Sonos’ John MacFarlane: Never Be Satisfied

Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.

Sonos’ John MacFarlane: Never Be Satisfied

This episode was originally released in June 2017. Press Play above to listen.

About this episode's guest:

  • Served as CEO of Sonos from 2002-2017
  • Sonos is known for its high-quality speakers that stream music from popular services
  • Currently works in an advisory role at the company
  • In his new role, he plans to potentially expand Sonos' commitment to STEM education
  • Fan of hip-hop, country and Taylor Swift


Topics covered in this episode:

Press Play to hear the full conversation or check out the transcript below. You can also subscribe to Office Hours on Apple Podcasts and Google Play.

Spencer Rascoff: John, it's great to be sitting here with you. Thanks a lot for taking the time.

John MacFarlane: It's an honor. Thank you.

Rascoff: Let's start off with you just describing the company and the service for those listeners that might not be as familiar with Sonos. What does it do? How does it work from a consumer standpoint?

MacFarlane: The Sonos mission is fill every home with music. Our brand promise, what we promise to do for our music lovers at home, is deliver an ultimate home music experience. That's our focus. Let's bring music into – really, it's bring the artist that you like into your home to wake up to, go to bed to, make dinner to, whatever you like.

Rascoff: I love that, when describing your company, you start with the mission statement. We're going to come back to that because that's so important to me that that's right where you begin with the company description. How many employees are there? How long has the company been around? How large is it?

MacFarlane: Fourteen hundred, fifteen hundred, right in that range. We're all over the world. There are three big offices in China. There are three big offices in the U.S. and a couple through Europe with the main footprint in the Netherlands. It's 15 years for me, so it started in 2002. I had just come off of a company called Software.com. There are four co-founders. This was the common uniting theme of that group of four and about 12 people we wanted to work with that we'd been tracking for quite a while.

Rascoff: Are those co-founders all still heavily involved in the business?

MacFarlane: One certainly is, the first one, Craig Shelburne. Three, including me, are involved but maybe in lesser roles now. Probably the eight, like one of the early software people, they're still – yeah, almost of them are still here.

Rascoff: Has management continuity at the top been an important part of Sonos' success?

MacFarlane: When you go from four people to 1,500, you have a variety of different roles to cover because when you're four to 40, you've got much more generalist, if you will. I'd say at 1,500 now still collaboration is a pretty key role, but people have to play swim lanes a little better. You have really deep specialists in various areas so it's a really different set of needs. So, I would say learning agility would be the number one thing I'd attach to anybody that lasted that whole time. Anybody that didn't, I'd say like you might hire someone out of one of the big CE companies.

There are people, like the guy that runs the product team now started as a software developer and through his whole career here accelerated faster than the company did. You've done high-growth companies. You know that's rare.

Rascoff: That's why I asked. The interesting and challenging thing about high-growth companies is everyone's role and functional area is changing every three or six months. So, you'll have someone who's great at a particular stage and then either they don't scale with the company or the role changes.

I encourage my direct reports to think of their direct reports, knowing what you know about that person today, would you hire them today for that role over the next two years? At least every couple months, every couple quarters be thinking about rehiring all of those people because sometimes they're not right for the role anymore. That's hard.

MacFarlane: I graduated undergrad in the late '80s. A bunch of my classmates went off to GE and IBM. GE, a high achiever, every two years they'd move you. As you know very well, at high growth, you don't need to move people every two years because in two years the job is totally different that you're standing in. So, yeah, you're right. It's a completely different environment.

But also, it depends on what the roles are, too. I'm sure you've dealt with all of this. It's both managing the person's expectations because sometimes someone walks in, and they think I'm not advancing unless my role is going up. You're sitting there helping them understand. Actually, if you look at what's underneath you, it's way broader than it was one year ago.

MacFarlane: The other thing is people need direct management skills and indirect management skills in the right measure are really important. So, sometimes, you need to put somebody in a role where they influence managing. If you don't learn how to do that, you're missing a big set of tools.

Rascoff: What do you mean by that? I assume what you mean is that somebody controls their functional area but in order for that to be successful, they need somebody off to the side, some other group, to support them in some way. So, they have to manage by influence throughout the organization.

MacFarlane: Yeah.

Rascoff: How do people do that successfully here at Sonos?

