What Are LA’s Hottest Startups of 2021? We Asked Top VCs to Rank Them
Despite — or in many cases because of — the raging pandemic, 2020 was a great year for many tech startups. It turned out to be an ideal time to be in the video game business, developing a streaming ecommerce platform for Gen Z, or helping restaurants with their online ordering.
But which companies in Southern California had the best year? That is highly subjective of course. But in an attempt to highlight who's hot, we asked dozens of the region's top VCs to weigh in.
We wanted to know what companies they wish they would have invested in if they could go back and do it all over again.
Startups were ranked by how many votes each received. In the case of a tie, companies were listed in order of capital raised. The list illustrates how rapidly things move in startup land. One of the hottest startups had not even started when 2020 began. A number doubled or even 16x'd their valuation in the span of a few short months.
To divvy things up, we delineated between companies that have raised Series A funding or later and younger pre-seed or seed startups.
Not surprisingly, many of the hottest companies have been big beneficiaries of the stay-at-home economy.
PopShop Live, a red-hot QVC for Gen Z headquartered out of a WeWork on San Vicente Boulevard, got the most votes. Interestingly, the streaming ecommerce platform barely made it onto the Series A list because it raised its Series A only last month. Top Sand Hill Road firms Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners reportedly competed ferociously for who would lead the round but lost out to Benchmark, which was an early investor in eBay and Uber. The round valued PopShop Live at $100 million, way up from the $6 million valuation it raised at only five months prior.
Scopely, now one of the most valuable tech companies in Los Angeles, was also a top vote getter.
The Culver City mobile gaming unicorn raised $340 million in Series E funding in October at a $3.3 billion valuation, which nearly doubled the company's $1.7 billion post-money valuation from March. It is no coincidence that that was the same month stay-at-home orders began as Scopely has benefited from bored consumers staying on their couch and playing ScrabbleGo or Marvel Strike Force.
The company's success is especially welcome news to seed investors Greycroft, The Chernin Group and TenOneTen ventures, who got in at a $40 million post valuation in 2012. Upfront Ventures, BAM Ventures and M13 joined the 2018 Series C at a $710 post-money valuation.
Softbank-backed Ordermark, which flew more under the radar, also topped the list. The company's online ordering platform became a necessity for restaurants forced to close their dining rooms during the pandemic and raised $120 million in Series C funding in October.
On the seed side, two very different startups stood out. There was Pipe, which enables companies with recurring revenues to tap into their deferred cash flows with an instant cash advance, and Clash App, Inc., a TikTok alternative launched by a former employee of the social network in August.
We will have the list of Southern California's top seed startups out tomorrow.
Hottest
PopShop Live ($100 million)
The live-streaming shopping channel created by Danielle Lin reportedly found itself in the middle of a venture capital bidding war this year. Benchmark eventually won out leading a Series A round, vaulting the app at a $100 million valuation. The Los Angeles-based platform has been likened to QVC for Gen Z and it's part of a new wave of ecommerce that has found broader appeal during the pandemic. Google, Amazon and YouTube have launched live shopping features and other venture-backed startups like Los Angeles-based NTWRK have popped up.
Boiling
Scopely ($3.3 billion)
One of the most valuable Southern California tech startups with a $3.3 billion valuation, the Culver City mobile game unicorn has benefitted from a booming gaming market that has flourished in this stay-at-home economy. Scopely offers free mobile games and its roster includes "Marvel Strike Force," "Star Trek Fleet Command" and "Yahtzee with Buddies." In October the company raised a $340 million Series E round backed by Wellington Management, NewView Capital and TSG Consumer Partners, among others fueling speculation that it was on its road to an IPO. Co-CEO Walter Driver has said that he doesn't have immediate plans to go public.
