Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2017

Upfront VI is our latest core fund and is $400 million to invest in early stage entrepreneurs. Upfront’s Base As you probably know we are based in Santa Monica and as my partner Greg Bettinelli coined, we’re #LongLA. Overall we write about $100 million of investment checks every year.

Funding 287

Funding Venture Capital Santa Monica Invest 287

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

Only naive people believe that but for inexperienced entrepreneurs you can be fooled into the narrative by the press who sometimes write stories without the actual data. The reduction in screen size has made the economic model of Internet advertising totally inefficient. PHONE CALLS. Enter phone calls. Not so fast.

Email 339

Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

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

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2010

The VC’s & executives were then asked to make “commitments&# (in writing) to 3-5 of the companies that they felt they could make some sort of contribution to. Walk into any Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in Southern California and you can’t miss their digital screens.

Company 276

Company Companies Startup Southern California 276

Tech Zulu Event

JANUARY 30, 2012

For those who still might be wondering what Spotlight: LA Tech is all about, It’s a screening room for new technology homegrown in our region. We write and create our own content for the game. Everything happens in the browser (no software to download) and the finished product looks amazing on large screens!

CalTech 91

CalTech Company Companies Idealab 91

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2010

Burstly, a Santa Monica based company, provides an open and free ad management platform that helps mobile application developers better monetize their inventory. As I naturally get asked all the time why we invested in Company A or Company B, I thought I’d just put forth my thesis in writing.

Mobile 282

Mobile Invest Company Companies 282