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XWatch: 2020 Year in Review with Baron Davis, Mark Suster and Emily Slade
Favot is an award-winning journalist and adjunct instructor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She previously was an investigative and data reporter at national education news site The 74 and local news site LA School Report. She's also worked at the Los Angeles Daily News. She was a Livingston Award finalist in 2011 and holds a Master's degree in journalism from Boston University and BA from the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada.

The pandemic and social unrest of 2020 accelerated change at a rapid pace for individuals, corporations and communities, L.A. business and tech leaders said during a virtual panel discussion. They predicted 2021 will be an opportunity for tech growth.
Upfront Managing Partner Mark Suster, Valence co-founder and COO Emily Slade and entrepreneur, athlete and investor Baron Davis spoke to dot.LA during its final Strategy Session event of the year. The challenges of 2020 were a common theme.
Suster said he sees the economic recovery as being K-shaped rather than U or V-shaped where half of the economy is doing better than it ever has, while the other half is doing worse.
"It's really, sadly, exacerbated inequalities in our system because the people that are doing better are knowledge workers and remote workers, and the people doing worse are the people who have to have their earnings from being in person," he said. "So, one thing I didn't anticipate was what we've basically done is accelerate societal change that would have taken five or eight or 10 years into one year."
Working from home is a change that the pandemic brought that Suster doesn't see going away. He expects people will work from home two or three days a week. He also said he is "bullish" about VR as the pandemic is pointing towards remote collaborative working.
One of the takeaways of Airbnb's and DoorDash's successful IPOs last week was how important and pervasive tech companies have become in today's market, Suster said.
"It sets up the opportunity of what we expect in the next 10 years," he said. "The second thing it speaks to is the sheer demand there is for public stocks because there's been a six, seven, eight-year period of time where these great companies raised billions of dollars in the private markets and weren't public. And now a lot of them are shifting to becoming public companies."
Valence, which connects Black professionals with capital, mentorship and professional development, saw its community membership double this year amid the social unrest following the death of George Floyd. Companies had been thinking about diversity and inclusion before this summer, but the protests brought "a sense of urgency and the awareness and understanding across the board," Slade said.
She said they saw strides this year towards diversity and inclusion in the L.A. tech and startup community, although the steps companies took in response to the movement varied.
She outlined three things that companies can do in 2021 to achieve diversity and inclusion goals: have diverse people on recruiting teams; spend money, time and attention on retention of new employees and promote Black and diverse leadership within the company.
"Being a part of a moment like this is actually really inspiring — to be able to say that we were in a time where so much change is taking place and that we didn't just stand by, that we participated," she said.
Davis, a former L.A. Clipper, said when he was involved in the early L.A. tech scene, he advocated for a name other than "Silicon Beach" to differentiate the community from Silicon Valley.
A native Angeleno, he'd like to see what he called "L.A. Unified," not the school district, but a community of innovation and inclusivity.
"For me it's really about unifying the city so we understand how to pay it forward, how to pay it back and how to build a modern city and a smart city where everybody can participate and everybody can share," Davis said.
He wants to create a structure for opportunities for young entrepreneurs, especially women, people of color and those in the LGBTQ community. And he's hopeful that the pandemic can create a unique moment for innovation.
"Right now, L.A. is, I keep saying, it's in its infancy, especially due to COVID," he said. "Obviously our school systems were failing, our educational systems need to be rewritten, so COVID has given us all these opportunities for these young minds to come and create and build. So, I think the opportunity for all of us is to seek, find, deliver and give access and use some of the things that we have, as the privilege, to share and build opportunities for the unprivileged."
Baron Davis, Entrepreneur, Athlete & Investor
Baron Davis, Entrepreneur, Athlete & Investor
Baron Davis is a two-time NBA All Star, serial-entrepreneur, investor and creator of thought-provoking content and platforms. During his years in the NBA, Davis was constantly listening, learning, networking, and connecting both on the court and off which ignited a successful post-NBA business career.
Davis is the founder of several companies, including Sports and Lifestyle in Culture (SLiC), Business Inside the Game (B.I.G.), The Black Santa Company and No Label; each with the objective of combining creative talent with original publication and production to develop and provide educational and empowering stories that appeal to global audiences of all ages. Davis was one of the original investors in Vitaminwater and helped launch Thrive Market.