Ordermark ($70 million)
The coronavirus has forced the closure of many dining rooms, making Ordermark all the more sought after by restaurants needing a way to handle online orders. Co-founder and CEO Alex Canter started the business in 2017, which recently rang in more than $1 billion in sales. Ordermark secured $120 million in Series C funding by Softbank Vision Fund 2 in October that it will use to bring more restaurants online. The company's Nextbite, a virtual restaurant business that allows kitchens to add delivery-only brands such as HotBox from rapper Wiz Khalifa to their existing space through Ordermark, is also gaining traction.
Simmering
Cameo ($300 million)
Cameo, which launched three years ago, had its breakout year in 2020 as C-list celebrities like Brian Baumgartner banked over a million dollars from creating customized videos for fans. In the sincerest form of flattery, Facebook is reportedly launching a feature that sounds a lot like Cameo. Even though the company is still technically headquartered in Chicago, we included Cameo because CEO Steven Galanis and much of the senior team moved to L.A. during the pandemic and say they plan to continue running the company from here for the foreseeable future.
Mothership ($64 million)
Co-founded by CEO Aaron Peck, Mothership provides freight forwarding services intended to streamline the shipping experience. The company's tracking technologies connect shippers with nearby truck drivers to speed up the delivery process. It raised $16 million in Series A venture funding last year, driving the platform to a $48 million pre-money valuation.
Nacelle ($6.7 million)
Founded in 2019, Nacelle's ecommerce platform helps retailers improve conversion rates and decrease loading speeds for their sites. The software integrates with Shopify and other services, offering payment platforms and analytics integration, among dozens of services. Nacelle raised about $4.8 million earlier this year with angel investors that included Shopify's Jamie Sutton, Klaviyo CEO Andrew Bialecki and Attentive CEO Brian Long.
Boulevard ($30 million)
Matt Danna and Sean Stavropoulos came up with Boulevard when an impatient Stavropoulos was frustrated wasting hours to book a hair appointment. Their four-year-old salon booking and payment service is now used by some of Los Angeles' best-known hairdressers. Last month, the two secured a $27 million Series B round co-led by Index Ventures and Toba Capital. Other investors include VMG Partners, Bonfire Ventures, Ludlow Ventures and BoxGroup.
CloudKitchens ($5.3 billion)
Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick CloudKitchens rents out commissary space to prepare food for delivery. And as the pandemic has fueled at-home delivery, the company has been gobbling up real estate. The commissaries operate akin to WeWork for the culinary world and allow drivers to easily park and pick-up orders as the delivery market has soared during pandemic. Last year, it raised $400 million from Saudi Arabia's colossal sovereign wealth fund.
GOAT ($1.5 billion)
Founded by college buddies five years ago, GOAT tapped into the massive sneaker resale market with a platform that "authenticates" shoes. The Culver City-based company has since expanded into apparel and accessories and states that it has 20 million members. Last year, Foot Locker sunk a $100 million minority investment into 1661 Inc., better known as Goat. And this fall it landed another $100 million Series E round bankrolled by Dan Sundeheim's D1 Capital Partners.
Savage X Fenty
The lingerie company co-founded by pop singer Rihanna in 2018 is noted for its inclusivity of body shapes and sizes. It has raised over $70 million, but The New York Times' DealBook newsletter recently reported that it's been on the hunt for $100 million in funds to expand into active wear. The company generates about $150 million in revenue, but is not yet profitable, according to the report. It became the focus of a consumer watchdog investigation after being accused of "deceptive marketing" for a monthly membership program.
Warming Up
FabFitFun ($930 million)
The lifestyle company provides customized personal subscription box services every three months with full size products. Started in 2010 by Daniel Broukhim, Michael Broukhim, Sam Teller and Katie Rosen Kitchens, it now boasts more than one million members. Last year, the company raised $80 million in a Series A round led by Kleiner Perkins last year and appears to be preparing for an eventual IPO as it slims down costs and refocuses on its high value products.
