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Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake
Since acquiring a controlling stake in Triller in 2019, Hollywood financier Ryan Kavanaugh and his partner at Proxima Media, Bobby Sarnevesht, have transformed the company. They've made at least five acquisitions, expanded the scope of their platform far beyond short-form, user-generated music videos and reportedly explored going public. Earlier this month, they brought on a new chief executive, Mahi de Silva, who took the helm from Mike Lu, who is now president and focused on investor relations.
De Silva, who joined Triller's board at the same time Kavanaugh and Sarnevesht took control, offers a decidedly different tone than his predecessor Lu. The former executive for Verisign and most recently the head of Bay Area-based Amplify.ai, a digital chatbot tool that lets brands interact with customers, De Silva said he's focused on creating strong relationships with partners after some very public disputes.
Mahi de Silva is Triller's new CEO.
Universal Music Group pulled its extensive catalog off the app in February, claiming that Triller "has shamefully withheld payments" and that its public statement about the situation was "removed from reality." Late last year, Wixen Music Publishing sued Triller for copyright infringement, and Triller has been called out in the past by the head of the National Music Publishers' Association for playing loose with its copyright obligations.
Triller, which launched in 2015, originally focused entirely on helping musicians create mobile video content but has expanded into livestreaming, live entertainment and even TrillerTV, which includes long-form content, including its own boxing brand, Triller Fight Club.
Along the way, Triller has faced accusations of inflating its user figures and flouting the need for proper music licensing.
Nevertheless, Triller has continued to grow its user base and balance sheet. As of late 2021, the company claimed around 18 million daily active users and 65 million monthly active users. That is well short of the many social media companies with which de Silva hopes to compete. dot.LA interviewed the new CEO to discuss his plans to change that, his views on Triller's public disputes and whether rumors are true that Triller plans to go public.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Triller now looks like much more than a short-form social video app. Was that the plan when Ryan and Bobby got involved and brought you in as a board member?
Mahi de Silva: The original thesis was to say, look, we think we can do this better than it being a simple short-form video app. If you think about the progression of YouTube to TikTok – and we have to give TikTok credit; they've done a pretty good job of taking content, making it super bite size, and making it easy to consume – we felt that we could help curate content, particularly bringing in tier-one, top-shelf content, and creating kind of a gateway to broader content, whether it be long-form or even movies. I think the reason Ryan brought me in was that back in the early 2000s, when I ran the wireless business at VeriSign, I built the largest ringtone business in the world. And it was about taking the power of music and making it into these super bite-sized things that were part of your mobile phone experience and it blew up and we built that into half a billion dollar a year business. So it was kind of a confluence of all of that, and being able to bring content and creators together to drive better awareness, better distribution, better monetization of that content.
Boxing isn't exactly a growth industry. Why was that the choice as the first step toward expanding your entertainment footprint beyond music?
Mahi de Silva: Boxing is iconic when it comes to pay-per-view. We saw an opportunity particularly in working with folks like Mike Tyson, to create really a tentpole event out of that. But we've taken a very different approach to boxing: the theatrical production of the event, the camera angles; it's using the most sophisticated technology that you'd see in very high-value production television and movies enter into the sporting arena. We also brought in lots of different artists, lots of different voices, that would appeal to an audience that wasn't a boxing fan. It's the ability to broaden the appeal of an event like this, and then really understanding how people respond to it.
To what extent do you see that expansion into different types and formats of entertainment playing into the Triller app?
Mahi de Silva: The center of our universe today is the app, so the first thing we do is we put the world's best creator tools into the app, so it's super easy to use the content you might have on your phone or the content you created, be able to integrate that with video, mix it, do effects, do filters. And then we do this unusual thing which is we make it easy for you to spread that anywhere and everywhere. You can send it to Instagram and YouTube and Snapchat and wherever you want to. We think by doing that, we are creating a different sort of distribution strategy for creators. And at the same time, we're creating tools where creators can track those posts, those shares, and draw more consumers into that content, and try to create a more lasting relationship with them. So it's not this, "let me go and build my Instagram audience, my Snapchat audience or my TikTok audience"; we're trying to enable them to think about, "okay, here's my content, here's where I distribute it, and here's my audience." We also want to help them monetize that in different ways. We think about the network effect starting with our app, but syndicating content all over the digital universe. And we also think that that snacky, 10-15 second video can be parlayed into more long-form experiences. You can do that even on our platform, moving from the short-form to TrillerTV, or being part of the content that we create for these pay-per-view types of experiences. Today that could be everything that's enabled in the FITE TV world, things that are created through the Verzuz world, and on these other platforms as well.
