Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 10, 2013
'Recently I wrote the first post in a series on board meetings, entitled, “ Why You’re Not Getting the Most out of Your Board ,” which focused on the need to prepare properly, set good objectives and discuss mostly strategic topics. Even if you follow this game plan meticulously your board meeting can be taken off course by well-intentioned board members who lead you down a rate hole.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 13, 2013
'In an interesting indicator of the growing influence of technology companies on Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum Of Art said this week that it has launched a new Art + Technology Initiative , which will give artists grants and lab space to experiment with new technologies. The new venture is being backed by Accenture, DAQRI, and NVIDIA, along with Google and SpaceX.
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InfoChachkie
DECEMBER 9, 2013
'A version of this article previously appeared on The Wall Street Journal. The empirical evidence highlights the lack of women and minority founders in the startup world. A 2012 Dow Jones'' report entitled Women At The Wheel encompassed 15-years of data on venture-backed startups. During the period studied, only "1.3% of privately held companies had a female founder, 6.5% have a female CEO, and 20% had one or more female C-level executives.".
Eric Greenspan
DECEMBER 11, 2013
'We all love great apps. They make our lives easier and more interesting, maybe even a bit more fun. But what apps are the must-haves? Here’s a list of my favorite apps: 1. AnalyticsPro. This app will give you all the data from Google Analytics to track the visitors on your website. I prefer it over the Google interface on my computer. It’s concise, very fast and works in real time. 2.
Advertiser: Aggregage
Office leases are one of companies’ largest expenses, and if your whole team is working from home with no clear end in sight, you may be wondering what to do about your lease.
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 8, 2013
'These days every new entrepreneur understands that an innovative product or service is necessary, but not sufficient, to start a business. You have to build a web presence with marketing content to get visibility above the 51 million other new websites created last year, and attract the customers you need. But most entrepreneurs don’t know where to start.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 9, 2013
'Milton Olin , the former COO of Napster , has died as the result of a bicycle crash early Sunday afternoon involving a police car, according to multiple reports. According to those reports, Olin was struck on Mulholland Highway in Calabasas. Olin served as COO of Napster from 2000 to 2002, and also had previously served at Altschul & Olin LLP, FirstLook.com, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP, Polygram, A&M Records, among other companies.
Southern California Tech Central brings together the best content for technical professionals in Southern California from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 9, 2013
'Most board meetings are “update meetings” where management downloads its status to a group of investors. These outside board members spend most of the board meeting trying to reacquaint themselves with the company’s business and critical issues. This is hardly ideal and some simple changes could help management avoid both issues.
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 10, 2013
'Every entrepreneur can learn from a mentor, no matter how confident or successful they have been to date. Even one of the richest, Bill Gates , still values his friend Warren Buffett as his mentor. Yet these relationships require special efforts on both sides to be productive and satisfying. Mentoring is not as simple as one person giving the other all the right answers.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 10, 2013
'Los Angeles-based online art gallery and e-commerce provider Saatchi Online has tapped one of LA''s technology and business veterans as its new CEO today, tapping Sean Moriarty for the position. Moriarty is an active investor and advisor to many of LA''s startup companies and headed up Ticketmaster Entertainment from 2000 to 2008, including heading up that company''s spinout from IAC/InterActiveCorp and its IPO.
Tech Zulu Event
DECEMBER 11, 2013
'LOS ANGELES, December 10, 2013 – Some big news for local startup Plug.DJ and their user-curated music sharing platform. By partnering with Javelin Venture Partners for their $1.25M seed round, they’ll be looking to support future product developments to grow and provide support for international growth. Plug.dj is a real-time music discovery site which allows individuals to share music and video links within chatroom style communities. “DJ’s” will create their own
Berkonomics
DECEMBER 12, 2013
'Investors love it when entrepreneurs draw little or no money from their startups. It extends the cash available for research and other necessary fixed costs and gives the fragile, young company more “runway” to get to breakeven. But when forecasting the ultimate viability of a business, many times an entrepreneurial founder uses a low, unsustainable salary rate for him or herself in order to show early breakeven.
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 7, 2013
'Even in this age of globalization and virtualization, the geographic area where you choose to live and work can still make or break your startup business. I still have to tell some entrepreneurs that even with the best idea, they have to move to Silicon Valley to find the investors they need, or they need to move to the U.S. get the attention of the market they choose.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 9, 2013
'Los Angeles-based content delivery network operator EdgeCast has been acquired by Verizon , to help bolster Verizon''s Digital Media Services, Verizon said this morning. Financial terms of the deal were not announced, but the deal is reported to be worth around $390M. Verizon said it will integrate EdgeCasts''a capabilities into its offerings, and will use it to further improve its capabilities.
