On this episode of the L.A. Venture podcast, sit down with Daniel Leff, the founder and managing partner of Luminari Capital, as well as the co-founder and managing partner of his latest fund, Waverley Capital.
Leff has spent 22 years investing in media space. Both Waverley Capital and Luminari Capital are focused on investing in digital media disruptors and innovators.
In this conversation, Leff shared some insights on his work with Waverley co-founder Edgar Bronfman Jr., the CEO of Warner Music Group and former CEO of Universal Studios.
Leff says he and Bronfman see their fund's mission as "trying to find invest in and help build what we call category defining media companies."
Leff has devoted his career to this mission; he was the second institutional investor in Roku. Today, his portfolio includes Headspace, Wondery, FuboTV, Matterport and The Athletic.
He says media is a unique industry, especially in L.A.
"In the media industry, it's a different path to be disruptive," he says. "Business is done differently. It's almost never that a very young person can come into the market and rail against the establishment and expect to be successful."
He argues it's important for both startups and enterprise companies to not "chase the past" and to recognize that you cannot "put Disney out of business. You can't put Comcast out of business. You can't put Viacom out of business… but you can disrupt them."
In the rest of this episode, Daniel shared about how he got established in media, his connection with Roku founder Anthony Wood and his plans for moving forward.
Daniel Leff is the the founder and managing partner of Luminari Capital, and the co-founder and managing partner of Waverley Capital.
"People say content wants to be free. No it doesn't. Great content requires a lot of investment."—Daniel Leff
dot.LA Engagement Intern Colleen Tufts contributed to this post.
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On this week's episode of the L.A. Venture podcast, meet Raina Kumra. She recently joined The Fund L.A. as a partner, where she works alongside last week's guest, Anna Barber.
Kumra is also a serial entrepreneur, and has over 15 years of branding and scaling expertise. She is the co-founder of Mavin, a "mobile startup focused on affordable internet access" in India.
She's also the CEO of Santa Monica-based Juggernaut, a company focused on "digital design and disruption" that has worked with both The Walt Disney Company and the federal government.
Kumra has a history of working in civic tech. She worked with the Obama administration, and was the senior new media advisor in the State Department's Office of eDiplomacy. She also worked with the Biden-Harris transition team, advising on leadership within the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
Despite her various ventures, she remains focused on building up ethical tech, sustainability and prioritizing the L.A. startup community.
On the rest of this episode, Raina shares some projects she's currently working on, thoughts on the future of ethical tech, and some questions she likes to ask entrepreneurs.
Raina Kumra is the CEO of Juggernaut, a partner at The Fund L.A., serves as an advisor for the moonshot factory, and is on the board of Nix Hydra Games. Her work has also been published in several journals and is part of MoMA's permanent collection.
"I think it's the 'terms of service' that is one of the most depressing norms in the tech industry of everyone just copy-pasting some sort of generic terms of service instead of sitting down and really thinking about it as an opportunity for your brand, an opportunity for your product to make a deeper connection and be more honest and transparent." — Raina Kumra
dot.LA Engagement Intern Colleen Tufts contributed to this post.
Want to hear more from L.A. Venture? Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
This week on the L.A. Venture podcast, hear from Mike Jones, the founder and CEO of studio and venture firm Science Inc. Jones is considered an expert on scaling and robust business strategy. He runs Science Inc. with Peter Pham, Greg Gilman and Tom Dare.
Starting in the late 90s, Jones began creating and managing his own businesses. He created UserPlane, an instant messaging service that was acquired by AOL early in his career. Following that, he was the turnaround CEO of MySpace— helping the company navigate losing its legacy status — and has invested in a number of notable brands, including GoodReads, Maker Studios Inc., HelloSociety and DogVacay.
Science is often considered an incubator. It was also the first investor in Dollar Shave Club and has also helped scale Mammoth Media, Arrive Outdoors, pray.com, Liquid Death and PlayVS. Jones has also been named one of the most influential people in Los Angeles.
Science has a venture funding studio, a blockchain fund and a late-stage SPAC. The company is best known for its venture arm, which is investing out of its $100 million Fund III.
Jones also works with these companies as an advisor. He says it's important to him that the founders he invests in are willing to learn and be highly adaptable to new strategies.
His background at MySpace, he says, gives him a unique perspective on the future of social media. He says he has respect for Snap founder Evan Spiegel, but adds he thinks social media needs to be more empathetic.
"in a world where when you and I meet up in person, we have millions of micro expressions on how we're communicating with each other," he says, "like pheromones, and all the other components that go into two people standing next to each other and actually having a conversation. We have to rebuild that digitally."
This is why he argues that founders' intent and message are so important.
"The thesis of an authentic brand is 'I make this product because I believe it's the right thing to do. And it has a purpose'," he says, beyond profit.
Mike offers his insights on investing, the 2020 ecommerce boom, the future of NFTs and his passion for cyrptocurrency.
"One thing that's 100% true is I've never seen retention correct itself. If you need to change retention substantially, you need to make substantial changes to the business." — Mike Jones
dot.LA Engagement Intern Colleen Tufts contributed to this post.
Want to hear more of L.A. Venture? Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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