Dave ($1 billion)
Launched in 2016, the finance management tool helps consumers to avoid overdrafts, provides paycheck advances and assists in budgeting. Last year, it began to roll out a digital bank account that was so popular that two million users signed up for a spot on the waitlist. The company, run by co-founder Jason Wilk, has raised $186 million in venture capital and counts billionaire Mark Cuban as an early investor and board member. Other backers include Playa Vista-based Chernin Group.
Sure ($59 million)
SURE offers multiple technology products to major insurance brands — its platform can host everything from renter's insurance to covering baggage, so customers never have to leave an agency's website. It also offers its platform to ecommerce marketplaces, embedding third-party insurance protections for customers to purchase all on the same webpage. Founded in 2014, the Santa Monica-based startup last raised an $8 million Series A round led by IA Capital in 2017.
Zest AI ($90 million)
Founded in 2009 by former Google CIO Douglas Merrill and ex-Sears executive Shawn Budde, Zest AI provides AI-powered credit underwriting. It helps banks and other lenders identify borrowers looking beyond traditional credit scores. It claims to improve approval rates while decreasing chargeoffs. The company uses models that aim to make the lending more transparent and less biased. This fall the company raised $15 million from Insight Partners, MicroVentures and other undisclosed investors, putting its pre-money valuation at $75 million, according to PItchbook.
PlayVS
Santa Monica-based PlayVS provides the technological and organizational infrastructure for high school esports leagues. The pandemic has helped the company further raise its profile as traditional sports teams have been benched. Founded in early 2018, PlayVS employs 46 people and has raised over $100 million. In addition to partnering with key educational institutions, it also has partnerships with major game publishers such as Riot and Epic Games.
Tapcart ($40 million)
A SaaS platform helps Shopify brands create mobile shopping apps. The marketing software saw shopping activity jump 50% over 90 days as the pandemic walloped traditional retailers. Founded by Eric Netsch and Sina Mobasser, the company raised a $10 million Series A round led by SignalFire, bringing the total raise to $15 million.
Papaya ($31.8 million)
Papaya lets customers pay any bill from their mobile devices just by taking a picture of it. The mobile app touts the app's ease-of-use as a way to cut down on inbound bill calls and increase customer payments. Founded by Patrick Kann and Jason Metzler, the company has raised $25 million, most recently a S10 million round of convertible debt financing from Fika Ventures, Idealab and F-Prime Capital Partners.
Floqast ($250 million)
FloQast is a management software that integrates enterprise resource planning software with checklists and Excel to manage bookkeeping. The cloud-based software company claims its system helps close the books up to three days faster. It is used by accounting departments at Lyft, Twilio, Zoom and The Golden State Warriors. In January, it raised $40 million in Series C funding led by Norwest Venture Partners to bring the total raise to $92.8 million.
Brainbase ($26.5 million)
The company's rights management platform expedites licensing payments and tracks partnership and sponsorship agreements. It counts BuzzFeed, the Vincent Van Gogh Museum and Sanrio (of Hello Kitty and friends fame) among its clients. In May it announced $8 million in Series A financing led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Nosara Capital, bringing the total raised to $12 million.
OpenPath ($28 million)
The Los Angeles-based company provides a touchless entry system that uses individuals cell phones to help with identification instead of a key card. The company offers a subscription for the cloud-enabled software that allows companies to help implement safety measures and it said demand has grown amid the pandemic. Founded by James Segil and Alex Kazerani the company raised $36 million led by Greycroft earlier this year, bringing its total funding to $63 million.
FightCamp ($2.5 million)
FightCamp is an interactive home workout system that turns your space into a boxing ring with a free standing bag, boxing gloves and punch trackers. The company is riding the wave of at-home fitness offerings including Peloton, Mirror and Zwift that have taken off during the pandemic as gyms closed. The company has raised $4.3 million to date.
Numerade
The Santa Monica-based company provides video and interactive content for education in math, science, economics and standardized test prep. Founded in 2018 by Nhon Ma and Alex Lee, who previously founded Tutorcast, an online tutoring service, the company gathers post-graduate educated instructors to create video lessons for online learning.
