socalTECH

JULY 21, 2011

Hollywood-based ZestCash , a startup offering up short-term, consumer loans online, has scored $19M in funding today, including $11M in a Series A equity round plus $8M in venture debt. The firm's founder and CEO is Douglas Merrill , the former CIO and VP of Engineering of Google. READ MORE>>.

GRP Partners 133

GRP Partners CIO Startup Hollywood 133

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 17, 2010

We will never be Silicon Valley in the way that Toronto will never be Hollywood. They not only have gotten bigger but they have an amazing track record of funding the biggest names in the sector: Cisco, Apple, Google, Facebook. LA produced Applied Semantics that created AdSense and was bought by Google. You don’t.

Company 290

Company Companies Technology Startup 290

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2012

The birthplace of sponsored search (Overture), semantic search (Applied Semantics which became Google AdSense), comparison shopping (ShopZilla, PriceGrabber) and many others. ZestCash, founded by Douglas Merrill, former CIO of Google [Hollywood]. An innovator in technology, especially monetization.

Startup 304

Startup Venture Capital Los Angeles Santa Monica 304

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 15, 2011

We were talking about a company, Factual (disclosure my firm is an investor), which was founded by one of LA’s most talented Internet entrepreneurs, Gil Elbaz , who as co-founder of Applied Semantics (purchased by pre-IPO Google for $102 million and now Google AdSense) is responsible for a large portion of the Internet’s monetization.

Venture Capital 313

Venture Capital Southern California Google Startup 313