2023 LA First Look Retreat — Roundtable Recaps
Fika hosted its 8th annual LA First Look Retreat on May 4th after a sad three-year hiatus. It was incredible to be back in-person at the historic Ebell for what turned out to be perhaps the best First Look yet, as many proclaimed this to be one of the top tech events in Los Angeles.
The day began with main stage keynote discussions with esteemed industry leaders touching on a wide range of hot-button topics from forging the next frontier on space to the evolution of care delivery.
In addition to these exciting keynotes, First Look attendees were broken out into eight interactive roundtable discussions led by investors, founders, operators, and civic leaders. The topics covered were:
Tackling Homelessness in LA
Carla Hall (LA Times) and Mike Bonin (LA City Councilmember) led a wonderful conversation where they discussed the root causes for homelessness, the rationale behind the “Housing First” model, as well as current programs that Mayor Bass is advocating for, including Inside Safe. The audience asked great questions on what an individual can do in the face of such grave challenges in their neighborhoods. There was also a lively discussion on whether certain homeless individuals really want housing, and Mike gave the great answer that 90% of the homeless population would welcome housing — but we will need a different approach for those who are resistant to services (i.e. housing plus all the wraparound services). He also made it clear that we will not solve homelessness if we do not address the structural issues (e.g. deinstitutionalization, changes in the criminal system, rising housing costs, regulations etc) in our society that create deep inequities in LA and communities across the country. It was so inspiring to be able to listen and learn from two leaders in our community who have dedicated so much of their life and energy to working on this crisis. We hope this session gave people a reason to get involved, to vote for the right civic leaders, and to understand how we need to all work together to find solutions to help the most vulnerable of our society to find a better future.
Lessons from the Trenches: Selling Through a Downturn
In a downturn, sales teams have had to refocus their energies inward on existing customers to ensure high levels of customer satisfaction and reduced levels of churn. The moderators of this sales-focused panel, Alex Patman (Okta) and Allison Yazdian (LTK), dove deep on how, and why, sales teams are reaffirming relationships with current customers and doubling down on how best to identify and activate expansion opportunities with existing customers. Additionally, Alex and Allison emphatically stressed the importance of up-leveling their sales teams by encouraging them to leverage more modern GenAI driven sales tools, irrespective of whether their teams were selling into SMBs or multinational enterprises. They suggested starting with top-of-funnel automations that help improve lead identification and outreach personalization at scale and then working your way down the pipe from there to increase efficiency and efficacy.
The Emerging Capabilities of Generative AI
James Cham (Bloomberg Beta) and Margaret Jennings (Usable Machines) led an impassioned discussion about the recent explosion of Gen AI and the consequences of this technology. The old stack does not matter anymore as there is no longer a need for data engineers and data scientists to deploy Gen AI into a product, service, or enterprise. Whereas the focus in the field of AI previously centered on precision and prediction, today’s large language models (LLMs) are creating something that did not exist before due to continuous learning. Moreover, while Google and Microsoft continue to spend billions on model development and deployment, they still don’t have a moat. The open source community is beating big tech bets at their own game! James and Margaret both agree that artificial general intelligence (AGI) has already been solved, and now we’re just playing on the margins. As such, the next generation of AI products must emphasize the human interaction feedback loop, as well as human input and their relationship to model completion in order to leverage model training and produce differentiated solutions.
Equity by Design: Building Inclusive & Diverse Organization
Paige Hendrix Buckner (All Raise) and Lisa Cawley (Screendoor), two amazing DEI leaders and revered champions of minority investors and founders, navigated a thought-provoking conversation about diversity in the workplace. Specifically, they highlighted the severe gap in the data that showcases how diverse teams perform better and the sad realities of where we still fall short in our hiring practices and company construction. Paige and Lisa further explored best practices for supporting diverse employees, founders, and fund managers once they join companies and portfolios, and they reiterated that pipelines for hiring, deals, and funds can only be as diverse as our personal and professional networks.
Rethinking the Traditional Education Model
Rebecca Kaden (Union Square Ventures) and Zac Katz (Age of Learning) navigated a highly constructive, and at times deeply conflicting set of opinions around the future of education. The panel (and participants) first focused on the implications of AI in education and the potential challenges that this brings to students. While all agreed that there would be an impact here, there was deep disagreement on how much it should infiltrate the work of teachers, schools and students, from a moral and learning standpoint. This debate quickly transitioned into discussions around school structures and the evolving school systems, especially at the high school level — which touched on public, charter and private schools, in addition to many new models for hybrid learning environments. Somewhat naturally, combining the early AI discussion with the discussion of school structures, the conversation moved into the supply side issues that different institutions are facing and how we should think about embedding education into other models.
The Next Fairchild: How SpaceX is Shaping a New Generation of Founders
SpaceX alums are building the next generation of products for the physical world! John Couluris (Blue Origin) and Karthik Gollapudi (Azimuth) led a lively discussion about how SpaceX is leading a resurgence in talent and expertise in specialized knowledge and skills, especially those that solve complex problems like rockets, autonomous machines, and next-generation hardware. When SpaceX first launched, it was a vertically integrated company because there were no vendors capable serving their needs. Now, we’re seeing a renaissance of new companies that are unbundling some of the internal tools that SpaceX built and democratizing them for new companies in the space. As such, standardization drives down costs as a barrier to entry and improves quality. And, as vertical integration becomes unbundled, John and Katrhik posed the question to the group, “where is the ultimate value created”?
Will the Downturn Scare Away LPs?
In a conversation led by Samir Kaji (Allocate) and Hunter Somerville (StepStone Group), this roundtable discussion honed in on how LPs are reacting to the market downturn. More and more fund managers are turning to non-US sources for capital infusions, as some roundtable participants highlighted their focus on family offices in territories like the Middle East. Hunter and Samir also pinpointed how LPs are now more heavily scrutinizing TVPI marks, especially when inconsistent between funds, and how we are moving towards a world where GPs need to justify their TVPI with actual metrics. Ultimately, it is becoming exceedingly difficult to be a GP in this environment as we will likely see a shake up across funds in the near future. That said, funds that took secondaries off in 2021 will be likely rewarded by LPs for being good stewards of capital.
Crypto, Web3, and Creator Economy: Beyond the Hype
Though the hype train around AI seems to have displaced crypto in the cultural zeitgeist, that didn’t stop Michael Ma (CreatorDao) and Shiva Rajaraman (OpenSea) from moderating a lively discussion about the state of web3 and the opportunities that abound in this space. As each of them shared stories of their respective journeys down the crypto rabbit hole, they addressed the evolution of web3 activity and moving beyond speculation/trading to use cases with real utility, specifically mobilizing loyalty and community engagement, among other applications of distributed ledger technology (DLT). Some of the key questions that were brought to the table were: (1) where should crypto-curious VC investors focus today, especially given the evolving regulatory backdrop?; (2) what “should” be a Web3 company?; (3) whether “Web 2.5” has substance and staying power (i.e. the likes of TaxBit and Chainalysis)?
