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Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Teens crawling the mall—if there are any who still do so—will soon be able to pick up an NFT under the dim lights of Hot Topic.
Toonstar, a Los Angeles-based Web3 animation studio, is joining Hot Topic, Inc. as the retail company’s official Web3 partner, the companies announced Wednesday. Creating NFTs related to Toonstar’s original projects and Hot Topic IP, Toonstar will facilitate NFT sales that can then be redeemed as physical merchandise in stores. The partnership will also include community-driven digital projects and will work with brands featured in Hot Topic to create new Web3 activations.
“We thought (the partnership) was a really good fit for Toonstart and for Web3,” Toonstar CEO and co-founder John Attanasio told dot.LA. “When you look at their community…they're all heavy collectors of both digital and physical goods already. When you think of the NFT world, a lot of it is about collectibles.”
Hot Topic’s teenage and young adult demographic also drew Toonstar to the company, as Attanasio said it matches their current projects, such as Mila Kunis’ NFT show “The Gimmicks,” a workplace comedy series set in the world of regional wrestling. Attanasio said Hot Topic shoppers are often the type to show up to fan events such as San Diego Comic-Con—which is where the partnership will officially launch later this month. Social media brand ambassadors HT Fanatics will be able to cameo in an episode of “The Gimmicks” at the event.
Creators have previously turned to NFTs to encourage their community amongst their fanbases—a theory Toonstar is following with this partnership.
The collaboration marks a shift in the previous trend of incorporating NFTs into retail brands. Clothing companies including American Eagle and Gap have respectively launched a digital clothing shop and an NFT collection. Even high-end brands have explored Web3, with Gucci releasing a series of digital and physical collectibles earlier this year and Prada offering a tying a free NFT to purchases from its Timecapsule initiative. But the Toonstar and Hot Topic partnership allows people to purchase NFT activation codes in stores and online, effectively merging their retail experience with their digital spaces.
As more retailers turn to digital creations, how states will handle sales tax remains up for debate. And as more questions of intellectual property ownership pop up amidst the crypto winter, retailers will have to navigate the changing digital landscape on top of inflation.
Partnering with a retail store provides Web3 companies like Toonstar the ability to “make buying an NFT as easy as buying a shirt in store,” Attanasio said. Such collaborations, particularly focused on the entertainment realm, may also help Web3 reach a wider audience.
“Web3 and NFTs are still very much a niche category, with only a few million people really active in the community,” he said. “Our thesis is that entertainment is going to be one of the things that bring NFTs and Web3 mainstream.”
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He 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 at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Everyone hates traffic, and it’s no secret that Los Angeles has some of the worst commutes in the country. Drivers in the LA area waste an average of 62 hours – more than an entire work week – in traffic every year, making it the sixth most congested city in the country.
To cope with the taxing traffic, some local startups aren’t thinking of ways to revitalize the county’s aging and unfinished freeway system: instead, they’re looking to the skies.
Right now, the idea of zipping around Southern California in a compact air taxi seems like a Philip K. Dick pipe dream. But there’s a handful of startups in the LA area eagerly engineering electric aircrafts that they say could be operational as soon as 2024.
Some of these startups have found powerful, well-funded allies in the ground transportation sector, like Archer Aviation which is backed by United Airlines, or Joby Aviation, funded in part by Uber. Others are supported by municipalities or nonprofits like the Urban Movements Lab, which LA Mayor Eric Garcetti launched in 2020 to hasten development on new transportation tech.
Here’s dot.LA’s guide to the startups you need to know that are working on air taxis or autonomous flight in Los Angeles.
Location: Santa Ana
Founded: 2019
Raised to date: $170 million
Overair raised a $145 million round last month to accelerate the development of its electric plane called Butterfly, which is a vertical take-off and landing vehicle that could see its first test flight by the second half of 2023. The company’s backed by a South Korean conglomerate called Hanwha and was spun out of a Lake-forest based military aerospace contractor called Karem Aircraft in 2020. Originally, the company made tech capable of dropping Navy SEALs into combat zones.
