
Get in the KNOW
on LA Startups & Tech
X'Throw Everything Overboard That You Don’t Really Need': Spencer Rascoff Offers Founders Advice During a Downturn

Lights were strung across the lawn and over the pool while about 150 guests meandered through the open concept home and towards the bar and the mounds of guacamole and warm churros. Hosted by McKinsey and Pacific Western Bank, “The Founder’s Guide to L.A.” event focused on advice from active angel investor, author and podcaster Spencer Rascoff, who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, Pacaso, Supernova and–of course–dot.LA.
Through questions asked by McKinsey & Company Senior Partner Tarek Elmasry and the audience, Rascoff spent a half hour providing speedy and insightful advice to tech founders in attendance.
When asked what he looked for in a founder, Rascoff said, “I look for grit - somebody who has something to prove to somebody, and who has a chip on their shoulder–someone who’s willing to run through walls for that company and that idea.” Rascoff, who seemed even-keeled and energetic, explained that his ambition and drive came from the death of his brother in a car accident when they were both in their teens.
Though founder life is exciting, Rascoff now sees himself as more of a teacher.
“I did it for twenty-something years, and now I’m a coach and a mentor to my startups. I’m happy to be in my mid-40s and to be at this stage in my career. It’s a little less dangerous. It’s also intellectually stimulating and rewarding.”
He teaches a class on startups at Harvard College and Harvard Business School. No investor is perfect, and Rascoff has had his share of failures along the way, but he’s learned from those as well.
As the evening progressed, Rascoff advised founders to make financial cuts to extend their runway to cover 24 months of operations.
“Cut your headcount, cut marketing expense. Throw everything overboard that you don’t really need in order to extend the runway.” He said it may not be as fun as running a company during the good times, but great things can happen when managing a company through a difficult period.
As for advice for founders who are seeking equity, Rascoff made some grim observations.
“Equity is hard to come by right now. VCs are mostly hiding under their desks; they’re shoring up their existing portfolio companies with inside rounds, and it’s pretty hard to get investors to write new checks into new companies right now.”
An attendee with a background in robotics and aerospace asked Rascoff and Elmasry how to start a company that would be in a capital-intensive area when no one is easily giving money. Both suggested bootstrapping. Before investing, investors want to see more proof points these days–and at a slightly later stage, Rascoff explained.
Photo by David Ruano
Market volatility and recession fears have caused the IPO window to slam shut in 2022. Experts have predicted a return in activity in late 2023. But Rascoff thinks it could be even quicker than that, if historical trends repeat themselves. The IPO window has never been closed for much more than eight months, he notes, and the sector is already about six months into its current dry spell.
Whenever access to capital becomes easier to access, L.A. is perfectly positioned to be a major tech hub. Rascoff hailed the region as the place where media, entertainment, pop culture and influencers intersect. Along with consumer businesses, L.A. boasts incredible aerospace and a robust venture ecosystem. Recently, even the major Silicon Valley players have begun to appreciate the value of establishing a presence in L.A., he added.
Rascoff intends to ride these tailwinds. As general partner of venture company 75 & Sunny, he and his team is working with 100 startups and have incubated five companies, a quarter of which are proptech startups. He’s specifically excited about democratizing access to real estate assets, but he’s also focusing on vertical social media networks like All Trails and LinkedIn. With his daughter Sophia, Rascoff recently started a vertical social network aimed at foodies called Recon.
After the talk, the attendees continued the night under the lights, surrounded by lush green walls of foliage, drinking their beverages of choice and talking about tech in L.A. and the future. Despite the current economic struggles, there’s plenty of optimism in the room.
- Former Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff launches dot.LA, a news site for ... ›
- Office Hours Podcast with Spencer Rascoff - dot.LA ›
- What Spencer Rascoff Looks for in a Founder - dot.LA ›
- Los Angeles' Top Entrepreneurs, as Picked by its VCs - dot.LA ›
- Here's What To Expect At LA Tech Week - dot.LA ›
- SoCal Venture Pipeline Partners with Pacific Western Bank - dot.LA ›
- Generative AI: Tech Startup Savior or Buzzy Nothingburger? - dot.LA ›
Subscribe to our newsletter to catch every headline.
LA Tech Week: How These Six Greentech Startups Are Tackling Major Climate Issues
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.
At Lowercarbon Capital’s LA Tech Week event Thursday, the synergy between the region’s aerospace industry and greentech startups was clear.
