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X‘Nobody Runs a Criminal Record Check on a Company.’ Reboot LA Teaches Former Prisoners to Run Their Own Businesses
Breanna de Vera is dot.LA's editorial intern. She is currently a senior at the University of Southern California, studying journalism and English literature. She previously reported for the campus publications The Daily Trojan and Annenberg Media.

It can be nearly impossible for former convicts to find a job in L.A. A new incubator is training formerly incarcerated Angelenos to start their own businesses instead.
"Nobody runs a criminal record check on a company," said Reboot LA program director Claudia Diaz.
Reboot LA will offer 28 formerly incarcerated individuals a chance to participate in their incubator program offered in partnership with the city of Los Angeles this fall. Its curriculum comes from Sabio Enterprises, a coding and educator developer community that provides boot camps for future software engineers.
"They're taking control, but just being hired on their own digital portfolios and their own talent," she said.
Because of the stigma, many people who have done time in prison or jail face higher hurdles to getting a job. Owning a company, instead of working for someone else or consulting as an individual is often an easier path toward economic sustainability. And studies show that jobs are also associated with lower recidivism.
Reboot LA helps students build skills to be competitive, including how to source clients, create a digital portfolio, perform full stack development and, ultimately, own their own tech consulting company.
Home Boy Bakery & Home Girl Cafe
Reboot LA's Roots
Sabio co-founder and chief executive officer Liliana Monge came up with the idea while working with the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC) in L.A. She thought Sabio's curriculum could help people with criminal records gain skills to work in tech and started devising a program to steer them toward employment after they finished a boot camp.
She hosted biweekly coding information sessions at Homeboy Industries and the Anti-Recidivism Coalition last year to gauge interest and engage possible participants.
But when Los Angeles went into lockdown, those classes went online and recruitment got harder. Then the city of Los Angeles agreed to cover the costs for 28 enrollees, and applications started to roll in. "In October, we finally got our first 100% remote program participant," she said.
Monge didn't want to disclose the names of participants because they attend classes alongside other Sabio students. She doesn't want her students to have to deal with the stigmas around incarceration. But she would say said the first participant is a Latina woman.
"[There is] a lack of women talent in the tech industry," Monge said. "So we're excited that our first program participant is a woman of color. And we look forward to having more program participants that are super diverse, and we want gender parity as well."
The city of Los Angeles was already working with ARC to provide job training to formerly incarcerated individuals. The Los Angeles Economic and Workforce Development Department (EWDD) noticed the tech workshops Sabio was doing with ARC. When Monge decided to expand the pilot program, EWDD worked closely with her to make Reboot LA available to all Angelenos with a record.
"The tech industry is thriving in Los Angeles, yet for some Angelenos, finding a job in this realm feels completely out of reach," said Carolyn Hull, general manager of EWDD. "EWDD invests in incubators as part of the city's mission to cultivate the city's clean tech industry and create opportunities for the city's underserved populations to gain access to the tech industry."
Few Legal Protections for Those with a Criminal Record
Angelenos with a criminal record are not legally protected against hiring discrimination based on their record. People with incarceration histories are four to six times more likely to be unemployed than peers without a record, according to data from the Prison Policy Initiative.
There have been a few recent measures in California that aim to provide them with protections against discrimination. But for the most part, these efforts haven't increased opportunities for formerly incarcerated people in the tech industry.
Last month, Governor Gavin Newsom passed an Assembly bill that expunges the criminal records of former prisoners who fought against the California wildfires Not all prisoners are on the front lines of fighting fires, however. And this measure is intended to help formerly incarcerated people seeking employment in emergency response.
In 2018, California passed the Fair Chance Act, known as "Ban the Box," which refers to a box on job applications that indicate whether the applicant has a criminal record. California employers cannot ask applicants about their conviction histories. But that doesn't protect employees from a criminal history check after they are hired, according to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. And any job that already requires a background check, such as those in finance or the government, is not subject to this law.
Emiliano Lopez and Guillermo "Memo" Armenta founded a web app and development company called FutureWork.Courtesy Reboot LA
Future Work: Rate My Parole Agent
Emiliano Lopez and Guillermo "Memo" Armenta — two Sabio graduates — helped Monge develop the ideas for Reboot LA. Both are social justice advocates and their work ranges from community outreach to housing people coming out of incarceration.
