The Irvine Company , which operates a huge list of shopping centers in Orange County and elsewhere, including Fashion Island and the Irvine Spectrum, is in the midst of a flap over license plate data sharing. The report claims that The Irvine Company started using driver license scanning at a number of its locations, using technology developed and operated by the company Vigilant Solutions--which is a contractor providing driver license information to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. MORE

Last year saw the city reap windfall exits from the acquisition of companies like Dollar Shave Club, and has a number of promising e-commerce companies… Read More. MORE

Did you miss out on your limited time chance at the flamethrower Elon Musk sold through his tunneling company, Boring Company? Well, don't despair, as you could be the proud owner of life size, LEGO-like blocks--made from tunneling rock escavated by the Boring Company's tunnelers--which can be used to create structures and buildings. Musk quipped that the company will sell those blocks as kits, with the first based on "ancient Egypt -- pyramids, Sphinx, temple of Horus, etc". MORE

What I didn''t discuss was how you should go about selecting the right company. I just got an email asking about exactly this: I''m with a new company that needs some software built, but doesn''t need (or have the resources for) a large staff of software developers. MORE

Los Angeles-based The Honest Company , the online, family products retailer led by serial entrepreneur Brian Lee, and which was co-founded by Jessica Alba, has raised $70M in a funding round, according to the company Tuesday. The funding brings the company''s total raised to $122M. MORE

Irvine-based Zadara Storage , which provides enterprise storage-as-a-service to customers via a hardware product combined with cloud-based storage, has scored media company The Impress Group. Zadara said it will support a VMware environment for The Impress Group, replacing aging storage arrays with its Zadara VPSA Storage Array. The financial impact of the win was not announced. MORE

has acquired a clothing company, Cottonseed Clothing Company , the firm announced today. Cottonseed Clothing Company is a provider of t-shirt and apparel for kids. Wittlebee said that Cottonseed was one the first vendors to supply clothing to the company. The firm also said that Cottonseed Clothing CEO Erin Gutierrez will continue to be involved in the manufacturing process for the company. clothes acquisition merger ecommerce science company clothing wittlebe MORE

announced Tuesday that e-sports company aXiomatic was one of 11 companies chosen to participate in the 2017 Disney Accelerator program Walt Disney Co. MORE

Los Angeles-based Honest Company , the online provider of eco-friendly baby, personal care, and other household goods led by Brian Lee and co-founded by Jessica Alba, has quietly let go of 80 employees --or nearly 14% of the company--in what the company has billed as a "growth positioning". honest company layoff jobs employment jessica alba baby personal care products ecommerce MORE

San Diego-based driving safety and monitoring systems provider SmartDrive Systems announced this morning that it has signed up Superior Paving, a large asphalt paving company on the East Coast, as a new customer. smartdrive paving company driver safety fleet auto automotive transportation MORE

Socaltech reports that Santa Barbara-based ShipHawk , the online developer of technology for helping connect users with shipping companies, has raised $5M in a funding round, the company said this morning. DN Capital’s Steve Schlenker also joins the company’s board. MORE

Venice, California-based Amplify LA , the startup investor which got its start as one of LA's first startup accelerators, said this week that it has added two new companies-- Kulagy and Tapcart --as part of its portfolio of companies. Amplify--which now focuses on pre-seed investments, generally as the first check into a company--has quietly become one of the more active investors in making investments in very early local startups. MORE

Poway-based Cohu said late Tuesday that it has agreed to acquire Kita Manufacturing Co LTD , a Japanese companies that develops products used in electronics manufacturing. The company said Kita had current year sales of estimated $17M. cohu spring probe company kita manufacturing japan electronics merger acquisition MORE

Los Angeles-based The Virtual Reality Company , the startup which is developing a virtual reality version of The Martian , has raised $23M in a funding round, according to the company. According to The Virtual Reality Company, the new funding will go towards developing more, original virtual reality content. stromberg robert primus movie hollywood content capital venture martian company reality virtual MORE

For Elon Musk , the technology mogul behind SpaceX and Tesla Motors, you post a video of the car elevator you built in Hawthorne, for The Boring Company and it's efforts to whisk cars, people, and stuff around via a network of underground tunnels in Los Angeles. elon musk boring company elevator transportation spacexIf you're most anyone on Instagram, you might post a picture of puppies, a sunset, your dinner, or a selfie. MORE

Los Angeles-based j2 Global , which has made an art out of buying small companies and incorporating them into a large portfolio of acquired companies, has acquired two more companies, saying this morning that it completed two more acquisitions in Q2. MORE

Los Angeles-based e-commerce provider Honest Company , which sells organic baby and beauty products, is looking to replace CEO Brian Lee with a veteran of the consumer packaged goods (CPG) market, according to a report. Recode, citing insiders at The Honest Company, says board members have been talking to executives from consumer packaged goods companies to take a role at the company. honest company employment consumer product goods MORE

Techstars Music , one of the startup accelerator programs run by Techstars in Los Angeles, said this week that it has added three new companies to its effort, bringing its total class to nine. According to Techstars Music, it added Concord Music , RecoChoku , and Royalty Exchange to Techstars Music 2018. MORE