Sources have told me that Triller has been looking into going public, through a SPAC. Is that still the plan?
Mahi de Silva: We're at that magic threshold where as a company, we have the income statement – in terms of revenue, earnings, growth potential – we have everything that you need to be a U.S. listed public company. So whatever vehicle we use to get there –whether an IPO, a SPAC, a direct listing – we've been very thoughtfully exploring all those options, and doing the right thing for both our shareholders and what's in the best interest of creating a growth vehicle for the company.
Do you expect Triller to go public one way or another this year?
Mahi de Silva: The timeline is something that we're not wedded to, because the public markets have different envelopes of opportunity. But we certainly think that it's possible to do it this year.
Triller has faced accusations that it's inflated its user accounts and shunned the need for proper music licensing. Why do you think the company continues to find its way into the middle of so many controversies?
Mahi de Silva: Those types of controversies are almost inevitable in a) the fact that we play in a very competitive environment, and b) everybody has a different way of measuring things. I think where people tend to get a little sideways is that we've talked about total engagement numbers, and we've talked about app engagement numbers, and those numbers are different. One of the reasons I'm here as CEO is to bring a little bit more rigor into how we do planning, how we focus on priorities and what numbers are really meaningful from a monetization standpoint, and what we make public.
As to music licensing, the labels are some of our most important partners in this journey. We absolutely take music licenses very seriously. I think we have disagreements with some of these entities because they look at numbers that maybe may have been talked about, like the total engagement numbers, versus what happens with content on our app. But we are quickly converging to resolving some of those, I'd say, misunderstandings. We totally embrace license holders and we think we're one of their most important partners.
Universal Music Group had some pretty harsh words for Triller, calling the company's response to the spat over publishing rights "removed from reality." As a board member at the time, were you concerned about that? And as CEO, do you see yourself in a position of power to try to correct some of those characterizations?
Mahi de Silva: I stand behind the conduct of the company throughout the history, ever since I've been involved, ever since Ryan and Bobby have been involved, about being very forthcoming about the facts of our business. Never have we tried to deceive anyone in the industry, particularly those people that we have commercial relationships with. Many of us have been in this business and had to negotiate these licenses. I myself, like I mentioned, in the ringtone business, negotiated with all these companies. Unfortunately, there's a tactic that says that, look, I'm going to use public opinion or sentiment to shape the outcome of a commercial relationship. And it's unfortunate when it gets to that. There may have been some misunderstandings, but we will quickly resolve them and we'll continue to have a very fruitful relationship with the labels.
What kind of misunderstandings are you referring to?
Mahi de Silva: This notion of what are the total users, how many people are we touching, in terms of our reach, with our network and our content, versus what is the reach of the app and what should be counted in the licensing conversation.
But the criticism that Triller received was related to its statement that it didn't need a license with Universal (note: Triller's statement at the time included, "Triller does not need a deal with UMG to continue operating as it has been since the relevant artists are already shareholders or partners on Triller, and thus can authorize their usage directly. Triller has no use for a licensing deal with UMG."). What's your view about the conversation escalating to that level?
Mahi de Silva: People try to use the public and press sentiment to try to shape commercial relationships. It's unfortunate that we get into that kind of noise. It's all just kind of positioning; it's not based in any kind of reality. The fact of the matter is we work with a very, very broad spectrum of creators and content. We want to facilitate the legal exchange of that content across our community of creators and users. So we want to invite in the maximum amount of content on our platform. If there are certain parties that feel they need extraordinary compensation to have that content work in our ecosystem, then they need to be ultimately disabused of that idea. We're not about trying to create an un-level playing field for folks that create, produce and distribute content. We're trying to democratize that. We think that there are very sane, fair terms to do that. We've been able to agree with a vast majority of content licensors around that concept, and I'm very confident that we'll do that with just about everyone.
