Density, a buzzy Upfront Ventures-backed startup that big tech companies like Facebook and Google as well as the U.S. government have used to anonymously monitor how employees are using buildings, can now provide a more accurate count of the number of occupants in a room.
<p>Previously the company's infrared sensors were only used at entryways. A new addition, called <a href="https://density.webflow.io/blog/introducing-open-area" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Open Area,</a> puts a radar smaller than a palm of a hand above any open space that can track a room of up to 1325 square feet. Each sensor will cost $399 plus an additional $199 for the monitoring software every year. </p><p>Although the technology was first designed to help companies better utilize office space and get rid of money draining empty offices and conference rooms, it can also be used to help enforce social distancing rules. </p><p>At first glance, the company's tracking devices could appear as a privacy nightmare, but Density says its technology is actually much less intrusive than traditional surveillance cameras because all of the information on the platform is anonymous; Workers merely show up as dots. </p><p>Density has seen 407% revenue growth from the same period last year as warehouses, factories and universities have all signed on as clients as they try to navigate keeping workers and students safe amid the pandemic, according to co-founder and CEO Andrew Farah.</p><p><a href="https://dot.la/a-company-perfectly-suited-for-the-covid-era-density-raises-51-million-2646809603.html" target="_self">Density raised $51 million in Series C funding in July</a> led by<a href="https://www.kleinerperkins.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Kleiner Perkins</a>, with participation from 01 Advisors, Upfront Ventures, Founders Fund, Ludlow Ventures, Launch, and DTA. The new round brought its total funding to $74 million. </p><p>Upfront managing partner Mark Suster sits on the board along with Jason Calacanis, the well-known angel investor who was an early backer of Uber. </p>
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- Stem, an L.A. music-fintech company that counts Zac Brown Band, Foster the People and Toro Y Moi as clients, announced a $10 million raise.
- The pandemic has hurt the music industry but has made Stem's tools and artist loan program 'more relevant than ever.'
- Stem has distributed over $100 million in royalty payments since its launch in 2016.
With so many musicians out of work, the pandemic has been about as useful to the music industry as a broken guitar string. But, Stem Disintermedia's co-founder Milana Rabkin says it has made her company — and the technology to help artists manage their business affairs — more relevant than ever.
<p>"With the opportunity to slow things down and look under the hood, they're trying to <a href="https://dot.la/music-startups-2647008629.html" target="_self">understand where their opportunities are for growth and saving</a>," Rabkin, who is also Stem's CEO, told dot.LA. "Artists have really started to pay more attention to the details of their business."</p><p>The demand for its services helped L.A.-based Stem – whose clients include notable acts like Zac Brown Band, Foster the People, and Toro Y Moi – seal a $10 million raise, which it announced on Wednesday.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<a href="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU2NDg0OC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMzIwODA0MX0.hVGcHFix-9uoxfeq_qMZn1uUUqEyG3WAqiiS6mf2vHU/img.png?width=980" target="_blank"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU2NDg0OC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMzIwODA0MX0.hVGcHFix-9uoxfeq_qMZn1uUUqEyG3WAqiiS6mf2vHU/img.png?width=980" id="f4c84" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="49e5fc13c5df3027f8a63d1f291b4b5b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"></a>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Stem Helps Musicians Get Paid. It Just Scored a Big Payday Itself.</small>