Our Place ($32.5 million)
The creator of a pan with a cult following on social media, this Los Angeles-based startup designs and retails cookware and dinnerware. Founded by Amir Tehrani, Zach Rosner and Shiza Shahid, the company completed its Series A funding earlier this year, bringing its total raised to date to $10 million.
Tala ($560 million)
For customers that have no formal credit or banking history, this company's application promises more financial access, choice and control. It gathers data to create a credit score that can be used to instantly underwrite and disburse loans ranging from $10 to $500. Co-founded by Shivani Siroya and Jonathan Blackwell, Tala has raised $217.2 million to date. Its investors include PayPal Ventures, Lowercase Capital and Data Collective.
ServiceTitan ($2.25 billion)
Founded in 2007 by chief executive Ara Mahdessian and president Vahe Kuzoyan, ServiceTitan operates software that helps residential home contractors grow their businesses. It provides businesses tools like customer relationship management and accounting integration to streamline operations. The company closed a $73.82 million Series E funding round from undisclosed investors earlier this year.
100 Thieves ($160 million)
Founded in 2017 by former professional "Call of Duty" player Matthew Haag, 100 Thieves manages esports competitions in major titles including "Counter Strike Global Offensive" and "League of Legends." The company also produces apparel and merchandise, opening a physical store and training ground called the "Cash App Compound" in collaboration with Fortnite earlier this year. The company has raised $60 million to date, from investors including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Aubrey Graham, better known as the rapper Drake.
Emotive ($16.5 million)
This AI-powered customer service platform automates text conversations between customers and businesses to increase sales. Emotive uses their sales team to verify questions, distinguishing it from other bot-driven marketing services, according to the company. The company was founded in 2018 by Brian Zatulove and Zachary Wise, who serve as the chief executive and the chief operating officer, respectively. It has raised $6.65 million to date, from Floodgate Fund and TenOneTen Ventures.
Everytable ($33 million)
Created by former hedge fund trader Sam Polk, the Los Angeles-based startup wants to be a healthy fast food chain. It prices its healthy pre-packaged meals around $5 in underserved communities while costing more in other neighborhoods with the goal of reducing so-called food deserts in low-income neighborhoods. It also offers a subscription delivery service. The company recently closed a $16 million Series B round led by Creadev along with Kaiser Permanente Ventures.
Lead art by Candice Navi.
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Photo by Maylin Tu
He wears a security vest that reads “Bird Ambassador” and it’s a fairly accurate description of his role in the hustle and flow of the city at night. In all the chaos, he’s a steady presence.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, Aceves was already charging scooters for Bird, Lime and Wheels, making pretty good money, about $100 for three hours of work a night. But when the virus shut down his family business and prompted companies to pull their scooters from the streets, he suddenly had no work and no income. Then, he got a call from Bird.
Photo from inside Adan Aceves's car. His responsibilities at night range from deploying e-scooters, charging and re-balancing the e-scooters. Photo by Maylin Tu
From Flyer to Fleet Manager
For deploying, charging and fixing a fleet of about 150 scooters, 100 of which are on the street at any given time, Aceves takes home on average $4,500 per month after expenses. Bird deducts a city fee, an insurance and hardware services fee and something called “contra.”
“If someone claims, ‘Hey, the scooter doesn't work,’ they get a discount. So that goes against me,” Aceves explained. His contra normally comes out to about 1% to 2%, while for other fleet managers it can run as high as 7% or 8%. After everything is deducted, Bird and Aceves split the remaining profit 50-50.
As for expenses, he spends $1,200 a month renting a charging container from portable charging infrastructure Perch — an investment he says has reduced the amount he spends on gas by 50%. If he only needs to cover a short distance, he’ll sometimes use a scooter to pick up other scooters, saving himself even more money on gas, an expense that currently comes out to about $100 per week. He also purchases parts directly from Bird to make repairs, another expense.