Tech Zulu Event
DECEMBER 9, 2013
'Annual event returns to Skirball Cultural Center this Wednesday night. Digital Family Reunion is exactly what its name implies – a reunion of digital executives young and old who have helped shape Southern California into a leading hub for entrepreneurs. This year’s event returns to its original home at the Skirball Cultural Center on Wednesday, December 11 from 6-10pm.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 13, 2013
'Irvine-based Oculus VR announced last night that it has raised $75M in a funding round, a giant Series B for the maker of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets. The funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, and also included Spark Capital, Matrix Partners and Formation 8. The round comes only 7 months after the company''s $16M, Series A funding.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 12, 2013
'In one of Southern California''s biggest holiday events of the year, over 700 people joined us last night at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles to celebrate the region''s rising stars, the socalTECH 50. We partnered up with the Digital Family Reunion to bring together the technology community for the night, for a night of networking (and more networking), live music, food, drink, and great company.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 13, 2013
'Santa Monica-based voice services, voice API and texting services company CallFire announced today that it has named Ronald Burr as the company ''s CEO. Burr, who has been Chief Revenue Officer of the company since 2012, was the co-founder of NetZero, and has also served at such companies as WebVisible, LRN, Westlake Venture Partners, Layer2 Networks, and Vault Corporation.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 10, 2013
'Los Angeles-based startup FOCUS said today that it has raised pre-seed investment from Launchpad LA, Kima Ventures, and various angels, and launched its first product--a new app which turns the Samsung Galaxy Gear into a personal fitness trainer. The startup was founded by Cavan Canavan and Grant Hughes. According to FOCUS, its fitness app--TRAINR--uses the Samsung Galaxy Gear to provide custom training programs, tracking exercises, repetitions, sets, and rest periods.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 10, 2013
'One of the biggest issues that families have after the loss of a loved one, is the sticky mess of unraveling piles of bills, bank accounts, wills, and whatnot. Los Angeles-based Family Archival Solutions is hoping that its new, online service will help address those issues, by letting users manage both their digital--and physical--documents. The startup said its service lets users store passwords for email services, photo sites, Facebook, Twitter and more; helps users track their physical asset
socalTECH
DECEMBER 11, 2013
'Los Angeles-based Chippmunk said this morning that it has raised $750,000, for the company''s shopping search engine--which helps users with comparison shopping, finding coupons, and with expert shopping recommendations. The startup--led by Brian Nickerson--said the funding came from both Los Angeles and Silicon Valley angels, including Richard Chino (GoTo.com, Smart.com); Dan Murray (Machinima), Derek Draper (Wildfire), Nikhil Srivastava (KKR), Andrew Schwartz, and others.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 9, 2013
'Irvine-based online advertising firm Adaptive Medias is announcing this morning that it has acquired Ember , one of the companies incubated out of the StartEngine startup accelerator in Los Angeles. Financial terms of the buy were not announced. Ember was a developer of real time, programmatic bidding software for the advertising industry, and used machine learning algorithms and contextual and semantic software engines for online advertising bidding.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 13, 2013
'Santa Monica-based Younity , the provider of a personal cloud file service headed by Erik Caso, said Thursday that it has launched a new feature that lets users share files, which automatically expire after a certain amount of time. The company--which describes the feature as "SnapChat for Files"--said its new function lets users share photos, music, videos, and data to friends in their personal cloud, but only for a certain amount of time.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 13, 2013
'Irvine-based Mavenlink , a developer of a software-as-a-service offering for project management and project accounting, has raised $7M in funding. The funding came from Carrick Capital Partners. According to Carrick Capital Partners, it co-founder and managing director, Jim Madden, as well as its CTO, Steve Unterberger, will both join Mavenlink''s board as part of the funding.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 12, 2013
'Santa Monica-based online car buying technology provider TrueCar said this morning that it has raised $30M in a new round of funding, from Vulcan Capital, the venture funding arm of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. TrueCar said the new funds will go towards market expansion, product development, and to build its brand. As part of the funding, Abhishek Agrawal has joined TrueCar''s board of directors.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 13, 2013
'Camarillo-based Interlink Electronics said Thursday that it has named a new, Chief Technology Officer. According to the maker of touch sensors and other electronics, Dr. Albert Lu has become CTO. Current CTO Dr. Jeff Baker has become Chief Scientific Officer at the company. Lu is based in Singapore, and has previously served at the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech).
