
Thankful Raises $12 Million To Help Businesses Boost Their Customer Service Experience
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.
Ted Mico created an automated customer service platform that works with companies like Crate & Barrel and subscription box service FabFitFun because he hated chat bots.
His three-year old company Thankful was born after his own experience waiting two weeks to hear back from customer service and throwing his phone in frustration across the room far too many times.
"When it comes to customer service, suddenly when you add technology you end up with some hideous chatbot experience," he said.
Ted Mico is Thankful's co-founder and CEO.
Thankful establishes customer relationships through their service platform routing and tagging help desk tickets. A Thankful AI "agent" fields customer queries via text or email. Mico said that Thankful can resolve up to 50% of all help desk tickets without a human.
Among the companies that use his service are MeUndies, makeup brand Morphe and sock-seller Bombas.
"In each one of our average lifetimes we will spend 43 days, dealing with customer service," Mico said. "All those customer queries we can solve without customer service people being involved, then they can be involved in other things and everybody gets better service."
The Venice-based company announced this week they raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Alpha Edison, a capital firm that invests in early-stage companies using AI, data and behavioral science. In addition, Bonfire, TenOneTen, Greycroft, Omega, and Miramar also invested in this round. The funds will be used to develop the product.
As more shopping is done online, more complaints and problems are being resolved through chat bots and other automated systems. It has swelled the ranks of the customer service industry. Thankful competes with other AI-driven companies including Bay Area competitors Netomi and Forethought.
Thankful charges a platform fee based on volume. Though Thankful is not profitable, there are over 50 brands using the platform.
Mico thinks customer service will be regarded as the most viable sales and marketing channel of the future. Despite many outlets like Yelp using the star rating system helping restaurants and businesses learn about customer's comments and complaints, it isn't quick enough. There's an expectation for immediacy which has been fueled by technology and was heightened by the pandemic.
"Customer service is usually the last thought for most companies and we think that within five years, it will be the first," Mico said. "If you actually think of customer service as the most important thing, that customer journey is sacrosanct."
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.
How Women’s Purchasing Power Is Creating a New Wave of Economic Opportunities In Sports
According to a Forbes report last April, both the viewership and dollars behind women’s sports at a collegiate and professional level are growing.
In 2022, the first 32 games of the NCAA tournament had record attendance levels, breaking records set back in 2004, and largely driven by the new and rapidly growing women’s NCAA tournament. WNBA openers this year saw a 21% spike in attendance, with some teams including the LA Sparks reporting triple-digit ticket sales growth, about 121% over 2022’s total. In 2023, the average size of an LA Sparks crowd swelled to 10,396 people, up from 4,701 people.
Women make up half the population, but “also 50% of the folks that are walking into the stadium at Dodger Stadium, or your NFL fans are just about 50% women,” noted Erin Storck, a panelist and senior analyst at Los Angeles-based Elysian Park Ventures.
Storck added that in heterosexual households, women generally manage most of the family’s money, giving them huge purchasing power, a potential advantage for female-run leagues. “There's an untapped revenue opportunity,” she noted.
In the soccer world, Los Angeles-based women’s soccer team Angel City FC has put in the work to become a household name, not just in LA County but across the nation. At an LA Tech Week panel hosted by Athlete Strategies about investing in sports, Angel City head of strategy and chief of staff Kari Fleischauer said that years before launching the women’s National Women’s Soccer League team, Angel City FC was pounding the pavement letting people know about the excitement ladies soccer can bring. She noted community is key, and that fostering a sense of engagement and safety at the team’s home venue, BMO stadium (formerly Banc of California Stadium), is one reason fans keep coming back.
Adding free metro rides to BMO stadium and private rooms for nursing fans to breastfeed or fans on the spectrum to avoid sensory overload, were just some of the ways ACFC tried to include its community in the concept of its stadium, Fleischauer said. She noted, though, that roughly 46% of Angel City fans are “straight white dudes hanging out with their bros.”
“Particularly [on] the woman's side, I'd like to think we do a better job of making sure that there's spaces for everyone,” Fleischauer told the audience. “One thing we realize is accessibility is a huge thing.”
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
Joby Aviation's Ambitious Plans to Dominate the Air Taxi Space
Turns out, it’s incredibly expensive to get an air taxi startup off the ground. At least, that’s what Joby Aviation is learning as it claws its way towards an ambitious 2025 liftoff deadline.
The Santa Cruz-based company is one of several vying for a prime spot in the electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL, for short) industry race, but it’s also one of the oldest. Formed in 2009, the company went public in August 2021, and valued at $4.5 billion, thanks in part to backing from big-name transport companies including JetBlue, Delta Airlines, Toyota and Uber. Toyota is Joby’s largest outside shareholder; it’s invested roughly $400 million to date.
Joby’s vision is that it can populate the skies of Southern California and later the greater U.S. with electric aircraft that can be used as ride-shares in the air. Think of it as Uber for the skies. The small crafts will seat one pilot and up to four riders, and could reach top speeds of up to 200 miles per hour.
If Joby and other competitors (like Silicon Valley-based Wisk Aero, Long Beach-based Odys or Skyryse, headquartered in Hawthorne) have their way, the congestion on Los Angeles’ freeways could one day be replaced with traffic in the air.
Although it reported lackluster performance in its May 3 first quarter earnings report, Joby has also seen a recent influx of cash. The company noted it lost $113.4 million, which was $51 million more than the same time last year. The company is far from profitable, and chalked the growing losses up to increased operating costs.
But Joby also recently cinched an additional equity investment from Baillie Gifford, a U.K.-based investment manager and early backer. It bought roughly 44 million shares in Joby, worth a total $180 million. In its earnings report, Joby said that cash will help it secure “near-term revenue,” likely in the form of contracts for its future air taxi services. Joby founder JoeBen Bevirt told dot.LA the company isn’t looking to raise any more capital in the near future.
Having ended its first quarter with $978 million in on-hand cash, much of which will be used to develop and manufacture its electric aircraft, as well as get it certified for flight by the Federal Aviation Administration, Bevirt noted Joby has plenty of runway to execute on existing contracts and secure new ones.
“The [Baillie Gifford] investment will accelerate early production so we can capitalize on revenue opportunities like that presented by the DoD contract extension without affecting the funds we already have available to support us through the certification process,” Bevirt noted.
Bevirt added that “we believe we’re very close to this future becoming a reality,” and said that the plan is still to roll out commercial passenger air taxi service to a yet-undisclosed “small number of select cities” by 2025. “There’s a lot of work to be done, but we’re confident in our path forward,” he said.
Joby also gained more funding for its contract to provide the U.S. Air Force with electric helicopters – an additional $55 million, extending the total contract value to more than $130 million. In addition to working for the Air Force, Joby now has relationships with the wider Department of Defense, and plans to conduct flight tests for the Marine Corps. According to the company, the Army and Navy have also expressed interest in electric aircraft, though those divisions haven’t inked contracts yet.
The Air Force is rapidly investing in new technology, and the program Joby’s part of is the government’s only investment into electric aircraft. One of the main goals of the USAF is to spur air taxi companies to accelerate their development by engaging them in an “air race” for contracts; In total there’s more than $1 billion of government funding at stake.
Bevirt said the contract “comes at a pivotal moment in history where the US government is keenly interested in leadership in electric aircraft.” He added that the White House has said advanced and clean air mobility are its top priorities, and noted, “there is tremendous enthusiasm from the government and armed forces for the commercialization of this tech.”
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.