Aceves starts every night at 10 p.m. and works for four to five hours. Between repairing power tools and managing a fleet of scooters, he works 11 to 12 hour days to put his two daughters, 15 and 19, through college.
It’s physically taxing work — a Bird Two, the model in Aceves’ fleet, weighs 46 to 47 pounds. “After you pick up 40, 50 scooters, then you start to feel it,” he said.
As one of the top flyers, Aceves is a perfect fit for the role.
Born in and raised in South Central and Downtown L.A., Aceves said both sides of his family were from Guadalajara. His grandfather on his father’s side helped build the railroads in California. His father died when he was 11 and he mostly lost touch with that side of his family.
He went to Cathedral High School in Chinatown, an all-boys Catholic school, before attending Los Angeles Trade Technical College for industrial technology and machining, skills that have come in handy in his work repairing power tools — which he’s been doing for the past 30 years.
“So I would go from South Central to Chinatown and I was always in Downtown. Though I gotta tell you, when I was in high school in the 90s — Downtown was not the place to be.”
When he turned 18, his mom told him, “You're out of high school, figure it out.” Now, he’s working to get his daughters through college without taking on student debt.
He knows Downtown’s streets inside and out. This gives him an advantage when scooters go missing, trapped in parking garages or parked under bridges where the GPS is spotty. He uses the Bird fleet manager app to track, fix and release scooters. In a sense, Bird also uses the app to track fleet managers.
“Bird sees everything. I wouldn't be surprised if they're listening to us right now.”
When Bird launched the fleet manager program, he was excited to start repairing scooters.
“As a mechanic, I take a lot of pride in my work. So I'll keep mine to where they're working 100%, if not better.”
Photo of Adan Aceves, working on this fleet of Bird e-scooter. Photo by Maylin Tu
The Pokémon GO Era of E-Scooter Charging
Back in the early days of the e-scooter boom, companies offered a “bounty” for retrieving, charging and redeploying scooters. You could make up to $20 per device — companies paid a premium for devices that were harder to find. According to multiple sources, it was like a grown-up version of Pokémon GO. People would hunt scooters with their partners, friends or kids.
This cadre of independent scooter wranglers and chargers — Bird called them “flyers” and Lime called them “juicers” — made good money and had fun doing it. But it wasn’t a sustainable solution for Bird, Lime and their successors — or the environment.
“The thing about the independent contractor model is that it's great for high growth,” said Harry Campbell, founder of The Rideshare Guy. Companies could launch rapidly in cities without going through the trouble and expense of hiring local employees — showing up with a truck full of scooters and using gig-workers hired through Craigslist to charge and deploy them. Bird, flush with investor cash, was willing to shell out a premium for this new job.
But that model was short-lived, partly because the micromobility startups realized that while using independent contractors was great to help them rapidly scale in unfamiliar cities, it also left them with little control over workers. Some flyers also started to cheat the system by hoarding scooters until the bounty on them went up, Campbell said.
When he started as a flyer, Campbell was making between $40 to $50 an hour. “I was like…I know that this isn't sustainable,” he said, “because this has happened over and over in the gig economy.”
Bird's independent scooter wranglers and chargers are called “flyers” and used to be able to make $20 per device wrangled. Photo by Maylin Tu
How AB5 Impacted E-Scooter ‘Flyers’
In 2019, California passed AB5, a bill targeting companies who misclassify employees as independent contractors.
In response, Uber and Lyft and other companies that rely on gig-workers spent $200 million to pass Prop 22 in California, exempting themselves from the law’s requirements.
E-scooter companies were forced to take a different route. Bird launched its fleet manager program in early 2020. The program employs small businesses like Aceves’s to manage e-scooters while giving them a cut of the profits. To become a fleet manager, individuals must register their businesses as an LLC. Lime uses logistics partners, while competitors like Superpedestrian and Veo make a point of hiring W-2 workers from the local community.