Los Angeles-based TS2 Holdings , a strategic business development firm focused on the technology industry, said on Friday morning that it has acquired three companies, including Neohire South , RockIT Recruiting , and Hero.jobs. Neohire South is a recruiting company with offices in Santa Monica and Tarzana, RockIT Recruiting is a tech recruiting company based in San Francisco, and Hero.jobs is a recuiting software company based in Santa Monica. MORE

Los Angeles-based Boring Company has received a permit to start digging in a parking lot in Washington, DC, as the company eyes building a tunnel which would connect New York and Washington, DC, with a Hyperloop tunnel. The company--which says it has received state approval from Maryland to dig a 10.1 The Boring Company also has been digging a tunnel in Los Angeles, in the SpaceX parking lot, but also has yet to get permission to extend that line off its own property. MORE

The company, which allows Uber and Lyft drivers to receive complimentary boxes stocked with retail items, has already bought a warehouse in Ontario, Calif Cargo Services Inc., a mobile marketplace headquartered in New York City, announced June 14 that it is expanding to Los Angeles. MORE

We've identified ten of the more technically interesting companies working on software in Southern California, using our unscientific, unproven, and undoubtedly biased informal polling. The company handles all the infrastructure required for text messaging, voice. MORE

Chicago has selected Los Angeles-based Boring Company , the tunnel-transportation-hat-and-flamethrower company run by tech mogul Elon Musk, for a $1 billion transportation system. According to Emanuel will be fully funded by Boring Company, with "no taxpayer subsidies". boring company chicago transportation system MORE

Watch out, Los Angeles--the first 1,000 "flamethrowers" being sold by Elon Musk's company, The Boring Company , were distributed on Saturday. The flamethrowers--conceived of by Musk partially as a joke in January --are the second off-the-cuff product sold by The Boring Company, which is developing tunnel boring technology for digging underground transportation tunnels across cities. The Boring Company previously sold thousands of hats with the company's logo. MORE

With all the hand wringing in the tech industry over gender balance and equity, here's one company that apparently has no issue: LA-based Evite , the online invitations service. Evite's gender balance is in stark contrast to such companies as Apple (68% male, 32% female employees and 72% male, 28% male leadership); Uber (63.9% The company is led by CEO Victor Cho. evite gender balance executives diversity report online technology company tech MORE

Santa Monica-based The Honest Company , which provides baby care, personal care, home care, and other healthy lifestyle products, said this morning that it has raised $100M in a Series D funding round. The company has now raised around $228M in funding. MORE

Los Angeles-based The Honest Company , the natural home products brand, said late Thursday that it has closed on a Series E financing round. The round was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company, along with others. per share, a significant decrease from the company's prior valuation of $45.75. fidelity capital venture ecommerce retail baby products home natural thehonestcompany company honest MORE

The Series C round from late stage and growth capital investment firm, The Riverside Company , caps a busy first quarter for the massage service. The former CFO of MarketShare, Heyrick has helped the company expand to over 11,000 massage therapists in its network. MORE

Lake Forest-based Netwatch said today that it has launched a new company, comprised of four visual monitoring companies in the video security area. The new company is backed by private equity funding from The Riverside Company. According to Netwatch, the new company is made up of Netwatch (Ireland), NMC (United States), CalAtlantic (United States) and Onwatch Multifire (United Kingdom). MORE

Application performance can be directly mapped to hosting dollars, and for a start-up company in its infancy, hosting costs can be a pain point. About What we do Portfolio People Blog Contact. You are viewing a single entry. Please also check out the most recent entries. March 28, 2013. MORE

Keeping the focus squarely on tools for artists and designers the company talked up its tools like Zync Render, which Google acquired back in 2014 , and Anvato, a video streaming and monetization platform it acquired in 2016. MORE

Los Angeles-based The Honest Company , the online natural baby, personal care, and beauty products provider, said Wednesday that it has raised $200M in a strategic minority investment, which came from private equity investor L Catterton. According to The Honest Company, the new funding will go towards its growth strategy, and will go both towards "innovation initiatives" as well as operational capabilities to boost its supply chain and global reach. MORE

Is another, Los Angeles consumer startup-- The Honest Company --about to be acquired by Unilever ? An unconfirmed report Thursday afternoon, from TechCrunch, says that Unilever is in early talks to acquire the company, founded by Jessica Alba and SoCal serial entrepreneur Brian Lee. The Honest Company has been hinting that it has been working on a possible IPO filing over the last year or so. honestco honest company jessica alba unilever merger acquisition rumor exit MORE

Los Angeles-based j2 Global , the widely diversified provider of Internet services and online media, has acquired two more companies, the company said today. j2 Global said it acquired ThreatTrack (VIPRE Security), a provider of security-focused cloud services, and certain assets of Lifescript , a provider of digial media in the health area. Financial details of those acquisition were not announced. j2 Global said it does not expect those acquisitions to be material to its business. MORE

Los Angeles-based OpenX has acquired Mezzobit and PubNation , two companies in the programmatic advertising space, the company said on Monday. Financial details of those acquisition were not announced by the company. According to OpenX, it plans to integrate Mezzobit and PubNation's tools into its platform. MORE

Los Angeles The Virtual Reality Company said this morning that it has released a new, animated virtual reality (VR) series, called Raising a Rukus. The company said it is the first to debut a series of the kind specifically for families. The Virtual Reality Company (VRC) previously had released the virtual reality series, The Martian VR for Twentieth Century Fox. virtual reality company hollywood content series raising rukus movie MORE