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XSike Insights Aims to Build Company Culture Through AI
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.

Siddarth Pandiya, the 20-year-old founder of Sike Insights, likes to say he was into remote work before remote work was cool.
He founded Sike Insights from his dorm in October 2019 with Andrew Zhou and Corine Tan, two fellow UCLA students. The three had made several different projects at hackathons and in the entrepreneurship fraternity Sigma Eta Pi before scrapping them all entirely and creating the artificial intelligence platform aimed at managers trying to stay in tune with remote workers.
"Making baby leaders," as he puts it, "more emotionally intelligent was kind of like the thing that I've always cared about, and after we got to work, we found our calling was easy," he said.
The company has just closed a $1 million pre-seed round with backing from Kleiner Perkins, Abe Burns,dot.LA co-founder Spencer Rascoff, Jeff Wilke, The Fund, Overton VC, MiLA Capital and Rough Draft Ventures.
Pandiya, who started his first company at 15 years old, came up with the idea based on his experiences on his high school debate team, where building a culture and cohesiveness could be the difference between winning and losing.
He knew businesses faced the same problem and wanted to create more sensitive companies.
"Especially in our generation, we would rather be unemployed than work at a company where we don't feel like we're cared for right," said Pandiya.
Work from Home Realities
There's a lot of technology already out there to help with asynchronous working — Asana, Trello, Slack and Monday all assist with remote team goal setting and communication. But what Pandiya noticed was missing was building a company culture.
"Culture is now a must-have for remote companies, as opposed to 10 years ago when culture was kind of seen as this wishy-washy thing and it was more like, 'Okay, suck it up and do your job even if you hate it'," he said.
Siddarth Pandiya, Corine Tan and Andrew Zhou are the co-founders of Sike Insights.
There is no way for employees to interface with their managers or each other at the same volume they could while at work, according to Pandiya. Co-workers can no longer stop by each others' desks and chat about their weekends or their projects. Sensitive conversations are harder without body language.
"Startups like Sike, that empower high levels of engagement within teams, have the potential to add a lot of value," said Jonathon Ruane, a professor of global economics and management at MIT. He said research indicates that the share of working days spent at home by full-time workers will triple after the pandemic.
"Managers will need to adapt to managing and leading teams remotely. Many are likely to adopt new technologies that support this," Ruane said.
Sike Insights' first product is a friendly dog named Kona. It's an artificial intelligence bot integrated into Slack who facilitates interactions with employees and managers by making suggestions about how to respond during different conversations.
Kona first gathers employee data from a self-reported survey about their personality types. It continues to monitor employees' Slack activity to build a profile of each persons' working style and make suggestions to their managers on how best to clarify tasks or deliver feedback.
At the start of the day, employees respond to a question from Kona: "How are you feeling today?" They can respond with a color and an explanation of their feelings. Not every status is related to work — teammates can share other happenings in their lives and better get to know each other despite not having in-person interactions.
Sike Insights' first product is a bot in the form of a dog named Kona.
A Test Case
TeamSnap, a sports organizing platform, was one of the beta testers for Kona. Their engineering team had daily stand-ups, weekly one-on-ones, and twice-a-week all-hands meetings. Shane Emmons, TeamSnap's chief technology officer, realized that these meetings consisted largely of small-talk because his team wanted to better know each other.
With Kona, they drastically cut down on meetings.
"Clicking an emoji each morning created some big changes in how we take care of each other," Emmons said. Emmons began spending less time asking his team how they were feeling, and was able to spend his time helping them grow. After two months, the team eliminated daily stand ups and made one-on-one meetings biweekly.
"You can't walk around the office in a remote setting, so Kona acts like my sixth sense. I can see my distributed team's emotional health in a way that I couldn't before," Emmons said. "People naturally check on each other and start casual conversations. It's all from taking a simple 30-second pulse each morning."
The last service Kona provides are daily insights that are relayed to managers and teams as Slack prompts. Each tip or reflection was developed with the help of top executive coaches, some of whom are investors, such as Robyn Ward and Jeff Gray.
"We're really the only company, the only tool that has real data on the culture of your company right now," said Pandiya. "And that's obviously really powerful in and of itself as an analytics platform. But what we have even beyond that is we are really the only tool that can help you manifest the culture that you want to create in your company."
Editor's note: This story has been updated.
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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.