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Office Hours: Former Lawyer Turned CEO Diankha Linear on Cultivating Community
Spencer Rascoff
Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.
Jan 27 2023
Diankha Linear
On this episode of Office Hours, Community CEO Diankha Linear joins host Spencer Rascoff to discuss her foray into the startup world and the strategic approaching to scaling up.
Community is a startup that uses SMS messaging to help Fortune 500 Companies and personal brands turn two-way text conversations into sales.
“Our technology is delivering on like two decades worth of promises in marketing, and that's to deliver customized personal communications to every single customer that you have,” Linear said. “We do that through text messaging.”
The platform uses human assisted AI to scale and customize the text messages you send to your audience.
“So what's wonderful about it is if you send a text message to your audience — let's say you have 200,000 members in your audience — most people sort of tend to respond in very similar ways,” she explained. “You could say something as simple as, ‘Hey, there's going to be a sale on my product, 30% off. What products do you use most or would you most like to see on sale?’ Our technology clusters and segments all of those responses.”
When Linear first joined Community as COO in May of 2021, the platform was heavily focused on working with high-profile celebrities, but she quickly realized that wasn’t a sustainable model.
“We needed it to scale, and certainly not at that rate,” she said. “So we sat down…We looked at the structure of the company—are we even set up right to move up market? Enterprise customers honestly need a more consultative sales process, versus the one-and-done conversations we were having with celebrities."
Linear and her team took a step back and really thought about what their “ideal customer profile” would look like. After months of research, they identified five verticals to focus on that would help them expand their business into enterprise brands.
Linear said the value proposition for enterprise is two-fold.
“One is the data,” she said. “Community is the best and most trusted source—give me a better source of gathering first and zero party data, right? Because you're directly having people text message, and they opt in—sort of sharing in an open way all of their first party data. And then you can curate zero party data that's relevant to your organization. So that's a different value prop that wasn't as important to celebrities and public figures. And then the second value prop is we now have so many integrations that enterprise companies can actually monetize Community very well.”
Community now has integrations with major companies like Ticketmaster, Salesforce and Act Blue. Working as a successful CEO, Linear credits much of her success to her time in the military and to two important lessons she learned.
“One, to prioritize people from day one,” she said. “The second thing is you do have to have a strategy. I should have mentioned that the very next thing I did [when redirecting the company] was getting the structure aligned. I got five people in a room. And we began drafting a strategy. We dropped that strategy the first quarter after I started.”
Given her experience at Fortune 500 companies and smaller startups, Linear said entrepreneurs seeking mentorship should formulate smart questions and then offer to take a potential mentor out for lunch or coffee.
“It would always give me the opportunity to see if there was a good fit,” Linear said. “I think it’s important for someone to feel a natural connection and to want to invest in you.”
And while the mentee will find a lot of value in the knowledge a mentor has to offer, the mentor should not underestimate the value a mentee can offer as well.
“Always remember that there is a certain amount of satisfaction that your mentor gets from investing in you,” Linear said. “So I always do my best to show up as well.”
dot.LA Reporter Decerry Donato contributed to this post.
Want to hear more episodes? Subscribe to Office Hours on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Spencer Rascoff
Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.
https://twitter.com/spencerrascoff
https://www.linkedin.com/in/spencerrascoff/
admin@dot.la
LA Tech ‘Moves’: Dreamscape, LinQuest and PetDX Gain New CEOs
Decerry Donato
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
Jan 27 2023
“Moves,” our roundup of job changes in L.A. tech, is presented by Interchange.LA, dot.LA's recruiting and career platform connecting Southern California's most exciting companies with top tech talent. Create a free Interchange.LA profile here—and if you're looking for ways to supercharge your recruiting efforts, find out more about Interchange.LA's white-glove recruiting service by emailing Sharmineh O’Farrill Lewis (sharmineh@dot.la). Please send job changes and personnel moves to moves@dot.la.
