August, 2018

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With $40 million for AuditBoard’s risk and compliance toolkit, LA’s enterprise startups notch another win

TechCrunch LA

Daniel Kim and Jay Lee, the two founders of AuditBoard , a Los Angeles-based provider of a risk and compliance software service for large businesses, grew up middle school friends in Cerritos, Calif. It was from their hometown Los Angeles exurb, that Kim and Lee first began plotting how they would turn their experience working for PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young (respectively) into the software business that just managed to rake in $40 million in financing led by one of venture capi

Startup 155
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Amazon to Team With L.A. Community Colleges for Cloud Computing Certificate Program

L.A. Business Journal

Amazon.com Inc.’s Amazon Web Services announced Aug. 9 that it will collaborate with the California Cloud Workforce Project (CA Cloud) and 19 community colleges in Los Angeles County to offer a regional cloud computing certificate. To date, this is the first program of its kind created by Amazon and local colleges.

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Silicon Beach Report Aug. 9: TaskUs Lands $250 Million

L.A. Business Journal

TaskUs worth $500 million following latest funding round; Stamps.com stocks fall after Post Office comment; Heineken passes on Snapchat in favor of other social media outlets.

Snapchat 176
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Can you defend your pricing niche against your competition?

Berkonomics

This week, we continue our series on marketing and positioning. There can be nothing more important in your business planning that selecting the proper pricing niche, making your story clear using that niche, and the defending your position against the competition. So, here comes the lesson and your challenge…. The five major niches. There are five major classes or niches a company should examine and make its own in calculating positioning in the marketplace.

Pricing 226
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Can You Ask for Office Rent Relief? How to Manage Your Lease During COVID-19

Office leases are one of companies’ largest expenses, and if your whole team is working from home with no clear end in sight, you may be wondering what to do about your lease.

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j2 Global Eyes $1.2 Billion To $1.25 Billion In Revenues In 2018

socalTECH

Los Angeles-based j2 Global said on Thursday that it continues to estimate revenues of between $1.20 billion and $1.25 billion for its fiscal 2018, as it continues to grow its stable of businesses. The company--which owns such brands as IGN, Mashable, Humble Bundle, Speedtest, PCMag, Offers.com, Everyday Health and What To Expect, plus eFax, eVoice, Campaigner, Vipre, KeepItSafe and Livedrive--reported a 5.4 percent increase in its revenues between Q2 of 2017 and Q2 of 2018 in its quarterly resu

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Thinking Like a VC

SoCal Tech Calendar

Wednesday, September 5, 2018 -- Thinking Like a VC. Cal Lutheran Center for Entrepreneurship. Featuring: Rob Vickery, Partner and Co-Founder: Stage Venture Partners. Rob Vickery, Co-Founder of Stage Venture Partners, which is one of LA's leading enterprise software venture capital fund, will be exploring the core principles of venture capital and core due-diligence techniques that are adopted in this area of finance.

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10 Venture Realities Will Position Your Business Plan

Startup Professionals Musings

If you are one of the new age of entrepreneurs who hates the thought of doing a business plan as a first step in starting your new venture you will love this message. More and more professionals agree that a better strategy is to explore and fine tune your assumptions before declaring a specific plan with financial projections based only on your dream and passion.

Startup 94
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Anonymous Social Media App Nets $550,000

L.A. Business Journal

Santa Monica-based Trill Project, founded by four high-schoolers who want to make social media safer, received on Aug. 15 a total $550,000 in a seed round led by Founders Bootcamp. Founders Bootcamp is a venture studio focused solely on high school entrepreneurs and run out of the UCLA Anderson School of Management’s Cross-Campus space.

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What two words are most valuable for your business planning?

Berkonomics

One of the most valuable tools in an executive’s arsenal is the use of the question chain in planning meetings or to analyze scenarios that might result from an action. The powerful words are “What if…” followed by an ever-deeper question that follows the possible results of an action, or a decision based upon the last “What if” question. The beauty of the method.

.Net 120
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AeroVironment MacCready Works Donates Drone To West Point

socalTECH

Simi Valley-based unmanned aerial vehicle maker Aerovironment says it has donated one of its drone systems--its Quantix robotic drone--to the West Point Military Academy. According to AeroVironment its MacReady Works unit donated the system to support West Point's robotics research center. AeroVironment said that the drone will be used by West Point's Center for Innovation and Engineering and Geography and Environmental Engineering Department.

Research 113
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Market Research: The Fuel For Marketing Strategies

SoCal Tech Calendar

Wednesday, August 22, 2018 -- Market Research: The Fuel For Marketing Strategies. American Marketing Association (AMA). We dive into the crucial process of gathering and analyzing information about markets, industries, and products in their competitive spaces. As a result, market research is a key method for providing data and learnings that fuel marketing strategies.