MacFarlane: I don't think it's unique to Sonos. People do it successfully by understanding what the other person is trying to do and fitting your win-win goal. But that's a different skillset than telling someone what to do. Even if you're a great delegator, you're still in a position of power and you're telling them here are your goals. That goal you made, let's tune it this way. You have a lot of influence over them. When you can't set a person's goals, you've got to get them to change their goals. I think it's a mixture of both. You need both those skillsets.

We do a lot of work. In the mission filling your home with music, that music comes from streaming services these days. So, there really isn't any Sonos without a bunch of our partners, Apple, Music, Spotify and Google. Those guys all have different cultures, and you have to influence them. So, there's a whole lot of work we do that's influence management.

The music industry is going through a huge transition. We can't tell them what to do, but we can help influence it.

Rascoff: Let's talk about that external environment, that kind of landscape. You are in such an interesting, challenging, dynamic area where you have these huge giants from Apple to Amazon to Google and others. You have the record labels. I feel there are these giants dancing all around you, and Sonos is doing this incredibly masterful job of bobbing and weaving to chart its course in context as these behemoths all around you do what they do. That's from the outside looking in. How have you navigated the change in the competitive landscape? Are these companies partners? Spotify and Apple and Alexa/Amazon, are they partners, competitors, both?

MacFarlane: It's actually a really interesting time at Sonos because the whole industry is going through a big change that changes the competitive landscape. When we started, the dominant players were the traditional consumer electronics, like Denon, Yamaha, Sony, and Bose. Samsung was a little bit but there were probably 20 labels. Harman Kardon was a fairly big player at that time. They went into the car audio.

What's happening now with the advent of streaming and things like voice response from Amazon is the speakers are getting a lot smarter. They look a lot more like a platform. You're still buying something that produces sound, but it's a lot more useful to a person in their home if it can respond to your smartphone, and to your voice, and use all the different music services. That looks a lot more like a general computer than it does inside itself. Of course, it can't look that way to a user.

Rascoff: Fundamentally, what Sonos sells are speakers.

MacFarlane: Yeah. That's right.

Rascoff: Now that speaker is controlled by your phone. It can put music onto that speaker from any of these services, from Spotify, from Pandora.

MacFarlane: We like to say you can play anything ever made anywhere. If you like QQ music, you can use QQ music from China. If you like a radio station in Brazil, you can listen. My parents listen to a radio classic in Paris. That's the fun of the internet meets home audio. So, it makes a different competitive set because it's not just your old home stereo system, if that makes any sense.

Rascoff: When the early smartphones got their own internal speakers – I remember the first couple generations of iPods and iPhones didn't have speakers. I remember the first iTouch got a speaker as the successor to iPod. I assume that didn't concern you very much because it's so low quality. But when Amazon launches Echo and the speaker quality is good, certainly not Sonos speaker quality – you can obviously use Sonos through the Echo and I do. But there, they're a partner and a competitor, right?

MacFarlane: Yeah.

Rascoff: How do you approach that? Even just internally with employees, how do you navigate that dichotomy with employees to try to talk about these dichotomies?

MacFarlane: None of these companies are a persona. Even when Steve [Jobs] ran Apple, you'd partner with them in one part. Probably the most strategically dangerous period for Sonos, if you recall, Apple made an iPod Hi-Fi. They had come out with the iPod. They were pivoting the company. It no longer was the Apple computer company. It became the Apple consumer electronics company around the iPod.

They came out with this dock for the iPod that was the iPod Hi-Fi. Now, fortunately, by Apple standards it failed. It was too early. But that was a dangerous time for us because had that thing been successful we would've had a battle for our lives at a time when we weren't really ready to battle with Apple.

Now, pretty much all the traditional consumer electronics guys are gone because they don't have the right DNA.

Rascoff: They're not selling their own speakers.

MacFarlane: Or they're teeny. They're irrelevant. Bose is probably the one left of the legacy and it's holding on with really Bluetooth products and stuff like that. But you're right. Amazon Echo, the Google Home, you'll see Apple come out with something at some point. For me, they're the Beats group or otherwise. There you're partnering with them. You're partnering with Apple Music. Maybe they come out with something that competes, too.

We made a really important decision early on which was we wouldn't take any money from the music services or the voice assistance. So, we're an open platform for them. We work great with Spotify, and we've earned their respect to present Spotify into your home, if you're a Spotify user. It's the same with Google Play Music. It's the same with Apple Music. We're the only integrated party for Apple Music.

Rascoff: To navigate this complexity, you've stayed neutral, in an open platform, as you said. You've also built an incredible brand. That's one of the other things that have allowed you to flourish, even in the face of this competition from these big players.