The event sponsored by Lowercarbon, Climate Draft (and the defunct Silicon Valley Bank’s Climate Technology & Sustainability team) brought together a handful of local startups in Hawthorne not far from LAX, and many of the companies shared DNA with arguably the region’s most famous tech resident: SpaceX.
“It's very clear that climate is no longer a niche issue,” said speaker Lauren Faber O’Connor, former chief sustainability officer for the City of LA. “It's not a boutique policy area, it's not a boutique sector of the economy, it is really becoming embedded into the future of our economy.”
Here’s a look at the greentech startups that pitched during the Tech Week event, and how they think what they’re building could help solve the climate crisis.
Arbor: Based in El Segundo, this year-old startup is working to convert organic waste into energy and fresh water. At the same time, it also uses biomass carbon removal and storage to remove carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in an attempt to avoid further damaging the earth’s ozone layer. At the Tech Week event Thursday, Arbor CEO Brad Hartwig told a stunned crowd that Arbor aims to remove about five billion tons of organic waste from landfills and turn that into about 6 PWh, or a quarter of the global electricity need, each year. Hartwig is an alumni of SpaceX; he was a manufacturing engineer on the Crew Dragon engines from 2016-2018 and later a flight test engineer at Kitty Hawk.
Antora: Sunnyvale-based Antora Energy was founded in 2017, making it one of the oldest companies on the pitching block during the event. Chief operating officer Justin Briggs said Antora’s goal is to modernize and popularize thermal energy storage using ultra-hot carbon. Massive heated carbon blocks can give off thermal energy, which Antora’s proprietary batteries then absorb and store as energy. It’s an ambitious goal, but one the world needs at scale to green its energy footprint. According to Briggs, “the biggest challenge is how can we turn back variable intermittent renewable electricity into something that's reliable and on demand, so we can use it to provide energy to everything we need.”
Arc: Hosting the panel was Arc, an electric boating company that’s gained surprising momentum in only two years of existence. Founded in 2021, the company’s already 70 employees strong and has delivered some of its first e-boats to customers willing to pay the luxury price tag, CTO Ryan Cook said Thursday. Cook said that to meet the power needs of a battery-powered speedboat, the Arc team designed the vehicle around the battery pack with the goal of it being competitive with gas boats when compared to range and cost of gas. But on the pricing side, it’s not cheap. Arc’s flagship vessel, the Arc One is expected to cost roughly $300,000. During the panel, Cook compared the boat to being “like an early Tesla Roadster.”
Clarity Technology: Carbon removal startup Clarity is based in LA and was founded by Yale graduate and CEO Glen Meyerowitz last year. Clarity is working to make “gigaton solutions for gigaton problems.” Their aim? To remove up to 2,000 billion pounds of carbon from the atmosphere through direct air capture, a process which uses massive fans to move chemicals that capture CO2. But the challenge, Meyerowitz noted in his speech, is doing this at scale in a way that makes an actual dent in the planet’s emissions while also efficiently using the electricity needed to do so. Meyerowitz spent nearly five years working as an engineer for SpaceX in Texas, and added he’s looking to transfer those learnings into Clarity.
Parallel Systems: Based in Downtown LA’s Arts District, this startup is building zero-emission rail vehicles that are capable of long-haul journeys otherwise done by a trucking company. The estimated $700 billion trucking industry, Parallel Systems CEO Matt Soule said, is ripe for an overhaul and could benefit from moving some of its goods off-road to electric railcars. According to Soule, Parallel’s electric battery-powered rail vehicles use 25% of the energy a semi truck uses, and at a competitive cost.
Terra Talent: Unlike the rest of the startups pitching at the Tech Week event, Terra Talent was focused on building teams rather than technology. Founder Dolly Singh worked at SpaceX, Oculus and Citadel as a headhunter, and now runs Terra, a talent and advisory firm that helps companies recruit top talent in the greentech space. But, she said, she’s concerned that all the work these startups are doing won’t matter unless we very quickly turn around the current trendlines. “Earth will shake us off like and she will do just fine in 10,000 years,” she said. “It’s our way of living, everything we love is actually here on earth… there’s nothing I love on Mars,” adding that she’s hopeful the startups that pitched during the event will be instrumental in making sure the planet stays habitable for a little while longer.
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.
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.
***
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.
***
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.