As municipalities ratchet up their regulations around micromobility services, they tend to look favorably on companies that employ W-2 workers. Los Angeles, for instance, is an “open permit” city, which means there is no competitive request for proposal (RFP) process, but companies must submit an annual permit application and a $20,000 fee. Campbell points out that for many cities, including Santa Monica and Long Beach, operators are required to submit detailed applications that are scored on multiple metrics, including community investment.
“It also makes them stand out relative to Bird or Lime that [aren’t] using that type of employment setup,” said Campbell.
Critics of AB5 say that gig-work is actually ideal for parents, caregivers or anyone looking for flexible work with a low-cost of entry.
“It'd be great to have these easy entry, easy exit jobs, where you can hustle when you want and put them down when you don't,” said Erin Hatton, professor of sociology at the University of Buffalo. But some employers take advantage of workers by offering flexible work without employee rights and benefits, which Hatton calls a “false construct.”
The “hybrid” fleet manager model was a logical next step for e-scooter companies, according to Campbell. As the rapid growth in the shared micromobility market started to slow, there was also regulatory uncertainty with AB5.
“Bird probably had hundreds of thousands of chargers at a certain point, so it would have been really hard for them to do a 180 and pivot to an employee model,” said Campbell.
The new fleet manager program seemed like a win-win for both Bird and the independent contractors it hired. No longer were contractors hunting down devices for a bounty. Instead, they would become responsible for the care, charging and placement of individual scooters. The better a fleet manager’s e-scooters perform, the more money they can make. On its recruitment page, Bird advertises that fleet managers can make up to $1,500 per week (with fine print caveats).
At the same time as it offloaded risk and gained more control, Bird didn’t have to invest in hiring W-2 employees.
Bird did not respond to a detailed list of questions about its fleet manager program, but confirmed to dot.LA that it employs 40 “independently owned businesses” in the city of L.A. who are “deeply invested in the communities they serve” and offer “bespoke block-by-block operational expertise.”
“I do not represent or speak for Bird or on their behalf,” Aceves read from his phone while sitting in the driver’s seat of his pickup truck in the parking lot outside of the Perch container. “So, I'm only speaking for my LLC, which is called Up Now.” He added that, per this message received from his engagement manager at Bird, “My relationship with Bird is as a logistics service provider.”
It’s not just about money. Going from “flyer” or “juicer” to “fleet manager” can be a source of pride. Aceves said that some flyers were ashamed to be charging scooters and that it was stigmatized as the “Millennial’s way of collecting cans.” But after they became fleet managers, those same people started bragging about how much money they were making.
“They have hustle,” said Perch Mobility co-founder and CEO Tom Schreiber. “They want to build a better life and have all the dreams everyone else does.”
In 2020, Medium’s tech-focused OneZero publication released an investigation into the program, claiming that Bird was “luring” fleet managers into thousands of dollars of e-scooter debt. However, a follow-up by Smart Cities Dive offered a different picture, focusing on some fleet managers who said they were happy with the program and making good money.
Bird is careful to refer to fleet managers as independent small businesses (not employees) and to emphasize the autonomy that fleet managers have to manage their own fleet. While fleet managers are responsible for repairing damaged scooters, Bird owns the scooters and fleet managers are not financially liable for lost or stolen scooters. But if owning your own business is part of the American dream, that dream can also be exploited by companies who promise one thing and deliver another, according to Hatton.
“Being able to realize a dream of being an entrepreneur — especially when you're coming from such a background — is really powerful,” she said. “And if it pays off for them, I'm all for it. But if they're being taken advantage of under the guise of a dream, then that's deeply problematic.”
From Bounty Hunter to Fleet Shepherd
Adan Aceves has seen things as a Bird fleet manager working nights in Downtown L.A. He jokes that he should start wearing a body cam to capture it all. At 2 a.m. when the bars and clubs get out, things start to get interesting.
Last week, he broke up a fight between two men in front of Union Station. One man was accusing the other of raping his niece.
“And I said, ‘If this dude's a rapist. I'm gonna help you beat him up. When and where?’ And he said it happened 20 years ago in Compton.”