MacFarlane: Those are one and related. Anybody would tell you a great brand comes from great products that people love and then you're building on that. So, those are highly related, if that makes sense.

Rascoff: In my research about your brand I learned a new word. Now I'm forgetting it, of course, which is Sonos is a word that can be turned sideways.

MacFarlane: Palindrome or an ambigram.

Rascoff: An ambigram, yes. An ambigram is a word that can be turned at a 45-degree angle and still be legible. Was that intentional?

MacFarlane: No. What was intentional is we knew we were building a consumer electronics company. A brand is, at the beginning, an empty vessel or the brand like that. So, we went out and got, I'd say, the best guy in the industry, David Placek from Lexicon. If you look at Lexicon naming, they did so many names you'd recognize. It was really fortunate because it was at the end of 2002. That's when the Silicon Valley dot-com crash really had played fully out. The hopper was just empty of new companies. People were really slowing their investments. So, he gave us a good deal. We worked and worked and worked it until he was about to fire us and out popped Sonos. Everybody knew it was the right thing.

Rascoff: I love these empty vessel names. Zillow is one of them. Zillow is zillions of pillows, which is meant to evoke the data, the quant side of real estate, and the touchy-feely, squishy, emotional side of real estate.

MacFarlane: So, you guys did the same thing. You put a lot of effort into it.

Rascoff: We did and it has the high-value scrabble letter of Z and W. Sonos is an anagram, an ambigram, I guess.

MacFarlane: I love your name. I remembered it from the first time I heard it, which is what you're trying to do.

Rascoff: Let's talk about the office environment at Sonos. Having spent a little bit of time here, I can see that the culture is a lot like Zillow, generally open spaced, emphasis on collaboration, a lot of glass walls. You also have a pretty distributed workforce. You have a couple thousand employees but they're in Santa Barbara, Boston, Seattle, and abroad. How would you describe the culture at the company?

MacFarlane: That's a really broad statement. We'd first have to agree on what the word culture means. I would say culture is as culture does.

Rascoff: You're right to say define culture. Culture is how decisions get made and how resources get allocated. That's what I think of for culture. Is it meritocratic or autocratic? Is it centralized or decentralized? How do decisions get made?

MacFarlane: You covered this with Dick Costolo in one of your earlier podcasts. One of the biggest challenges is getting everybody on board so we're all pulling in the same direction. It's amazing when you are and it's terrible when you're not.

Rascoff: That's where the mission statement comes in. Make sure everyone agrees on the mission.

MacFarlane: Yeah. That's exactly right. The mission, the values of the company, values are really important. So, our values are experience first. Start at what experience you're trying to deliver for the customer, for the employee, for the partner. It just takes you out of your shoes and puts you in theirs, at the beginning, so, experience first. Relentlessly progressive. Some people accuse me of being progressively relentless but you need to be moving forward constantly. You guys know that.

Rascoff: That means just never being satisfied with status quo.

MacFarlane: Yeah, never be satisfied when you finish something. When you make physical products or cognitive/physical products, which we do, you always want to stop and collect. What would we do differently? Some of our products we've killed. You never want to be afraid of that. Talk about the things you did wrong.

Rascoff: Can you think of a time when your employees' understanding of the mission statement and the values resulted in a good decision being made that wasn't under your thumb?

MacFarlane: You know very well I just stepped down as the CEO. So, I feel comfortable around that. A lot of the criteria for the team that was taking over was do they really believe in, express, and use the values? They're not real values unless you see them applied all the time. I don't think there's anybody at Sonos, including myself, that's perfect at all three of those values. What you want is to give everybody permission. Are you really thinking about the experience first? In a meeting where that's maybe the most junior person in the meeting and they have license to ask that question because that's values working. It happens quite a bit.

Rascoff: When I think about other tech companies, I mean, it's true of all industries. But in all industries, if the employee base doesn't understand the mission and share the values, things go bad quick. In tech, it's even worse.

MacFarlane: You better have strong command and control.

Rascoff: That's right. Let's wrap up by talking about your decision to hand the reins over to someone else and to step aside as CEO. Fourteen years after founding the company, why did you think it was time to do that?

MacFarlane: In the first 15 years of Sonos, the music services we mostly marketed to our customers, their customers were a lot younger. People used to say young people don't pay for music. The average age of a Spotify paid user was under 25 so they did pay. It's just that the industry hadn't offered a great product until Spotify and Apple came along.