You mentioned you're going to be bringing more rigor to the numbers. Would you say your style is a little different than Mike's? Was he a little more prone to getting involved in some of these public disputes than you plan to be?
Mahi de Silva: I think Triller has assembled a really amazing team of operating execs. We all have our strengths, we all have our weaknesses. I think the things that may be different is that a CEO kind of tries to set the tone, because our job is to create followership. As much as we like to lead, you have to have followers that buy into a vision and buy into a strategy. And I'm confident that we'll be able to bring that about.
Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake
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.
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.
L.A. Tech Week has brought venture capitalists, founders and entrepreneurs from around the world to the California coast. With so many tech nerds in one place, it's easy to laugh, joke and reminisce about the future of tech in SoCal.
Here's what people are saying about the fifth day of L.A. Tech Week on social:
#LATechWeek has been on 🔥🔥🔥. Yes the events are super cool at amazing venues. But, I’m blown away by the people. I’ve met so many founders building generative AI companies from the ground up. I’m so bullish on LA right now🥳. LA is for builders #longLA
Thanks @rpnickson 📸 pic.twitter.com/B6rT2jJYIs
— Dr. Kelly O'Brien (@Kvo2013) June 8, 2023
Successful LatinxVC Avanza Summit 2023 in LA! It’s been an amazing few days near the beach w great company. Thank you to our panelists & participants.
Huge thanks to our incredible sponsors SVB, Chavez Family Foundation, Annenberg Foundation, PledgeLA, Fenwick & West, Countsy! pic.twitter.com/oVuGIgFurk
— LatinxVC (@LatinxVCs) June 9, 2023
30+ gaming startups presented at the A16z Speedrun Demo Day in LA yesterday. Great thanks to the @a16zGames team for an awesome day of events! #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/DKq8IFo5QZ
— Grace Zhou (@graceminzhou) June 9, 2023
📣🤩 What’s the buzz? It’s #LATechWeek from @TechstarsLA & @TechstarsHealth joint demo day with the #Techstar HC team where our @fyelabs founder/CEO Suvojit Ghosh mentored both cohorts! #TechStars demo day highlighted 12 amazing emerging #startups in #healthtech #innovation. 🩺 pic.twitter.com/0RXClCtfDQ
— FYELABS (@fyelabs) June 9, 2023
Another successful Coffee On Slauson in the books for #LATechWeek.
Special thanks to the good people at Pledge LA, SVB and @GundersonLaw for the ongoing support and the @findyourhilltop staff for providing the space, eats & vibes. ♻️ pic.twitter.com/51cMDoEn30
— Slauson & Co. (@SlausonAndCo) June 9, 2023
The perfect combo to start #LATechWeek Day 5: pastries, coffee, and great convos with industry founders ✨
Fireside chats with @enriquealle, @wp, and @robynpark pic.twitter.com/booYPdekVV
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 9, 2023
Of course @designerfund has the most amazing pastries at their event. #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/PjyWlGTQI4
— Jesse Pickard (@jessepickard) June 9, 2023
My favorite event from @Techweek_ has to be "Modern Storytelling & Business Building." Hosted by @STHoward #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/SV1eexMJ4k
— JonnyZeller (@JonnyZeller) June 9, 2023
And the finale of the night was courtesy of the one and only @zedd for an unforgettable end to the "City of Games" party! Hosted by @a16zGames and @100Thieves #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/hliI9yLKse
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 9, 2023
Excited to be at the @a16zGames Speedrun Demo Day! Loved the energy and excitement from the companies that pitched there. It was also great to see @Tocelot and @ndrewlee at this amazing #LATechWeek event pic.twitter.com/NfLQO5lR27
— Andy Lee | andypwlee.bit (@andypwlee) June 9, 2023
Thank you to everyone who joined the Sony Venture Fund US team at #LATechWeek for our screening of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Last summer, we started building a presence in LA. Today, it's exciting to host such an event with the @Sony family and the LA VC community. pic.twitter.com/wdDm6qtHdL
— Sony Innovation Fund (@Sony_Innov_Fund) June 9, 2023
Time to eat, connect and build while @remi_rodney provided the vibes. 🙏🏽#LATechWeek @BuildOnBase @developer_dao @WeAreRazorfish pic.twitter.com/QIPh1gjvoA
— Hola Metaverso-Blockchain & New Web Tech Events 🎪 (@holametaverso) June 9, 2023
@Lux_Capital at #LATechWeek advancing the impossible to inevitable, from..
