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At VidCon, Investors Are Still ‘Betting Big’ on the Creator Economy
Kristin Snyder
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
The creator economy is the bedrock of this week’s VidCon convention, which is drawing creators, companies, investors and fans alike to Anaheim to discuss the rapidly growing realm of digital content and entertainment.
To discuss how investors, in particular, are viewing the booming creator landscape, Thursday’s “Betting Big on the Creator Economy” panel featured the likes of MaC Venture Capital partner Zhenni Liu, Investcorp managing director Anand Radhakrishnan, Team8 Fintech managing partner Yuval Tal and Paladin co-founder and CEO James Creech.
Liu said that her Los Angeles-based VC firm is paying closer attention to the influence that creators are having on how consumers spend their time and money. She cited the recent “healthy Coke” viral trend, in which people mix balsamic vinegar and seltzer water as a soda alternative, as an example—citing how the number of people who have viewed the original TikTok video that set off the craze surpasses the Coca-Cola TikTok account’s number of followers.
This growing influence stems from the surging number of creators, Radhakrishnan said. With the pandemic forcing many to reconsider their career paths, he said people now view content creation as a legitimate professional route—quipping that these days, more children want to be YouTube stars than astronauts.
“As an older person, I thought this was the downfall of Western civilization,” the Investcorp managing director said. “At the end of the day, I think it reflects that this is real—and as an investor, we’re looking at ways to invest in the next great economies.”
Creech said that the growing creator sector rests on three main pillars: content creation, audience growth and monetization. The constant evolution of creator platforms does present a challenge for investors, however, with Liu noting that more creators are looking to Web3 as an alternative to traditional outlets often offering a smaller slice of revenues.
“As a result, we’re seeing creators who can’t figure out how to build their audience, monetize and distribute,” Liu said. “With Web3, this opens up a new opportunity. There's a lot of chaos, but chaos provides the opportunity for creators to rise up.”
Additionally, the shift toward short-form content means that more investment dollars will be redirected away from longer-form shows and films, Tal observed. And even with an increasingly likely recession on the horizon—one that already appears to be hitting the creator economy, as well as the wider tech, startup and venture capital sectors—Tal and the other panelists remained optimistic about the creator economy’s prospects moving forward.
“It is almost winter-agnostic,” Tal said. “The shift [toward the creator economy] is so massive that no [economic] winter can slow it down.”
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Kristin Snyder
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db
Proptech Startup Snappt Raises $100 Million To Help Landlords Flag Fraudulent Rental Applications
05:00 AM | March 15, 2022
Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash
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Snappt, a West Hollywood-based proptech startup that helps landlords detect fraudulent rental application documents, has landed a $100 million Series A funding round led by venture capital giant Insight Partners, it announced Tuesday.
The startup is the part of an expanding real estate tech sector that raised a record $9.5 billion in funding last year to produce products ranging from retail analytics to energy efficiency technology to tenant management platforms.
Snappt, in particular, addresses the problem of financial document fraud by rental applicants, by providing landlords with a software platform that can detect when pay stubs and bank statements have been fraudulently altered. More than just a surface-level scan, the software analyzes the source code behind the documents to make sure it matches that of legitimate forms by banks and financial institutions. The startup claims its technology has a 99.8% accuracy rate, while roughly 12% of the forms it processes are flagged as fraudulent.
Snappt co-founder and CEO Daniel Berlind
Courtesy of Snappt
“Financial institutions’ documents come in incredibly consistently,” Snappt co-founder and CEO Daniel Berlind told dot.LA. “A Bank of America statement will always come in with the exact same properties. And if you're going to move these properties around, there’s obvious evidence of that.”
Berlind and fellow Snappt co-founder Noah Goldman experienced such issues firsthand; their families both run property management businesses based in Los Angeles, and the pair would often consult with one another on problems they were having with tenants. In 2017, they noticed a surge of fraudulent bank statements and pay stubs; the numbers wouldn’t add up, or the format of various forms submitted from the same bank were inconsistent.
The pair founded Snappt that year and quickly gained traction with the platform, which is used at over 1,000 multifamily properties across the U.S. While real estate is still their target audience for the software, Berlind said other potential use cases could include mortgages, auto loans, utility bills and health care documents (such as forged COVID-19 vaccine cards).
“At the core of what we've built is a fraud detection engine,” Berlind said. “It’s more about how we tune it and the information that we have available.”
In a statement, Insight Partners managing director Thomas Krane said Snappt “is revolutionizing the rental screening process” by addressing “the biggest challenge for today’s property manager—lowering eviction rates and thus reducing bad debt.” Snappt claims its platform helped customers avoid more than $105 million in bad debt last year.
The startup’s previous investors include New York-based early-stage venture firm Inertia Ventures, which provided it with $1.5 million in seed funding, according to Snappt. The company did not provide its current valuation.
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Keerthi Vedantam
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
https://twitter.com/KeerthiVedantam
keerthi@dot.la
Don’t Call It a Comeback: Riot Games Names Co-Founder Marc Merrill President of Games
06:13 PM | February 17, 2022
Image courtesy of Riot Games
More than four years after stepping down as co-CEO, Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill has been named the L.A. video game developer’s president of games—putting him in charge of franchises including the studio’s blockbuster “League of Legends” title.
After Riot CEO Nicolo Laurent broke the news on Twitter Thursday, Merrill responded that he “can’t wait to jump in… on super secret projects,” tagging several Riot executives and developers. Since he and Riot co-founder Brandon Beck relinquished their co-CEO roles at the end of 2017, the pair have served as co-chairmen of the company.
Riot Games President of Games Marc Merrill.
Image courtesy of Riot Games
According to Polygon, Merrill has played a more informal role in producing various projects for Riot Games in recent years—such as commemorating the 10-year anniversary of “League of Legends” in 2019 and producing Riot’s 2021 animated Netflix series “Arcane.” Now, Merrill is turning his focus back toward overseeing gaming content for the publisher.
“Marc is one of the key visionary leaders who helped create Riot, build ‘League of Legends’ into a global phenomenon and drive Riot’s mission to become the most player-focused game company in the world,” Laurent said in a statement provided to dot.LA. “We have ambitious goals for Riot’s next phase of growth—it’s truly just the beginning for our live games and we also plan to enter a few other, very different genres—and Marc is the perfect person to lead our Games teams in delivering those incredible experiences for players
Merill and Beck co-founded Riot Games in 2006; five years later, the company was acquired by Chinese tech giant Tencent. After the pair stepped down as co-chief executives four years ago, Laurent, Riot’s then-president of global publishing, took the reins as CEO.
At the beginning of this year, Laurent laid out his five-year vision for Riot Games—including plans to embrace a more flexible hybrid work model, an emphasis on diversity and inclusion, and designs on more seasons of “Arcane.” Laurent also said Riot will open more development studios around the world to build out its talent base globally.
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Samson Amore
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.
https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la
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