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Dreamscape Learn, a collaborative venture between VR company Dreamscape Immersive and ASU University, tapped edtech veteran Josh Reibel as chief executive officer.
National security space technology company LinQuest promoted chief operating officer Greg Young as president and CEO.
PetDX, a liquid biopsy technology company, welcomed Alejandro Bernal as president and chief executive officer. Bernal previously served as president for Mars Veterinary Health International and Global Diagnostics.
LINK Agency, the creative agency that specializes in data-driven, short form advertising tailored to the TikTok generation, appointed Frederico Lopes as chief operating officer. Prior to joining, Lopes served as project leader at the Boston Consulting Group.
Susan Wegleitner joined investment firm WCO Spectrum as chief financial officer. Wegleitner served as managing director at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
EV manufacturer Mullen Automotive tapped former vice president of Key Safety Systems Jerry Hu as president and former vice president of Mahindra Raj Pai as chief engineer of commercial vehicles.
Mahmee, an integrated care delivery platform for maternal and infant health that connects patients to health professionals and healthcare organizations, hired Dr. Amanda Williams as medical director. Williams also serves as the clinical innovation advisor at California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative.
Slickdeals, a community-powered shopping platform added Neville Crawley to its team as president. Crawley is a seasoned product and technology executive with stints at Quid, Kiva and OppFi.
Marketing agency Midnight Oil welcomed Bill Rosenthal as president. Rosenthal most recently served in the joint role of COO and CFO at Rogers & Cowan PMK.
SONIFI Health, a healthcare technology company, promoted senior vice president Kelly Boyd to general manager.
B2B e-commerce platform Oro named Daphna Andrews as vice president of customer experience. Andrews recently served as the eCommerce and digital transformation consultant at Gorilla Group.
Life sciences real estate development company IQHQ welcomed Janice Sears and Anshul Mangal to its board of directors. Sears also serves on the committee for Sonder Inc. and Invitation Homes, while Mangal served as president and general counsel at Project Farma.
Dr. Lorence Kim of Ascenta Capital has joined biotechnology company ADARx Pharmaceuticals’ board of directors.Read moreShow less
Decerry Donato
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
This Week in ‘Raises’: ADARx Pharmaceuticals Lands $46M, PLAI Labs Scores $32M
Decerry Donato
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
Jan 27 2023
This Week in ‘Raises’: ContractSafe Inks $27.5M, Deal Box Collects $125M
A local RNA base-editing platform raised fresh funding to advance its drug development pipeline, while a local Web3 company founded by former MySpace and Jam City founders Chris DeWolfe and Aber Whitcomb scored funding to build out an artificial intelligence backed by generative AI that allows users to create and upload their own digital assets to the game.
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Venture Capital
ADARx Pharmaceuticals, a San Diego-based RNA base-editing platform, raised a $46 million Series B-1 funding round led by Ascenta Capital.
Los Angeles-based Web3 company PLAI Labs, raised a $32 million seed funding round led by a16z (formerly Andreessen Horowitz).
Spatial LABS, a Los Angeles-based Web3 and hardware company raised a $10 million seed funding round led by Blockchain Capital.
San Diego-based e-commerce and fulfillment platform Speakeasy Co. raised $6.8 million for its third seed round led by InvestBev.
StoryCo, a Los Angeles-based company that is focused on allowing fans to help collaborate and generate content based on established Hollywood properties, raised $6 million in funding led by Collab + Currency and Patron.
Los Angeles-based direct to consumer scientific research company People Science raised $5.3 million in a second seed round of funding led by Acre Venture Partners.
Per an SEC filing, Los Angeles-based car-sharing marketplace HyreCar Inc. raised $3.7 million in funding.
Monrovia-based water management service VivoAquatics Inc. raised $2 million in funding, per an SEC filing.
Raises is dot.LA’s weekly feature highlighting venture capital funding news across Southern California’s tech and startup ecosystem. Please send fundraising news to Decerry Donato (decerrydonato@dot.la).
Read moreShow less
Decerry Donato
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
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