day just to be involved with those people.

Spencer: So let's start with your career and sort of take a step back. You've had a 33-year, 32-year career in the Navy. Just walk us through, even at the very beginning, why did you join the Navy? Then give us some career highlights to bring us to the present.

Admiral Wettlaufer:It's a great question 'cause it's one I ask myself. You look back after this amount of time. I was a microbiology major in college, and I did not wanna be in a laboratory ever again after I finished my degree. I was thinking about that, what do I do that's gonna be exciting?

Spencer: At traditional college or at Navy?

Admiral Wettlaufer: No, university, Colorado State.

Spencer: OK.

Admiral Wettlaufer:So when I finished school and had a great time learning, loved to learn, but I wanted to change what I was doing, and I have a lot of family members, my dad's family and my mom's family, who were in the military. A doc that my dad worked with asked me the question about a year prior, said, “What are you really gonna do?"

So end of school, graduate, and I went to the recruiting office in downtown Denver, parked in the back, walked in the side door. The first office I came to was Navy officer programs, and I went in and said, “I have this microbiology degree; I don't wanna use it. What do you have?" So two weeks later I take an aptitude exam. A week later, 'cause this was prior to computer-based testing, a week later they call back and say, “Hey, you did well on that test. Do you wanna be a pilot?" I said, “How much does it pay?"

So that's 32 years ago, 32-and-a-half years ago, and I have been challenged and intrigued, curious and rewarded, with great opportunity ever since.

So I started off, went to flight school in Pensacola, Florida. I came out of there flying off the USS America, A-6 Intruders. We were based on the East Coast. Three deployments, two sets of workups, Desert Storm kind of in the middle there, and then I went to the test world, and I had the opportunity to become a U.S. Navy test pilot, so I went to school again. Got to use all the physics and calculus that I had previously, and so I went to test pilot school. Again, great challenges.

Totally different than what I was doing prior to that; not totally, but different in the way you approached it. Got to spend a lot of time operating off ships as well. So a year of school, two years of doing test work, and then I transitioned to the F-18 at that point, and I flew F-18 Charlies operationally. At test pilot school and during the test business I flew 22 to 25 different airplanes, which wasn't unusual at the time.

So I went to Japan and I operated off the USS Independence and the Kitty Hawk flying F-18s, and then I went to the UK and I got an opportunity to fly with the British at their test pilot school as an instructor or tutor, as they say, and did some test work for her majesty on exchange from the United States Navy. And then I went to the Naval War College after that, and so I went and got a master's degree in national security and strategic studies. While I was a test pilot I was fortunate enough to go to the University of Tennessee as an away student and had a master's of science in aviation systems.

So a lot of school along the way, a lot of interesting and diverse experiences, and then I worked in a think tank for the CNO, the Chief of Naval Operations, called the Strategic Studies Group at the time. So our job was to look out in the future and see what future stuff was there and how do we pull it in closer, how do we get there faster. So for CNO Clark, Adm. Clark at the time, that was his focus for us and a great opportunity to work with scientists, see behind some of the doors in our federally funded research and development institutions around the United States, as well as U.S. government labs.

And following that I was fortunate enough to get selected to command an F-18 squadron. Went back to Japan as the XO and then the commanding officer on a VFA-195, the Dambusters in Japan, and operated off the carrier for a few years there, underway a lot, and then was rewarded.

Spencer:Underway; you just used some terminology.

Admiral Wettlaufer:At sea. So underway at sea. If you see the Navy around the United States, we're probably not doing our primary mission. We play the away game, so we play the away game 24/7 so there's some aircraft carrier strike group ships out there, independent strike group.

Spencer:What is that sound that we're hearing?

Admiral Wettlaufer: It is 11:30, so we have to mark the time with the bells traditionally. If you were standing watch and back in the day the tradition is you didn't have a watch.

So the ship lets you know what time it is, and if you're on a four-hour watch you wanna hear those bells get to higher numbers of bells as the time goes on 'cause that marks your watch. So there's 30 more minutes in somebody else's watch.

Spencer: Punctuality. Just one of the many reasons I love the Navy. So here we are, we're sitting on the USS Stennis, an aircraft carrier. You command Carrier Strike Group 3.

Admiral Wettlaufer: That's correct.

Spencer: Approximately 7,500 people?

Admiral Wettlaufer: Right.

Spencer: The Stennis is obviously the largest ship in the strike group, and then how many other ships are attached to the Stennis?

Admiral Wettlaufer: So attached to the strike group I've got five destroyers and the cruiser Mobile Bay, USS Mobile Bay, which, by the way I, deployed with Mobile Bay back in the late '80s and early '90s on the East Coast. You see ships around for quite a number of years, and aircraft carriers are typically around for about 50 years, but that's a little beside the point. The ships that will deploy with us, we won't deploy with all of those destroyers.

One of them is already deployed now by itself, independently deploying forward, doing a number of missions in the Pacific and farther to the west. So we're gonna deploy with some number of those ships. In the past year or so we've been training for that process.

Spencer: By the way, one of the really interesting themes of your career is something that I heard when I spoke with other officers when I was on the ship, which is continuous education. It seems like the career of a naval officer involves a lot of returning to school and then returning back into the force and sort of transitioning between academic and practical.