Those weren't our demographic. Ours was a little older than that because you needed to be settled in your first home, rent or whatever, but you were in a home. So, as the shift to streaming services happened, that opened up a much bigger market because that's a global market, not a U.S., UK. When that happens, you pat yourself on the back for a second. Then you sit there and think about what the company needs to do over the next stage.

I thought the group was ready to take it there. I'd just come off of balancing – we were late to recognize the impact of the Echo, and the Echo Dot, and voice assistance overall. I think the magic Amazon did was cleared that undefinable bar of usability. All the voice response systems before that weren't. Being able to walk into your home and say I want to listen to KCLU or KCRW or whatever, the Ruen Brothers radio, that's a really nice way to control your music system. That's definitely part of an ultimate home music experience. So, we needed to get there.

We pivoted the company. The company did a really good job of pivoting. The team was ready to step up. When you pivot a company like that, it was much more me driving. As you know well, using the forces of a founder are dangerous things because people rely on that. You want the team to be able to next time go this is really important. How do we incorporate this in? As much as it was important to pivot, it was also important that I put a bunch of people in charge. They felt the accountability over it. They weren't looking for me to find the next pivot.
My title is the intern. I'm here for anybody that wants help, contacts, or any mentoring. I love the company. I love what we're doing. I love helping, but I wanted to get out of the way of leading.

Rascoff: Let's talk about the day that it dawned on you that Echo was going to challenge your ability to achieve your mission. Prior to that, voice recognition, whether it's Siri or others, was inadequate. It wasn't ready for prime time.

MacFarlane: It didn't stick.

Rascoff: But then, you must have come into the office one day and somebody had an Echo. They said “play music by the Rolling Stones," and it played music from Amazon. You said uh-oh. What happened at that moment?

MacFarlane: I had a board member, Mike Volpe, who was playing with it early on. There were a variety of employees inside that were playing with it. So, there was a cacophony of voices about it. What happened maybe the day that happened is I finally decided we were moving too slowly to change. We had just come off of the calendar Q4 sales cycle.

The Echo definitely impacted our ability to sell because we didn't really have a story with the Echo. It was, yeah, someday voice response will happen. It's not like the Echo and the Sonos are really competitive. They're complementary I think you'll see over time. We just hadn't worked on doing that at all. We had a full plate of stuff that we were working on. The Echo just wasn't one of them.

So, actually getting the company to pivot around that then was a day. I had gone to an Allen and Company conference in Arizona. It's right around this time of year. I just talked with a bunch of other CEOs about how to do change control for this kind of thing. Everybody said the biggest mistake I've made in doing that is not – make the mistakes on getting too aggressive because the way you're describing it, John, you need to embrace it, not status quo.

Rascoff: A couple quick wrap-up questions. What music service do you use to listen to music through Sonos?

MacFarlane: I use all of them. I have a favorite of the moment. I would say probably if I want programmed radio I'll still fall back on Pandora mostly although Google Play's radio stations are getting really good. If I want playlists, I'll use Spotify or maybe Tidal some because Tidal has got some really good ones. If I want serendipity, I'll use the 4U from Apple. So, it really varies.

Rascoff: What kind of music do you listen to?

MacFarlane: It'd be more a question of what don't I listen to. I like hip-hop. I like some country. I like anything from Taylor Swift to the Ruen Brothers to Q-Tip's new album, the Roots.

Rascoff: Eclectic.

MacFarlane: Yeah. It's pretty eclectic.

Rascoff: What's on top of the list of things that you want to do next in life?

MacFarlane: Hang around here and help it be the next 10x growth that I know it's capable of. Music is such a fantastic spot. I think it'll be bigger than it's ever been. It's so much fun seeing it through the darkest of times and now it's opening back up. I love music. That's great for the artists. Everybody wins, finally.

Rascoff: I love your mission: Fill every home with music. It's something that I do almost every day with Sonos. Thanks a lot for speaking with me, John.

MacFarlane: It's my pleasure. It's my honor.

Rascoff: Thank you.

The post Sonos' John MacFarlane: Never Be Satisfied appeared first on Office Hours.

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This Week in LA: Robotaxis, Reels & a $100K Challenge

🔦 Spotlight

Happy Friday, LA,

It’s Coachella Weekend 2, which means fewer cars on the road, easier restaurant reservations, and just enough quiet to hear the next wave of innovation humming through the city. This week, we’re watching more driverless cars roll in, Instagram remix your Reels feed, and a $100K climate challenge call for startups. Let’s get into it.