..defense primes partnering with cutting edge defense tech startups, to..
..hardware x LLMs improving mental health.
From the rich and diverse LA ecosystem stems generational companies: pic.twitter.com/v5S5r8JtbU
— Shahin Farshchi (@Farshchi) June 9, 2023
LA Tech Week has been a blast! Met some amazing creators, founders and investors from all over the world! #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/AAh9JFELhe
— Chris Germano (@netslayer) June 9, 2023
Had such a blast at LA Tech Week and hosting events for @brexHQ
Top highlights were collabing with @pulley on an Emerging Managers / Founder mixer at the @poplco House, rooftop event in Venice, creator panel with @thechangj & proper Korean food with in KTown.
Exhausted is an… pic.twitter.com/mGQnSYGPdg
— Τyler Robinson (@TyyRob3) June 9, 2023
Did you have fun at @sophiaamoruso’s launch party for @trustfundvc? #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/gbrbXRQ9Xx
— Kay (@KaySnels) June 9, 2023
y00tilty in every city with @KaylaLor3n & @cryptochrisg813.
Welcome to the LA @y00tsNFT fam! #LATechWeek #3XP week. pic.twitter.com/6wWKlsTacx
— VanG0xH (@CryptoVanGoghs) June 9, 2023
Really enjoyed #LATechWeek. Here are some observations I made 👇
— s.personal.ai (Suman Kanuganti) (@SumanPersonalAI) June 9, 2023
Thank you @TheKofiAmpadu for including me in #demoday with the latest @a16ztxo cohort! It was a real full circle moment to witness the brilliance of both @ChrisLyons & @ZMuse_ & #PledgeLA very own. She’s why we’re #LongLA 🚀💕 #LAtechweek pic.twitter.com/itkKXMxQRb
— Qiana Qiana! (@Q_i_a_n_a) June 9, 2023
@upfrontvc Gaming Founders Podcast #iLOVELA #LATechWeek @Techweek_ @KatiaAmeri @mucker @fikavc @bonfire_vc @TenOne10 @WatertowerGroup @ganasvc @IAmRobRyan @john_at_stonks @eva_ho @dereknorton pic.twitter.com/LCbaGXCoW7
— Sean Goldfaden (@seangoldfaden) June 9, 2023
Hosts Kevin Zhang, Partner at @upfrontvc, and Eden Chen, CEO of @pragmaplatform, interviewed two special guests from @raidbaseinc Stephen Lim, Co-Founder & Product Director, and Trevor Romleski, Co-Founder & Game Director. 🎙 #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/hxHEAoELZ6
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 9, 2023
Kicking off @a16zGames @100Thieves City of Games party at #LATechWeek 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/zQcZedG15f
— Jon Lai (@Tocelot) June 9, 2023
Yesterday at @socinnovation I got to have this AWESOME conversation with @iamwill — musician, producer, technology entrepreneur, and Founder & CEO of https://t.co/D60y1e2JOu #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/KBxK6rXyTG
— Anna Barber (@annawbarber) June 9, 2023
I absolutely love this game. Proud moment for the team @investwithatlas. #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/fPZvKXU7TC
— Tobias Francis (@TobiasFrancis) June 9, 2023
Had a blast at LA Tech Week this year with @brexHQ
From hosting & moderating my first creator panel featuring @BlakeMichael14, to a fun rooftop night in Venice, and to attending some amazing events such as Watertower’s emerging manager panel and a VC/founder tennis tournament pic.twitter.com/udjfmLHE0L
— Jonathan Chang (@thechangj) June 8, 2023
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.
At Lowercarbon Capital’s LA Tech Week event Thursday, the synergy between the region’s aerospace industry and greentech startups was clear.
The event sponsored by Lowercarbon, Climate Draft (and the defunct Silicon Valley Bank’s Climate Technology & Sustainability team) brought together a handful of local startups in Hawthorne not far from LAX, and many of the companies shared DNA with arguably the region’s most famous tech resident: SpaceX.
Here’s a look at the greentech startups that pitched during the Tech Week event, and how they think what they’re building could help solve the climate crisis.
