Data startups, Riot Games data and more among week’s L.A. tech highlights
Gil Elbaz, chief executive of Factual Inc., is photographed in his office. The company recently raised capital.
Data up! Three Southland startups raised significant cash last week, all sharing similar business plans: They analyze data to boost other companies’ revenue.
Los Angeles-based Factual raised $35 million from a big group of investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Altpoint Ventures, Index Ventures, Upfront Ventures and CAA co-founder Michael Ovitz. Factual embeds its software into popular apps like the Weather Channel to keep tabs on where a user is. Factual then can determine their interests and demographics based on the places they’ve been.
The data are used by ad technology companies to target specific segments of the population, such as empty-nesters or college kids. Factual follows about 600 million people. It’s now working on prediction software to figure out where people will go and personalize software to automatically tailor apps to individual tastes.
Culver City-based DataScience raised $22 million to hire more data scientists in a financing led by Whitehart Ventures. The company uses people and computers to analyze the corporate data of companies such as dating app Tinder and clothing service Tradesy.
The company offers specific steps to companies looking to increase sales or address other business concerns. For example, DataScience claimed, a company whose negative reviews often included the words “shipping” and “poor description” worked on fixing those specific problems and saw a 20% drop in negative reviews.
Another Los Angeles ad tech company, SteelHouse, raised $49 million in a funding round led by Mercato Partners. The company lets advertisers keep track of multiple ad campaigns at once. SteelHouse said it should generate about $30 million in revenue this quarter.
Not so quiet. Anonymous message board app Whisper announced that it has doubled its monthly user base since May to 20 million. The Venice company’s app is used mostly by young people to pose thoughts and questions anonymously that others can reply to incognito as well. Movies and TV shows have begun buying ads on Whisper.
Audio clips. Podcasts and other forms of audio-only media would be a bigger business if the best moments from those soundtracks could be easily clipped and shared on social media -- so says Clammr, a startup with offices in Boston and Los Angeles that launched last week. Shorter audio gets listened to 10 times as much on social media, it claims.
With Clammr’s widget, listeners can pull out soundbites of up to 24 seconds. PodcastOne, Sideshow Network and Westwood One are among audio producers offering the widget to users.
ESports move. Electronic Arts Inc. Chief Operating Officer Peter Moore is changing job titles early next year to head the video game maker’s new Competitive Gaming division. As chief competition officer, Moore’s task will be finding a way to generate serious revenue from eSports, or video game competitions. He’s got to make sure games are suited for spectator competitions and design live events that millions of people want to tune into.
EA has long been involved in tournaments, but industry experts say EA could have done more in recent years to capitalize on the popularity of game franchises such as “FIFA Football” and “Madden NFL.” Instead, it’s fallen behind to younger companies such as Riot Games. Redwood City-based EA employs hundreds of people in Los Angeles. Moore previously held high-ranking roles as Sega and Xbox.
Fans watch the world championship finale of the computer game “League of Legends” in the Mercedes Benz Arena in Berlin on Oct. 31. Two teams of five seek to destroy their opponent’s base on a virtual map studded with obstacles.
Speaking of Riot, the company announced last week that 36 million people watched at least a moment of its “League of Legends” world championship last month, up from 33% from 27 million in 2014. The online broadcast peaked at 14 million simultaneous viewers. Across the entire 73-match playoffs for the popular game, the number of hours of gameplay watched nearly doubled from last year to 360 million. Small numbers compared to the 2012 London Olympics, which reached 3.6 billion, but big for a nascent industry unfamiliar to most.
In case you missed it. Members-only regional airline Surf Air said it would increase membership by $200, to $1,950 a month. Mobile game company SGN bought two smaller game development studios in what it said would be the first of increasingly bigger purchases needed to become a gaming powerhouse.
Passengers fly on a SurfAir flight to San Carlos from the Hawthorne Airport in Hawthorne on March 19.
Yahoo, which recently opened part of its new office in Playa Vista, scrapped plans to spin off its stake in Chinese online shopping company Alibaba and essentially put its iconic brand up for sale. ESports streaming service Azubu raised $60 million through a debt sale.
And both Hyperloop Technologies Inc. and electronic car startup Faraday Future announced plans to build facilities in Nevada instead of California.
Elsewhere on the web. VentureBeat explores a new venture capital firm that plans to put $10 million next year into virtual and augmented reality startups at the earliest stages. Amitt Mahajan, the co-creator of “FarmVille,” and former HTC executive Phil Chen are among the names behind Presence Capital.
The Long Beach Post looks at mobile app development studio Principal, which has been doing work for Peerspace, PBS and others.
Chat with me on Twitter @peard33