🚕 Zoox Is Bringing Its Robotaxis to LA

Image Source: Zoox

Amazon-owned Zoox just announced that its futuristic, steering wheel–less robotaxis are heading to Los Angeles. The company has begun mapping the city as it gears up to launch a fully autonomous ride-hailing service. These aren’t retrofitted Teslas; they’re bidirectional vehicles built specifically for autonomy, with no front, no back, and no driver seat.

It’s Zoox’s first major push beyond Northern California and Las Vegas, and it's a signal that LA is being positioned as a proving ground for next-gen transportation. As the city preps for the 2028 Olympics, Zoox is hoping to help LA reimagine what mobility looks like without a human behind the wheel.

👀 More on that here:Zoox’s LA Expansion

💬 Instagram’s New “Blend” Feature

Image Source: Instagram

Instagram just announced “Blend,” a new feature that creates a private Reels feed curated for you and a friend based on your shared interests. It’s like a personalized explore page, but just for two. Think Spotify Blend, but with more memes and fewer breakup ballads.

It’s currently in testing, but if rolled out broadly, Blend could change how creators build community and how content spreads in smaller, more intimate algorithmic circles.

🔥 LACI Launches the LA Resilient Rebuilding Cup

100 days after the Palisades and Eaton fires swept through parts of LA, the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI) is launching a new initiative: the LA Resilient Rebuilding Cup. It’s a pitch competition aimed at finding startup solutions to help LA rebuild stronger and greener.

Up to $100,000 in prizes and piloting funds are up for grabs. Finalists will pitch live on July 10 in Downtown LA, and selected winners will get the opportunity to bring their technologies to fire-affected communities. Focus areas include fire detection, renewable energy, air quality, mental health tools, resilient construction, and more.

Startups have until May 30 to apply.
📍 Apply here


🤝 Venture Deals

LA Companies

  • Parallel Systems, a Los Angeles-based company developing autonomous battery-electric railcars, has raised $38M in a Series B funding round led by Anthos Capital, with participation from Riot Ventures and others. The funding will support the commercialization of its technology, including the launch of its first commercial pilot in Georgia. This pilot, approved by the Federal Railroad Administration, will test self-propelled intermodal flatcars over a 160-mile stretch, aiming to offer a more efficient and sustainable alternative to short-haul trucking. Parallel Systems plans to use the funds to scale production of its Generation 3 vehicles and expand operations in the U.S. and Australia. - learn more

LA Venture Funds

  • Bonfire Ventures led a $7.5M seed funding round for 1Fort, a New York-based startup that automates commercial insurance workflows for brokers using AI. Village Global and others participated in the round. 1Fort's platform streamlines the insurance process by automating tasks such as application completion, quote retrieval, and policy binding, helping brokers secure better coverage for clients more efficiently. The funds will be used to enhance the platform's AI capabilities, expand the team, and grow partnerships with carriers and brokers across the U.S. - learn more
  • Strong Ventures led an ₩800 million pre-Series A funding round for LunchLab, a Seoul-based B2B startup offering corporate lunch subscription services. LunchLab provides daily lunchbox deliveries and post-meal dish collection for companies, streamlining office meal logistics. The funds will be used to expand production capacity, enhance delivery operations across Seoul, and improve their proprietary ordering app. - learn more
  • CIV participated in Crux's recent $50M Series B funding round, supporting the company's mission to streamline financing for clean energy and manufacturing projects. Crux, based in New York, operates a capital markets platform that facilitates transactions such as transferable tax credits and debt financing, aiming to enhance liquidity and efficiency in the clean economy sector. The newly acquired funds will be utilized to expand Crux's network of market participants, enhance its software infrastructure, and scale its operations to meet the growing demand for clean energy financing solutions. - learn more
  • Finality Capital Partners participated in the $11M seed funding round for Optimum, a startup incubated at MIT and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Optimum is developing a decentralized memory layer for Web3, utilizing Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) to enhance data storage and propagation across blockchain networks. The funds will be used to advance Optimum's technology and expand its team to address scalability challenges in decentralized systems. - learn more
  • TIME BioVentures participated in Phantom Neuro's recent $19M Series A funding round. Based in Austin, Texas, Phantom Neuro is developing a minimally invasive neural interface called Phantom X, designed to enable intuitive control of prosthetic limbs and robotic exoskeletons. The new funding will support the company's first human trials, preclinical testing, regulatory submissions, and expanded research and development for broader applications of its technology beyond prosthetic limbs. - learn more
  • Veridical Ventures participated in a $2M seed funding round for SlashExperts, a San Francisco-based B2B platform that connects prospective buyers with existing customers to facilitate authentic peer conversations. This approach aims to build trust and expedite sales processes. The funds will be used to enhance the platform's features, ensuring seamless and effective connections between buyers and users. - learn more
  • F4 Fund participated in Boby.ai's $1.25M seed funding round, supporting the Istanbul-based startup's mission to develop AI-powered mobile applications. Boby.ai, founded by Gökçe Nur Oğuz, Onur Olgun, and Berat Oğuz, focuses on creating user-friendly AI tools for end-users, such as their flagship app Mozart.ai, which enables users to generate personalized music using AI. The funding will be used to expand the team and develop new AI-based mobile products. - learn more
  • Riot Ventures and Impatient Ventures participated in Blue Water Autonomy's recent $14M seed funding round. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, Blue Water Autonomy is developing fully autonomous, unmanned ships designed to operate on the open ocean for extended periods. The company plans to use the funds to expand its engineering team, accelerate ship testing, and integrate various payloads onto its platform. - learn more
  • Aliavia Ventures led a $1M pre-seed funding round for InsightWise, an AI-powered platform based in Sydney, Australia, designed to streamline the consulting process by automating tasks such as proposal development and strategy creation. The funding will be used to enhance the platform's capabilities and support expansion into the U.S. market. - learn more