The man being accused said he didn’t know the other man and that he was sleeping when he was attacked.
He’s been in some tense situations while trying to retrieve scooters, including being threatened by a guy with a stick and pulling out his knife in self-defense.
At night, Aceves functions as “eyes on the street” In Downtown L.A., providing a kind of crucial, if unrecognized, public service, in keeping the city safe and vibrant (as urbanist Jane Jacobs outlined in her book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”).
There are the drunk people who think it’s funny to knock over a row of scooters like so many dominoes or tangle them up in a torturous triangle for fun. He only lines up three to four scooters at a time because he’s found that people are less likely to mess with them.
People have left scooters on the freeway or under bypasses, and once, someone threw a Bird onto a street sign, where it hung suspended like an upside down “L.”
“They’ll leave them in places where it's like, ‘Why? Why would you put it here?’ Not only is it time-consuming but sometimes it can be dangerous,” he said.
Sometimes an enterprising user will ride a Bird scooter all the way to Venice or Marina del Rey, where he has to go to retrieve it, cutting into his profit margin.
One Bird recently made its way all the way to Mexico. “I told Bird, “Hey — this bird decided to migrate.”
All told, he’s lost about 130 scooters since he started. And while e-scooters are extremely visible on the streets of L.A. — much to the chagrin of some Angelenos — Aceves works mostly behind the scenes, not only recharging and rebalancing scooters, but also making sure that they are legally parked and not blocking the public right of way.
“That is one thing I would like people to know — that there [are] actual humans behind each scooter,” Aceves said.
For Lack of a Safety Net
Photo by Maylin Tu
Aceves works with two other fleet managers (one is his brother). He said they help each other out. Otherwise, it can be hard to maintain a grueling, seven-nights-a-week schedule, with no vacation pay or sick days.
He makes more money than he would as a so-called gig-worker, but he doesn’t receive either the legal protections afforded employees under federal and state law, nor the types of perks tech companies often offer.
“One of the things that is quite tricky about the independent contractor model is that the costs of that model are not readily apparent,” said Hatton.
Nonetheless, for many workers, the trade-off is worth it and Aceves says he enjoys the flexibility.
“I enjoy the freedom. I enjoy driving Downtown. I like the fact that the scooters are providing a service to a city without majorly giving us pollution and decreasing traffic,” he said. “I always think to myself, ‘I gotta leave this planet better than when I came in. Because my kids are here and possibly their kids’.”
Aceves grew up during “some of the worst years in South Central'' and wants to write a book about the experience. He thinks he has enough material — the kind of stories you wouldn't believe if he told them to you — for two or three seasons of a TV show.
He was 11 during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, when the streets were on fire.
“I was like, ‘What the hell's going on? Is it the end of the world?’.”
As a teenager, he said he had a few run-ins with the LAPD’s infamous Rampart Division . Aceves said corrupt cops would try to shake down gang leaders for money and retaliate against people in the neighborhood when they refused — doing everything from beating them up, to trying to plant drugs or guns on them, to picking them up and leaving them in a rival gang’s neighborhood.
“So basically expecting you to get killed ‘cause it wasn't like they were going to greet you — or offer you a ride back. So I would be running home at 2 a.m. down Central Avenue, as fast as I could. People would think I was on drugs and I was just running home for my life.”
Today, Aceves cruises through the streets of Downtown L.A. every night, to put his daughters through college and to make the world a better place.
In working with cities, companies like Bird straddle the line between private enterprise and public service — claiming to make cities greener, safer and more equitable. And shared micromobility has changed the landscape of Downtown L.A., arguably for the better. But it’s people like Aceves who deal with the best and the worst the city has to offer.
At one point, Aceves leans down to pick up a LINK scooter that’s lying with its handlebars in the street. “We’re not supposed to touch competitors’ scooters,” he explains. “But normally, if they're in a situation like this, I pick it up…I feel like it's my community.”
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