An Air Force veteran who commanded hundreds of experimental missions and operated spacecraft will take the helm of Slingshot Aerospace.
The El Segundo-based company announced that co-founder Melanie Stricklan will take over as its new chief executive officer, effective Thursday, as the company shifts its focus to its space products, Slingshot Orbital and Slingshot Orbital Laboratory.
Her first task as chief executive will be to lay out the company's shorter term plans and to guide the transition of engineering resources to the space portfolio. This year, Slingshot will focus on Slingshot Orbital, its space domain awareness and data tool, and Slingshot Orbital Laboratory, a space simulation training tool built for the U.S. Space Force that utilizes the same information.
"There are many, many avenues for both of those to take, as more and more players come into the ecosystem," said Stricklan.
As companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin take to space, Slingshot Orbital tracks and predicts the movements of not only their rockets, but everything beyond our atmosphere.
Melanie Stricklan, co-founder and now CEO of Slingshot Aerospace
Slingshot's other products, Slingshot Earth and Slingshot Edge will no longer be central priorities for the company, the company said, as their data input and analysis is focused primarily on Earth.
Stricklan is a rarity in the male-dominated aerospace field.
"I'm super excited to see more and more females coming into leadership positions within the aerospace ecosystem," she said, adding there are even fewer women in the space industry. "If folks like myself and Mandy Vaughn over at Virgin Orbit can continue to influence both the industry and the people coming to work for companies, we'll see more and more females in the space leadership realm."
Stricklan served in the U.S. Air Force for 21 years, where she helped develop next generation capabilities for space domain awareness and space control. She commanded over 200 experimental missions and operated spacecraft.
Stricklan co-founded Slingshot in 2017 with U.S. Air Force colleague Thomas Ashman and entrepreneur David Godwin. She and Ashman were keenly interested in the data gathered by satellites, airplanes and drones, and wanted to develop technology that would analyze and use it, reinterpreting it to make it easier to understand.
They brought on David Godwin, an entrepreneur, technologist and big data architect, as CEO. After participating in Techstars L.A.'s accelerator program and announcing the close of a $8 million Series A round last year, Slingshot has raised $17.1 million to date with Godwin's help. He will now serve as chairman of the board, primarily focusing on fundraising, investor relations, strategic partnerships and legal issues.
- Slingshot Aerospace's Melanie Stricklan on 'Female Founders ... ›
- Slingshot Aerospace Melanie Stricklan on Aerospace's Future - dot.LA ›
- Slingshot Aerospace Raises $25 Million - dot.LA ›
Subscribe to our newsletter to catch every headline.
A screenshot of Encore's Studio app for iPhone.
Photo courtesy of Encore
“What's disruptive about what we're doing is it is mobile live performance,” Encore co-founder and CEO Jonathan Gray told dot.LA. “It's free [for the artist] in your pocket, everywhere you go. And I think that's ultimately the vision of the company.”
Founded in 2020, the startup previously required artists to use both an iPad and iPhone to set up a show, with the more powerful tablets ensuring better production quality. But the iPad requirement proved to be a barrier for artists who couldn’t afford one, Gray said. Encore brings artists to its physical studio to perform on a greenscreen stage, too, but the company wants Encore shows to feel less like formal productions. They’ll ideally be something an artist does casually—and frequently—to engage with fans and make money in a lower stakes environment.
“The vision of the company, and the way we will get scale, is with artists doing stuff on their own,” Gray said. “I think as soon as it's on your phone, as soon as you can be going live in a minute, you're totally changing what it means to go live.”
Admission is cheap, but Gray said fans collectively spend a lot of money during a show. Middle-tier artists who have relatively smaller but engaged fan bases have racked up several thousand dollars during an Encore show—without booking a venue or hiring a production team.
“There's this completely untapped part of the music industry that has tons of engagement, but the engagement is on social [media],” Gray said. “Ultimately, your superfans can only stream on Spotify so many times. And even though you have super fans, how many of them are going to show up to a single city on a single night? Not that many.”
The new Encore Studio App lets artists design AR stages, add custom artwork and incorporate visual effects to turn basic spaces into more visually compelling backdrops. Other features include live polls, “backstage pass” video chats, and “clap goals,” in which artists can, for example, entice fans to spend more to hear new music.
Encore has raised $9 million in seed funding so far from investors like Battery Ventures, 468 Capital and Parade Ventures. The company has 14 employees and has facilitated 200 live shows since its first app went live in February. Roughly 2,000 artists have registered with Encore, which shows performers are interested but haven’t tried it, Gray said. That’s a big reason why the company is removing the iPad obstacle.
“You can actually get from downloading the app to having your own AR world and going live in like two minutes,” Gray said. “Before—it was not two minutes.”