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XWriter-Actor Shantell Yasmine Abeydeera on How Niche Streamers Create Community
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

Shantell Yasmine Abeydeera is an L.A.-based writer, performer and content creator. Her latest series, "Dating In Place," will be available on Revry, an L.A.-based, ad-supported, niche streaming service focused on the LGBTQ community.
Revry is one of many niche streaming services competing in an increasingly crowded market, where audience loyalty and good relationships with artists are key to success, as we probed in an earlier piece on what it takes for a niche streaming service to survive.
Revry is free and accessible to more than 250 million households and devices in over 130 countries. Its offerings are divided into several channels, such as "Revry News" and "Revry Live TV." "Dating In Place" will air on the channel " OML on Revry," which debuted earlier this month to focus on queer female programming.
It is a collaboration with OML, a boutique media company formerly called One More Lesbian, of which Abeydeera is also the director of content and partnerships.
dot.LA recently caught up with her about her new show, her thoughts on the value of queer spaces in the streaming world and how niche services can help build community around content.
OML on. Revry - Official Teaser
dot.LA: Do you consider yourself a queer-oriented artist?
Abeydeera: I consider myself to be a storyteller, first and foremost. But being queer is a very important part of of my storytelling journey, mainly because of the lack of representation that was available to me when I was younger. I wasn't seeing stories where I was represented on screen. And that's because of the fact that I am so unique, in being multi-ethnic, queer, very feminine-presenting, a lot of things that we just don't really on screen.
I was always really, really thirsty to see that kind of representation. I started creating queer storylines, and once it started being received by the queer community, I saw that there was such a need for it.
How does a platform like Revry allow you to get those kinds of representative stories out there?
I think it's huge, but there is definitely a struggle. Platforms like Revry obviously don't have the money behind them, the way that the mainstream streamers like your Hulus and your Amazons do. So it's harder for them to produce shows that are the kinds that bring in the audiences that become loyal.
What's really smart is that these guys are focusing a lot on short-form content, which is far more attainable for content-creators as well as for the platform. So, say for example, "Dating In Place": 10-minute episodes, 10 episodes of the series – that is far more affordable than 10 episodes of a half-hour series where you go from the show costing $20,000 to costing $150,000. It's easier for queer content-creators to fund short-form content.
In that sense, do you see Revry as a stepping stone to working with a different, perhaps larger distributor?
I would like to see the development of platforms like Revry. My hope is that these platforms develop and form the viewership they deserve, so that then they're able to become partners in creating more content. I'm not necessarily thirsty to go and work with a big machine, but I'm not totally against it either.
Are you worried about potentially pigeonholing your career by focusing on queer content or working with a queer-oriented distributor?
No, I don't really worry about pigeonholing my career, mainly because I think there are many different incarnations of queer stories that can be told. For a long time, queer people weren't able to tell their stories. I think we're going to start to see an expansion. So I'm looking forward to telling stories that just merely have queer characters in them. And where we're not necessarily calling it queer.
How do you see "Dating In Place" playing a role in that trajectory of telling broader queer stories?
One of the interesting things in "Dating In Place" is that we don't actually ever refer to any of the characters as being queer. We never talk about it. I think that's a big step. And there's never any reference to there being any issues with parents or families when it comes to these characters' sexual identity.
The issue was just that these two girls met, they were going to go on a date, and then the pandemic hit, and now they're in completely separate countries, and they're dating online and falling in love but they've never seen each other or touched each other.
If not for OML on Revry, what do you think would have happened with "Dating In Place"?
A lot of what happens to short-form content is it goes to festivals and then it goes to YouTube. And especially for queer content, that's kind of the death for the content creator, because queer content on YouTube is quite famously de-monetized. So the money that you're making on the clicks of queer content is, like, minus cents in comparison to other content that can maybe make like a dollar, or whatever. So I think without a platform like OML on Revry, a show like "Dating in Place" would have just gone on YouTube or Vimeo.
How else would you say having your show on OML on Revry is beneficial to you as a creator?
The thing that I will say about the queer community, especially – consumers of queer content – is that they're very loyal. Once they become interested in your content, they are then interested in you and invested in you. As an artist and as a creator, that's really all you can ask for: people that are going to be there to view the content that you've made, and people that are going to be there when you make more.
I'm really excited for this platform to exist for this audience. Before, a lot of this audience, the fandom audience, kind of would just be scrolling through YouTube, clicking on tiny thumbnails trying to figure out, is this a queer-inclusive show? And now, hopefully, they will migrate over to a platform where they know that all of the content is queer-inclusive and queer-positive, and has been made for them. Hopefully, now this audience will find a home.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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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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Astroforge Raises $13M To Mine Asteroids
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.
Y Combinator startup Astroforge wants to use its new $13 million seed round to mine asteroids.
The Huntington Beach-based company aims to become the first company to bring asteroid resources back to Earth, TechCrunch reported Thursday. Initialized Capital led the funding round and was joined by investors Seven Seven Six, EarthRise, Aera VC, Liquid 2 and Soma.