"Both my mom and I come from a marginalized community, we both formerly incarcerated folks," said Lopez. "We took advantage of the opportunity that ARC and Sabio had at one time where we were able to join the coding boot camp on a scholarship."
Since graduating, they have founded a web app and development company called Future Work.
Lopez and Armenta were introduced to Sabio's programming at the Anti-Recidivism Coalition. They took a 12-week coding bootcamp, and after finishing, started looking for work in the tech space.
"From there, Memo and I decided to look for jobs in the coding world. And we noticed that it was largely closed for people with a background," said Lopez.
They brainstormed and worked on small projects for a while, which Lopez saved in his Google Drive within a folder called "future work."
"We were just fed up with the way things were going. And we just threw our hands up in the air and we went downtown. We filed to create a company called Future Work, named after the folder on my Google Drive," said Lopez. "We're a functioning part-time business right now. And currently, we have a little product to offer."
That product is an app aimed at improving relationships between parole agents and parolees, for people with backgrounds similar to their own.
"[It's] going to be a "rating app" for parole agents, to understand what the relationship between parole agent and parolee is," said Lopez. "What that looks like on the grand scale is, 'What does that culture look like, with an entire office of parole agents and an entire community of people on parole?' [We'll] use that data to improve those relationships in the future, so we can build a safer society — one that is based on mutual respect, and the common goal of having someone succeed and not go back into the institution."
Reboot LA is still looking for participants for its first official cohort of participants. Applications are available on their website. Los Angeles residents can apply to the free program, and cohorts are selected every month.
Full-time courses run for 13 weeks, six times a week. Part-time courses meet on weekday evenings and Saturdays. Participants are trained in Microsoft's .Net platform, Node.js development, client side frameworks, database architecture and API tools.
"L.A. is really kind of brimming with exceptional tech talent," Monge said." And so we're excited to make sure that through this program, we can bring in diverse voices to the tech ecosystem."
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Breanna de Vera is dot.LA's editorial intern. She is currently a senior at the University of Southern California, studying journalism and English literature. She previously reported for the campus publications The Daily Trojan and Annenberg Media.
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LA Tech ‘Moves’: LeaseLock, Visgenx, PlayVS and Pressed Juicery Gains New CEOs
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow 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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LeaseLock, a lease insurance and financial technology provider for the rental housing industry named Janine Steiner Jovanovic as chief executive officer. Prior to this role, Steiner Jovanovic served as the former EVP of Asset Optimization at RealPage.
Esports platform PlayVS hired EverFi co-founder and seasoned business leader Jon Chapman as the company’s chief executive officer.
Biotechnology company Visgenx appointed William Pedranti, J.D. as chief executive officer. Before joining, Mr. Pedranti was a partner with PENG Life Science Ventures.
Pressed Juicery, the leading cold-pressed juice and functional wellness brand welcomed Justin Nedelman as chief executive officer. His prior roles include chief real estate officer of FAT Brands Inc. and co-founder of Eureka! Restaurant Group.
Michael G. Vicari joined liquid biopsy company Nucleix as chief commercial officer. Vicari served as senior vice president of Sales at GRAIL, Inc.
Full-service performance marketing agency Allied Global Marketing promoted Erin Corbett to executive vice president of global partnership and marketing. Prior to joining Allied, Corbett's experience included senior marketing roles at Disney, Warner Bros. Studios, Harrah's Entertainment and Imagi Animation Studios.
Nuvve, a vehicle-to-grid technology company tapped student transportation and automotive sales and marketing executive David Bercik to lead the K-12 student transportation division.
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow 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’: Curri Scoops Up $42M, Mosaic Scores $26M
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow 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.
A local logistics platform raised fresh funding to put toward product development, infrastructure and sales and marketing initiatives, while a San Diego-based fintech company closed its Series C funding round to expand its investment in AI which will empower high-growth SMB and mid-market finance leaders.
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Venture Capital
Curri, a Ventura-based logistics platform, raised a $42 million Series B funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.
San Diego-based financial platform Mosaic raised a $26 million Series C funding round led by OMERS Ventures.
