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One Card to Rule Them All: LA Metro’s Experiment in a Universal Transit Wallet
Maylin Tu
Maylin Tu is a freelance writer who lives in L.A. She writes about scooters, bikes and micro-mobility. Find her hovering by the cheese at your next local tech mixer.
L.A. Metro is launching the largest experiment in the U.S. to provide 2,000 residents with a seamless transportation payment platform spanning public and private systems.
The agency is opening up applications for its mobility wallet as part of its universal basic mobility (UBM) pilot, helmed by L.A.’s Department of Transportation (LADOT). Metro is seeking applicants from South Los Angeles to apply by November 1. After applicants are selected, the first phase of the pilot will begin within the next few months.
One thousand participants will receive prepaid debit cards which the city will replenish with $150 per month ($1,800 total over the course of a year) to spend on multimodal transportation options in the program’s first phase. The debit card can be used to pay for Metro bus and rail, Metro Micro and 26 municipal transit agencies across L.A. County, as well as private mobility options including shared e-scooters and e-bikes, car share, ride-hailing and taxis. Participants can use funds to pay for rides from companies like Uber or Lyft, but not for personal car expenses such as gas or repairs.
In the second phase set to launch in early 2023, payment will be integrated into L.A.’s TAP card. According to Metro’s The Source, the agency was seeking private mobility operators to integrate with TAPforce, a platform providing “a seamless payment option” for multiple forms of transportation. Metro has yet to announce which private mobility companies will be integrated into TAP for phase two.
One-in-five low-income residents who ride transit don’t own a smartphone. For that reason, Metro plans to provide 200 participants with cell phones and data plans, in addition to the $150 subsidy, according to LADOT Spokesperson Colin Sweeney. The application process for receiving a phone and data plan will take place in-person.
Roughly 30% of the 370,000 residents in South L.A. live below the poverty line, according to LADOT. Studies have shown that low-income households spend a greater percentage of income (28.8%) on transportation compared to wealthier households (9.5%). The goal of the UBM pilot is to provide underserved Angelenos greater access to mobility and economic opportunities.
The agency announced the program in April with components including EV charging stations, workforce training programs, a free EV shuttle, upgrades to bus and cycling infrastructure and an “e-bike library,” which would let users checkout e-bikes.
Funding for the project comes from a $13.8 million grant from the California Air Resources Board and an additional $4 million from the city’s unappropriated balance (UB) fund.
To date, the only parts of the program in operation are the workforce development programs offered by the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator and Los Angeles Trade Technical College, according to LADOT.
Oakland piloted a universal basic mobility program in 2020, in which 500 residents received $300 total (A second phase beginning next month will include 1,000 participants); Bakersfield is piloting a program for 100 disadvantaged youth ages 18 to 24, and Pittsburgh’s 50-person UBM experiment just launched in August.
If South L.A.’s pilot is successful, the city hopes to expand it to the rest of L.A.
“The idea would be, ‘How do we roll it out around the city and then the county?” said Eli Lipmen, executive director of Move LA. “The goal is to stand it up and figure out the mechanics of it.”
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Maylin Tu
Maylin Tu is a freelance writer who lives in L.A. She writes about scooters, bikes and micro-mobility. Find her hovering by the cheese at your next local tech mixer.
LA-Based Matter Moves Into Audio to Create a Better Dating App Experience
06:58 AM | June 04, 2021
Courtesy Matter
The latest entrant in Los Angeles' busy dating app scene has been testing audio elements and a speed dating feature as it builds toward its goal of creating meaningful relationships based on what matters most to people.
Matter is revamping its platform to capture the happy hour experience with audio. The app will soon include a speed-dating feature, allowing users to connect over a two-minute call to determine if they want to match.
Another feature called "communities" will allow users to connect with potential mates based on the interests and values that are most important to them.
Launched in November 2020, Matter grew its core users from USC and UCLA students who relied on it to meet classmates while campuses were closed.
UCLA student Jenna Rose, 22, says she was never a dating app user, but found herself using the app because many of the faces she saw in her feed were already familiar.
"A lot of the people that I was seeing on my feed were people I could actually see myself, you know, meeting up with or being friends with because they were students in the L.A. area," she says.
Matter CEO and founder Monji Batmunkh
CEO and founder Monji Batmunkh says starting off only at two of L.A.'s premier universities allows Matter to focus on solving one problem at a time before expanding nationally.
An Angeleno himself, Batmunkh, 35, says he formed his startup in the area because of the region's diversity and the experimental nature of college dorms' hothouse environment.
"I went to USC and established networks there. I'm very familiar with other schools like UCLA, Santa Monica College, CSUN, UC Irvine, etc. L.A. is a very diverse place where complex cultural communities will be a big part of it," he says. "They are the early adopters, if we can build the products that are liked by college, they happen to be very influential and [will] spread it across other areas."
