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

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 17, 2010

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. Zorik Gordon is tearing it up at ReachLocal. As a result many funds are OK with big bets. Get over it.

Company

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