socalTECH
DECEMBER 12, 2013
'Los Angeles-based Snapchat confirmed it has raised $50M in a Series C funding Wednesday, as the hot, instant photo messaging app developer reportedly turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook and has decided to continue on as an independent company. The funding round came entirely from Coatue Management. Snapchat has now raised $125.0M in funding.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 11, 2013
'Irvine-based cloud-based storage service provider Zadara Storage reports a win this morning in Switzerland, with Swisstopo, the federal mapping agency for the Swiss confederation. Zadara said that Swisstopo is using its Virtual Private Storage Array (VPSA) storage service. Financial impact of the win was not disclosed. Zadara''s products are being used to support NFS storage to Amazon''s EU regional data center in Dublin.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 10, 2013
'Los Angeles-based technology incubator and studio Science said today that it has hired on Matt Monahan as its new Vice President of Social Media Marketing. Monahan was most recently at AlphaBoost, a startup which was building Facebook advertising reporting software. Monahan also co-founded The Comotion Group (acquired by Sharethrough) and was also an advisor to Wildfire (acquired by Google).
socalTECH
DECEMBER 10, 2013
'Santa Monica-based SHIFT , which develops real time, online advertising and marketing tools, announced this morning that it has raised $6M in a Series B funding round. The company said the funding came from DN Capital, and will go towards international expansion in Europe. SHIFT said it has now raised $14M in funding. SHIFT is led by James Borow. SHIFT''s flagship product is the SHIFT Open Marketing Cloud, which it says offers up "best-in-class" marketing apps to marketers, to help them reach c
socalTECH
DECEMBER 10, 2013
'Los Angeles-based StoryBots , the unit of JibJab which develops children''s content and apps, has launched a new set of videos and apps specifically for the holiday season. According to JibJab, the new personalized video app includes The Christmas List and Starring You Christmas Book which inserts your head into a funny Christmas themed video, app.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 12, 2013
'Los Angeles-based online movie information and ticketing site Fandango said Thursday that it is continuing its efforts at creating original content for the service, with the second season launch of its series "Fandango Frontrunners". The series, hosted by Dave Karger, interviews with stars, directors, producers, and others. Fandango also said it has linked up with the USC School of Cinematic Arts on a special sets of episodes filmed at the Eileen Norris Cinema Theatre/ Frank Sinatra Hall, and a
socalTECH
DECEMBER 10, 2013
'Los Angeles-based PaeDae said this morning that it has raised $11.6M in a venture capital funding, in a combination of both equity and debt. The startup said the funding came from Ed Ojdana, 3G Capital, Grind Games, Silicon Valley Bank, as well as other strategic and angel investors. PaeDae said the new funds will go towards the company''s expansion beyond a premium rewards network to an advertising and monetization platform aimed at brands and mobile app developers.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 11, 2013
'Santa Monica-based MomentFeed , which develops mobile marketing software which lets marketers understand correlate the activities of mobile users with the physical locations of those consumers, said this morning that it has raised $5.5M in a Series A funding round. The funding was led by Signia Venture Partners, along with Draper Nexus, DFJ Frontier, Double M Partners, and Daher Capital.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 13, 2013
'Did you miss the Digital Family Reunion and socalTECH 50 celebration earlier this week at the Skirball? You can see some of the action from the evening in our gallery below, courtesy of photographers Chris Barnes and Jonathan Dingman , who covered the event for us (Thanks, guys!). Premier Sponsor: Sponsors: READ MORE>>.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 11, 2013
'Los Angeles-based Plug.dj , an online music and video sharing service, has raised $1.25M in a funding round, to bolster the company''s product. The funding came from Javelin Venture Partners. The firm, which is led by Alex Reinlieb, said it will use the new funds to expand its team, develop its product, launch new services, and improve community support.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 10, 2013
'Culver City-based Indi Molecular , a developer of synthetic replacements for antibodies, announced Tuesday that it has raised $300,000 more in its seed funding, bringing the total raised in the round to $1.8M. The new funding was led by InterWest Partners, and also included several un-named, angel investors. The company said the funding will go towards further developing its technology, which its says can product synthetic peptide molecules that are equivalent or superior to molecular antibodie
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