Davis also served as producer of several acclaimed documentaries including "Crips and Bloods: Made In America," "30 for 30: Sole Man," and "The Drew: No Excuse, Just Produce."Davis currently resides in his hometown of Los Angeles where he plays his most important role, Dad to his two kids.
Mark Suster, Managing Partner at Upfront
Mark Suster, Managing Partner at Upfront
Mark Suster has been a managing partner at Upfront since 2007, where has led notable investments in companies including Bird, Invoca, Density, Nanit and Maker Studios (acquired by Disney). He previously was the founder & CEO of two successful enterprise software companies, the most recent of which was sold to Salesforce.com, where Mark became VP of products. Prior to being a founder, Mark was a software developer at Accenture while living and worked in Europe, Japan and the U.S. Mark is a graduate of UCSD and has an MBA from the University of Chicago.
Emily Slade, Co-Founder & COO of Valence
Emily Slade, Co-Founder & COO of Valence
Emily is the co-founder & COO of Valence, a new tech platform and community incubated by Upfront Ventures focused on connecting Black professionals with mentorship, job opportunities and capital.
Previously, she was the global head of growth/partnerships at Working Not Working, the platform connecting the world's top creative talent with companies looking to hire them, She built the "Work in Progress" initiative there. That effort launched with the acclaimed food-recovery program "FoodFight" that supports tens of thousands of homeless people. They launched FoodFight with a focus on turning foodie-hotspot Abbot Kinney Blvd in Los Angeles into the first zero-food-waste street in America during their beta, and now FoodFight is a feature within the Postmates app in 19 cities with 3000+ participating restaurants donating food to homeless shelters.
Throughout her career, she's focused on helping tech companies and startups scale strategically and authentically, contributing to the $1B IPO & sale of Active Network during her seven-year tenure there. Her side hustle is behind the lens as a co-founder of a travel production company, Pindrop Films, which takes her on photo adventures around the world. She's also worked as a film consultant supporting the development of features including "Man's Search For Meaning" based on the iconic memoir by Viktor Frankl and she is the L.A. chair of The Schusterman Family Foundation.
Kelly O'Grady, Chief Correspondent & Host and Head of Video
Kelly O'Grady, Chief Correspondent & Host and Head of Video
Kelly O'Grady is dot.LA's chief host & correspondent. Kelly serves as dot.LA's on-air talent, and is responsible for designing and executing all video efforts. A former management consultant for McKinsey, and TV reporter for NESN, she also served on Disney's corporate strategy team, focusing on M&A and the company's direct-to-consumer streaming efforts. Kelly holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. A Boston native, Kelly spent a year as Miss Massachusetts USA, and can be found supporting her beloved Patriots every Sunday come football season.
Ben Bergman, dot.LA Senior Reporter
Ben Bergman, dot.LA Senior Reporter
Ben Bergman is the newsroom's senior finance reporter. Previously he was a senior reporter/ host at KPCC, a producer at Gimlet Media and NPR and produced two investigative documentaries for KCET. He has been a frequent on-air contributor to NPR and Marketplace and has written for The New York Times. Bergman was a 2017-2018 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism at Columbia Business School. He enjoys skiing, playing poker and cheering on The Seattle Seahawks.
Sam Adams, dot.LA Co-founder & CEO
Sam Adams, dot.LA Co-founder & CEO
Sam Adams serves as chief executive of dot.LA. A former financial journalist for Bloomberg and Reuters, Adams moved to the business side of media as a strategy consultant at Activate, helping legacy companies develop new digital strategies. Adams holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard College and an MBA from the University of Southern California. A Santa Monica native, he can most often be found at Bay Cities deli with a Godmother sub or at McCabe's with a 12-string guitar. His favorite colors are Dodger blue and Lakers gold.
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- Stories That Shook LA's Tech Industry in 2021 - dot.LA ›
- Baron Davis on His Investing Strategy - dot.LA ›
Favot is an award-winning journalist and adjunct instructor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She previously was an investigative and data reporter at national education news site The 74 and local news site LA School Report. She's also worked at the Los Angeles Daily News. She was a Livingston Award finalist in 2011 and holds a Master's degree in journalism from Boston University and BA from the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada.
