socalTECH

AUGUST 6, 2012

Santa Monica-based Demand Media (www.demandmedia.com) has seen its share of ups and downs as one of the highest visibility technology and media companies to come out of Southern California's technology ecosystem in recent years. What is Demand Media doing nowadays? Can you explain that process?

Demand 240

Demand Media eHow Content 240

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

As I’ve written about recently, at Upfront Ventures we started talking a couple of years ago about wanting to fund stuff with more meaning. I think this is a combination of being realists as venture capitalists that outsized returns in our funds must come from taking on bigger, more impactful projects that can move markets.

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

TechCrunch LA

APRIL 18, 2022

Elder told TechCrunch that the company raised $7 million in a seed round, touting it as “one of the highest seed-stage valuations in its category” — he declined to divulge the number — to give the company nearly $10 million in total funding to date. This includes a $2 million pre-seed round from 2021.

Software Review 187

Software Review Metrics Startup Technical Review 187

Tech.Co

JULY 13, 2023

Initially pinned as a generative AI startup for Twitter when it first hit the headlines back in April, the xAI website seems to suggest that the new startup will remain separate from the social media platform, as well as Musk's collection of other technology companies.

Artificial Inteligence 115

Artificial Inteligence ChatGPT Generative AI Technical Review 115

Tech.Co

DECEMBER 29, 2023

As investors continue pouring funding into artificial intelligence and consumer habits shift, many AI and subscription model startups have been enjoying rapid growth. Verifying Looking for regular tech news straight to your inbox? Yet, while many early-stage startups crumbled under the pressure, diamonds also emerged.

Startup 210

Startup Generative AI Newsletter Tool 210

TechCrunch LA

APRIL 12, 2018

seems like an unlikely place to grow one of the next billion-dollar startups in the booming Los Angeles tech ecosystem. By and large, these workers have not benefitted much from recent technology improvements available to office-based workers—think new email and workplace-collaboration technologies, or advanced sales and HR systems.

Glendale 271

Glendale Los Angeles Startup Technical Review 271

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 31, 2021

The sweeping infrastructure package put forward today by President Joe Biden comes with a price tag of roughly $2 trillion (and hefty tax hikes) but gives startups and the broader tech industry about $1 trillion worth of reasons to support it. Fables of the reconstruction.

Startup 229

Startup Technical Review Invest Research 229

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 21, 2009

On the third Wednesday of every month I co-chair a meeting called the SoCal VCA (venture capital alliance), which represents participants from all of the top venture capital firms in Southern California as well as prominent members of the Tech Coast Angels (TCA). We feature a prominent speaker at every event.

Venture Capital 241

Venture Capital Technical Review Southern California Company 241

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 20, 2014

According to a recent Forbes article , UC Santa Barbara''s Technology Management Program offers students a superior startup education over the University of Pennsylvania (home of Wharton), as well Harvard, Northwestern and even its acclaimed southern neighbor, the University of Southern California. Want to be an entrepreneur?

Santa Barbara 258

Santa Barbara Technical Review Startup Venture Capital 258

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

While this reaction to such a valuation is understandable, to anybody who has seen the meteoric rise in consumer demand and actual revenue the valuation is much less surprising and may turn out to be quite conservative. As I like to tell people who ask about Bird, “consumers have literally voted with their feet.” Is Bird really defensible?

Santa Monica 256

Santa Monica Funding Startup Course 256

socalTECH

JANUARY 28, 2019

However, there is already the technology out therefrom San Luis Obispo-based Whitefox Defense (www.whitefoxdefense.com)  to both detect, and neutralize those drones. We spoke with founder and CEO Luke Fox to learn more about the company, and its technology. Explain how your technology works?

Startup 187

Startup Technical Review Technology Competition 187

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

It is also a result of pent-up demand. Consumer spending is 70% of the economy and will continue to be stretched – We can look all we want at tech innovation, VC funding cycles and hot M&A deals, but ultimately growth and therefore investment must be underpinned by revenue. then the world will be fine for fund raising.

Venture Capital 269

Venture Capital Startup Funding Technical Review 269

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 7, 2020

Although his focus is naturally on bigger companies, I contend that his recommended strategies apply equally well to entrepreneurs and startups: Demand a mindset of deep thinking for the long term. In my experience, even in startups, longer-term strategy often gets pushed off the agenda due to current challenges.