Admiral Wettlaufer: Absolutely, and not all of it — there's a lot of formal education from flight school or a junior sailor going to learn the first part of his trade, whether he or she is working as a mechanic or electrician or maybe working on computer systems, right? They're gonna get some training initially and then we do a lot of on-the-job training.

So a naval aviator or a junior sailor coming to the ship or coming to a squadron is gonna be in a continuous training process. A lot of that is formal. It's formalized in books or via computer system, or it's formalized by the fact that I've got to sit down with somebody else who knows the subject, and I've got to do a give-and-take education process, on-the-job training. If you're training me on something, you've got to be satisfied that I understand it before you sign me off.

Spencer: There are many misconceptions that civilians like I had or have about the military, one of which is that the career path is a straight up-and-down ladder. You do a certain number of years in a position, you get promoted to the next position, next rank, etc. The naval career feels a lot more like the corporate world, especially in technology. We use this metaphor that your career is like a jungle gym, not like a ladder.

You go up a little bit, to the side, down, over, up some more. Would you agree with that description?

Admiral Wettlaufer:A jungle gym; I would certainly say there's a career path. Don't get it wrong. We have a designed career path, a very typical career path, whether you're a Surface Warfare Officer or Submarine Officer, Aviator, Supply Officer, there's gonna be some typical jobs you have to get, but they're not all in the same place. So similar in the corporate world to your IT analysis or comparison is that you're gonna move laterally, out of one organization, over to another.

You're still in the Navy, but you may work with another Navy or you're gonna move from a seagoing billet to learn maybe more about how the shore side works. It also gives you a break from being in the deployed status to being not so much of a deployed status. So there's some stability aspects of the career that go with that, but there isn't stability in — it's very unusual for somebody to be in one place for a long period of time. So you're gonna move laterally up and down just like you described in the jungle gym.

Spencer: So I wanna talk about teamwork for a moment and how this whole organism fits together. You said something fascinating to me when I was here a couple months ago. I expressed surprise at frankly how much transparency there was about the operations of the ship, and I said, “Don't foreign governments, don't the Chinese or the Russians or whomever, aren't they trying to copy this aircraft carrier?"

And you said, “Firstly, we have a lot of technologies that you're not seeing on this tour, but more importantly it's not about the technology that creates this aircraft carrier. It's about the teamwork that the way this strike group works together and the way the entire Navy works together, and it will take generations for other navies, other countries' navies, to recreate that.

Admiral Wettlaufer: Well, it's a culture, right? Every organization has a different culture.

This organization, particularly the culture around excellence. We can't operate forward in a dangerous environment. You saw on the flight deck one of many dangerous environments we work in, but it's perhaps the most dangerous environment in the world when you're operating the flight deck and we're not getting shot at necessarily up there on the flight deck. It's people, metal, it's machinery, it's a dynamic environment. It's high paced and there's not much room for error because a single error can have catastrophic effects.

So it's that culture that you have to build and maintain, and we've been doing this for a number of years, at least as you looked at the aircraft carrier. We've been fortunate enough to operate and learn over time. None of it's static. We're continuously learning and we're bringing people into that culture a few at a time. It's not like we don't – we don't start from Jan. 1 and we're gonna bring in a whole bunch of new people, we're gonna bring in 5,000 new people to be on the aircraft carrier with the air wing, or 7,500 people start over in the strike group.

It's this continuous process of maintaining that culture and training people into it, acculturating them, and then standards. So the standards have to be owned, learned and owned at the lowest possible level, and you want to have decisions made at the lowest possible level of execution, level of responsibility that you can so that you can have those decisions made rapidly. You saw the flight deck, right? Perhaps one of the most interesting ballets without ballet shoes on.

Spencer: This is fighter jets landing and taking off on an aircraft carrier.

Admiral Wettlaufer:Right. Fighter jets, helicopters; the synchrony of that, the maintenance that goes on, the cyclic nature of that business. And you saw as you described it the team of teams that could potentially be separated and maybe are in the building-up phase as we get ready to start to get underway from maintenance to operations, and you start training in smaller groups or single-ship units, single squadrons.

As you bring that together, the key is that synchrony that occurs when you bring these separate teams together, and the culture has got to be there to allow that to happen. Otherwise, you have stovepipes of excellence and they don't cross.

Spencer: You handed me a little index card here with a quote, which you sometimes do, handing leadership and other quotes out to people here on the ship. It's an Aristotle quote. It says, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit." So what does that mean to you? What does a culture of excellence mean? How do you achieve it?

Admiral Wettlaufer: So it's got to start with knowing what the goals are, and you have to translate that. You have to communicate. Communication, I believe, is the hardest thing we do. It's absolutely very, very difficult. It takes continuous attention, and you have to use every medium that you possibly have to communicate: verbally, face-to-face verbally, on a loudspeaker, clock.

The chiming of the clock, right? And so if we don't communicate the mission, the short-term, medium-term and long-term goals in a continuous way, people stop paying attention, right? What do you wanna have? Buy-in. How do you get excellence? Well, you gotta communicate. Gotta know what I'm supposed to be doing. Then you gotta get buy-in. You gotta get past that 51 percent momentum hump if you will, right? You've got to have a self-sustaining momentum, and it's gotta overcome the momentum of sameness.

