Here's a roundup of recent L.A. startups news you need to know:
FAMILY STORIES: Remento announced that it raised $3 million in a seed round. The raise was led by Upfront Ventures, along with a group of angel investors, including Brooke Hammerling, Chuck Davis and Dan Nova.
Remento allows people to capture family stories in a unique way. Its mobile app provides conversation prompts to inspire the sharing of stories from every member of the family – from questions about a grandparent’s childhood home, to prompts that add context to images of precious keepsakes or wedding photos.
HEALTH CARE: Techstars is relaunching an accelerator focused on health care. The first one — a joint effort between Cedars-Sinai and Techstars — created a digital health accelerator that launched in 2016 and focused on companies that were developing hardware or software offerings.
This new iteration is sponsored by Cedars-Sinai, Point32Health, UCI Health and UnitedHealthcare. And it's looking for startups in a wide range of areas to participate. The 12 selected will receive capital, mentorship and programming from the Techstars global network and the U.S. healthcare/healthtech ecosystem. The program runs March - June 2023. The application deadline is November 30. Techstars is seeking companies focused on areas including the social determinants of health, mental and behavioral health, digital therapeutics, and women’s health.
MANUFACTURING: Manufactured announced that it raised $13 million. in debt and equity financing. The funding came from Tenacity Venture Capital and TriplePoint Capital, bringing its total amount raised to $16 million.
Manufactured helps companies source, finance and manage inventory. The additional funding will enable it to make inventory financing available to more companies and build automation around credit underwriting and servicing. Manufactured also recently hired Zara Ivanova as head of finance. She's overseeing the company's effort to help its clients enhance their inventory reliability. Manufactured draws on its network of more than 500 global vendors to serve over $600 billion of demand in industry verticals like healthcare, food and lifestyle products. Ivanova brings e-commerce business experience from Affirm.
SOFTWARE: JusticeText has closed a $2.2 million seed round, according to TechCrunch, with participation from Bloomberg Beta and True Ventures, as well as Michael Tubbs, the former mayor of Stockton, CA; LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; and musician John Legend.
The software company catalogs, analyzes and then shares video evidence, hoping to increase transparency in police interactions and improve overall judicial outcomes for low-income criminal defendants. The product is geared for public defenders to use in trials.
LIFE SCIENCES: Two L.A. startups are getting ready to start the California Life Sciences 2022 fall FAST Advisory Program. FAST provides first-time entrepreneurs customized advisory and coaching to enhance their business model and build a commercialization strategy.
The founders meet in-person and virtually throughout the program. The two startups in the L.A. regions that were selected as part of the group of six are:
- Angeles Therapeutics, founded by a professor at USC's Keck School of Medicine. It's a next-gen cell therapy company that's aiming to make CARs more efficient against solid tumors. CARs are T cells that have been genetically engineered to produce an artificial receptor for use in immunotherapy.
- BioMark Oncology is a preclinical-stage pharmaceutical company developing a platform to advance the use of response biomarkers in clinical trials.
GAMING: Scopely announced the acquisition of “Stumble Guys” from Finnish mobile game studio Kitka Games, according to Scopely's chief revenue officer and board member, Tim O’Brien.
The battle royale party game has more than 20 million daily players around the globe. “Stumble Guys” features include fast-paced multiplayer gameplay, ease of social mechanics, a wide array of challenging levels, personalized and expressive collectibles and player avatars, and discoverable rewards. Game activities include a space race, skydiving, waterslides and battles.
EV MANUFACTURING: Mullen Automotive, a startup manufacturer of EVs, based in OC, announced its acquisition of a controlling interest in EV truck maker Bollinger Motors, according to TechCrunch.
This is Mullen’s first EV acquisition and propels the company into the medium-duty truck classes 3-6, along with the B1 and B2 sport utility trucks.
The purchase price was more than $148 million in cash and stock for a 60% controlling interest, which gives Mullen the majority ownership of Bollinger.
Bollinger brings a pipeline of interest from large companies for commercial electric truck classes 3-6 in a wide range of markets such as last-mile delivery, refrigeration, utilities and their upfitters.
MENTAL HEALTH Headspace Health, which created a digital mental health platform, announced that it acquired the Shine app, a platform for mental health and wellness support, according to TechCrunch.
Financial details of the deal have not been revealed. Founded in 2016, the Shine app serves over 45,000 paid subscribers and has reached over six million people by offering self-guided content – including daily meditations, self-care courses and personalized support – as well as virtual workshops hosted by third-party experts and Shine’s community.
DATA SECURITY: Open Raven announced it raised $20 million in Series B funding. It's a data security management company that helps enterprises prevent leaks, breaches and compliance incidents.
The round was led by Pelion Ventures with participation from existing investors Kleiner Perkins and Upfront Ventures. This increases Open Raven’s total funding to date to $40 million.
