Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 30, 2016

conversation literally every week with startups. You will build out features or expend to platforms — often before you have enough market feedback to warrant it. Because investors need to imagine making a minimum of 10x their invested capital and early-stage investors are shooting for even higher multiples.

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TechCrunch LA

AUGUST 5, 2022

From Los Angeles to Silicon Valley , a trend emerged among social media influencers and startup founders alike: move into a mansion with 10 or so collaborators, work day and night together to build fame and wealth, and hope that your new roommates do their dishes. Image Credits: Robiiiworld (Brandy Merriweather via BStarPR).

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

” I hear it when I visit LPs (the people who invest in VCs) all across the country, “Yeah, I haven’t been out there for a few years but I keep hearing that something is going on there.” Given how efficient markets are when a large market like LA starts to blossom it attracts capital pretty quickly.

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Entrepreneur Snapchat Startup Google 376

Tech Zulu Event

JULY 16, 2013

Today’s startup innovators come from about six hours south of Silicon Valley. Previously known as GRP Partners, Upfront Ventures has focused on early stage investments since 1996. Fun Fact: One of the most prominent figures from their firm, Mark Suster t, runs a blog startups follow religiously. That’s so yesterday.

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TechCrunch LA

JANUARY 14, 2019

Meanwhile, new venture-backed companies like the superstealthy Shadows, SuperPlastic and Toonstar are all developing virtual characters that will launch via social media channels like Snap and Instagram, or on their own platforms. ” Los Angeles-based Brud is by far the most established of this new breed in the U.S.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2014

A few years ago I started calling the local tech ecosystem down here #LATech. In fact, many people know I grew up in NorCal and still have a 650 area code on my mobile phone. I’m super proud of the work produced by Gravity , a local #LATech company I invested in who was recently sold to AOL for $90 million. Maker Studios.

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socalTECH

JUNE 8, 2020

Our interview today is with Scott Grimes , the CEO of Los Angeles-based Stackin' , which operates a text-based, financial messaging platform. How did the company start? Scott Grimes: Ultimately, we are a text messaging platform build on top of Twilio. Stackin recentlyraised $12.6M What is Stackin'? This is my second venture.

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socalTECH

DECEMBER 22, 2016

Today, we have Cody Simms , Executive Director of Techstars (www.techstars.org), which has been very active this year in the startup accelerator and mentoring area. Cody Simms: Locally in LA the Snapchat IPO will have a huge impact on our local startup ecosystem. What was the biggest news from you or your firm this year?

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Southern California Snapchat Yahoo Social Media 100

socalTECH

MARCH 11, 2014

Venice-based Zefr (www.zefr.com) got its start in the content world--licensing movie clips and posting them online--but soon, figured out there was a whole different opportunity in developing software tools to understand exactly what was happening on YouTube. Thanks for the time today. Why the rebranding?

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Hollywood Help Media Content 159

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 10, 2019

Image via Pixabay After a frustrating meeting with a small business client recently who didn’t “have time” for social media, I was surprised to find evidence on the Internet that up to one quarter of small business owners are still hesitant to invest time, money, and effort into a social media strategy.

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socalTECH

AUGUST 17, 2020

We have a couple of thousand retailers and a product catalog of 80 million products, and every day, people are posting their photos and videos to Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter. The second part of our app is Know It, which is a video on demand platform. Retailers will pay them for those recommendations.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

Today Upfront Ventures is announcing that we’ve backed Rebecca Kantar ’s startup Imbellus , a company designed to assess human potential and ultimately change the way we teach children. We led a $4 million investment along with Thrive Capital, GLG and Sound Ventures. How does one come up with the right idea to start a company?

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LATechDigest

MAY 13, 2016

Up to seven companies will be selected for this year’s program, which launches right after Labor Day, and wraps in the middle of November. Trakfire : a platform that enables its community to curate the best music from emerging artists, the third company founded founded by 19 year old USC Iovine Young Academy sophomore Arjun Mehta.

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Mentor Venture Capital Draper USC 75

Tech Zulu Event

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

And I’ll tell you why, starting with where you started and why you succeeded. Launched in July of 2006, Twitter was a platform that experienced consistent and steady growth for many years. They hit the coveted one million user milestone and within two years a billion tweets had been sent on the platform.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2017

He was running to be the 42nd mayor of Los Angeles and he outlined his vision to “open up the city government to technology and innovation” if he were elected. The “Snapchat effect” as I like to call it is that many engineers now want to stay and many more want to move here.

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Riot Games Los Angeles Technical Review Venture Capital 191

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2015

Many people are too cautious in sales processes and as a result when they present their solutions they end up sounding milquetoast and undifferentiated from anybody else in the market. We knew that all buyers would be concerned about security, privacy, back-ups, data protection and so forth. Why Buy Anything ? Why Buy Me? Why Buy Now?

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 12, 2016

Why Invest? And while my relationship with Chuck was critical to my investment, so too was the leadership of Trevor Templar , the Chief Revenue Officer. In all my time investing I have never seen such a senior revenue officer join a company at this stage. Why Invest? Think about Snapchat.

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Software Mobile Artificial Inteligence Oracle 105

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2016

The company that I invested in – Maker Studios – became the largest and covered video games, music, comedy, women’s life style, mom’s, animation and the like. I wrote about my investment 18 months ago when we led a $10 million round in Mitu Network , the largest Latino online video company.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2017

It conjures up a range of emotions anytime I’ve privately expressed my opinion to thought leaders in our industry that I believe it is one of the most innovative companies in digital media. In fact, the platforms weren’t always so quick to crack down as many of them benefitted financially. Wasn’t Jonah worried about “platform risks?”

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