So the momentum of sameness is we're gonna just sit here and do nothing 'cause I'm perfectly happy in where we are and what we're doing. That's not me. I'm not perfectly happy, right? So you have to have communication to talk about the goals, and you have to have goals, right? You have to have achievable things along the way, and you have to translate those things into action.

So culture of excellence self-assesses. To achieve excellence I wanna shoot really at perfection because if you shoot at perfection you're gonna achieve excellence, right?

It's very hard to be perfect. And you've got to assess, where am I all the time on every single line of effort, and how do you communicate those lines of effort to the newest person in the organization as well as the most senior people in the organization and outside of the organization, 'cause we need support from outside as well.

So that culture of excellence can be self-sustaining if it's self-working. It can't sustain itself without a ton of effort at every single level. So the most junior leader to the most senior leader has to be fully engaged in achieving that mission, whatever it happens to be.

Spencer: I mean so many similarities here to business. The best businesses I think are mission-oriented. Their leadership team constantly communicates to employees why their work is important, how it relates to the broader mission. You have a culture of excellence and standards. In tech we call them OKRs, objectives and key results to try to hold people accountable.

You have some sort of relative advantages and relative disadvantages as compared with companies, I'd say from my point of view. One of the relative advantages is that when you're underway, your employees, if you will, have no access to social media, no access to distractions. They're sort of all yours, if you will, 24/7 to mold them and to lead them.

Corporations don't have that advantage. A disadvantage is that your employees are quite young, I mean 17, 18, 19. I don't know what your median age is on a ship, but it's probably in the early 20s, I would guess.

Admiral Wettlaufer: Right. Most people arrive at the age of 18 to 22 is where that arrival time is, depending on their seniority and what job they're doing, but I see exactly what you're saying and what that view is. Those young people, though, provide the energy and also a challenge. The challenge is to make sure they're engaged in the right direction and make sure there are opportunities, or they came for opportunity. Make sure we're helping them achieve those, reach those goals that we help them set.

So there's a human-to-human contact that we have, as you rightly point out, longer than the eight-hour day, a typical day you may get for a worker in the tech business or a corporation someplace. But that is a great gift because we can communicate whenever we want, we think anyway. But then the challenge is to make sure that they're listening. One of the key challenges is that, as you know, what I say is not what you heard. That's a key challenge. So how do I make sure —

Spencer: What I say is not what you heard. What do you mean by that?

Admiral Wettlaufer: Everybody translates differently, and when are they paying attention or what's the state of their mind as they're paying attention? So what I say is not, or what I wrote is not, what you read necessarily. So how do I find out what I said is what you know?

Spencer: You ask people to play it back to you?

Admiral Wettlaufer:You have to play back, right? So not only can you — you have to push communication. There has to be a return process.

Spencer: And so correct me if I'm mistaken, but you allot a not insignificant portion of your day to management by walking around, talking to sailors, discussing with them what's on their mind, what they're working on. Why is that so valuable?

Admiral Wettlaufer: Because you can skip levels, right? I'm not sure what you might call it in the —

Spencer: We call them skip levels.

Admiral Wettlaufer: So you can skip levels, and to skip a level then you don't have to wait for the filter to give you the information that the filter wants to give you. So one of the big challenges that we had is we are preparing our war fighting skills, our deployment kind of skills; over the past year is understanding where the entire team sees themselves. So I can say something, and if I don't ever go look outside the room, if I don't ever go ask, then I'm gonna get a bunch of smiling faces that said, “Oh yeah, we heard that."

But I haven't checked whether or not that translation what they have heard beneath that level is what I have said, or what I mean — even more importantly, what I mean. So if I don't go out, and any of us, leaders at any level, if we don't go out and engage, then we really don't know what's on the minds and what the state of mind is of the people that we expect to execute, and I think that's important to get past roadblocks in achieving goals. Because if they don't have the same or similar goals in mind, then we're never gonna get there. We won't get to excellence.

Spencer: One of the other disadvantages you have is there's a lot of turnover, sort of by design. In the Navy people start and then they're on a particular shift for, I don't know —

Admiral Wettlaufer:Four, six years, something like that.

Spencer: And actually even certain elements are detached from this ship, right?

Admiral Wettlaufer: That's correct. Yes.

Spencer: So the air wing, which is 1,000-plus people, 2,000 people that fly the planes, it's like you're putting pieces of a puzzle together. They join the ship for some finite period of time, and now these teams of teams are working together, and then the air wing leaves.

Admiral Wettlaufer:Disembarks. Yep.

Spencer: So how do you — with turnover, with these sort of teams coming and going, how do you try to gel the whole organization together?

Admiral Wettlaufer:So that's where you've got to have, well at least in my case, I've got six direct reports. The captain of the aircraft carrier has 20 or 19 direct reports.

Spencer: So because you oversee the strike group you have six ships.

Admiral Wettlaufer:The air wing commander; the destroyer squadron commander, who is responsible for the destroyers; the cruiser commanding officer at USS Mobile Bay; the aircraft carrier commanding officer; the air wing commander; and my information warfare commander. So those are my direct reports.

