A livestreaming platform that lets people enjoy concerts together while at home walked away as the winner of dot.LA's first Startup Pitch tournament.
The brainchild of UCLA business school graduates — one of whom lost his job in the music events industry during the pandemic — Crewtify is one of a number of livetreaming platforms that have bubbled up to solve an immediate need: connecting musicians with their fans during the COVID era and beyond.
<p>"I believe I can offer a meaningful substitute for in person music events, and I wonder how many lives will be saving in the process," co-founder and CEO David Gukasyan said in his opening pitch. <br/></p><p>That seemed to strike a chord with the judges, who were particularly interested in how this moment has changed consumer behavior, the new technology it has spawned and by Crewtify's embrace of both.</p><p>"So clearly, there's a big, big shift in the way we're consuming live entertainment and the way we're participating in these types of events," said Spencer Rascoff. "And we think it [provides] an exciting opportunity for a company like Crewtify to be launched into that environment."<br/></p><p>Rascoff is the co-founder of Hotwire, Zillow and <a href="https://dot.la/proptech-startup-pacaso-raises-17m-to-make-it-easier-to-own-a-second-home-2647880750.html" target="_blank">Pacaso</a>, as well as the co-founder of dot.LA. <a href="https://www.techstars.com/accelerators/los-angeles" target="_blank">Techstars Los Angeles</a> Managing Director Anna Barber was his cohort in judging the pitches. <br/></p><p>The finalists were each nominated by dot.LA's audience and went through two rounds of voting to reach the dot.LA Pitch Competition. After each company presented their pitch, the judges followed up with a round of questions.<br/></p><p>The competition kicked off with a <a href="https://dot.la/virtual-fireside-chat-with-founder-ceo-of-cameo-steven-galanis-2646352676.html" target="_blank">Cameo</a> video by Chris Diamantopoulos, also known as the bold and brash investor <a href="https://silicon-valley.fandom.com/wiki/Russ_Hanneman" target="_blank">Russ Hanneman</a> from the television series "Silicon Valley." </p><p>"I need to find the next Pied Piper!" Hanneman said. Pied Piper being the brilliant startup at the center of the show.</p><p>The pitch competition was sponsored by Amazon Web Services, Fenwick, Fullstack Finance and Carta, who will be providing Crewtify with access and credits to their services.<br/></p><p><em>Watch the startup pitches below. </em></p>
<p>Thanks to the 100 Los Angeles startups who participated in the process. After great nominations from our audience and pitches all around, Anna Barber and Spencer Rascoff found their next "Pied Piper" in Crewtify.<br/></p>
Pitch: Social Cipher
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="50e36cbc9f5a5b063e8458fca9456bbd"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AcP5hUsSQyE?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>Finding an engaging curriculum for neurodivergent youth is difficult, especially in this age of online learning. Vanessa Castañeda Gill, co-founder and CEO of <a href="https://www.socialciphergame.com/" target="_blank">Social Cypher</a>, explained that her experience growing up with autism helped her to realize the lack of learning tools for neurodivergent youth. Even today, programming and curriculum is out of touch, patronizing or unengaging. Much of the learning tools for this market are focused on 'fixing' young learners, said the company's CEO.<br></p><p>"Now, I know it was problem because, well, I lived it," said Gill. "Over the years, though, I learned that I never actually needed to be fixed. I just needed a different way to learn. And that's how I founded Social Cypher."</p><p>Social Cypher is a social emotional learning (SEL) platform with a partner app marketed toward counselors and educators in the neurodivergent space. Social Cypher's primary product is a game called "Ava," which immerses students with autism into a fictional world where they are a space pirate, and have to make decisions regarding the people and situations they encounter. Meanwhile, the companion app helps counselors remotely stream gameplay and track social and emotional progress.</p><p>Social Cypher will be piloting in January and is currently raising a pre-seed funding round.</p>Pitch: Have | Need