LA Exits

  • Pex, a leading provider of digital rights technology, has been acquired by Vobile, a global leader in digital content protection and transaction services. This acquisition enhances Vobile's services for the music industry and strengthens its position as a global solution provider for digital audio content. - learn more

Download the dot.LA App

Rain's Latest Funding Fuels the Future of Financial Wellness

🔦 Spotlight

Happy Friday,

This week, the LA tech scene buzzed with news that Rain, a leader in financial wellness, hassecured $75 million in Series B equity funding, spearheaded by Prosus. This isn't just another funding round; it's a pivotal chapter in Rain's mission to transform how American workers interact with their earnings.

Since its inception, Rain has been at the forefront of innovation in financial technology, particularly with its earned wage access solutions. The concept was simple yet revolutionary: allow workers to access their earned wages instantly, mitigating financial stress and dependency on high-interest payday loans. This vision quickly gained traction, propelling Rain from a promising startup to a key player in the fintech space.

What makes this Series B funding particularly noteworthy is what it represents on a larger scale. It's not just an influx of capital but a strong endorsement of Rain's potential to expand even further. With previous rounds fueling their initial growth and strategic partnerships, such as their notablecollaboration with Marqeta to enhance payment technologies, Rain has steadily built a foundation not just for success but for significant impact.

As Rain secures this significant new funding, their initiative to reshape financial wellness is set to expand dramatically, showcasing the profound impact tech can have on everyday financial challenges.

Looking forward to seeing how their innovations will drive change in the financial landscape.