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<a href="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU2NDg0OC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMzIwODA0MX0.hVGcHFix-9uoxfeq_qMZn1uUUqEyG3WAqiiS6mf2vHU/img.png?width=980" target="_blank">assets.rebelmouse.io</a>
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</p><p>Rabkin, a former agent at United Talent Agency who comes from a musical family, formed the company after seeing how frequently artists would give up trying to monetize their work because of the sheer administrative hassle and complexity it involves. Record labels often supply these back-office services, but Rabkin wanted to target what she called an underserved market of indie artists and their teams who aren't on a traditional path.<br></p><p>"Small- to medium-sized businesses are our customers," she said. "We provide the same function that AWS (Amazon Web Services) does to a startup: the plumbing and infrastructure." </p><p>Stem simplifies the confounding tangle of rights management for independent artists using technology. As of this month, the company has distributed over $100 million in royalty payments since its launch in 2016.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU2NDgzNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1ODY0ODI0OX0.pWF64e99T6hiJHaHfTXrdeaa70RCcrg6TMhcouZzPCw/image.jpg?width=1500&coordinates=1024%2C1786%2C1083%2C1770&height=2000" id="40078" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cb322d89946e60404f1c288fb38abf7e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Stem co-founder and CEO Milana Rabkin Lewis
<p>The most common way Stem helps artists capture more cash is to audit their tracks on platforms like Facebook and YouTube to ensure payouts are appropriately distributed. Sometimes, as with the case of Childish Gambino, Stem can also help to create new revenue streams by clearing rights around older projects and mixtapes.</p><p>Stem's new financing round will accelerate product development, including adding technological tools for artists to access its $100 million debt-financing arm, called Scale. The company launched it earlier this year. Access to capital is especially important for artists right now as touring and performance revenue has dried up, Rabkin said.</p><p>Scale is a capital partnership with New York-based CoVenture. Artists can take out advances against their catalogs and future earnings. Unlike similar deals with record labels, Rabkin said, borrowers have substantial say in how much of their future income they put toward paying down the advance. Rabkin added that artists who've tapped into the Scale funds have used the money to buy property for building a recording studio, market their work or simply cover daily living expenses.</p>
<p><br>Stem employs around 40 people and has raised $22 million to date.<br></p><p>The funding round was led by SF-based Slow Ventures, with participation from Aspect Ventures and L.A.-based Upfront Ventures. Stem's advisors and investors include Adam Nash, former CEO of fintech firm Wealthfront and board member of Acorns, another fintech company; Mark Gillespie, manager of DJ Calvin Harris; former NBA all-star Baron Davis; and holding company WndrCo.<br></p><p>Nash said in a statement that "the music industry has been extremely slow to bring the transparency and capabilities of modern software to creators."</p><p>"That's one thing we want to solve," said Rabkin. "Not just (for) organizing information, but really giving artists as business owners the tools to take control of their business and be smarter about what they do with it."</p>From Your Site Articles
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Remote Work Has Become the Norm, but Investors Still Want Their Startups to Have an Office
Aug 17 2020
Fresh off raising a $7 million seed round in February, Jill Wilson took the first step any founder traditionally takes when launching a new startup: She called up a real estate broker and leased an office.
"I would not have ever considered a remote workplace before," said Wilson, co-founder and CEO of mobile game maker Robin Games. "I was very squarely in the camp that you need to be in the same room to create a great creative product."