Batmunkh moved to the U.S. at 16 from Mongolia. He got his associate's degree from Santa Monica College before focusing on business administration and finance at USC and getting his master's at Columbia. From there, he worked as a consultant at McKinsey for four years.
The pandemic, he says, has provided aspiring entrepreneurs with a silver lining.
"It's one of the best times to be starting companies, because the barriers to entry are becoming lower and lower," Batmunkh says, "I think this is a great time to do it especially if you have a network and established connections in your home country, that could be an arbitrage opportunity."
In 2020, Batmunkh launched his first startup, Simpozium, a social network focused on Los Angeles college students. Most of Simpozium users were female and conversations in the app trended toward the dating scene at a time when in-person connections were next to impossible.
Simpozium soon made the switch to a dating app and traded its name for another: Matter.
Last September, Batmunkh was able to bring on Swiss Founders Fund as an investor. The proptech-focused venture firm led an early round that helped Matter raise half a million in pre-seed funding.
The dating app scene is crowded. Big dating apps like Tinder, Bumble and Hinge have relied on their simple format and ease of use to streamline the process. A new crop, led by apps including L.A.-based Lolly and S'More, borrow from popular short video apps like TikTok and Instagram to focus on Gen Z singles.
Matter's format is similar to Hinge, focusing on user likes and prompts. But the app aims to focus on the things that matter to its audience through its user experience, which is more akin to an Instagram feed. The app generates questions that cater to L.A. residents by asking, for instance, "which they prefer: saddle ranch or urth cafe?" and "what's your ideal date in L.A." There are no character limits for the answers.
They allow users to customize the section of "what are you looking for" with users' own words.
Batmunkh focused on honing his app with students at his alma mater, USC, and UCLA before expanding to other college campuses. He's also keen on providing students with opportunities to gain experience and income working for a tech startup. USC student Katrina Nguyen, 20, worked for Matter as a growth development intern.
"Monji did a really great job capturing what startups should be at least like really new startups," she says, "I love that he didn't helicopter us, he really trusted the interns, despite us being college students. We really had a lot of responsibilities as we were basically paving the way for Matter."
Matter will start their pre-registration process for virtual happy hour in the coming week. They plan to re-release their app in Los Angeles in late June.
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Katherine Abando
Katherine Abando is a lifestyle writer and social media producer from Los Angeles. Her coverage interests include internet culture/tech and Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) identity. She enjoys learning about emerging entrepreneurs and digital trends that pop up on her social media feed. Follow her on Twitter @kaband0.
https://twitter.com/kaband0
https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherineabando/
Text Message Marketing Startup Voyage SMS Raises $10 Million, Buys ‘Frenemy’ LiveRecover
01:00 PM | February 03, 2022
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
Voyage SMS, which builds text message marketing tools for online stores, has closed a $10 million funding round as well as its first-ever acquisition, the company announced Thursday.
East Coast venture firms RiverPark and York IE led the funding and were joined by angel investors including former Airbnb executive James Beshara and Birthdate Co. CEO Ajay Mehta. Birthdate Co. is among Voyage’s customers, which also include online brands Zitsticka and Negative Underwear.
Alongside the raise, Santa Monica-based Voyage has snapped up LiveRecover, a company that aims to engage with online shoppers after they abandon their shopping carts. Like Voyage, Austin, Texas-based LiveRecover focuses on SMS marketing and integrates with ecommerce services like Shopify and ReCharge. LiveRecover, however, is less centered around automation; in lieu of chatbots, it employs customer service staff in the Philippines to offer a “hands-on, human experience,” Voyage CEO Rev Reddy told dot.LA.
When asked about Voyage’s valuation and the price of the LiveRecover acquisition, a Voyage spokesperson declined to share additional information. The company also declined to comment on previous funding or its total amount raised to date—though Reddy described the new funding as “more of a growth round” for the startup.
Reddy said he had kept an eye on LiveRecover since Voyage publicly launched in late 2019. “We were frenemies in a sense, because people were actually using both services,” he noted. LiveRecover’s principal backers, who Reddy described as an unnamed “family office,” first reached out to the Voyage CEO about a sale through a direct message on LinkedIn, according to Reddy. LiveRecover co-founders Cody Collier and Dennis Hegstad, who founded the startup in 2018, have left the company following the deal.
Voyage will put its new funding toward hiring, as well as expanding its feature set beyond SMS and into “other messaging channels,” Reddy said. Down the line, he added, the platform will know “when to use automation, AI and chatbots and when to add a human to the experience.”
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Harri Weber
Harri is dot.LA's senior finance reporter. She previously worked for Gizmodo, Fast Company, VentureBeat and Flipboard. Find her on Twitter and send tips on L.A. startups and venture capital to harrison@dot.la.
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