Spencer: And so the captain of the USS Stennis, this aircraft carrier, has 20 direct reports.

Now you used to have that position, if I'm not mistaken, so that's another challenge of management, is one, you get promoted to the next role and someone else takes your prior role. How do you —

Admiral Wettlaufer:Don't do the other guy's job.

Spencer: How do you let go?

Admiral Wettlaufer:You better let go because he was selected to do that job for a reason. It's the same as skipping levels to figure out what's happening. By the nature of my experience, my experience is similar to his job right now, so I can ask some questions and walk around essentially and get a good idea about what's going on there.

My challenge, as you mentioned with the air wing, is translating, making sure the air wing commander and his commanding officers have heard what I said and I've translated my vision properly so they can execute it. But it's a shared vision, so here's the other advantage is that, that part of the organization, that division, if you will, of an organization has similar goals.

They just have a different way to get there. So we share the end goal. I've just got to make sure I've translated the goals to the air wing commander so he can do it to his squadrons so that when they arrive we are ready to start that synchronization process. We don't have to do stutter steps to break down silos. And it's not just the air wing commander coming on board, it's the air wing commander coming on board with those squadrons that have to leverage the supply system on the aircraft carrier.

They've got to be able to fully integrate with the support mechanisms from laundry to food service to berthing and cleaning to the flight deck operations. So these organizations have to be able to very neatly — this goes back to culture — very neatly interlock without having the stutter steps. If you have the stutter steps, it delays excellence. It could create some challenges in safety and operations that we just don't wanna have.

Spencer: When people enter the Navy typically today, or when I asked sailors, “Why did you join?" their most common answer was, “For a better life." Some version of, “I wanted to better myself because I was kind of stuck. I was in a rut in my life" essentially. Once they're here and then they're part of this organization for three, four, five years, the people that seem to stay for a career, another motivation clicks in. Maybe it's duty, maybe it's personal fulfillment. Walk us through that motivation.

Admiral Wettlaufer: That's a great question. It's probably the success along the way, right? Everybody comes for a different set of reasons and they find things along the way, and that's what we want them to do. We want them to come and contribute to the team and be successful on the way, to take what they didn't have and they wanted and go find it here. That's opportunity.

People wouldn't come if they weren't looking for opportunity, right? So how do we help them get along that path? For some there is an “I'd like to go to higher education and I didn't have the opportunity to do this." A young lady about four weeks ago, five weeks ago, actually it was the 17th. I remember it was the 17th of August. She was leaving the ship. I knew her when she was just arrived here, and she wasn't the youngest person to join the Navy. So she arrived here with three years of college completed, and she came here to get an opportunity to complete.

So she finished her fourth year of college while in the Navy over the four years, and she was leaving here to go on to law school to take advantage of the GI Bill. So there's one motivation, right? But she also had family. She had a child she wanted to take care of, etc. But there are many others. Petty Officer Bloomer, who works in the air department, I've known her since I think when I was XO, when she was first on the ship, so 2011 maybe.

Her motivation is helping out other sailors. So she wants to be a career counselor, and she counsels other junior sailors on how to achieve their goals. And then you've got people that are exceptional, technically exceptional in their particular job, or they enjoy the challenge and the lifestyle of being at sea and doing the nation's business. All those people are patriots. Every single one of them arrived here, they raised their right hand and they said, “I wanna be part of the 1 percent."

They didn't know it necessarily at the time, but they're part of the 1 percent that the 99 percent expects to protect them without question. So that 1 percent; I am honored to work with the 1 percent of America that wants to defend America. So in all of those things that people want, I think what they get out of this, no matter how long they stay, is that they were part of the folks that stepped up and said, “I'm gonna defend the United States of America and what we believe in."

It's a fascinating merging of all kinds of people from all walks of life in the United States, and I'm just honored to have the opportunity to be part of that process, particularly right now.

Spencer:And we're grateful to you and to them. When people leave the military and look for their next career they are — companies like ours work very hard to recruit them.

Veterans face a lot of challenges re: orienting themselves to the private sector and just the world after the military. What would you want companies like ours and other executives listening to this to know about veterans so that we can be better at bringing them back?

Admiral Wettlaufer: Sure. We may have discussed this when you were on the ship previously. I think one of the major things that we deliver from a human being perspective is that people see their own success. OK, this is what I came to do and my team did this and I've succeeded here. And along the way we do what corporate America doesn't necessarily do — and certainly at the entry level in corporate America — is that we train them to lead, right? We train people to step up and take charge.

We have all kinds of training along the way, from just learning how to fight a fire on the ship to make sure that you can save your ship and save your shipmate; and damage-control kinds of things to operating up on the flight deck to managing somebody else's personnel files. These are all key aspects of what we do and what they see. What you see on the outside is somebody who not just knows how to go to work on time; a responsible taxpaying citizen.

They certainly came in and become that, or they were that beforehand, is that somebody who knows how to lead, step into a breach and pick up something that got dropped. So I promise you will hire somebody who can lead when given the opportunity, and they will deliver success in organizations at an earlier age, an earlier time in their career than somebody that doesn't have that military experience necessarily.

Spencer: That has been my experience in my interaction with our veterans. I mean they're extraordinary and I hope we can hire a lot more of them. Thank you for your service, Admiral. Thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing some wisdom. I greatly appreciate it.

