Francesca Billington
Emcee’s founder and chief executive, John Aghayan, told dot.LA that he expects to close the transaction by April. (The company did not disclose the purchase price.) Aghayan envisions the six-block-long building as a retail destination and co-working space that would accompany Emcee’s to-be-developed metaverse platform.
“We decided to buy real estate to bring under one roof tens of thousands of creators, innovators, private companies, startups and public companies,” Aghayan said.
Emcee’s plan is to lure a combination of software developers, entrepreneurs and designers to the Downtown space, which it says will house a hotel, member-exclusive rooftop pool, restaurant and one floor of co-working offices. The company wants the ground floor to operate like a futuristic shopping mall where in addition to physical storefronts, brands will maintain an augmented reality presence letting shoppers browse and buy online.
Built in 1907, the building once stood as Hamburger’s Department Store; it staffed about 1,200 employees and housed its own post office, public library and auditorium.Photo by Eric Zassenhaus
Emcee’s acquisition of the property is being financed by outside investors, none of whom the startup disclosed. Waterbridge Capital currently owns the property; the investment firm is helmed by Joel Schreiber, an early WeWork investor who backed Emcee’s $6 million seed round in December.
“This is the hottest location in Downtown L.A.,” Schreiber told dot.LA.
Once the deal goes through, Emcee plans on commencing work on the redevelopment—though the company declined to pinpoint a specific date when construction might begin.
Emcee was founded in 2021 as an ecommerce platform that relies on internet influencers to promote and market brands. Emcee’s influencers earn up to 30% commission for every purchase made on the platform. Users can also sell personal items through its marketplace, similar to the shopping platform Depop.
Emcee’s purchase of the Broadway Trade Center is just one in a string of metavere-related expansions that the startup is plotting. Next year, it expects to roll out Emcee City, which it describes as a “fully functional immersive world, bridging IRL and digital landscapes to redefine social interaction, commerce and entertainment.”
The company also plans to introduce its own cryptocurrency, the $EMC token, by March. Consumers will be able to spend the currency on Emcee’s platform or, eventually, at physical stores located within the Emcee Studio building in Downtown L.A. Before opening the studio, Emcee will launch avatar functions and a 2D map for users to “start investing and buying virtual real estate,” Aghayan said.
If construction proceeds as anticipated, Aghayan’s company could successfully transform the expansive, historic property back into a retail destination. Built in 1907, the building once stood as Hamburger’s Department Store; it staffed about 1,200 employees and housed its own post office, public library and auditorium. The May Department Stores Company acquired Hamburger’s in 1923 and operated the building for more than half a century before moving out in 1986, at which point it was renamed the Broadway Trade Center.
In 2014, Waterbridge Capital and Continental Equities bought the property for $130 million with plans for a high-end redevelopment: a 200-room hotel, office space, luxury retail and a rooftop featuring bars and restaurants. Waterbridge oversaw basic construction and restorations to the building and hired L.A.-based Omgivning Architects to help design the new space.
But Waterbridge has yet to deliver on its initial plans. Schreiber, Waterbridge’s founder and CEO, said the firm has been “looking for the right tech enterprise to help us execute on this vision.”
“We had interest from very large tech companies—the largest tech companies in the world—to take the space,” Schreiber said, though he did not name which ones. “But this is not what the vision was—just to buy a building and put in a tech tenant.”
Aghayan is now hoping he can deliver on Schreiber’s vision.
“Santa Monica, Marina del Rey and Venice are attracting gaming, NFTs, crypto,” Aghayan said. “This is making Downtown the center to track all this talent and community.”
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The incubator launched its first national “Friends & Family” cohort this month for 20 early-stage startups through a partnership with Slauson & Co., an early-stage venture capital firm based in L.A. and focused on economic inclusion.
“We felt that there was an opportunity to kind of reframe this concept of ‘friends and family,’ and not just from a capital standpoint,” Grid110 CEO Miki Reynolds told dot.LA. “The capital is very much needed, but there’s also this access to networks and resources and education.”
Neither Slauson nor Grid110 will take equity in the 20 startups. Instead, they’re giving each founder a $20,000 non-dilutive cash grant, with the chance to earn more throughout the 12-week virtual program. The accelerator will provide the cohort’s entrepreneurs with mentorship and coaching from executives including Sequoia Capital partner Jim Goetz, former TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot and Jonah Peretti, Buzzfeed’s co-founder and CEO.
A map of the startup companies in Grid110 and Slauson & Co.’s ‘Friends & Family’ program.
Geotz, Ron Conway of San Francisco-basd seed fund SV Angel, the Annenberg Foundation and the Schultz Family Foundation all donated capital to finance the cohort. The program received nearly 600 applications from 38 states, making it Grid110’s first national cohort. It is also an exceptionally diverse cohort; each company has a founder who identifies as Black, Latinx, Asian or Pacific Islander, while 75% have a woman founder.
“There’s so much under-accessed value in some of these communities that, if given the right investment and guidance, you can really see the return a lot of VCs are looking for,” said Kibi Anderson, whose startup Wordsmyth—which helps media, film and advertising firms hire writers of color—is one of five L.A.-based companies in the program.
Not every member of Grid110’s cohort is necessarily tech-focused. Other L.A. companies include the South L.A. grocery market Hank’s Mini Mart and Thimble, a brand of numbing patches designed to reduce patients’ pain and anxiety during procedures involving needles.
“There’s a lot of pressure to raise from VCs,” said Thimble CEO Manju Dawkins, whose company raised pre-seed funding late last year. “That’s good for a lot of companies, that may be good for us, but it’s difficult.”
A look at the statups in Grid110's 2022 cohort
Here are the startups in the Friends & Family Winter 2022 cohort:
- The app 1000 MORE helps users track upcoming bills, contact their local representatives and crowdfund advocacy efforts in disenfranchised communities.
- Beautiful Curly Me designs toys and accessories and sells books and other content for young Black and brown girls.
- The paper goods company By Ms James sells greeting cards, art prints, posters and other home and office decor.
- Cadenzo’s web-based platform connects local musical artists to venues where they can set up bookings.
- CEREMONIA is a lifestyle brand selling handcrafted home decor and accessories using natural and locally-sourced materials.
- The online marketplace Church Space helps churches earn income by renting out their buildings as on-demand event, worship and meeting spaces.
- El Camino is a travel company offering group tours for women.
- FELOH [Fell•Oh] is an online beauty community and digital marketplace for inclusive beauty brands.
- Fil2R makes sustainable, reusable water filters for home use.
- Gen Z-focused FRONTMAN sells cosmetics and skincare for men.
- Hank’s Mini Mart is a family-owned market in South L.A.’s Hyde Park using food and art to engage with the local community.
- Otis Dental offers subscription-based oral care that lets customers make impressions of their teeth at home for custom night guards and whitening kits.
- The beauty brand Peculiar Roots sells products for natural hair.
- Revival helps users buy back their debt at the same rates that they were sold to debt collection agencies.
- The men’s grooming brand Sons of Hollis sells grooming tools and haircare products for men with coarse, curly, kinky or wavy hair.
- The Black-Owned Market is a curated online marketplace to shop and interact with Black-owned brands.
- THIMBLE develops anxiety- and pain-reducing products like numbing patches for common needle procedures.
- Unoma Haus is designing and building off-grid van conversions for rent or purchase.
- Direct-to-consumer design service WESTxEAST makes custom-fit South Asian clothing.
- Wordsmyth is a tech platform enabling companies to hire writers of color, as well as an online community for those writers to connect with one another.
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