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XWatch: Exploring Relativity Space With Tim Ellis and Spencer Rascoff
Annie Burford is dot.LA's director of events. She's an event marketing pro with over ten years of experience producing innovative corporate events, activations and summits for tech startups to Fortune 500 companies. Annie has produced over 200 programs in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City working most recently for a China-based investment bank heading the CEC Capital Tech & Media Summit, formally the Siemer Summit.

dot.LA Co-founder and Executive Chairman Spencer Rascoff speaks with Relativity Space Co-Founder and CEO Tim Ellis about 3D printing in manufacturing, going to Mars, and the future of the new space race in the latest Strategy Session.
Strategy Session: Exploring Relativity Space With Tim Ellis and Spencer Rascoffwww.youtube.com
Tim Ellis
Tim Ellis is the co-founder and CEO of Relativity, the first autonomous factory and launch service for rockets. Relativity recently created the largest robotic metal 3D printer in the world and has tested our entirely 3D printed Aeon rocket engine over 180 times. Previously responsible for bringing metal 3D printing into Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, and a propulsion development engineer on Crew Capsule RCS thrusters, BE-4, and New Glenn. Alumni of USC and played a leadership role in launching the first student designed and built rocket into near space. Testified to the US Senate on commercial space policy and is the youngest member on the National Space Council UAG by nearly 2 decades, and directly advises the United States White House on all space policy. Has spoken at numerous conferences including CBInsights Aha! and TEDx. Relativity is backed by Playground Global, Social Capital, Y Combinator, Mark Cuban, USC, and Stanford.
Spencer Rascoff
Spencer Rascoff is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire and dot.LA, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. He is currently executive chairman of dot.LA and a board member at TripAdvisor. In the fall of 2019 Spencer was a Visiting Executive Professor at Harvard Business School where he co-taught the "Managing Tech Ventures" course. In 2015, Spencer co-wrote and published his first book, the New York Times' Best Seller "Zillow Talk: Rewriting the Rules of Real Estate." Spencer is the host of "Office Hours," a monthly podcast on dot.LA featuring candid conversations between prominent executives on leadership, diversity and inclusion, and startups.
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Annie Burford is dot.LA's director of events. She's an event marketing pro with over ten years of experience producing innovative corporate events, activations and summits for tech startups to Fortune 500 companies. Annie has produced over 200 programs in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City working most recently for a China-based investment bank heading the CEC Capital Tech & Media Summit, formally the Siemer Summit.
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E-Bike Startup Wheels Agrees To Sell Business to Micromobility Firm Helbiz
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
West Hollywood-based electric bicycle-sharing startup Wheels has agreed to sell its business to micromobility firm Helbiz, the companies announced Tuesday.
Helbiz said it has signed a letter of intent to acquire Wheels for an undisclosed sum, with the transaction expected to close by the end of this year.
Wheels was launched in 2018 by brothers Jonathan and Joshua Viner, the former co-founders of dog-walking startup Wag. The dockless e-bike provider, which has raised roughly $100 million in funding to date, has 8,000 vehicles deployed across 12 markets including Los Angeles, New York, Austin and Honolulu.
Wheels has particularly built up its presence in its hometown; the company says it is the “only operator across the four permitted markets of metropolitan Los Angeles”—those being the cities of L.A., Santa Monica, West Hollywood and Culver City.
New York-based Helbiz currently operates in more than 35 cities across the U.S. and Italy, according to its website, with plans to expand to France and Serbia. Helbiz—which manages a fleet of electric scooters, bicycles and mopeds—was launched in 2015 by Italian-American entrepreneur Salvatore Palella and went public in a SPAC deal last August.
The merger comes after Wheels inked a deal with Helbiz in January to supply the company with 2,500 of its sit-down e-bikes in the U.S. and Italy.
“From a strategic perspective, this acquisition is expected to double [Helbiz’s] revenue, expand the cities served, enhance margins and reduce costs,” Palella said in a statement. “Our focus is to adapt and grow with profitability at the core of every decision. This acquisition makes us even more confident in our ability to achieve that goal in the next 18 months.”