Admiral Wettlaufer:Thanks very much for coming out and seeing me again, and I look forward to opportunities to engage with a lot of folks in the world, the corporate world, if given the opportunity.

Spencer:Thank you.

The post Rear Admiral Wettlaufer on Creating a Culture of Excellence appeared first on Office Hours.

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$207M Later, Napster is Back and Ready for the Metaverse

🔦 Spotlight

Happy Friday, Los Angeles!

This week, we’re rewinding the clock and fast-forwarding into the future at the same time. Napster, yes, that Napster, just got acquired for $207 million byInfinite Reality, a metaverse and immersive tech company that’s aiming to bring the iconic music platform into the next generation.

For anyone who came of age in the early 2000s, Napster was either your musical awakening or the reason your dial-up connection crashed. Launched in 1999 by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, it was the face of peer-to-peer file sharing and a lightning rod in the music industry’s first wave of digital disruption. After its legal battles and shutdown in 2001, Napster bounced between owners like Roxio and Best Buy, before eventually merging with Rhapsody and evolving into a legitimate streaming service.

Now, Infinite Reality is giving Napster a fresh remix. The company says it plans to turn Napster into a social-first music platform that emphasizes artist-fan interaction over passive listening. We’re talking virtual 3D concert experiences, listening parties, fan communities, and merch drops… essentially, a metaverse-native platform built for music superfans.

According to Infinite Reality CEO John Acunto, this aligns with the company’s bigger vision: moving the internet away from “a flat 2D clickable web” into “a 3D conversational one.” They’re betting that a brand like Napster, which already carries cultural weight, can thrive in a world where fans want deeper connections and creators want modern monetization tools.

It’s a bold move, but maybe a smart one. Nostalgia is a powerful asset, and in an era where legacy brands keep getting digital reboots, Napster has a chance to go from early disruptor to comeback story.

Will today’s listeners hit play? We’ll see. But as far as tech comebacks go, we’re here for this remix.

🤝 Venture Deals

LA Companies

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  • Flight Science, an aviation tech startup focused on AI-powered flight optimization, raised $1.5M in pre-seed funding led by Outsiders Fund. The company helps airlines reduce fuel costs, emissions, and turbulence impact, and will use the funds to grow its team and expand product rollout by summer 2025. - learn more
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          • Second Sight Ventures participated in a $14.2M Series A1 funding round for Lucky Energy, an Austin, Texas-based energy drink company. Lucky Energy offers a line of zero-sugar, zero-calorie beverages in six flavors, formulated with ingredients like maca and beta-alanine. The company plans to use the funds to accelerate distribution, introduce new products, support strategic partnerships, and recruit in key business areas. - learn more
          • M13 led a $5.5M funding round for Chord Commerce, with participation from Act One Ventures and others. The New York-based company provides an AI-powered customer data platform (CDP) that helps commerce brands unify customer data, generate real-time insights, and automate marketing decisions. The funding will be used to further develop the platform and support brands in scaling their data-driven marketing efforts. - learn more
          • Upfront Ventures led a $4M Seed funding round for Arlo Health, a New York City-based AI-powered health insurance underwriter focused on small and mid-sized businesses. Arlo offers level-funded health plans designed to improve preventive care and cost transparency through value-based care and AI-driven underwriting. The funds will be used to expand its broker network, grow its engineering and sales teams, and scale operations. - learn more
          • Bonfire Ventures co-led a $5M Seed funding round for VoiceOps, with participation from Village Global and others. Based in New York City, VoiceOps uses generative AI to analyze phone calls and surface insights that boost sales performance, ensure compliance, and optimize marketing. The funding will support product development, team expansion, and broader market adoption. - learn more
          • MANTIS Venture Capital participated in a $17.2M Seed funding round for EDGE Markets, a fintech company building banking tools tailored to the gaming industry. EDGE’s flagship product, EDGE Boost, offers a debit card and bank account specifically designed for betting, with features like spending limits, financial transparency, and cash-back rewards. The funds will be used to further develop the platform and expand its presence within the gaming market. - learn more

              LA Exits

              • SmartDepo, a leading provider of AI-powered deposition summaries for the legal industry, has been acquired by Rev, a prominent speech-to-text technology company. Founded in 2023 by civil rights attorney Isaac Manoff, SmartDepo delivers comprehensive deposition summaries featuring 100% accurate page-line citations, hyperlinked tables of contents, key admissions analyses, and deposition memos highlighting essential themes. This strategic acquisition combines Rev's highly accurate transcription services with SmartDepo's advanced summarization capabilities, aiming to enhance productivity for attorneys and court reporters by reducing manual review time and improving client outcomes. - learn more
              • Stem, a platform offering personalized distribution and digital strategy services for independent artists and labels, has been acquired by Concord, a leading independent music company. Stem will operate as a separate division within Concord Label Group, with CEO Milana Lewis and President Kristin Graziani continuing in their roles. This acquisition provides Stem with the capital and resources to invest in new technology, expand its suite of label services, and accelerate global growth, while maintaining its mission to empower independent artists with autonomy and support. - learn more

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                          $100M in Wheels and Wings: Startups Changing How We Move

                          🔦 Spotlight

                          Happy Friday, LA —

                          LA’s mobility scene is shifting gears — fast.