Annie Burford is dot.LA's director of events. She's an event marketing pro with over ten years of experience producing innovative corporate events, activations and summits for tech startups to Fortune 500 companies. Annie has produced over 200 programs in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City working most recently for a China-based investment bank heading the CEC Capital Tech & Media Summit, formally the Siemer Summit.
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Data Collection Takes Center Stage at Techstars LA’s Demo Day
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
Techstars Los Angeles hosted its annual Demo Day on Thursday, featuring a cohort of 12 startups from across the world that are working in health care, space, ecommerce and more. The event capped a three-month accelerator program that all of the companies attended in person in Los Angeles, allowing a virtual audience to discover the seed and pre-seed ventures searching for funding and potential partners.
While the startups spanned from commerce to quantum computing, many of them had one thing in common: data collection. All of us are familiar with what data collection means for consumers: Spending just a couple days with my new cat-owning roommate, for instance, once spiraled into a deluge of kitty litter ads whenever I scrolled through my phone. For the startups, data collection means opportunities for creating solutions that can save companies money and help ease bottlenecks.
Showcases like Demo Day usually demonstrate the kinds of technology that investors think will have resonance in the market. The cohort’s health tech ventures, as an example, were largely spurred by issues in the health care system that were exposed by the pandemic.
Matt Kozlov, managing director of Techstars L.A. and a longtime investor in these industries, told dot.LA he specifically looked for companies that didn’t need to raise that much money—either by bootstrapping, becoming profitable early on or a mix of both. The startups leave the program with a $20,000 investment from Techstars; in return, Techstars gets a 6% stake in each company.
Rwazi, a Mauritius-based startup and Techstars L.A.’s first investment in Africa, was one of the presenting companies tapping into consumer habits of the developing world, which contributes $5 trillion to the global economy every year but lacks comprehensive data because a lot of digital transactions are not traceable.
The seed-stage company aims to collect and share consumer data from regions that conduct a large portion of transactions through cash. Using Rwazi, companies can analyze customer data like which demographics are buying their products, and the company’s “mappers” collect that information from small and large businesses and share it through the platform. Rwazi, which currently operates in Africa plans on expanding into South, Southeast Asia and South America. Joseph Rutakangwa, CEO of Rwazi, called that region alone a “$40 billion opportunity.”
Then there’s Pear Suite, a Seattle health startup serving the elderly population. Health care organizations lack data about patient behaviors that may allow them to provide preventative care before a grandparent falls ill or ends up in the emergency room, adding money to the already expensive health care economy. Pear Suite collects and leverages patient data that healthcare organizations can use to predict and avoid potential issues down the road.
Lastly, San Francisco-based Squid iQ came onto the scene after the pandemic’s upheaval of the antiquated hospital system, where ventilators and beds could not keep up with demand for care, and physicians had to make difficult decisions about who to treat. Poor medical equipment inventory has long plagued hospitals who deal with an array of emergencies and sometimes can’t locate a life-saving device. Squid collects data on the type of technology, how long it has been used as well as where it is located when not in use. The process may allow health care staff to spend more time caring for patients and help hospitals save money.
By and large, health care has fallen behind on optimizing data collection for the purpose of improving care, reducing costs and saving lives. Data collection, in some cases, is a game-changer—and it will be interesting to see if industries operating with archaic technology will embrace these startups, or if these new companies will hit the same bottlenecks as the ones before them.
- Watch Techstars LA's 2020 Class Demo Day ›
- Techstars LA Unveils Health Care Spring 2022 Accelerator Class ... ›
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
Magic Johnson Invests, Buys Two ‘Virtual Teams’ In New NFT Sports League
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
Los Angeles Lakers legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson has just bought two new sports franchises—in the metaverse.
Johnson is investing in Beverly Hills-based SimWin Sports, a digital sports league where virtual teams and athletes backed by non-fungible tokens (NFTs) compete in simulated games. In addition to taking an ownership stake in the startup, Johnson has acquired a yet-to-be named basketball team and football franchise called the Los Angeles Magic. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 2019, SimWin Sports is among a crop of startups merging fantasy sports with blockchain technology. The league’s NFT teams are owned by well-known athletes and celebrities, from Hall of Fame NFL wide receiver Jerry Rice to former Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter. SimWin fans, meanwhile, can buy, sell and trade NFTs representing fictional players who can be drafted by the league’s team owners. Those NFT holders can potentially earn money, too, when team owners like Johnson pay their players salaries and performance bonuses.
