NEWSLETTER
EVENTS
sportstech

Golf

🔦 Spotlight

After announcing its partnership with the PGA of America earlier this year, LA-based Sensible Weather, a climate finance platform, has now introduced its Weather Guarantee program in collaboration with 23 distinguished golf facilities in Myrtle Beach, managed by Founders Group International, Caledonia Golf & Fish Club, and True Blue Golf Club. ⛈️⛳️

This guarantee allows golfers to protect their rounds from undesirable weather by offering a reimbursement if rain is forecasted on the day of play. Sensible Weather assessed a need in the golf community, surveying 1,000 golfers and finding that 97% of avid golfers expressed interest in Weather Guarantees. The initiative addresses the increasing impact of disruptive weather on outdoor activities like golf by specifically aiming to simplify operations for golf courses, enhance golfer satisfaction, reduce last-minute cancellations, and generate additional revenue for facilities.

The success of this venture can be attributed to Sensible Weather first identifying a need by the golf community followed by a thoughtful strategic approach. Sensible Weather brought Golf Professional, Ben Tyler, on board to ensure effective communication of the opportunity and exceptional customer service required to make the partnership a success. To implement the Weather Guarantee, Sensible Weather collaborated closely with Tee Time Central, a booking platform, to integrate the feature directly into their checkout process. Golf facilities using Tee Time Central for their online bookings can easily activate Weather Guarantees.

The expansion to golf courses adds to Sensible Weather’s growing market and customer base over the past year. In September, Sensible Weather secured an investment from AMEX Ventures adding to its list of investors that includes Wonder Ventures, Infinity Ventures, and Industry Ventures. Sensible Weather is partnered with over 3,500 businesses and has received $22 million dollars in investments. Since it began offering Weather Guarantees in 2021, they have sold over 55,000 guarantees. That’s the tee! ☕⛳🏌️

Check out our previous coverage of Sensible Weather here.

🎉 Don’t forget about our referral contest this month! 🎉

Competition Status: 🔥 It’s heating up! Number of referrals to beat is 8 with less than a week remaining.

Ron Burgundy Battle GIF

Gif by trt_network on Giphy

The contest is simple: whoever refers the most friends to dot.LA using our referral program by October 31st will get a coffee and conversation with Zillow, Pacaso, and dot.LA co-founder Spencer Rascoff, where you can pitch him, get business advice, or just shoot the breeze. This is a great opportunity for any current or future entrepreneur, so good luck referring! ☕️☕️☕️

P.S. If you’re not based in LA, you can hop on a Zoom instead 💻

🤝 Venture Deals

LA Startups

  • Greater Good, a provider of primary care for seniors, raised a $20M Series A led by Flare Capital Partners, and joined by LRVHealth, Health Velocity Capital, Martin Ventures and Optum Ventures. - learn more
  • LegalMation, a developer of generative AI solutions for high-volume litigation, raised a $15M Series A led by Aquiline Capital Partners and joined by insiders Motley Fool Ventures, REV Venture Partners, Key Venture Partners, Quick Set and Brentwood Investments. - learn more

LA Funds

Built for founders, by founders: Rho, the consolidated finance automation platform designed to help you scale.

Founders, we know how much you are handling at once. Operating multiple platforms for each facet of your finances should not be getting in the way of running your business.

Leave managing your finances to Rho, so that you can focus on growing your business. Whether you have just raised your first round of funding and need help managing your funds, or you are a start-up looking to diversify your capital, Rho is the only finance automation platform that lets organizations manage all spend and cash in a single system.

Rho is your trusted and reliable financial support that can help you diversify and manage your cash efficiently. Manage all your cash and spending in one system:

  • Cash Management: Enterprise-grade banking where you can streamline your finances and manage multiple entities from one platform. With Rho’s sophisticated treasury management, put your idle cash to work and keep your cash secure with FDIC-insurance up to $75 million.
  • Spend Management: Control spend before it happens with Rho corporate cards. Streamline post send reporting by digitizing your expense policy and eliminating expense reports. Pay all your vendors in one workflow.
  • Accounting Automation: Reduce time-to-close and reconcile seamlessly. Integrate directly with your ERP.

“Rho has made it their mission to help companies like ours. By giving us the ability to loop corporate cards and expense management into one place…we’ve been able to close our book smooch faster each month and automate our spend from end to end.” - Dr. Squatch.

Join other startups like Dr. Squatch, Sundae, Canvas, and Runway that are making finance frictionless with Rho.


✨Featured Event (11/9)✨

RECURRING REVENUE CONFERENCE on November 9th in Culver City

Southern California's premier SaaS and Subscription conference, this one-day event draws 600+ top founders, executives, investors, and Cloud experts. Experience a dynamic program with 20+ sessions, including leading industry speakers, fireside chats, breakout sessions, and roundtable discussions. This year's insights span AI, metrics that matter, scaling strategies, making a pivot, the changing role of the CFO, what investors are looking for, and more. Keynotes include ChowNow and HackerOne CEOs. Attendees will enjoy plenty of networking time during breakfast, lunch, coffee cart breaks, and cocktails on the patio. Join us on November 9th at the Culver City Hilton to learn from industry leaders.