                          We’ve got movement on the ground and in the skies this week.

                          Image Source: Upway

                          Let’s start on two wheels. Sequoia-backed startup Upway just launched its new 30,000 square-foot flagship facility in Redondo Beach, and it’s not your average bike shop. The UpCenter, as they’re calling it, is the largest e-bike refurbishment center in California — and it’s a big bet on LA becoming a leader in urban micromobility.

                          If you haven’t heard of Upway yet, you will soon. The company refurbishes e-bikes at scale, with $70 million in funding and operations in both the U.S. and Europe. Their mission? Make high-quality e-bikes more affordable and accessible, especially in cities where traffic is, well… legendary.

                          With California’s new e-bike rebate in effect and Angelenos increasingly looking for car-free ways to move around town, Upway’s timing couldn’t be better. Whether you’re commuting, cruising the Strand, or just sick of spending half your life on the 405, a refurbished ride might be the smoothest move you make all year.

                          Now — from bikes to drones.

                          Image Source: Neros

                          Neros, a young LA-based startup focused on American-made autonomous drones, just announced a $35 million Series A to ramp up manufacturing. In a market long dominated by overseas players, Neros is building drone tech domestically — and it’s not just for hobbyists. Their AI-powered drones are designed to be rugged, adaptable, and mission-ready, with applications across defense, public safety, and infrastructure.

                          The round was led by Vy Capital, with participation from Interlagos Capital, D3, Sequoia, and Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, the CEO of Zipline. Neros’ co-founder and CEO, Soren Monroe-Anderson, summed it up well: this is about “freedom through autonomy.”

                          Now, on to this week’s LA venture deals, fund announcements, and acquisitions…

                          🤝 Venture Deals

                          LA Companies

                          • BuildOps, a Los Angeles-based provider of a unified cloud-based platform for commercial contractors, has raised a $127M Series C funding round led by Meritech Capital Partners, with participation from B Capital, Fika Ventures and others. This investment elevates BuildOps to unicorn status with a valuation of $1 billion. The company plans to use the funds to enhance product capabilities, improve customer support, and scale operations to meet the growing demand from commercial contractors nationwide. - learn more
                          • Proteus Space, a Los Angeles-based company specializing in rapid custom satellite bus solutions, has raised an oversubscribed $6.1M Seed-2 funding round, led by Lavrock Ventures with participation from Crosscut Ventures and others. The funds will be used to accelerate the development and deployment of MERCURY™, Proteus’ automated computational engineering system, which aims to revolutionize custom satellite bus design by significantly reducing development time and costs. - learn more
                          • Occuspace, a Westlake Village, California-based company specializing in occupancy intelligence technology, has secured a $6M Series A funding round led by Lewis & Clark Ventures. The company plans to use the funds to accelerate its growth across higher education, corporate, and government facilities, aiming to make space utilization data the source of truth for understanding and managing the built environment. - learn more
                          • Qolab, a company specializing in quantum computing hardware, has secured Series A funding from Applied Ventures, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials. The investment will be used to advance the development and scalable manufacturing of superconducting qubits, a critical component for large-scale quantum computing. As part of the collaboration, Qolab and Applied Materials have also co-authored a technical roadmap outlining strategies to scale quantum computing from hundreds to millions of qubits. - learn more
                              LA Venture Funds
                                • Wasserman participated in a $56M funding round for Carbon Arc, a New York City-based AI data utility company. Carbon Arc specializes in transforming raw data from various industries into structured, standardized intelligence suitable for AI models and business applications. The funds will be used to accelerate the growth of Carbon Arc's Insights Exchange platform, enhancing its data utility services for businesses and the AI community. - learn more
                                • Trousdale Ventures participated in a $24M funding round for Coreshell, a San Leandro, California-based battery technology company. Coreshell specializes in developing low-cost, high-performance silicon anodes for lithium-ion batteries, aiming to enhance energy density and reduce costs. The funds will be used to scale production at their 4 MWh manufacturing facility and to plan a new 100 MWh facility, with the goal of delivering next-generation electric vehicle batteries to global automakers this year. - learn more
                                • Talino Venture Studios has participated in a $2.8M seed funding round for Higala, a Philippine-based instant payment system startup. Higala aims to enhance financial inclusion by connecting rural banks, thrift banks, commercial banks, and electronic money issuers through an open payments infrastructure, thereby lowering the cost of real-time payments and reducing entry barriers. The funds will be used to expand Higala's services, including the launch of platform banking in the second quarter, enabling smaller financial institutions to offer digital payment services. - learn more
                                • Alexandria Venture Investments participated in a $150M Series B funding round for Latigo Biotherapeutics, a Thousand Oaks, California-based clinical-stage biotechnology company developing non-opioid pain treatments. The funds will support the advancement of Latigo's selective Nav1.8 inhibitors, currently in clinical development, and the expansion of its broader therapeutic pipeline. - learn more
                                • Thiel Capital led a $3.25M funding round for Pilgrim, a biotech startup focused on enhancing human performance and defending against biological threats. The funds will be used to advance its Voyager platform, which is developing cutting-edge biotechnology with potential applications ranging from creating ‘supersoldiers’ to mitigating emerging biothreats. - learn more
                                • Alt-Capital and WndrCo participated in an $18M seed funding round for Town, a startup specializing in small business tax solutions. Town offers an AI-powered platform that automates tasks such as document processing and data collection, providing each client with a dedicated tax advisor. The funds will be used to scale Town's services across the U.S. and expand their team. - learn more

