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Insights: The Challenges (& Opportunities) of Starting a Tech Company in LA

Jason Nazar is CEO and founder of Santa Monica-based document sharing firm DocStoc, and recently put together his thoughts on the challenges, and opportunities, facing startups in Los Angeles. He gave us permission to reprint it in our Insights and Opinions section.


I recently hosted a panel at the Twiistup Conference about LA tech companies. I asked the panelists (David Travers, Brian Norgard, Fouad ElNaggar, & Demian Sellfors) about the specific challenges that we face down here in Los Angeles as opposed to Silicon Valley. I have some pretty specific thoughts on the differences between companies in the two cities, as I wrote about in my previous post A Tale of Two Tech Cities. But I thought I'd take some more time here to expand on what I think are the challenges, and opportunities, of starting a tech company in LA.

Challenge #1 – Tech Companies are Not Typically Started by Technologists.

In the bay area it's quite common for the entrepreneurs starting a company to be developers or technologists who can build the first versions of their products. That's typically not the case in Los Angeles. Here it seems that entrepreneurs are coming out of business school, transitioning from corporate life, or hail from the entertainment industry. Whereas in Silicon Valley, you can have a V.1 of a product up and running in a few months weeks getting thousands of users (More...)


Read Jason's entire post on the The Challenges (& Opportunities) of Starting a Tech Company in LA