“This multibillion-dollar business is about to take off and the SimWin model is an excellent way for sports fans to get involved in this groundbreaking opportunity,” Johnson, who will also serve as an advisor to SimWin, said in a statement.
SimWin’s virtual sports contests are largely games of chance. Team owners can pre-set their game strategies and rosters, while player NFT holders may “train” their players to improve their attributes—but player performance itself is simulated through what SimWin calls an “innovative AI performance model.” The digital athletes, in turn, develop over the course of their careers and can go through hot and cold streaks, much like real athletes.
“From a fantasy perspective, for all those people who wanted to own a team—whoever wanted to be a player, manager or player agent—they'll have an opportunity to do that,” Andre Johnson, SimWin’s executive vice president of business development, told dot.LA. (Andre Johnson, a former gaming executive at Sherman Oaks-based Mythical Games and L.A.-based Virtual Reality Company, is Magic Johnson’s son).
The company has sold “dozens” of teams so far, including some for a seven-figure price, Andre Johnson said, while NFTs for players are expected to run between $300 to $600 for fans to purchase. SimWin also plans to generate revenue through merchandise and TV distribution deals, and aims to integrate sports betting through licensing deals with third-party sportsbooks, he added.
The 22-person startup expects to launch its first virtual football season by late summer or early fall, according to Andre Johnson. SimWin has raised $13.25 million in funding to date, according to PitchBook Data, from investors including 1UP Ventures, Animoca Brands, Infinity Ventures Crypto, Bron Studios, Kingsway Capital and YOLO Investment. The firm’s CEO is David Ortiz, a former senior producer on EA Sports’ popular Madden football video game franchise who’s also worked at the gaming studios of Sony and Microsoft.
Other companies are attempting NFT-based sports leagues of their own, including Hermosa Beach-based Fan Controlled Football, which lets crypto owners call the plays in real-life games. Andre Johnson called sports the “biggest form of entertainment,” but noted that most American pro sports leagues only run for a few months each year. SimWin—which says it will run games 24 hours a day, every day—is betting that die-hard fans will engage all year long with its more than 5,000 contests annually.
“We want everything that you would see from a traditional sports franchise,” Andre Johnson said. “All the ways you can generate money, all the things you can do, we're just doing it from a digital perspective.”
- The NFL Is Giving NFTs to Fans Attending Super Bowl LVI - dot.LA ›
- Fan Controlled Football League Will Stream on Twitch - dot.LA ›
- Fan Controlled Football Raises $40M for NFT-Based League - dot.LA ›
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
Stax CEO Suneera Madhani on Overcoming Imposter Syndrome and Taking a Risk
Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
Suneera Madhani never wanted to run her own business. But when the corporate world left her feeling unfulfilled, she started her own payment processing company, Stax.
On this episode of Behind Her Empire, Madhani discusses how she dealt with feelings of self-doubt and drew on her family’s small business experience to launch her company.
Madhani grew up watching her parents run their convenience store. While working alongside her family, she said even simple moments, like her father instructing her to place stickers on cans with care and precision, taught her important lessons in entrepreneurship.
“Now as a mother and as an entrepreneur, I look back and I'm like, ‘Man, Suneera, that was your MBA—your entire life,” she said.
It wasn’t until her idea to change the payment processing system was consistently rejected by others that she finally considered founding it herself. But it took her family’s encouragement to take the first step. Even then she set a six-month time limit to make Stax work.
But her persistence paid off. The business she built inside her parents’ Orlando home has raised $245 million in venture capital; she now leads a team of over 300 employees.
“I literally love Stax the way I love like it's my first child,” she said. “I believe that business is personal.”
As one of the few female CEOs in fintech, she said she still struggles with imposter syndrome. It’s easy to get trapped in the cycle of needing to constantly achieve the next goal without stopping to revel in what she’s already achieved, she said. But it’s important to change the conception of what a founder can be so others feel like they can take the risk.
“The only piece of advice I have for you is to ask yourself, what's the worst that's going to happen? And I think that's the game-changer for me,” she said. “You realize that the worst is actually not as bad as we mentally make it out to be.”
Hear more of the Behind Her Empire podcast. Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radioor wherever you get your podcasts.
dot.LA Editorial Intern Kristin Snyder contributed to this post.
Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.