                                  LA Exits

                                    • Dieta Health, a Los Angeles-based company known for its AI-powered stool imaging technology, has been acquired by Cylinder. Dieta’s clinically validated app, shown to outperform traditional patient-reported outcomes, will be integrated into Cylinder’s platform to improve digestive health diagnostics and enable earlier, more personalized treatment. As part of the deal, Dieta’s founder and key team members will join Cylinder to support ongoing development and clinical research. - learn more

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                                            PledgeLA’s Next Chapter Starts Now with Noramay Cadena

                                            🔦 Spotlight

                                            Happy Friday, Los Angeles! As we wrap up another busy week in LA’s tech scene, there’s big news on the leadership front. PledgeLA has a new chair, and it’s someone who knows what it takes to break barriers and build lasting impact. Noramay Cadena, a San Fernando High grad turned triple-degree MIT engineer, has spent her career defying expectations. She started in aerospace engineering, leading operations before pivoting to venture capital, where she’s invested in 90+ companies across industries. She co-founded Latinas in STEM in 2013 and later launched MiLA Capital, a seed-stage VC firm investing in hardware and manufacturing innovations. As Managing Partner of Supply Change Capital, she has focused on technology transforming the food system, raising a $40M fund and deploying over $20M into 23 companies, including eight in California. Stepping into her new role as chair of PledgeLA, she’s setting her sights on an even bigger challenge: making LA’s tech and VC ecosystem more inclusive, accessible, and globally competitive.

                                            Noramay Cadena (left, with her son) incoming chair of PledgeLA, receives a Catalyst Award for Emerging Manager in December. (With Qiana Patterson, PledgeLA Chair 2020-22 and Managing Partner of NAYAH)

                                            She follows in the footsteps of Anna Barber of M13, whose leadership transformed PledgeLA into a driving force for change, launching the VC Fellowship to elevate diverse investors and spearheading the GP + LP Connections Series, which facilitated over 80 investor meetings last year. She also played a key role in the Venture Capital Data Report with UCLA Luskin and introduced the PledgeLA Catalyst Awards, honoring leaders driving capital access and innovation.

                                            Now as Chair Emerita, Barber will continue supporting PledgeLA as it enters its next phase under Cadena’s leadership.

                                            Cadena recognizes the strength of the foundation she’s inheriting. “Anna has been instrumental in making PledgeLA a force for inclusion in LA tech and venture. I’m honored to build on that work as we take the next big leap forward,” she said. “We’re at a critical moment for LA tech. We’ve built momentum, but now is the time to turn that into real, lasting change. I’m focused on forging new partnerships, increasing capital access, and ensuring that LA’s innovation economy works for everyone—not just the few.”

                                            Her first priorities? Expanding PledgeLA’s VC Fellowship to create more pathways into venture, strengthening connections between emerging fund managers and investors, and doubling down on community-driven initiatives. Earlier this year, PledgeLA members, including Wonder Ventures, raised $1.1M for wildfire relief efforts—a testament to the power of LA’s tech community when it mobilizes.

                                            With Cadena at the helm, PledgeLA isn’t just continuing its mission—it’s accelerating it. Thanks to Barber’s legacy and Cadena’s vision, the future of LA tech is poised for even greater impact. For more details on the transition and what’s ahead, read the official announcement here.

                                            And speaking of momentum, if you’re heading out this weekend, be sure to check for road closures—the LA Marathon is set to take over the streets this Sunday! Whether you’re running, cheering, or just navigating around town, it’s another reminder that LA is always on the move.