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="606f2f0ddccb87da007c277e52669789"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fOLZxe5o2BI?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p><a href="https://www.haveneed.org/" target="_blank">Have | Need</a> is an app that empties garages, but not wallets. It's the first consumer multi-party barter platform for goods and services. Unlike Ebay or OfferUp, users never use cash — they trade their items for other things they need, sometimes in a large chain of trades, called "barter loops." </p><p>Founder and CEO Josh Cline explained how Have | Need organizes these trades so that more people can offer what they want and get what they need.</p><p>"Legacy barter doesn't scale because it depends on what is known as the mutual coincidence of wants. That means each of the two parties must have something the other wants, and that is rare," he said. "<span style="background-color: initial;"></span>Have | Need, however, can match the haves and needs of a limitless number of people, creating barter opportunities that were not previously possible."</p><p>Moving beyond a two-person trade into a chain of trades exponentially increases the available possibilities of getting what you need with what you have. In the middle of a pandemic, he added, many are reckoning with just how much stuff they have, and many who have lost their jobs may not have cash on hand to get what they need.</p><p>Their target user base is in the billions. "Basically anyone with a smartphone that has more than they need or needs more than they have will benefit from Have | Need."</p><p>Have | Need is launching next month, and will be open to the public early next year. They are also currently raising a pre-seed funding round.</p>Pitch: Crewtify
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cb4789cc48636e772846a0e0ec1098dc"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fjm4ScUzK7o?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>Now, more than ever, it's clear that the future of music is online. <a href="https://www.crewtify.com/" target="_blank">Crewtify</a> makes in-person events accessible to individuals or groups who can't make it to the event. </p><p>David Gukasyan, CEO and co-founder, introduced Crewtify, a subscription model online community platform for music events. Using this platform, fans have unlimited access to watch and participate.</p><p>Beyond the pandemic, it's likely event organizers will still host online events, said Gukasyan, because barriers that have always been present, like cost, distance, and limited space remain. </p><p>Post-COVID, he expects a hybrid system to emerge as event organizers continue broadcasting shows online for online communities. "Crewtify provides the live music experience to fans in the comfort of their own homes. It also allows you to break from the party, into private rooms, to chat or match with other users."</p><p>At the moment, Crewtify has 2,000 users and plenty of user-generated content. Later they hope to build exclusive artist partnerships, and community and network effects.</p>
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It seems everyone wants to be a VC these days, so why can't the Chainsmokers join the line-up?
Earlier this year, the electronic DJ and production duo, Alex Pall and Drew Taggart, announced the debut of their $35 million early-stage fund.
Being a DJ and a startup VC would appear to have little in common, but at a lunchtime panel on the first day of the dot.LA Summit, the pair said there are actually a number of parallels.
"We built the Chainsmokers from nothing and so we think of ourselves as founders, too," said Taggart, who added that personal chemistry is key in both music and startups. "The luckiest thing was to meet each other."
<p>That luck has turned into a lucrative career that will be hard to top in the startup world. The Chainsmokers became the highest-earning DJ act in the world last year, earning over $46 million in a single year, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/monicamercuri/2019/07/29/the-worlds-highest-paid-djs-of-2019/#299d2db87a97" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">according to Forbes.</a></p>
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<p>Taggart also talked about their decision to <a href="https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/chainsmokers-catalog-acquired-by-hipgnosis-songs-closer-1203307402/" target="_blank">sell their entire catalog of 32 songs last year</a>, saying they got "a great price" (which was not disclosed.) He also is not sure their music will be worth as much in years to come because he sees music tastes as increasingly fickle.<br/></p><p>"I don't know if kids ten years from now will listen," Taggart said. </p><p>Their fund has a name, Mantis, more befitting a band. Mark Cuban, Keith Rabois, Jim Coulter Ron Conway and dot.LA Chairman Spencer Rascoff, who moderated the panel, are all investors.</p><p>One of Mantis' first investments was in the L.A. based fitness app FitOn, and Pall said he's excited about joining the city's tech scene. </p><p>"There's a real energy in this city that people are beginning to take notice of," Pall said. "We're pumped to be a part of it."</p>
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I have long been a proponent of going public because I believe it creates stronger, more disciplined companies that deliver greater shareholder value. It's great to see the pendulum in the founder and venture capital community swinging away from the "stay private longer" attitude that dominated tech over the last decade.