Courtesy Archer Aviation
Location: Santa Clara
Raised to date: $2.18 billion
Archer went public in September 2021, raising nearly $858 million in a SPAC deal that made the startup a unicorn with a $1.7 billion post-deal valuation. Based in Santa Clara, Archer thinks its Maker aircraft can begin charting courses over Los Angeles at up to 150 miles per hour within the next two years. The company completed its first hover test flight last December and is gearing up for another test flight this week.
Location: Mountain View
Founded: 2019
Raised to date: $450 million
While it’s not headquartered in Los Angeles, it's worth mentioning Wisk since it’s working extensively in Long Beach. The Silicon Valley-based company began working with the city’s Office of Economic Research in February to survey local businesses, government agencies and community leaders to gauge their interest in using air taxis in and around Long Beach. Wisk spokesman Chris Brown told dot.LA the company’s air taxis wouldn’t be up and running for another decade, at least, but said the startup’s already completed over 1,500 test flights.
Location: Santa Cruz
Founded: 2009
Raised to date: $1.64 billion
One of the older firms on this list, Joby is working to make an electric aircraft with the goal of taking passengers on flights within the next two years. Joby claims its vehicle can travel 150 miles on a single charge and will be capable of vertical take-off and landing, which crucially could reduce the company’s need to build expensive runways. Following backing from Uber, Toyota, Intel and JetBlue, Joby went public in August 2021 which led it to quickly surpass unicorn status at a $4.5 billion valuation.
Location: Long Beach
Founded: 2019
Raised to date: $15.9 million
Long Beach-based Odys is building vertical take-off and landing electric planes and is aiming to create a network of local city helipads and airports that can host its vertiports. Odys was founded by James Dorris, a former engineer at Virgin Hyperloop, and Axel Radermacher, a former production manager at Karma Automotive, in 2019. The startup wants to cut door-to-door travel times in half by ferrying people across town in air taxis. It’s backed by Hyperloop One co-founder Brogan Bambrogan.
Location: Hawthorne
Founded: 2016
Raised to date: $240.5 million
Skyryse is working on a software that can simplify flight controls and allow people (with the proper pilot creds, of course) to control aircraft with just an iPad using its FlightOS software. The startup launched in 2016 and in 2019 it demonstrated its ability to use the tech to program a helicopter to fly itself. In April, the company inked a deal with one of its investors, the medical transport company Air Methods, to retrofit 400 of the company’s single-engine choppers and fixed-wing airplanes with FlightOS. Skyryse courted engineers from Boeing, Ford, JetBlue and SpaceX, and hired new COO Justin Ryan and CFO Stephen Koo earlier this month.
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He 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 at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern 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.
On average, Americans waste 108 billion pounds of food, which equates to 130 billion meals that is thrown away each year, according to Feeding America.
Los Angeles-based FooDoo is looking to reduce that waste in the Grab & Go market with its hardware kit technology that is installed in FooDoo’s vending refrigerators. The AI-based microstores, as FooDoo refers to them, can store up to 500 items and are set to launch in Los Angeles this September. In preparation, the company has teamed up with several ghost kitchens across the city that will cook ready-to-eat meals to be stored in FooDoo’s fridges.
Founded in 2021 by CEO Kirill Sizyumov and CPO Nikita Makarov, and CTO Ivan Gurkin, the company was bootstrapped by Sizyumov and now has a few angel investors that believe in FooDoo’s technology.
Once a dish is produced by the ghost kitchens and stocked, a radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag is attached and all the information about the meal, including the name, its ingredients and its expiration date, is linked to the tag. This information is sent to FooDoo’s data center and will allow the team to track the products where its scanners are installed.
Sizyumov said FooDoo has two issued patents, one is for the system for data transfer between server, and remote vending machine, and computing device of the user; and the second is for vending machines with RFID antennas. In addition to these, the startup has three more pending patents and are waiting to get those issued by this fall.
The hardware installed in each microstore consists of readers and scanners that will track the products and take stock of what is still inside. FooDoo’s technology allows the team to forecast user demands, and provide the ghost kitchens that provide meals with an accurate production plan for the next week.