<p>Less than a month later, the coronavirus sent Wilson and her team home, where they have been working ever since. Some employees left Los Angeles to be closer to family and live in cheaper cities like Atlanta and New Mexico. "I will never require people who moved away to come back," Wilson said.</p><p>Despite being scattered across the country instead of shoulder-to-shoulder in the office they rented on Abbot Kinney, Wilson has been surprised how productive her team has been. "I've done a shocking 180 on this," said Wilson. "I'm a convert to a distributed workforce." </p><p>Wilson says it is a big advantage to be able to recruit from a vastly bigger pool of candidates, not just those in Los Angeles or willing to move here. And she says her employees are much happier now that they don't waste time sitting in traffic commuting to Venice, California. "I think that's one of the reasons my team is so efficient, because they can literally roll out of bed and start working," she said. </p><p>Startups' early days are usually defined by young and over-caffeinated engineers huddled around monitors, not Zoom meetings and virtual happy hours. Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Google were all famously started in garages. A newer generation of startups launched in co-working spaces, but proximity has always been seen as a crucial ingredient for building a young company.</p><p>"Investors have questioned how well a business can find its footing and grow — especially in its early days — without close, personal collaboration among employees," wrote Paul Condra, a lead analyst at Pitchbook, in a research note. "Similarly, as organizations scale, the distributed model is often viewed as an impediment to that growth, which has made it harder for companies using it to raise money. For venture investors, the ability to see a company's physical offices, meet the team and witness first-hand the central hive of day-to-day activity is a key part of regular due diligence."</p><p>Nearly all office workers have been forced to work remotely since mid-March, but the transition for young startups has arguably been among the hardest. Whenever the day comes when employees feel safe enough to return, investors interviewed by dot.LA say they still prefer to back companies that have an office.</p><p>"You just can't achieve the same level of productivity if everyone remains totally remote," said Mark Suster, founding partner of Upfront Ventures. "When we return to some sort of new normal, whatever that normal is, people are still going to need to congregate in close proximity with each other."</p><p>"I'm still of the old school that I like to see a team in the same place to the extent possible. So I'm looking forward to the day when a team can be in the same place," said Eric Manlunas, founder and managing partner of Wavemaker Partners. "There's a lot of positives that come out of that." </p><p>When the UK-based startup network <a href="https://ff.co/" target="_blank">Founders Forum</a><a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-future-of-remote-work-according-to-startups/" target="_blank"> interviewed hundreds of founders recently</a>, 63% said what they missed most about the office was spontaneous conversation and collaboration. </p><p>Investors agreed that the younger a startup, the more crucial it is for employees to be together. It also is much more important for a founding team who has not worked with each other before to be together. "You need that connective tissue in the early days," said Sanjay Reddy, co-founding partner of Unlock Venture Partners.</p><p>However, just because offices are still important does not mean that things will ever go back to the way they were before the pandemic. "I do believe the genie is out of the bottle," said Reddy. "I don't think we're going back to the office full time ever again." </p><p>Nearly half of organizations with office space say they expect to reduce their physical office footprint as a result of the coronavirus, and more than 20% expect to reduce it by more than 25%, according to S&P GLOBAL. The new normal for startups will likely include a degree of remote work and more openness to hiring employees who don't want to live in high-priced cities. </p><p>"I don't think any company is fully ready to embrace fully remote yet because so much is unknown," said Matt Hoffman, a partner and head of talent at M13. "But we see companies that were very reticent to have anyone work remotely, and now they're taking some steps to see what works well. No one should go from zero to 60 overnight."</p><p>Condra, the Pitchbook analyst who studies workplace trends, says the real test of remote work will be when it is viewed not as an accommodation, but as a benefit. He is curious to see if a venture fund will specifically target fully remote companies because they view them as a competitive advantage, but he has not seen any doing that yet. It seems that for all the reasons workers do not miss offices: traffic clogged commutes, annoying co-workers, sad desk lunches – most companies still view the benefits of offices outweighing their cost. </p><p>"Is there a tipping point where a company comes along and says, 'We can do better if we're distributed than we can do in an office'?" asked Condra. "Once that is proven, the model will become mainstream."</p><p>The list of successful fully remote startups is a short one. But Gitlab, which is valued at $2.75 billion and employs 1,200 people in 67 countries, all of whom are remote, is invariably at its top. Whether the company is a one-off, largely because of the remote-friendly nature of its business – providing software for developers – remains to be seen. </p><p>"A lot of people like going into the office to focus on work," said Hoffman. "I don't think that will ever go away."</p><p>Even Wilson is not ready to go fully remote. She is keeping Robin Games' Venice office in the hope that some of her team can eventually return there for meetings and brainstorming sessions. Even though she is allowing employees to work from anywhere indefinitely, she sees a symbolic importance to maintaining a physical headquarters with her company's logo on the front door. </p><p>"It's nice to have roots," she said. "We want to have a base for our company."</p>
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