Technical Review 124

Technical Review Layoffs Social Media Metrics 124

Xconomy

DECEMBER 18, 2018

The Bristol, UK-based startup, founded in 2016, has now secured a total of more than $300 million in financing from venture capital firms and other investors including Microsoft and the corporate venture arms of BMW and Dell Technologies. Read more » Reprints | Share: UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS.

Technical Review 65

Technical Review Product Venture Capital Software Review 65

socalTECH

APRIL 13, 2021

The NSF determined eight to ten years ago that the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants they were funding to academic teams, to commercialize technology, they were losing, because not many academics had the background to understand how to go out and source customers, and did not know how to run a startup.

Marina Del Rey 150

Marina Del Rey Startup USC Incubator 150

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 19, 2015

The funding came from Cowboy Ventures, Crunchfund, Maynard Web, Snoop Dog, and a number of other angels. Philz opened an outpost in Santa Monica last year, due to the demand of Silicon Valley venture investors and executives who were spending an increasing amount of time in "Silicon Beach".

Santa Monica 100

Santa Monica Southern California Venice Technical Review 100

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2013

“Scope creep” (or feature creep) is an insidious disease that kills more good startups than any other, especially high-tech ones, and yet most founders (who may be the cause) never even see it happening. Define milestones for cost review and sign-off. Change requests must be visibly reviewed by executives frequently.

Technical Review 110

Technical Review Startup Software Review High Tech 110

InfoChachkie

MARCH 18, 2013

In order to extract value beyond your Angel investors' cash, you must first assess three important parameters: (i) the relative strength of their personal brand, (ii) their ability to add operational value, and (iii) the amount of care and feeding they will demand from you. Painfully Diligent Investors.

Angel 217

Angel Technical Review RSS Entrepreneur 217

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2011

It’s not clear that there was big customer demand for some of these products yet entrepreneurs were egged on by VCs to “take the money&# and try and push the market. Over funding often produces bad behavior in early-stage companies. “9 women behavior&# is not restricted to just fund raising.

Development Team Review 374

Development Team Review Technical Review Startup Resource 374

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 28, 2018

There are many things a VC is looking for in reviewing your business plan but beyond things the like the quality of revenue, margins, OPEX and CAPEX there’s a really simple rule I call, “Cash In, Cash Out, Milestones Achieved.” One big mistake I see many founders make is asking for an unrealistic amount of money in the fund raise.

Venture Capital 247

Venture Capital Capital Funding Demand 247

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

And do I fit as a Part-Time CTO , Technology Advisor , CTO Founder , Acting CTO ? Consider what Ryan Waggoner tells us How to Find a Technical Cofounder : When I was doing freelance development, I had about one pitch per week for an equity-only opportunity. Go to tech (or other relevant industry) events. Go to user groups.

CTO Hire 241

CTO Hire CTO Coach Equity Develop 241

socalTECH

AUGUST 18, 2017

Last week, Pasadena-based Ocular Data Systems (www.oculardatasystems.com) announced a funding round from the Pasadena Angels, for its camera-based systems used by law enforcement to capture evidence in drunk or drugged driving cases. For the first time, in a long time, traffic deaths and crashes are rising, due to drunk and drugged driving.

Pasadena Angels 100

Pasadena Angels Pasadena Technical Review Southern California 100

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Prorata rights are one of the most important rights of a private market technology investors and yet are seldom fully understood. These tensions seep out in some angels or seed funds publicly or semi-privately deriding later-stage VCs for their “bad” behavior. As always a balanced perspective is in order.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

socalTECH

MAY 14, 2010

Clearly, 2009 was not a good year, from the perspective of the technology innovation ecosystem. Technology and innovation has historically been the thing that has pulled the economy out of recessions, and I think that is especially true right now. For OCTANe to be successful, we want to see our technology ecosystem grow.

OCTANE 174

OCTANE Orange County Technical Review Southern California 174

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 2, 2017

Anne Fulton: Fuel50 is a career pathing startup, part of the HR technology landscape. We're a disruptor, the third wave in human resources technology. Anne Fulton: I've always been a technology lover, although I'm an organizational psychologist by training. It was really a meeting of the minds with the fund.