Research 100
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UberAIR to take flight with help from UT Austin and U.S. Army Research Labs

TechCrunch LA

After three months of discussions, Uber Elevate has selected The University of Texas at Austin as its partner alongside the U.S. Army Research Laboratory to develop new rotor technology for vehicles that the company will use in its uberAIR flying taxi network. The news is the latest step in Uber’s plans to get demonstration flights off the ground in the megalopolises of Dallas Ft.

Research 147
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Wireless Internet Firms Take On Big Telecoms in Cities and Suburbs

Xconomy

If you’re a city dweller, and unhappy with the big company that provides your Internet connection, chances are good there’s a scrappy little outfit that thinks it can do better for you. Metropolitan areas have become target territories for the wireless Internet service providers, or WISPs, that for a long time have been the only options for rural residents whose neighborhoods aren’t reached by giant telecom companies such as Comcast and AT&T.

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Science Inc. Adds Cladwell

L.A. Business Journal

Santa Monica-headquartered startup incubator Science Inc. disclosed Aug. 30 it added Cincinnati, Ohio-based personalized closet management app Cladwell to its growing portfolio of startups.

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Catch up to your market or be lost!

Berkonomics

Markets and competitors change. Are you being left behind? Over the years, I have often heard the complaint from CEO friends that they have become so swamped by the demands of their growing businesses that they feel themselves further and further from the center of their industry, no longer at the forefront of information and competitive development.

Marketing 120
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Cargomatic Collects $35M

socalTECH

Long Beach-based Cargomatic , which develops technology to connect shippers and carriers, said this week that it has raised $35M in a Series B funding round. The funding was led by Warburg Pincus, and also included Canaan, Genesee & Wyoming, Xplorer Capital and Muse Family Enterprises. According to Cargomatic, the new funding will go towards geographic expansion efforts and hiring key employees.

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Softec Techbrew. BlockChain and Crypto Currency

SoCal Tech Calendar

Monday, August 20, 2018 -- Softec Techbrew. BlockChain and Crypto Currency. Marvin Byrd is a 7 year veteran of the cyber security industry who has specialized in crypto algorithm implementations. Marvin has worked with the PCI (Payment Card Industry) alliance looking at the security of credit card devices devices and side channel attacks for breaking crypto keys.

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Rapper Azealia Banks’ claims to have the inside track on Elon Musk’s Tesla take-private drama

TechCrunch LA

If Azealia Banks’ Instagram account is to be believed , Elon Musk’s tweets about Tesla’s take-private deal can be chalked up to some good ole acid and a whole lot of post-tweet frantic scrambling. Over a series of Instagram stories from the weekend, Banks (whose account should be taken with an entire salt shaker — more on that later) reported from the belly of the beast (which in this case is one of Elon Musk’s Los Angeles homes).

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Patients Have “Fingers Crossed” As Alnylam Awaits Historic FDA Decision

Xconomy

By next Friday, the FDA could for the first time approve a medicine that uses a biological trick that was only discovered two decades ago: RNA interference , which silences a gene before it can make a harmful protein. That medicine is patisiran (Onpattro), from Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY ). An approval wouldn’t just be a scientific milestone.

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Blizzard’s Overwatch League Adds Two New Teams

L.A. Business Journal

Santa Monica-headquartered Activision Blizzard Inc.’s Blizzard Entertainment announced Aug. 2 that it added two new teams to its global e-sports competition, the Overwatch League.

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Have you experienced your “Every Three-Million Dollar Crisis?”

Berkonomics

Here is a phenomenon I discovered over time when dealing with many small start-ups in their early revenue period. A very predictable series of rotating crises seemed to befall most every one of these young companies. These became so predictable that I could accurately label them as occurring about every $3 million in gross profit (or revenue for service companies).

Startup 120
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NTS Shifts Operations To Anaheim

socalTECH

National Technical Systems (NTS), a provider of qualification testing, inspection, and certification services to the electronics and other markets, has shifted its corporate operations to Anaheim, from three offices in Calabasas, Fullerton, and Brea. According to NTS, it has opened a new "Corporate Center" in Anaheim, which will house its finance, accounting, marketing, procurement, human resources, contract administration, and information technology operations.

Calabasas 113
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South Bay Monday Club

SoCal Tech Calendar

Monday, August 20, 2018 -- South Bay Monday Club. Monday Club helps Southern California companies improve their business plan presentations and meet experts who can help them achieve their objectives. Email fredvmc@earthlink.net for more information.

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Survios president and co-founder Nathan Burba is joining us at TechCrunch Sessions: AR/VR

TechCrunch LA

There’s nothing inherently social about VR. In fact, putting on a headset and entering your own world can be a fairly isolating experience. But Survios’ latest offering is looking to turn that truism on its head. Electronauts is designed to deliver a social experience, in which players can create music for their surroundings. The new title is immersive, but designed to be played in a social setting, like a party.

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8 Steps To Starting A New Venture With Limited Funds

Startup Professionals Musings

Now is the time to be an entrepreneur and create a business from your passion. The cost of rolling out a business has never been lower – it only takes a few hundred dollars to incorporate a Limited Liability Corp (LLC) online, create your own website, use social media to get attention, and you are in business. In the early Internet days, it would cost a million dollars to get this far.