Arbor: Based in El Segundo, this year-old startup is working to convert organic waste into energy and fresh water. At the same time, it also uses biomass carbon removal and storage to remove carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in an attempt to avoid further damaging the earth’s ozone layer. At the Tech Week event Thursday, Arbor CEO Brad Hartwig told a stunned crowd that Arbor aims to remove about five billion tons of organic waste from landfills and turn that into about 6 PWh, or a quarter of the global electricity need, each year. Hartwig is an alumni of SpaceX; he was a manufacturing engineer on the Crew Dragon engines from 2016-2018 and later a flight test engineer at Kitty Hawk.
Antora: Sunnyvale-based Antora Energy was founded in 2017, making it one of the oldest companies on the pitching block during the event. Backed by investors including the National Science Foundation and Los Angeles-based Overture VC, Antora has raised roughly $57 million to date, most recently a $50 million round last February. Chief operating officer Justin Briggs said Antora’s goal is to modernize and popularize thermal energy storage using ultra-hot carbon. Massive heated carbon blocks can give off thermal energy, which Antora’s proprietary batteries then absorb and store as energy. It’s an ambitious goal, but one the world needs at scale to green its energy footprint. According to Briggs, “the biggest challenge is how can we turn back variable intermittent renewable electricity into something that's reliable and on demand, so we can use it to provide energy to everything we need.”
Arc: Hosting the panel was Arc, an electric boating company that’s gained surprising momentum, moving from design to delivering its first e-boats in just two years of existence. Founded in 2021, the company’s already 70 employees strong and has already sold some of its first e-boats to customers willing to pay the luxury price tag, CTO Ryan Cook said Thursday. Cook said that to meet the power needs of a battery-powered speedboat, the Arc team designed the vehicle around the battery pack with the goal of it being competitive with gas boats when compared to range and cost of gas. But on the pricing side, it’s not cheap. Arc’s flagship vessel, the Arc One is expected to cost roughly $300,000. During the panel, Cook compared the boat to being “like an early Tesla Roadster.” To date Arc Boats has raised just over $35 million, according to PitchBook, from investors including Kevin Durant, Will Smith and Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Clarity Technology: Carbon removal startup Clarity is based in LA and was founded by Yale graduate and CEO Glen Meyerowitz last year. Clarity is working to make “gigaton solutions for gigaton problems.” Their aim? To remove up to 2,000 billion pounds of carbon from the atmosphere through direct air capture, a process which uses massive fans to move chemicals that capture CO2. But the challenge, Meyerowitz noted in his speech, is doing this at scale in a way that makes an actual dent in the planet’s emissions while also efficiently using the electricity needed to do so. Meyerowitz spent nearly five years working as an engineer for SpaceX in Texas, and added he’s looking to transfer those learnings into Clarity.
Parallel Systems: Based in Downtown LA’s Arts District, this startup is building zero-emission rail vehicles that are capable of long-haul journeys otherwise done by a trucking company. The estimated $700 billion trucking industry, Parallel Systems CEO Matt Soule said, is ripe for an overhaul and could benefit from moving some of its goods off-road to electric railcars. According to Soule, Parallel’s electric battery-powered rail vehicles use 25% of the energy a semi truck uses, and at a competitive cost. Funded in part by a February 2022 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, Parallel Systems has raised about $57 million to date. Its most recent venture funding round was a $49 million Series A led by Santa Monica-based VC Anthos Capital. Local VCs including Riot Ventures and Santa Monica-based Embark Ventures are also backers of Parallel.
Terra Talent: Unlike the rest of the startups pitching at the Tech Week event, Terra Talent was focused on building teams rather than technology. Founder Dolly Singh worked at SpaceX, Oculus and Citadel as a headhunter, and now runs Terra, a talent and advisory firm that helps companies recruit top talent in the greentech space. But, she said, she’s concerned that all the work these startups are doing won’t matter unless we very quickly turn around the current trendlines. “Earth will shake us off like and she will do just fine in 10,000 years,” she said. “It’s our way of living, everything we love is actually here on earth… there’s nothing I love on Mars,” adding that she’s hopeful the startups that pitched during the event will be instrumental in making sure the planet stays habitable for a little while longer.
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.