                                            Image Source: The McCourt Foundation


                                            🤝 Venture Deals

                                            LA Companies

                                            • Scrunch AI, a Los Angeles-based platform that helps businesses optimize their presence in AI-driven search results, has raised a $4M Seed funding round led by Mayfield. The company plans to use the funds to accelerate product development and expand its market reach, aiming to ensure brands remain visible and competitive as AI search becomes more prevalent. - learn more
                                            • Wolf Games, a Los Angeles-based generative gaming startup, has secured $4M in seed funding. The investment round includes prominent figures such as television producer Dick Wolf, music industry pioneer Jimmy Iovine, and Paul Wachter, Founder and CEO of Main Street Advisors. Wolf Games specializes in creating generative cinematic games that adapt to individual player choices, offering immersive and personalized storytelling experiences. The company plans to use the funds to develop its inaugural game, "Public Eye," set to launch in Summer 2025. "Public Eye" is a crime procedural game where players assist in solving murder investigations, guided by an AI-powered assistant that tailors the experience to each user's play style. - learn more
                                            • Fixated, a digital entertainment platform, has secured $12.8M in funding, led by Eldridge Industries. Fixated specializes in transforming creator representation and monetization, providing infrastructure, strategy, and expertise to help digital creators scale their content and diversify revenue streams. The investment will be used to expand Fixated's influence across talent management, content creation, gaming, and digital entertainment, aiming to empower creators and set higher industry standards. - learn more
                                            • Liminal, a user-generated content (UGC) gaming startup, has secured $5.8M in seed funding. The investment round included BITKRAFT Ventures, Riot Games, and OTK Media Group, with participation from angel investors including Marc Merrill, co-founder of Riot Games. Liminal is developing a platform that enables players to create immersive role-playing game (RPG) adventures without coding knowledge, aiming to make storytelling through gaming more accessible and engaging. The funds will be used to advance the development of this platform, with plans to launch publicly playable content in the coming year. - learn more
                                            • Pragma, a Los Angeles-based backend game engine developer, has secured $12.75M in strategic funding, bringing its total raised to over $50M. The investment round included participation from Square Enix, Upfront Ventures, Greylock Partners, and Insight Partners. Pragma specializes in providing scalable backend solutions for live-service games, powering features like matchmaking, analytics, and monetization. The new funds will be used to enhance their suite of live-service tools, support strategic acquisitions, and strengthen partnerships within the gaming industry. - learn more
                                            • Tetrous, a Sherman Oaks-based biotech company focused on bone-to-tendon healing, raised $6.5M in an oversubscribed Series A round. The funds will be used to expand market reach, generate clinical data, and broaden surgical applications of its technology. - learn more
                                            • Uthana, a generative AI company specializing in 3D character animation, has raised a $4.3M funding round led by IA Ventures. The company plans to use the funds to expand operations and development efforts, aiming to revolutionize the animation and game development industry by enabling real-time, lifelike animations that adapt dynamically to gameplay, thereby enhancing immersion and realism. - learn more
                                            • LiquidTrust, a Los Angeles-based fintech company, has raised a $4M Seed funding round led by Anthemis Female Innovators Lab Fund, Resolute Ventures, and Motivate Ventures. The company specializes in secure payment solutions for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and has introduced Micro Escrow Pay, an instant escrow payment solution designed to embed trust directly into payment flows. The funds will be used to expand operations and development efforts, aiming to protect SMBs from fraud and nonpayment risks. - learn more
                                              LA Venture Funds
                                                • B Capital participated in a $4.5M funding round for Bizongo, a Mumbai-based B2B e-commerce platform focused on raw material procurement and distribution, bringing the company's valuation to $980M. The funds will be used to scale operations threefold by December, expand product categories, and position Bizongo for profitability by the last quarter of FY26. - learn more
                                                • UP.Partners led a $4M Seed funding round for SaySo, a New York City-based retail technology company that provides an interactive shopping platform designed to turn excess inventory into profit-driven opportunities. SaySo plans to use the funds to expand its partnerships and bring its interactive clearance platform to a broader retail audience. - learn more
                                                • March Capital participated in a $200M Seed funding round for Lila Sciences, a company developing an AI platform combined with autonomous laboratories to accelerate scientific discovery across life, chemical, and materials sciences. The funds will be used to further develop Lila's AI platform, build the first AI-driven science factories, and scale operations to enhance scientific research capabilities. - learn more
                                                • Animal Capital led a $1.6M pre-seed funding round for Platter, a New York-based ecommerce technology startup. Platter specializes in helping Shopify brands create high-converting storefronts that maximize profit. The funds will be used to further consolidate disparate tools into a unified product suite, empowering Shopify brands to build more profitable storefronts. - learn more

                                                LA Exits

                                                  • Tastemade, a media company known for its food, travel, and home design content, has been acquired by food delivery startup Wonder for $90M. The acquisition aims to integrate Tastemade’s content with Wonder’s services, including takeout, delivery, and meal kits, to create a comprehensive "mealtime super app." The deal is also expected to enhance Wonder’s advertising business and offer seamless access to meals featured on Tastemade’s platforms. - learn more
                                                  • Jumpcut Media, a provider of AI-driven intellectual property management and audience analysis tools, has been acquired by Cinelytic, an AI-powered content intelligence platform. Jumpcut's platforms, such as ScriptSense and SocialSense, offer real-time insights into content development and market alignment, enhancing decision-making across the content lifecycle. This acquisition aims to integrate Jumpcut's capabilities into Cinelytic's services, optimizing decision-making in the entertainment industry. - learn more
                                                  • FatTail, a Calabasas, California-based advertising technology company specializing in direct advertising solutions, has been acquired by Chartbeat, a media operations software platform backed by Cuadrilla Capital. This acquisition aims to integrate FatTail's advertising revenue management capabilities with Chartbeat's content analytics services, providing media companies with a unified platform to enhance both audience engagement and revenue generation. - learn more
                                                  • Deep 6 AI, an AI-driven precision research platform specializing in accelerating patient recruitment for clinical trials, has been acquired by Tempus, a leader in AI-powered precision medicine. Deep 6 AI's platform analyzes both structured and unstructured electronic medical record (EMR) data to match patients with clinical trials, serving over 750 provider sites and encompassing more than 30 million patients. This acquisition aims to enhance Tempus' capabilities in clinical trial matching and real-world evidence generation, furthering its mission to advance precision medicine and patient care. - learn more

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