Learn more and register using DOTLA229 for a discounted ticket rate of $229 (regularly $399): bit.ly/3EitWB5

Early-stage founders get a discounted ticket rate ($59). Apply here today!


📅 LA Tech Calendar

Saturday, October 28th

  • Mental Health Innovators Social- Saturday afternoon in Venice join a diverse community of founders, investors, researchers, clinicians and creators who are building the future of mental health.

Sunday, October 29th

Wednesday, November 1st

Thursday, November 2nd

  • Los Angeles Tech Networking Event - Join other tech enthusiasts in Playa Vista onThursday night for a laid-back networking event that's all about fostering connections.


📙 What We’re Reading

sportstech
startups

Bank

Hi folks,

Excited to share another LA startup profile. This week’s profile covers not a founder or investor, but rather an ecosystem partner without whom, LA’s entrepreneurship scene would not be possible.

If you’re a startup founder or VC in Los Angeles, I can almost guarantee you’re at most two degrees of separation from Al Guerrero. If you don’t know him, someone in your network does. Al is a fixture of the LA tech scene and, more importantly, is one of those people everyone likes instantly – one Zoom call, one conversation at an event, and you feel like Al is your best friend.

After years as a startup banker at SVB, Al is now building his own startup – a bank within a bank.

👦🏻 Early Life

Alejandro “Al” Guerrero’s story starts in San Francisco. Al was a Bay Area kid, raised by parents who emigrated from Mexico, met in English class, and got married soon after. When he was six years old, Al’s parents opened a Mexican restaurant in Berkeley called Guerrero’s, where he spent his evenings after school doing homework and helping out in the restaurant. Working while studying didn’t hold his (or his siblings’) grades back, though. He, his brother, and his sister all excelled in school, and all three attended UC Berkeley as first generation college students.

At Berkeley, Al studied business and, like many of us, didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do with his life post-college.

I majored in business because in my mind, “business people have jobs” and education for me was a path to provide for my family since they had sacrificed so much to put me in this position.

He also participated in Inroads, a non-profit dedicated to helping minority students break into corporate America. The organization marked two of Al’s defining characteristics starting to come into focus. The first is Al’s consummate ability to make meaningful connections in the business world. He’s a networker in the best sense of the word – as I mentioned above, everyone knows Al! The second characteristic is Al’s dedication to diversity and helping immigrants and people of color succeed.

After college, Al moved an hour south to attend Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and then onto investment banking at Merrill Lynch in Los Angeles, a city he hasn’t left since.

👨🏻💼 LA and 2023 Banking Crisis

Like many Angelenos, Al dabbled in Hollywood for a while, leading innovation and eventually starting the venture arm of Technicolor, the storied post production company. Throughout his time there, Al and his teams worked with brands, movie studios, and startups to bring their visions to life.

This servant mission led Al to his next firm, Silicon Valley Bank, where many of you likely met him.

To be honest, entering the commercial banking sector wasn’t something that was on my radar, so it was a bit of a risk (for both SVB and me) when I took the role. But I believed I had found my career calling with that role. I could leverage everything I had done in the past – from my time as a venture capitalist, to my time at a startup, to my finance background. Even my time at my family’s restaurant was relevant as it was instrumental in building a strong belief in customer service.

Al spent six years at SVB in LA as a managing director. Al's time at SVB was marked by unwavering support for the Los Angeles startup ecosystem. He nurtured relationships with founders and investors, recognizing the pivotal role banking could play in supporting innovative ventures. His customer-centric approach and commitment to delivering exceptional service endeared him to the entrepreneurial community. After supporting hundreds of startups and venture funds, Al left the firm following the devastating bank run, which led to the collapse of SVB.

❝

The banking crisis was very stressful for both our clients and the employees of the company. During this time, I felt a huge outpouring of support from the LA startup community, many members of which had reached out to check in on me. I vividly remember being overwhelmed with emotion (and tears) when I read all of the posts on LinkedIn supporting me the day after the bank run. The support I felt reaffirmed my resolve to continue supporting the LA startup ecosystem, both in good and challenging times, similar to how the ecosystem had been there for me.

👨🏻💻 Building Stifel West Coast Venture Banking

But every crisis is an opportunity! Al had relationships and experience, which were now extremely desirable for other banks looking to move into the startup banking space, and Stifel came knocking.

❝

I wanted to find a home that would be entrepreneurial, with the ability to move fast to support a client base that requires that level of responsiveness. I also wanted to go to a place that had experience in venture banking and that had strong CEO support. I found all of that at Stifel. Plus, when I found out that there were a total of 30 former SVBers moving over to Stifel, all of whom were the ‘best of the best’, it made my decision a no-brainer.

So what is Stifel and what does it do differently from its peers?