Helbiz reported net losses exceeding $19 million in the quarter ended March 31, on revenues of just $3.3 million.
“Our businesses are complementary in really powerful ways,” Wheels CEO Marco McCottry said in a statement. “There is minimal overlap of city permits, and we believe the combination of our businesses can create a uniquely diversified mobility offering that generates compelling synergies across a large footprint.”
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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
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel Talks Snapchat’s ‘Super App’ Aspirations
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.
Snap co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel said that Elon Musk’s plan to build Twitter into a “super app” mirrors his own social media company’s ambitions.
Super apps, which integrate multiple services into one platform, allow companies like Santa Monica-based Snap to diversify user engagement, Spiegel told Axios Monday at the Cannes Lions advertising festival in France.
“[W]hen you’ve diversified engagement across a wide variety of products in the same application, that can really strengthen your business,” Spiegel told Axios.
With his tumultuous, $44 billion Twitter takeover in the works, Musk told Twitter employees last week that he wants the social media platform to reach the popularity of Chinese super app WeChat. Tencent-owned WeChat integrates digital payments and other ecommerce features into its messaging and social media capabilities.
“When he talks about Twitter as a super app, I think that’s an idea that’s really compelling,” Spiegel said of Musk’s plans for the company. “I think he’s seeing a lot of what we saw in Asia, for example, and a lot of what we’ve tried to build.”
While Snap has not previously expressed interest in the super app model, Spiegel noted that the company has invested in bolstering its service beyond media-sharing and messaging in recent years—with Snapchat now incorporating concert recommendations, augmented reality and original content.
“[I]f you look at the evolution of Snapchat, [it’s something] we’ve been investing a lot in, over the years," he said.
Musk’s acquisition of Twitter still needs to overcome his concerns over spam accounts on the platform, while the debt portion of the deal still needs to “come together,” the Tesla CEO said Tuesday. Another of the billionaire’s companies, Hawthorne-based aerospace firm SpaceX, fired several employees last week for writing and circulating an open letter criticizing Musk’s conduct.- Snap Announces New Shows, Ad Features and Cameo Partnership ... ›
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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.
SteadyMD Becomes the First Telehealth Company With Clinicians In Every US State
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.
SteadyMD, a Westlake Village-based telehealth startup, has acquired health care credentialing platform BlocHealth, it announced on Tuesday. The deal makes SteadyMD the first telehealth platform to offer clinicians in all 50 states as well as licensing and credentialing services for those health care providers, according to the company.
“We can so much more efficiently handle broadly the demand in telehealth when our clinicians are licensed in a lot of states,” SteadyMD co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Yarone Goren told dot.LA. “That was really the rationale for the deal.”
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Founded in 2016 by Goren and CEO Guy Friedman, SteadyMD says it has raised $35 million to date, including a $25 million Series B round led by Lux Capital last year. The startup has looked to tackle an ongoing primary care physician shortage by making it easier for patients to access out-of-state doctors whose expertise is matched to their health and lifestyle. The company has since grown to expand its business-to-business (B2B) offerings, allowing it to provide other telehealth ventures with infrastructure and streamlining the licensing process for customers like Lemonaid Health, the San Francisco-based telehealth startup acquired by 23andMe in November.
Telehealth—once a niche product dedicated mostly to online therapy—has expanded to nearly every facet of health since the pandemic. But as most clinicians are required to be licensed and follow guidelines in the state where a patient sought treatment, platforms like Florida-based BlocHealth allow physicians, nurses and therapists to apply for licenses across different states—letting them access patients across state lines, including in areas that may have a clinician shortage.
“In a sense, we're creating capacity by bringing clinicians online and then by getting them licensed in more states,” Goren said. “I think we're creating a lot of efficiencies. The primary care shortage is not overstated, but it usually relates to in-person visits.”
With more health care providers and patients embracing telehealth, investment has poured into the rapidly growing sector—not only on the point-of-care side, but on the B2B side, as well. Tech giants like Google have ramped up their health care cloud offerings to make telehealth platforms more secure, while startups that help clinicians transition to the telehealth model have lured millions in investment dollars.
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.