AHARA, a Los Angeles-based startup focused on providing personalized nutrition suggestions, raised a $10.25 million seed funding round led by Greycroft.
Per an SEC filing, San Diego-based developer of peptide therapeutics designed to assist in the treatment of autoimmune diseases and disorders selectIon raised $5 million in funding.
Miscellaneous
Los Angeles-based Sensydia, a company working on non-invasive cardiac diagnostics, said this morning that it has received $3 million in a NIH grant.
Raises is dot.LA’s weekly feature highlighting venture capital funding news across Southern California’s tech and startup ecosystem. Please send fundraising news to Decerry Donato (decerrydonato@dot.la).
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow 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.
'Esports Winter’ is a Myth, Local Gaming Execs Say
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.
Last year, global venture capital investment in esports dropped by more than 40%. Investors have been rapidly selling off teams and franchises, and the industry has witnessed a consistent decline in ad spend. This has prompted many critics to coin the term “esports winter,” referring to a fall-off in the industry, an indication that VCs believe their investments didn’t achieve success as expected.
A recent article in The New York Times highlighted two major esports leagues that recently divested from their teams: Madison Square Garden sold its team CounterLogic Gaming to NRG in April, while Team SoloMid sold its League of Legends Championship Series team in late May.
Arguing that the industry still has potential for growth, several gaming executives at a LA Tech Week panel said that instead of an “esports winter,” the industry was experiencing a period of “normalization.” The panel at SoHo House in West Hollywood featured Brian Anderson, CEO of Culver City-based esports outfit FlyQuest Sport, Gene Chorba, head of developer relations at Roku and Felix LaHaye, founder of United Esports.
“I'm actually very skeptical of the claim of an esports winter,” Anderson said. “I think that what I'm seeing in the market right now, ultimately, is just a lot of venture capital firms that deployed capital into the eSports space that are not generating the returns that they were looking for, and have now done the press junket and are labeling it an esports winter.”
“In reality,” Anderson said, “esports, in my view, is alive and well.”
Anderson said there were a lot of “unrealistic expectations” around esports since it became popular in 2016, and the current decline was a sign that the market was correcting itself. “This is a necessary pain point that any nascent industry is going to go through as it matures and develops, and I think that in, let's say, 24 months, 36 months, esports will be in a much better financially sustainable place,” he said.
“I think we're having a little bit of a normalization,” Chorba said. “We saw the entire economy was being shot to the moon, with nothing behind it… we were seeing valuations of companies, public and private, that just didn't make sense for what they were building.”
Other tech industries have experienced a similar “normalization” in recent years. Cryptocurrencies, NFTs and big tech have all seen a downturn in recent months after being flooded with VC interest for many years.
According to the panelists, the existing viewer base for esports was a clear sign that the industry still had potential for growth. “There's still a ton of attention on professional video games. There's still so much grassroots fan support,” Anderson said. “As long as organizations and developers are able to figure out how to actually monetize that fan base, I think esports is still alive and well and here to stay for a long time.”
According to Insider Intelligence in 2022, there were 532 million esports viewers globally, with nearly 30 million viewers in the U.S.; this is expected to increase to 34.8 million by 2026.
Chorba explained that the reduction in ad spend and brand deals in esports shouldn’t worry investors because these crucial revenue streams have slowed down for other industries as well. “Ad-supported is hemorrhaging money and really just trying to wait out what's really a bad economy right now,” he said. As more people stop paying for cable, Chorba said, eyeballs will move onto streaming sites like YouTube or Twitch to watch gaming content.
LaHaye and Chorba said that one of the reasons for the decline in esports investments could be that executives and VCs are running esports companies like tech or SaaS companies. “As a matter of fact, they are not tech companies. They are ad-supported entertainment products,” LaHaye said.
By taking their companies to IPOs too early, certain esports companies ruined their chances in the market, LaHaye added. “There's also a downswing that's done by a rush to [go] public,” he said. “There are some fairly poor business models in esports that are going through a rougher time.”
“[Game publishing] is a hit-making business,” LaHaye said. “I think there tends to be confusion between what is a fundamental issue for the esports industry itself and some business models within the esports industry being bad business.”
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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.