That said, the traditional IPO listing path has many shortcomings. I experienced this firsthand in 2011 when we took Zillow public. The cover price on the original S-1 was $12-$14 a share, but we upped it to $14-$16 due to strong demand on the IPO roadshow. We priced it at $20 a share, only to watch the first trade open at $60 that day. (Note: Zillow has since done a 3-for-1 stock split, so divide these numbers by three if you're trying to compare it with today's ~ $100 stock price.)
<p>So on what should have been a day of high-fives and champagne, I couldn't help but feel disappointment that we left a huge amount of money on the table by underpricing our IPO. 🤦 Facepalm. </p><p>Our employees and our venture capital owners were penalized by this broken system. And it's not just the Zillow IPO — this problem is systemic; the typical tech IPO trades up by 43% one day later. That's a massive amount of money to leave on the table for an issuer.</p><p>Direct listings provide a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/06/bill-gurleys-plan-to-move-from-tech-ipos-to-direct-listings.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">second path</a> to a public listing, and they typically avoid the underpricing issue of a traditional listing. But they have their own set of shortcomings, including the inability of the company to raise primary capital in the offering.</p><p>SPACs — Special Purpose Acquisition Companies — offer <a href="http://abovethecrowd.com/2020/08/23/going-public-circa-2020-door-3-the-spac/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a third way</a>, and remedy many of the problems with IPOs, while offering some new benefits, including the ability for a company to provide financial projections at the time of the SPAC IPO, when the private company merges with the public SPAC. In addition, the SPAC model offers a quicker, more certain path to going public. With the launch of <a href="https://www.supernovaspac.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Supernova Partners Acquisition Company</a> (yes, our acronym is "SPAC"), my partners and I are creating that path for a company in the broader tech sector. </p><p>But going public by merging with a SPAC is just an express route to basecamp. Being a fast-scaling, successful public company is the summit. I know this because I've been up that mountain. </p><p>From the point we went public at Zillow, we navigated 16 acquisitions — including that of another public company who was our biggest competitor. We grew our employee base 10-fold in six years. We pulled off a complex business pivot. And most critically, we protected our culture from the volatility of the stock market and kept our people focused on our mission. The internal name for the Zillow IPO in 2011 was "Project Step," because it was just a step along the way. I've seen firsthand that going public is the beginning, not the end. </p><p>The transition from being privately held to being publicly traded is like graduating from college and entering the real world and the job market. Welcome to the big time. And for a newly public company, it's a scary world out there, full of potential facepalm moments. The right mentors, directors, and advisors can make a huge difference during those first few years as a public company. And that is yet another benefit of going public through a SPAC: you get the benefit of the experience which the sponsor group provides. In Supernova's case, we have assembled a world-class team with diverse skills available to help whichever company we take public. We are player-coaches who have all excelled on the field before, and are now excited to help shepherd a company and help them avoid facepalm moments of their own.</p><p>There are many SPACs (and more every day), but not all are created equal. Some teams are Wall Street-heavy and exist only to take a company public, exploiting a private-to-public valuation arbitrage opportunity; some are led by Silicon Valley founders who will act as advisors for a longer period of time. Very few combine both. With Supernova, <a href="https://www.supernovaspac.com/corporate-governance/management-team" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">my partners and I</a>, along with our <a href="https://www.supernovaspac.com/corporate-governance/board-of-directors" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">board</a>, together create a Swiss Army knife of experience in company building, culture building, marketing, finance, deal-making, product design, tech, capital markets and operations. </p><p>We know the journey to IPO and beyond is filled with facepalm crevasses that can be avoided with an expert guide at your side. Our operations and managerial experience, combined with our mentoring and coaching of founders and executives over two decades, will help chart a path toward long-term value. Personally, this is the beginning of a very exciting journey in my career as it combines all of my passions — investing, mentoring and coaching — with my experience as a seasoned CEO, all together with an unparalleled team I'm proud to call partners.</p><p><em>Spencer Rascoff is the co-Chair of Supernova Partners Acquisition Company and the co-founder of dot.LA.</em></p>
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