Help 100

Help Southern California Startup Technical Review 100

Tech.Co

OCTOBER 27, 2023

Who Owns Anthropic, and Who Funds It? Who Owns Anthropic, and Who Funds it? During Anthropic's first funding round, which took place in early 2021, the company raised an impressive $124 million – which included investment from Skype Co-founder Jaan Tallin. You'll also see how Claude differs from ChatGPT in key areas.

ChatGPT 139

ChatGPT Artificial Inteligence Training Startup 139

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 23, 2013

There is so much written these days about how to attract investors that most entrepreneurs “assume” they need funding, and don’t even consider a plan for “bootstrapping,” or self-financing their startup. Of course, every company needs these, in due time. You need a prototype. You need specialized equipment. Marty Zwilling.

Startup 100

Startup Entrepreneur Technical Review Equity 100

socalTECH

AUGUST 8, 2018

Dave Fink: Postie is a building a technology platform with a mission of making direct mail marketing behave as easily and dynamically as your favorite, programmatic channels. However, there just hasn't been the underlying technology to make it possible to pull all of that together. What is Postie? Both of us are purely digital.

CTO Hire 100

CTO Hire Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Marketing 100

socalTECH

MARCH 4, 2010

It's pretty typical in the life of a startup, where we've proven we have a product people like, and use and demand, and can scale, and we did a pretty effective job of learning about advertising and making revenues off high yielding, CPC advertising. There is a huge demand from people, who have gone there to buy products.

Technical Review 171

Technical Review Rustic Canyon Screening Startup 171

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

There is so much written these days about how to attract investors that most entrepreneurs “assume” they need funding, and don’t even consider a plan for “bootstrapping,” or self-financing their startup. Of course, every company needs these, in due time. You need a prototype. You need specialized equipment. Marty Zwilling.

Technical Review 95

Technical Review Startup Equity Entrepreneur 95

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2013

Every early-stage startup should explore this new funding alternative. Due to the struggling economy as well, traditional individual Angel investors haven’t been able to fill the gap. VCs are finding that they don’t need the “large” funds of $100M to $500M to support a portfolio, if they focus on early-stage startups.

Angel 92

Angel Entrepreneur Venture Capital Startup 92

socalTECH

AUGUST 18, 2009

In the recent surge in interest in the clean technology and energy investment area, we're constantly surprised by the number of startups in the area focused on some aspect of the industry. Let's start on the technology side--can you tell us about the technology, and its origins? It's very simple, from the technical perspective.

UCLA 159

UCLA Technical Review El Monte Startup 159

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

To grow faster businesses need resources in today’s financial period to fund growth that may not come for 6 months to a year. You have to understand whether they’re likely to yield revenue growth in the near term OR whether you have access to cheap enough capital to fund your losses until your investments pay off.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

socalTECH

OCTOBER 29, 2015

in a funding round. The easiest way to look at it, from the tech perspective, is that we are very similar to LendingClub. Brett and I sat down, and said, how can we take a tech approach and create a positive impact on the existing real estate industry, particularly in the mortgage and real estate finance industry.

Southern California 100

Southern California Google Technical Review Manhattan Beach 100

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

There is so much written these days about how to attract investors that most entrepreneurs “assume” they need funding, and don’t even consider a plan for “bootstrapping,” or self-financing their startup. Of course, every company needs these, in due time. You need a prototype. You need specialized equipment. Marty Zwilling.

Entrepreneur 102

Entrepreneur Technical Review Startup Equity 102

socalTECH

MARCH 19, 2019

We started focusing on that, and at the time we were doing only phone verification, but then we started adding in data analytics because of customer demand, we added in some other things like straight messaging rather than pin codes. So you were able to fund your growth just from customer? What were you doing before?

Marina Del Rey 113

Marina Del Rey Software Review Startup Incubator 113

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

2 preamble issues having read the comments on TC today: 1: I know that the prices of startup companies is much great in Silicon Valley than in smaller towns / less tech focused areas in the US and the US prices higher than many foreign markets. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. I acknowledged this in the article.

Startup 336

Startup Pricing Technical Review Marketing 336