Stifel isn’t truly a startup – it’s a 130-year old financial institution. Al and the other ex-SVBers are building a startup within Stifel, though. The West Coast venture banking practice is brand new[GA(-LA1] , built from the ground up by Al and his team. In his own words,

❝

Stifel’s Venture Banking is a full service commercial bank serving VC backed companies from inception to exit. After countless conversations with founders and investors, we have learned relationship-focused banking is critical to the venture ecosystem. To a degree, banking can be a commodity, and high-touch, white-glove service is what’s missing in the market. Our goal is to fill this gap and be available to support our clients at all times. For Seed and Series A companies, we are providing them a tailored banking bundle with flexibility, security and they can earn interest at very attractive rates. We are also active lenders to startups – issuing over 100 terms sheets in 100 days. From venture debt for Series A companies to lines of credit for later stage companies, we are here to support startups as they continue to scale.

We also bank venture funds, many of which may be struggling to find a bank that can support them. Our offering includes capital call lines which many banks aren’t as focused on providing in today’s market. Because of this focus, we have deep relationships with VCs that can prove to be helpful for our startups.

Lastly, we are actively supporting the SoCal Tech market. In the short time we’ve been at Stifel, we’ve already hosted over 14 events, and many of them were networking events for founders and VCs.

So who should talk to Al and his team at Stifel? To be honest, I’d say anyone looking for a good conversation, but anyone building a new startup or setting up a new venture fund is who they can help most.

Al has been a pillar of the LA tech scene for almost 10 years now, and it’s exciting to see him wearing his entrepreneurial hat with Stifel Venture Banking.

*This post was written in a paid partnership with Stifel Bank*
startups
real estate technology ventures

Real Estate

This week’s dot.LA Deep Dive delves into the stodgy but rapidly changing world of commercial real estate. Marina Del Rey-based Crexi is the new kid on the block, looking to transform the way buyers, brokers, and sellers do business.

Crexi, a commercial real estate (CRE) upstart, emerged on the scene in 2015, reshaping the CRE world with its blend of property marketplace, data platform, and virtual auction. Its mission? To build the simplest and most efficient one-stop-shop for CRE professionals. Crexi is the cupid of the real estate realm, connecting sellers of properties with buyers, and matchmaking the most efficient and effective transactions possible.

This is the actual 4th image on Google when you search “Commercial Real Estate”
Credit: Investopedia

Crexi’s origin story takes us to the early life of its creator, Mike DeGiorgio. Mike was a tumbleweed as a kid, growing up all over the country, which fostered an adaptability that later became a hallmark of his entrepreneurial ethos. Armed with a business degree from Northern Illinois University, Mike embarked on his professional journey at Irvine-based Auction.com, a tech enabled marketplace for bank-owned and foreclosed residential real estate properties. At Auction.com, he witnessed the elaborate waltz of property transactions, and, while there, he was struck by the fact that – while residential real estate was quickly jumping into the digital age, commercial real estate seemed stuck in a bygone era. The itch for innovation gnawed at him, and the concept of Crexi began to take shape.

His idea was a digital emporium in the truest sense of the word: a one-stop destination where CRE professionals could convene, conduct business, and make deals with just a click.

In 2015, Crexi emerged, a result of Michael's determination and a trio of co-founders who shared his vision. The path to success, however, wasn't a cakewalk. With a seed funding of $4.3 million from investors like Lerer Hippeau Ventures and Freestyle Capital, Crexi embarked on a journey to transform the commercial real estate landscape. Over the next five years, Crexi slowly but surely gained adoption across the CRE world, but in 2020, Covid struck and threw the CRE world into a state of disarray from which it has not yet returned. Like much of the financial world, CRE had a rough 2020 but roared back in late 2021 to a total of $1.43 Trillion (with a T!) in transaction volume. Higher rates have since put a damper on things, and transaction volumes have plummeted in late 2022 and early 2023 by 60-75% over the prior year.

Credit: Motley Fool + CBRE

Luckily, Crexi was perfectly positioned to function in an uncertain market and grew through all of the ups and downs. Crexi’s value proposition has actually increased in the current market craziness. With asset values changing rapidly as the value of office space, distribution centers, and malls crash and rebound, Crexi’s data platform gives CRE pros a way to keep up. Additionally, in the event a deal goes sour, Crexi’s auction platform gives financial institutions an ability to offload properties quickly, easily, and to the highest bidder.

Fast forward to the present, and Crexi has emerged as one of the most resilient proptech companies in a brutal year for the space. It leads nearly three million buyers, brokers, and tenants through the intricate maze of CRE transactions, unlocking access to a whopping $5 trillion of property value. Crexi has facilitated transactions worth over $440 billion and continues to grow even during a challenging time for real estate.

So where does Crexi go from here? It just keeps on growing. Mike envisions a commercial real estate ecosystem built around Crexi, where properties are marketed, analyzed, and traded with unprecedented ease. It aspires to be the central hub of its industry, making commercial real estate accessible and efficient for all participants.

Over the last eight years, Crexi has grown from an idea to an integral part of the commercial real estate world. It’s successfully surfed the ups and downs of Covid, work from home, higher rates, and the return to office. Next up, we expect to see more big things from Crexi.

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