“We want to make an impact,” Makarov said. “We want to provide people with much more food at high quality, but for the minimum price.”
With 7.7% of Americans still working at home, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey, Makarov said the company is targeting multifamily buildings which will give people the opportunity to have a fresh meal in just a few minutes. It will cost $100 a month to have FooDoo’s microstores at these facilities. Instead of waiting for your Postmates or GrubHub delivery to arrive, tenants can walk to the microstore and purchase a meal of their choice.
“During the work week, [many people] don't have an additional hour or two to wait for the delivery app,” Makarov told dot.LA. “So we are a good alternative.”
As soon as a microstore is installed, residents or any guests that want to make a purchase must download the FooDoo app, which will be available for free in the Google Play and Apple Store, where customers must link their form of payment. The app on your phone will act as a key that can unlock the sliding door and give access to the meals. Once an item has been taken, the app will automatically charge the user based on the preferred payment method they linked.
While many food-tech startups have popped up like those selling expiring food at a discounted rate, Makarov said that these companies are working with the consequences of overproduction, whereas FooDoo is trying to tackle it from the very start, which is in production planning.
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern 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.
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
Virtual concerts took off in 2020 when the coronavirus forced musicians to cancel or postpone in-person shows. The looming question is whether the tech startups that raised a ton of cash during the pandemic can keep the momentum going as concerts in the real world return.
It may be a while before that question can be definitively answered. But a new deal struck by West Hollywood-based AmazeVR signals that the music industry is still very interested in virtual shows, especially those that take place in the much-hyped metaverse.
AmazeVR has teamed up with K-Pop juggernaut SM Entertainment to produce VR concerts for the South Korean label’s roster of artists. The Seoul-based joint venture, called Studio A, allows AmazeVR to expand its concert production globally by sourcing from some of the most popular Asian music stars. The deal also broadens AmazeVR’s content delivery, as concerts will be distributed exclusively through its music metaverse service along with SM’s VR service.
Founded in 2015, AmazeVR has been on a tear lately, raising $15 million in January and recently completing a VR concert tour with Megan Thee Stallion. Interestingly, those shows brought fans together in 10 U.S. cities much like a traditional tour. Instead of having people tune in from home, fans gathered in movie theaters, strapped on VR headsets and watched the rapper perform a pre-recorded set.
That approach was partly aimed at introducing VR to fans who may not own a several-hundred-dollar headset, AmazeVR co-CEO Ernest Lee previously told dot.LA. In March, Lee said the 40-person company was bullish on the future of at-home virtual concerts, believing they’ll become a meaningful revenue stream for artists.
Others in the industry are less certain. Although the technology behind virtual shows has improved, there are still limitations that prevent them from feeling truly immersive. Artists, for example, can’t feed off a crowd. While fans flocked to see stars like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande in virtual shows, it remains to be seen whether musicians with smaller fan bases can capitalize. Live performance startup Encore, based in Culver City, recently launched a new studio iPhone app with mid-tier artists in mind.
It’s important to note there’s a wide rage of “virtual shows” these days, from live-streams on laptops to online 3D worlds that turn artists into cartoonish characters. AmazeVR’s concerts are of the high-production VR variety. The firm pre-records 3D, live-action videos of artists like Megan and inserts them in computer-generated worlds post-production.
Meanwhile, real life shows are rebounding. Beverly Hills-based Live Nation reported that its first-quarter revenues skyrocketed from $290.6 million in 2021 to $1.8 billion this year. But SM’s deal with AmazeVR marks a meaningful endorsement of VR shows as in-person concerts return.
Launched in 1995, SM is one of South Korea’s largest entertainment companies and helped popularize the now global phenomenon of K-Pop. Its roster of artists and groups include Girls' Generation, Red Velvet, Exo and Aespa—a new pop girl group that just reached a partnership deal with Warner Records and played their first U.S. live show at Coachella this year.
“We’ve had a great interest in this market and see the opportunity for our artists in the metaverse,” Lee said in a statement. “AmazeVR shares the same vision for this next generation of music.”
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
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