Across Los Angeles and San Diego, tech companies are on the search for new talent, spanning industries from cannabis to neuroscience to real estate. But professionals are no longer just looking for a job — they’re looking for a career where they can make a difference.
Everyone wants to feel like their contributions count, especially when it comes to their work. Whether it’s a simple product update that makes a difference in the lives of customers or building a platform that shakes up an entire industry, seeing the impact of your daily efforts in real time is what transforms an occupation into a passion project.
That’s why Built In LA sat down with seven innovative tech teams leaving their marks on the world to discuss the exciting projects they have on the horizon and what sets their company cultures a part from the rest. And did we mention they’re all hiring?
Located in San Diego, Seer Interactive is a digital marketing agency powered by big data, committed to connecting people and businesses with innovative solutions.
Building camaraderie: “The thing that has kept me at Seer for 3.5 years is the community,” Ramos said. “Seer offers opportunities for remote people to share resources, talk with one another, teach, learn, and participate in community events. Leadership sends little gifts and thank you notes to remote people that make them feel included in the company culture.
“I am treated as more than just an employee, but as an individual with unique needs and personal preferences. Before COVID-19, Seer gave remote team members the opportunity to travel to our offices, special events, and sometimes just to be in the same place as our teams and work friends. I am looking forward to visiting our offices again in the future.”
Continuous growth: “I’ve been doing SEO professionally for 13+ years. Seer Interactive’s focus on big data has given me the chance to develop tactics and processes that I might not have been able to do elsewhere. I get to use my experience and company resources to discover, innovate, build tools, and work differently than I ever have before.
“The culture of teaching, learning, and leveling up both myself and my coworkers is a different dynamic than I’ve experienced at companies in the past. I feel like Seer cares about me and values the work I do. As long as Seer keeps teaching me new things, I’ll keep learning and paying it forward by helping my coworkers and clients grow.”
Kernel is a full-stack neurotech company building a non-invasive platform for monitoring the brain with unprecedented accuracy, speed and versatility.
Looking internally: “For millions of years, our human brains have evolved as all things have: randomly,” Maring said. “Now, in the 21st century, it remains cumbersome and costly to glean even the most simple insights about one’s mind. Kernel changes that. Kernel’s technology, built by a passionate and innovative team, takes our conscious reality by the horns, giving us a crystal-clear lens into our most important organ and the precise levers to control it. Once I understood that, joining Kernel was a no-brainer.”
Technical possibilities: “As a software engineer at Kernel, I am most excited by the developer ecosystems that our hardware unlocks. Kernel’s Flow and Flux brain interfaces provide an accessible and deep well of precise neural data. Combined with Kernel’s API and SDK, an economy will emerge centered around optimizing and expanding the human brain. This ability to ‘read and write neural code’ will bring about the singularity of consciousness that will fundamentally change the power of both the individual and the collective.”
Whip Media aims to transform the global content licensing ecosystem with an enterprise software platform that centrally connects data, processes and teams throughout the digital distribution journey.
Evolving together: “I started working with Mediamorph back in 2010, when I was at Warner Bros., when they were a startup and we were implementing their product as a part of WB’s end-to-end contracts to cash solution for the Home Entertainment Digital Distribution business,” Bagwe said. “They were a small, but smart, enterprising and knowledgeable group, and had a go-getter attitude that helped us implement a unique solution that is still used to this day at WB!
“Upon seeing the rapid growth of Mediamorph, its adoption within studios and retailers, and a very promising future potential of their platform, I decided to join their team in 2017 as they made their presence known in the content licensing solution space. I’ve not looked back since then and I’ve loved being an integral part of this company as our platform has matured over the years. We’re now Whip Media. I look forward to hiring new talent to help us keep growing as we bring to fruition our ambitious product roadmap and further expand our foothold in the digital content licensing business.”
Transforming the industry: “Whip Media is transforming the global content licensing ecosystem through its proprietary data and predictive insights. Our proprietary Content Value Management platform has been serving the media and entertainment industry since 2009. In May 2021, we launched the Whip Media Exchange; it is a data and AI-powered content marketplace that makes global film and TV content licensing smarter, faster and more efficient by connecting buyers and sellers in a centralized platform to streamline discovering, buying and selling content licenses.
“My professional services team is responsible for implementing our enterprise solutions that help studios and retailers streamline their digital supply chain business across the board by improving their deal negotiations, controlling costs and spend, streamlining their avails management processes, automating VOD operations, performance tracking and much more. We work closely with our sales and engineering teams to help Whip Media to deliver these high value projects to our clients. We are a high-performing lean team, and we are expanding rapidly in our Los Angeles, New York and London offices.”
Hawke Media is a full-service digital marketing agency helping implement creative ideas into a client’s marketing strategy.
A long-term affair: “It may seem incredibly cliche, but why have I stayed at Hawke Media? The people,” Brocker said. “I am lucky enough to work with nearly 200 passionate, innovative, hardworking people. Each and every day, the engaging, funny conversations I have with them remind me how impactful my role as a talent acquisition partner is. I have the unique pleasure of seeing these talented individuals get promoted into leadership roles, become part of the interview process, and transform into marketing rockstars for our clients. There’s nothing more motivating than being surrounded by that energy and having the ability to see it grow with our new talent.”