“When you look at the opportunity here—and the opportunity really is to mine the universe—this is such a huge opportunity that investors are willing to make the bet on a longer time horizon,” Astroforge co-founder Matt Gialich told TechCrunch.
Virgin Orbit veteran Gialich launched the company alongside his co-founder, SpaceX and NASA alum Jose Acain, in January; the four-person firm, which Gialich said is now hiring for seven more positions, hopes to successfully mine an asteroid by the end of the decade. The seed money will fund Astroforge’s first two missions, with its first being a demo flight scheduled for a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare launch next year.
While Astroforge is keeping the specifics of its technology close to the vest, the company told TechCrunch that it involves a “high-rated vacuum” and requires a zero-gravity environment, but won’t involve actually landing on the asteroid itself. The company is eyeing asteroids ranging from 20 meters to 1.5 kilometers in diameter that carry high concentrations of platinum-group metals, which limits its potential targets to less than 1 million of the 10 million asteroids near Earth.
Astroforge wouldn’t be the first to attempt this science fiction-esque endeavor, though commercial space mining has faced financial and logistical obstacles that no company has yet overcome. NASA, for its part, is counting on the private sector to realize the U.S.’s space mining ambitions, then-deputy administrator Jim Morhard told dot.LA in 2020.
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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.
Illumix Founder Kirin Sinha On Using Math to Inform Creative Thinking
Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
Kirin Sinha wanted to be a dancer. When injury dashed that dream, she turned to her other passion: math.
On this week’s episode of the Behind Her Empire podcast, host Yasmin Nouri talks with the founder and CEO of augmented reality (AR) technology and media platform Illumix.
Sinha received degrees from MIT, the University of Cambridge and LSE and founded a nonprofit to help middle school girls with their math skills. She ventured into AR while perusing an MBA at Stanford. Since founding Illumix in 2017, Sinha has raised $13 million from investors including Lightspeed and Maveron Ventures.
Her background in mathematics informs how she problem solves as a CEO, she said. Both math and her dance background taught her to seek out creative solutions.
“A lot of people think that math is very rote and analytical, but at its core it's truly not,” Sinha said. “It's about being creative. It's about having this building block for expressing and understanding the world around you.”
That creativity is bolstered by habits her mother taught her, such as surrounding herself with affirmations drawn onto post-it notes to bolster her spirits. Working in AR, Sinha said she's aware that what people surround themselves with impacts their inner world.
“Your diet is the people around you,” she said. “It's what you surround yourself with. It's the images and the words that surround your day-to-day life. I really spend a lot of time thinking about how can you improve the wider sense of the word diet around you.”
A crucial part of Sinha’s diet is carving out time for a daily walk to dedicate time to ponder Illumix’s future. Reflecting on big-picture goals and challenges allows her to consider how AR changes the ways people engage with the space around them.
Hear more of the Behind Her Empire podcast. Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radioor wherever you get your podcasts.
dot.LA Editorial Intern Kristin Snyder contributed to this post.
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Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
Rael Raises $35M To Grow Its Organic Feminine Care Brand
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.
Rael, a Buena Park-based organic feminine care and beauty brand, has raised $35 million in a Series B funding round, the company announced Wednesday.
The funding was led by the venture arms of two Asian companies: Japanese gaming firm Colopl’s Colopl Next and South Korean conglomerate Shinsegae Group’s Signite Partners. Aarden Partners and ST Capital also participated, as did existing investors Mirae Asset and Unilever Ventures.
Rael described the new round—which takes its total funding to date to $59 million—as “the largest amount raised in the U.S. feminine care category to date.” The company said it plans to use the capital to grow its product offerings, retail partnerships and global marketing reach.
Having already branched into skincare products meant to combat hormonal acne, co-founder and CEO Yanghee Paik said Rael plans on further expanding beyond basic feminine care products. “We aspire to be a clean, holistic personal care brand for women, so we’re graduating from just being another organic feminine care company,” Paik told dot.LA.
Paik and her two co-founders, who are all Korean-American women, launched Rael in 2017 and started out by selling organic pads on Amazon. Paik said she was inspired by the products she would bring back home after trips to South Korea, where the organic category represents more than 30% of the feminine care market (compared to less than 10% of the U.S. market, according to Rael). The startup has since expanded into retail stores like Target and Walmart, and part of its new funding will be dedicated to further growing its retail presence.
These days, Rael is part of an increasing number of companies focused on organic feminine care, with brands like LOLA, The Honey Pot and The Flex Co. all offering organic menstrual products.
“The feminine care industry is not like beauty, which attracted a lot of investors initially,” Paik said. “People are noticing that it’s one of the markets that has not been noticed by investors as much, but has a lot of growth potential because it’s been dominated by big brands. Now there are female-founded smaller brands that are trying to make a difference there.”
As part of Rael’s growth efforts, the company has also brought in Lauren Consiglio, a former marketing executive at Unilever and L’Oreal, as its president.
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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.