🤝 Venture Deals

LA Companies

  • Dosen, a Los Angeles-based HRtech startup founded by Ronan Wall, Victor Burke, and Cian McCarthy, has secured $2.3M in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round led by Affinity Ventures. The company offers an AI-powered platform that aligns employee-led learning with business goals through personalized, gamified development programs. The funds will be used to scale the platform, enhance AI-driven personalized learning, and improve employee engagement and productivity. - learn more
  • Plug, a Santa Monica-based company operating an EV-exclusive wholesale online auction platform, has secured $6.7M in an oversubscribed seed funding round led by Floodgate, Autotech Ventures, and A*. The company has also launched Plug Trade Desk™, the first EV-focused service designed to help dealers confidently price, move, and monetize trade-ins. The newly acquired funds will be used to enhance Plug's technology and expand its services, aiming to support dealers in navigating the growing used EV market. - learn more
  • Gallatin AI, a defense tech startup, has raised $15M in seed funding led by 8VC to scale its AI-powered logistics platform, Navigator. The tool helps military logisticians predict, plan, and execute operations more efficiently in contested environments. Funds will be used to expand the team and deploy the platform across military services. - learn more
  • BLNG AI, a generative AI platform based in Los Angeles and Paris, raised $3M in seed funding led by Speedinvest to streamline jewelry design by turning sketches into photorealistic renderings and animations. The funding will support commercialization, team expansion in Europe and the U.S., and the launch of a subscription-based app for luxury brands and independent jewelers. - learn more
  • Amca, a newly launched aerospace company focused on modernizing the industrial supply chain, has raised $76M in funding from investors including Caffeinated Capital, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others. The company plans to acquire specialized suppliers and develop new aerospace products, aiming to strengthen and future-proof the sector’s manufacturing and innovation capabilities. - learn more
  • Turbine Finance Corp., a Santa Monica, California-based data science-driven liquidity platform, has raised a total of $21.75M in equity funding, comprising a $13M Series A round co-led by Alpha Edison and TTV Capital, and a previously unannounced $8.75M seed round with participation from Fin Capital, B Capital, and Sozo Ventures. Additionally, the company secured up to a $100M warehouse facility from Silicon Valley Bank to provide credit facilities to venture investors. The combined funding of $121.75M will be used to deploy the warehouse line and expand Turbine's data science team. Turbine's platform enables private equity and venture firms to offer limited partners access to the value of their portfolio investments without reducing exposure, leveraging machine learning to expedite underwriting processes. - learn more
  • Gente Beauty, an innovative Brazilian body care brand, has received a lead investment from Webster Capital, a private equity firm specializing in consumer and healthcare sectors. This partnership aims to support Gente Beauty's growth and expansion in the beauty industry. - learn more
            LA Venture Funds
            • Alexandria Investment Partners participated in a $41M Series A round for Solu Therapeutics, a Boston-based biotech company developing targeted protein degradation therapies. The funding will advance its lead candidate, STX-0712, which recently entered a Phase 1 clinical trial for CMML and other advanced blood cancers. - learn more
            • Calibrate Ventures participated in SigIQ.ai's $9.5M seed funding round. SigIQ.ai, based in Berkeley, California, is an AI tutoring startup focused on providing personalized education through advanced AI models. The funds will be used to hire top talent, enhance their AI models, and scale their platforms to educational systems worldwide. - learn more
            • Rusheen Capital Management participated in Zero Industrial's $10M Series A funding round, aiming to accelerate the development of thermal energy storage solutions in North America. Zero Industrial focuses on deploying large-scale thermal energy storage projects to enhance energy efficiency and support decarbonization efforts. The funding will be used to expand their project pipeline and advance the commercialization of their technology. - learn more

            LA Exits

            • Bread Beauty Supply has been acquired by Cost of Doing Business (CODB), a holding company founded in 2024 by Topicals founder and CEO Olamide Olowe and president Sochi Mbadugha. The acquisition aims to expand Bread's retail presence in the U.S., starting with an increased footprint in Sephora stores. Founder Maeva Heim will continue as Chief Creative Officer, focusing on the brand's creative direction, while CODB will manage strategic operations. This move reflects CODB's commitment to supporting Black-owned businesses and fostering diversity in the beauty industry. - learn more

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                          El Segundo Startup Turns Tax Credits into Big Business

                          🔦 Spotlight

                          Hello LA,

                          Step into the world of Incentify, the El Segundo-based innovator turning the headache of managing tax credits and incentives into a walk in the park. Founded in 2019, this trailblazing company is reshaping how businesses approach what was once a daunting bureaucratic challenge.

                          Incentify’s platform is revolutionizing the industry by helping businesses discover and effectively manage a share of the estimated $1.2 trillion in tax credits and incentives that often go unclaimed each year. This critical service not only simplifies the process but also ensures that companies can more easily access and leverage these financial opportunities to fuel their growth and sustainability initiatives.

                          Recently, Incentify reached a new milestone by securing $9.5 million Series A funding led by Innovent Capital Group. This significant investment underscores the market’s confidence in their innovative approach and supports their mission to expand their technological capabilities and market reach.

                          As Incentify gears up for this expansion, their efforts are set to make tax incentives more accessible to a broader spectrum of businesses. This is especially vital in today’s economy, where optimizing financial strategies is crucial for business resilience and growth.

                          Incentify's success story from El Segundo is not just about financial gains but also about empowering companies with the tools to turn complex financial engagements into strategic advantages.

                          Stay tuned for more from LA’s vibrant tech scene. Let’s continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible.

                          Enjoy your weekend, and keep innovating, LA!