Funding 73
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Silicon Beach Report Aug. 16: Tech Investor Sues AT&T Claiming ‘SIM Swap’ Scam

L.A. Business Journal

Cryptocurrency investor Michael Terpin sues AT&T over “SIM swap” scam; Cargomatic raises $35M in series B round; Boeing acquires El Segundo-based satellite and flight-plan maker.

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Rivaling Google, Web-Mining Diffbot Opens Its Knowledge Graph to All

Xconomy

Diffbot , a tech startup that continuously scours the Web to assemble a “knowledge graph” of billions of facts in context, announced today that it’s opening up the searchable resource to the public—with starter rates as low as a cable TV bill. Mountain View, CA-based Diffbot gleans unstructured data scattered across websites, ads, blog posts, videos, and other public online assets to create a knowledge repository that can be mined by companies for their specific purposes.

Web 75
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Walmart Labs Plans Major San Diego Area Expansion

socalTECH

Walmart Labs , the technology arm of retail giant Walmart , is planning a major expansion in San Diego--hoping to tap into the area's deep depth of technology talent. According to Walmart, it is planning to triple its headcount in San Diego, as it expands into a new office which is triple the size of its existing operation in the city. According to Walmart Labs, it plans to triple its San Diego headcount to over 180, and expand into a new building which is around 30,000 square feet.

San Diego 113
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Exit Options in Today's Environment

SoCal Tech Calendar

Thursday, August 16, 2018 -- Global LAVA: "Exit Options in Today's Environment" Whether you are just starting a business or exploring exit options, this Global LAVA event is designed to educate entrepreneurs, investors, and service providers about the current market dynamics and opportunities to position a company for a successful exit. Come learn about the corporate MandA process, discover what financial sponsors are looking for, and understand whether an IPO is still an option.

LAVA 100
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Startup Spotlight: Frendli

Startup San Diego

Frendli is a mobile app that helps people meet new friends by connecting them with people who share their interests, activities, tastes, aspirations, location and lifestyle. We match people together in small groups of two to four and help them break the ice and start a conversation in the app. Next we incentivize them to go offline and build friendships face to face in the real world by offering deals and discounts on experiences they share an interest in.

Startup 61
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How To Find Money Based On Your New Venture Progress

Startup Professionals Musings

Time is too precious to waste trying to close a deal with the wrong investors at the wrong time. Luckily, not all investors are looking for the same thing, so it pays to know what type of investors are most interested in what your startup brings to the table. The key is understanding how potential investors see you, and especially how they view the maturity stage of your startup.

Startup 73
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Bird Introduces City Management Platform, New Hires

L.A. Business Journal

Santa Monica e-scooter operator Bird Rides Inc. announced its new platform to help cities manage the influx of their scooters. Called GovTech, the platform was announced Aug. 29, the day before Santa Monica announce the companies chosen to participate in its city-wide shared mobility pilot program. Bird was among the four companies chosen for the program.

Platform 113
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Ford’s Autonomic Pairs With Alibaba Cloud On Mobility Hub for China

Xconomy

Ford—one of the automakers competing in China’s huge car market—is now making a bid to provide China’s leading software infrastructure hub dedicated to streamlining transportation by connecting cars and riders with mobility services. Ford’s recently acquired unit Autonomic , which co-created the automaker’s Transportation Mobility Cloud (TMC), inked a deal Tuesday to partner with Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing division of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.

Mobile 75
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Cylance Aims To Secure Political Campaigns

socalTECH

Irvine-based cybersecurity software developer Cylance said today that it is looking to secure all of 2018's U.S. political campaigns, by offering up its software at no cost to political campaigns and candidates. Cylance cited an "unprecedented number of threats" to the democratic process. Cylance CEO Stuart McClure said that "It is clear that malicious actors are ramping up their activity in advance of the midterms, " continuing "we know malevolent hackers will exploit any vulnerability at any l

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Pitch Genius Workshop

SoCal Tech Calendar

Saturday, August 11, 2018 -- Pitch Genius Workshop. The purpose of this workshop is to educate idea-to-early stage startups about investors, fundraising, and how to make a successful pitch. We're going deep into the investors' mind to understand how they analyze startups for investment. Through a slide-by-slide explanation of the investor deck, you will learn what turns investors on, what turns them off, and what investors absolutely abhor when founders are pitching them.

Slides 100
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You’re Doing It Wrong: Stop Making a Mess Out of Your App’s Time Zones With UTC

Inverted Software

At Inverted Software we craft dozens of apps and APIs per year for our customers. One of the many challenges every client / server system face is the synchronization of time. Apps might be using multiple micro services and databases in different clouds and mobile apps might be running on different devices anywhere in the world. How can all those systems coordinate times and subsequently show the correct time to the user regardless of the time zone they currently reside in?