Event: Verizon 5G Is 'Changing the Game' for the Tech Industry

Katherine Phan
Katherine Phan is dot.LA’s VP of Operations. Katherine has years of experience producing events, activations and summits working with startups to Fortune 500 companies in industries such as tech, film, television, fashion and lifestyle. Katherine holds a bachelor’s degree from UCLA. During her down time, she enjoys being an armchair expert in film and food.
Summer Series Verizon 5G​

By now, everyone has heard about 5G but Verizon says the wireless network technology goes far beyond faster web surfing and streaming.

Tech industry leaders and venture capitalists gathered for a final dot.LA 2021 Summer Series event at the Verizon 5G Labs in Playa Vista on Thursday to get a first-hand look at the technological promises of the new generation of wireless. The event was sponsored by Compass real estate agents Ari Afshar of Voyage Real Estate, Lauren Forbes and Jen Winston.


Luke Wang, 5G Labs lead for Verizon, moderated a speaker panel featuring Pam Allison, head of 5G Labs strategy and partnerships, Ian Nelson, senior manager of business development of Ryot, and Corey Laplante, chief operating officer of Mixhalo.

Verizon 5G Labs co-hosted the event with dot.LA.

"L.A. is at the very intersection of tech media entertainment, and 5G is completely changing the game for all kinds of use cases across the super industry," said Sam Adams, CEO of dot.LA, in his introductory remarks at the event.

Nelson, who works on technology that relies on fast wireless speeds, said 5G has been greatly beneficial in his line of work.

"I tend to think about 5G as an accelerant to degree, right? It does enable quite a bit of features and ways to interact with content and products, but it really does benefit when you tie it to other technologies," said Nelson.

Allison talked about the accessibility of 5G for people with newer phones.

"The first is nationwide 5G and that you know, if you have a 5G phone, it means you get 5G almost anywhere that you can typically get 4G," said Allison.

Laplante lauded Verizon for what the company has been doing outside of being just a mobile carrier and entering the entertainment space.

"Look at the NFL deal that they just struck two or three weeks ago. It's a 10-year deal. They're in all these stadiums, the opportunity and scale, there's like nothing we could achieve with another mobile carrier," said Laplante.

9/13

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Cadence

Here’s How LA’s Tech Scene Is Reacting to the SVB Collapse

Decerry Donato

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.

Here’s How LA’s Tech Scene Is Reacting to the SVB Collapse

The collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has left many in sheer panic, including the tech industry, which relies on the bank’s financing.

Since the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) has taken control of the bank’s deposits, nearly half of those U.S. venture-backed tech companies pulled deposits out of the bank.

The uncertainty of the situation left the majority of people with unanswered questions, so they took their concerns and thoughts to Twitter.

Here's how SoCal is reacting to the news:
















The SoCal Companies Affected By the Fall of Silicon Valley Bank

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College and previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

The SoCal Companies Affected By the Fall of Silicon Valley Bank
An event held by SVB Private, an arm of Silicon Valley Bank, in March. (Cameron Rice)

The shockwaves fromSilicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) unexpected shutdown are rattling the tech industry writ large. In Southern California, SVB invested in several local tech companies through its SVB Capital venture arm.

Though the bank’s VC arm won’t be able to conduct future investments, founders that do have money tied up with the company in the form of debt will have to pay back the eventual new owner of SVB, and potentially would be opening themselves up to new loan terms.

With this in mind, let’s look at the Southern California tech firms that still have money tied up with SVB, and how that might affect their operations as the floundering bank searches for a bailout.

Suiteness

Walnut-based Suitness makes an app for people to book adjoining hotel rooms or suites. It took debt financing from SVB and paid it off last year, founder Kyle Killion said.

But, Killion said he almost wished they had been a bit less financially responsible: “We could have gotten an even better deal if we had waited” to pay off the SVB debt, he told me. “If we had waited the debt would be sold off to another bank at a discount and we would need to pay them [and] that new bank’s cost-basis would be lower because of the discount.”

In addition to SVB, Suiteness has also taken funding from Y Combinator and counts OpenAI founder Sam Altman as a board member and investor. Killion said that despite the current turmoil, his company had a good experience lending from the embattled bank. “We did get a very generous deal from SVB,” he said.

Pathmatics

Pathmatics is now part of app data firm SensorTower, but before itsMay 2021 buyout, the Santa Monica-based mobile ad analytics company raised debt funding from SVB. Gabe Gottlieb founded Pathmatics and served as its CEO for nearly 11 years before the buyout, and he is now Sensor Tower’s chief strategy officer.

Gottlieb said Pathmatics found SVB after its series A round. He said Pathmatics paid off its SVB debt before the acquisition and noted if it weren’t for the closing, he’d bank with SVB again. “I feel like we got a pretty good deal,” Gottlieb told me, adding it was a “low interest rate in absolute terms for a startup that was still very much in the growth phase.”

The founder also added, “I always felt like they had top-notch people working there [and] I’m really sad to see what has happened to them as they were an important part of literally generations of startups’ success.

EcoSense

In the last several years EcoSense has bought out a number of rival LED makers, including Lumium Lighting in January 2019 andSoraa in March 2020. The LED luminaire company raised a debt financing round from SVB in late June 2020, according to PitchBook Data. EcoSense launched in 2009 and is now owned by Korrus, a lighting company based in Chinatown.

Fulcrum Microsystems

A semiconductor company based in Calabasas, Fulcrum Microsystems raisednearly $17 million from investors including SVB Capital back in March 2007. The company was lateracquired by chip-maker Intel in July 2011 for an undisclosed sum. Fulcrum’s tech mainly powers Ethernet switches for data centers, and Intel’s buy gave it a valuable direct supplier to power its data centers across the globe.

HealthTap

Per Pitchbook, Sunnyvale-based virtual doctor appointment app HealthTap raised debt financing from SVB in April 2020. SVB was biotech-focused and rana healthtech investment banking division alongside providing debt rounds to healthtech companies in California.

Last November, HealthTaplinked with Samsung to bring its Eval360 tech – which lets doctors conduct virtual medical exams – to develop software that would allow people to get those virtual evaluations through their Samsung Smart TVs in the future.

Kandji

ThisSan Diego-based company builds a device management software for IT teams using Apple products. It raised $60 million from investors including SVB Capital in March 2021. Less than a year later, itraised another $100 million, also including SVB. In addition to SVB, Kandji is backed by VC firm Greycroft, which has an Arts District office, and Manhattan Beach-based B Capital. Kandji has raised nearly $90 million since its 2018 launch.

Shield AI

San Diego-basedShield AI is trying to build Hivemind, the world’s first artificial intelligence pilot to power autonomous planes. SVB backed the company in December 2022, joining Shield AI’s$225 million Series E round. SVB also invested in its $22 million Series B round in April 2019. Shield AI has raised $575 million since it launched in 2015, and is also backed by Venice-based Riot Ventures.Boeing recently partnered with Shield AI to research unmanned flight technologies for the U.S. Air Force.

Disclosure: SVB has been a sponsor of dot.LA events and recently had an article published on the site as part of a paid partnership agreement.

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