                          🤝 Venture Deals

                          LA Companies

                          • TOGETHXR, a pioneering women's sports media and commerce brand co-founded by athletes Alex Morgan, Chloe Kim, Simone Manuel, and Sue Bird, has achieved profitability and significant growth, including tripling its year-over-year revenue and increasing its social media following by 17% year-to-date. The company has secured additional growth capital in a funding round led by Alex Morgan's Trybe Ventures. The funds will be used to expand TOGETHXR's presence in the women's sports marketplace. Additionally, media executive Nancy Dubuc has joined the company as Executive Chair, bringing her extensive experience to support TOGETHXR's mission of elevating women's sports and culture. - learn more
                          • Airvet, a Los Angeles-based pet telehealth platform, has secured $11M in an oversubscribed Series B-2 funding round led by HighlandX. This investment follows a year of significant growth, including a 4x increase in year-over-year revenue and a tripling of its client base. Airvet partners with leading employers across various industries, such as PepsiCo, Adobe, and Lyft, to provide employees with 24/7 access to veterinary care via video or chat. The platform's services include online pharmacy, e-prescriptions, discounted pet insurance, wellness programs, and specialty care, with recent expansions into Spanish and French language support. The funds will be used to further enhance Airvet's platform and expand its reach, aiming to make veterinary care more accessible and affordable for pet families globally. - learn more
                                  LA Venture Funds
                                  • Interlagos co-led a $50M Series A funding round for Aetherflux, a San Carlos, California-based startup developing satellites to collect and transmit solar energy from space to Earth. The funds will be used to expand Aetherflux's engineering team and advance the technology for its planned low Earth orbit demonstration mission in 2026. - learn more
                                  • Bungalow Capital Management co-led a $2M seed funding round for Juno, a Denver-based startup specializing in corporate guest travel management. Juno offers an integrated platform that streamlines booking, logistics, payments, reimbursements, and support for non-employee travelers such as job candidates, contractors, and customers. The funds will be used to accelerate product development and expand partnerships, including a collaboration with ALTOUR as their first travel management company partner. - learn more
                                  • Veridical Ventures co-led a $3.75M seed funding round for Flagship, a Sydney, Australia-based retail technology company specializing in visual merchandising solutions. Flagship's platform creates digital twins of retail stores, enabling data-driven optimization of product placement and store layouts to enhance sales performance. The funds will be used to expand Flagship's presence in the U.S. market and further develop its product offerings. - learn more
                                  • Miroma Ventures participated in a £6.5M Series A funding round for Limitless Travel, a Birmingham, UK-based company specializing in accessible holidays for individuals with disabilities. Founded in 2015 by Angus Drummond, who was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at 22, Limitless Travel offers curated group holidays with trained carers, ensuring accommodations and excursions meet specific accessibility needs. The investment will enable the company to enhance its technology, expand its range of destinations, and lay the groundwork for international growth, aiming to transform the lives of disabled individuals through travel. - learn more
                                  • B Capital participated in a $20M Series A funding round for Gable, a Seattle-based company specializing in data management solutions. Gable's platform focuses on "shifting left" in data management by enabling software and data developers to collaboratively build and manage high-quality data assets through API-based data contracts. The funds will be used to accelerate product development and expand Gable's team to meet the growing demand for data collaboration tools. - learn more
                                  • Rebel Fund participated in a $3.8M funding round for Sohar Health, a health technology company. Sohar Health is developing an AI-powered platform designed to streamline patient intake and triage, aiming to enhance access to healthcare services. The funds will be used to accelerate product development and expand the company's reach within the healthcare industry. - learn more

                                      LA Exits

                                      • Tixologi, a next-generation ticketing platform, has been acquired by Punchup Live, a New York-based comedy platform. This strategic move integrates Tixologi's advanced ticketing technology into Punchup Live's ecosystem, enabling seamless, direct-to-fan ticket sales for comedians and venues. The acquisition aims to enhance the ticket purchasing experience by providing features such as fast checkout, unified outreach tools, and advanced anti-scalping solutions, thereby empowering comedians to connect more effectively with their audiences. - learn more
                                      • InVisit, a Calabasas, California-based provider of cloud-based visitor management solutions, has been acquired by Motorola Solutions. InVisit's platform streamlines visitor registration, access, and host notifications across sectors such as commercial offices, education, and healthcare, enhancing security through features like blocklist screening and real-time guest activity insights. This acquisition aims to integrate InVisit's capabilities into Motorola Solutions' Avigilon Alta security suite, offering enterprise customers a unified, cloud-native approach to managing security threats and improving operational efficiency. - learn more

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