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February 2020 Investor Update

February 2020 Investor Update

February 11, 2020

“Tech is not at the margins of these moments — it's at the intersections. We are fortunate to have dot.LA chronicling how innovators and entrepreneurs in Los Angeles will make their mark on this city and world.” 

- Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti , February 3rd, 2020—

February 11th, 2020 

Dear dot.LA investors, 

2020 has been a shining year for us so far, and we’re just getting started. 

On January 9th we emerged from stealth mode to positive press in the LA Times, GeekWire, and many others. From our new headquarters in Cross Campus Beverly Hills, we began to field a thrilling amount of inbound inquiries from prospective sponsors, employees, story subjects, and more.  

Our launch festivities began on Tuesday January 21st with a wonderful event at FabFitFun’s headquarters. We were joined by Mayor Garcetti, who delivered powerful remarks about LA’s present and future and the role dot.LA can and will play in shaping the city’s economy. We also announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with the Annenberg Foundation and their PledgeLA initiative; more information to come regarding the specifics of this relationship, but the crux of it involves a financial underwriting of dot.LA’s coverage of issues relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

Next up was Thursday evening, when we were thrilled to see so many of you at our launch party at Spencer’s house - pictures courtesy of our friends at Santa Monica’s Aircam available here. Thank you to the Rascoffs for hosting, and thank you to Annie Campbell Catering for orchestrating everything. And for those wondering, the official dot.LA Cocktail includes: Tito’s vodka, Meyer lemon juice, simple syrup, and a sprig of thyme. I’m told they were delightful!

We also got to release “dot.LA’s Guide to Los Angeles” physical map - borne out of a desire to sketch out the story we were devoted to  telling about LA. While there were always going to be some unfortunate oversights (our apologies to Dollar Shave Club, FabFitFun, and other omissions!), we think this is a good first attempt at setting the stage for LA tech. If you or anyone you know would like a framed copy, please send me an address and I will get it over to you quickly. 

After two weeks of anticipation and a soft-launch newsletter, the site went live on January 27th. The previous 24 hours had been chaotic and melancholy: the tragic death of Kobe Bryant forced us to revise our editorial rollout plan. But the journalism team kicked into gear and prepared a thoughtful tribute to Kobe’s cut-short next act as a venture capitalist. 

In the two weeks since the site has launched, we have seen our audience grow and our positive impact on the community. As we settle into the community even deeper, we can’t wait to tell the untold stories as LA evolves into the premier innovation hub of the 2020s.  

Editorial / Site Performance

dot.LA’s site has performed magnificently since its January 27th launch. Some key stats: 13,000+ unique visitors; 53,000+ pageviews; average dwell time well over 2 minutes; 3,000+ newsletter subscriptions. For a brand new site with a limited focus by design, these are super promising numbers. 

Top Performing Stories:

Events are a crucial pillar of dot.LA’s strategy to attain both our business and mission goals. As we develop our own execution capabilities, we are partnering with some existing conferences/summits to program a track, panel, or other way to add dot.LA flavor to events such as the Montgomery Summit in March. In terms of things we produce ourselves, we will begin small-scale dinners in March and build up in complexity up to our inaugural flagship annual event in November. Stay tuned for invites and requests to participate!

Our new Director of Events has laid out our draft events prospectus for the remainder of the year here:

Partnerships with Existing Major Events

  • Montgomery Summit – Santa Monica 

  • Jefferies Private Internet Conference – Santa Monica 

  • Code Conference – Beverly Hills 

  • Goldman Private Innovative Company Conference – Las Vegas 

  • Hawke Media Summit – Los Angeles

  • Watertower Ventures In The Flow Conference – Playa Vista 

  • CNBC Evolve Conference – Beverly Hills 

  • Citigroup, JPM, Andreessen Horowitz – locations TBD 

Spring

  • Salon Style Dinner w/ Chernin Media Group @ Westside restaurant 

  • Launch CEO Dinner Event Series / Dine-Around LA 

Summer 

  • Summer Soiree

  • Charity Poker Event 

  • Skyspace Sunset Reception in DTLA 

  • Women in Tech & PledgeLA Event 

  • dot.LA night at the Hollywood Bowl for a concert  

  • dot.LA partnership event @ MLB All-Star Game

  • dot.LA partnership event @ MLS Major League Soccer 

  • CEO Dinner Event Series / Dine-Around LA continued

Fall/Winter

  • Pitch Event

  • Health & Wellness Event

  • dot.LA Tech Summit – 1 full day of keynote speaker programming, (5) presenting company tracks, networking events, 1:1 meeting via Summit app, activation lounge and more with 500+ attendees 

  • Hackathon Event 

  • Holiday Party

Sponsor Recruitment

We have kicked off the recruitment process for our cohort of Founding Sponsors - a one-time opportunity for organizations to partner with dot.LA on the ground floor and demonstrate their deep support of the Los Angeles tech and startup ecosystem. 

We have designed three tiers of sponsorship ranging from $25-150K per year, with the top two being limited in number so as to maintain a premium level of user experience. I consider sourcing and negotiating these sponsorships among my very top priorities in the months to come. 

Team Announcements

Annie Burford joins us as Director of Events. In this role, she will own the implementation of an event strategy for dot.LA and collaborate with myself and other dot.LA staff and partners on execution and logistics for events, partnerships, sponsorships and programs. In addition to establishing event marketing communications plans and budgets focused on set key strategic goals while developing effective metrics to track event ROI. Thank you to Chris Hill of Comcast Ventures for the introduction in responding to my plea for candidates for this role in our December update! 

Eric Zassenhaus joins us as Managing Editor, Platforms & Audience. Eric is our audience development “growth hacker,” and has responsibility over the site, the newsletter, and various growth initiatives. 

Max Levinson joins us as Business Operations Manager. He’s running point on a wide variety of roles including sponsorship sourcing and development, vendor sourcing/negotiation, and back office implementations. 

How You Can Help

  • Send in story ideas + tips: If you or an associated company has something to announce, or if you have something you’d like to see covered, please pass it along to me or directly to editor-in-chief Joe Bel Bruno ([email protected]).

  • Join our Amplification Team: If you or someone you know has a large social media platform and would be willing to receive advance notice on high-impact stories, please let me know or reach out directly to Eric ([email protected]) 

  • Outreach to potential launch sponsors: Our ability to develop sponsor relationships early will set us on a course to financial security. I am already in contact with a number of eager prospective sponsors (so far, commercial real estate brokers, tech law firms, and investment banks have been the most obvious matches, but we’d like to cast a wide net!)

  • Feedback on editorial and events so far: We’ve gotten a lot of positive affirmations on the product so far - which is wonderful! - but I need all the help I can get in identifying ways to improve the product. I promise my feelings won’t be hurt if you send some constructive criticism my way. 

  • Events spaces: Please reach out to Annie ([email protected]) or me if you know of places that would be willing to offer their spaces at sub-market rates (ideally free! 

Sam Adams 

Co-founder and CEO, dot.LA