A new frontier: “Companies of all shapes and sizes dramatically changed over the last year and a half. It required a lot of ingenuity and patience to get to the other side. While the pandemic isn’t over, I think we can firmly say we’ve turned the corner and are in a new chapter. That new chapter is having all the privileges of working and recruiting at a remote-first agency without the restrictions of COVID-19. In the last year, our workforce has grown to include 28 different states. We now have the opportunity to create employee retreats, community groups, and really see how the remote work experiment goes in a ‘normal’ world.
“There’s been a lot of chatter about four-day work weeks recently and I think Hawke’s remote-work policy creates a similar sense of freedom, opportunity and innovation that workers have been waiting for. As a recruiter, I get to be part of this next chapter by continuing to find talent across the U.S. and build a strong, remote-but-not-quarantined, culture!”
Endpoint is a digital title and escrow company that’s designed to streamline the home closing process by making it simple, fast and transparent for everyone involved.
Technological revolution: “The mission of what we are trying to accomplish here at Endpoint is the biggest reason I stay,” Foley said. “We are in a unique position to completely revolutionize an incredibly large industry that is relatively untouched by innovative technology, which is a rare opportunity in 2021. The problems we are solving here are wildly complex, which means we aren’t going to reach our lofty goals overnight, but it also makes the process rewarding and keeps us all invested in marching toward our ultimate goal of delivering a differentiated home-closing experience. Since day one, the mission here hasn’t changed. We know what we are trying to accomplish, we know what problems we need to solve, and it really feels like everyone in the organization is brought into that and that we are all in this together.”
On the horizon: “When looking at the future, the thing that most excites me is figuring out how we are going to scale. Up until this point, we’ve proven that we are building something that people want, but we know that our products and processes are not quite in a place that will allow us to scale nationwide overnight. In order to expand into new markets and drive deeper market penetration in the areas where we currently operate, we are going to have to innovate in every area of our business and do something that hasn’t been done before.”
“From the product side, that means building systems that will allow us to standardize and automate the home closing process, and from the operations side, it means rethinking how homes can and should be closed. We are laying the foundation now on both fronts, and are working on some really cutting-edge stuff to figure out how we can use technologies like optical character recognition, machine learning, and robotic process automation to drive greater efficiencies as an organization. We are entering a really interesting phase as a company and I couldn’t be more excited to have a seat on this rocket ship.”
Weedmaps provides back-end services for cannabis retailers and dispensaries and is also a trusted source for educational materials on cannabis and crowdsourced dispensary reviews.
A people-first mentality: “The deciding factor for me when I joined the company was the people I met,” Pisharody said. “Both the leaders and team members I spoke with seemed very passionate about the company’s mission. The leaders came across as being very honest about the current state of the company — what’s working; what’s not working; and while they were keen on seeing overall gains in the efficiency and effectiveness of the people function, they also seemed to genuinely care about the employees and their wellbeing.”
“Additionally, they were committed to making the necessary changes towards building a company that didn’t just talk about diversity, equity and inclusion; they wanted to make sure that the company showed its commitment to DE&I through everyday actions.
“The people team at Weedmaps came across as hard working, empathic and genuinely caring of the workforce they support. They were also eager to learn and help elevate the people function at Weedmaps, and they were all supportive of one another which goes a long way towards ensuring effective teamwork.”
Going public: “There’s a lot about the future of the company and the work ahead of us that I’m excited about. Becoming a public company brings a higher level of scrutiny on all our processes and procedures. We’ve functioned well in a private startup mode, but now all functions have to show that they can scale and play at a different level. This requires us to build on the existing foundation and introduce more structure and discipline into how we get the work done.
“The current team has worked hard to build, grow and establish Weedmaps as a leader in our industry. They did all that work without losing their passion for the company’s mission, and while supporting each other regardless of whatever barriers they faced. While change is necessary, I want to ensure that we don’t lose that passion, innovation or camaraderie, but continue to build on it as we grow and attract new talent who are interested in joining our mission.”
WELL Health is a communication platform that allows patients to text, email or chat directly with their healthcare provider. WELL Health recently launched ChatAssist AI, which combines natural language understanding capabilities with healthcare-specific use cases to enable conversational AI.
Accepting the role: “To be honest, joining a startup was a little nerve-racking for me,” Mastela said. “My previous experience was with a large, tenured company. But I ultimately decided to join WELL Health because I wanted to try new things and be pushed to pursue growth. Since I have been here, I have had so many opportunities to try new tools, work with different teams and grow with the company — all of which has been really rewarding for me. Since I have joined WELL Health, all of the learning and growth opportunities I was looking for have been fulfilled – I am very happy with my choice!
“My current role is deeply rooted in looking at our product to see if there is a bug, or if it is working as designed. Since I first came into this role six months ago, I have learned so much about how our product works and its functionality. I can now apply my learnings from the different examples and edge cases I have seen to what’s ahead and inform our growth. I work with our teams to provide considerations so that we can preemptively address any potential issues we may face as we think about our expansion. I really enjoy applying the knowledge and insights.”
Endless learning: “My role is very unique. I work across several different teams, including back-end engineering, data, integrations and more. Because of this, I am able to gain insights from different projects across the company and get my feet wet with the work of so many different teams. As WELL Health continues to grow into new markets and territories, I am able to bring a unique perspective (which spans different disciplines) to the table to inform our growth and direction.
“I enjoy working with so many different functions within our company. It’s helped me gain a deep understanding of our product, quickly, and bridge the work of the QA Team with data insights. The knowledge I have gained since joining WELL Health has helped me in my current role and I know it will continue to serve me well throughout my career.”
