socalTECH

JUNE 27, 2013

In a world where we have blogs, social media, sites like TheFunded, and a variety of other sources where entrepreneurs can figure out what other people think about VCs, being open and transparent matters. Being so open, when entrepreneurs think about capital, we want to be top of mind. Mark Suster: It''s our best source of deal flow.

Funding 196

Funding Venture Capital Los Angeles Social Media 196

socalTECH

OCTOBER 11, 2016

We take a really friendly, Shark Tank approach that promotes young entrepreneurs, and lets them pitch to a group of seasoned investors and venture capitalists on a panel, and where they not only get an actual investment, but also go through a retail challenge, to get consumer feedback. How did you get involved with angel investing, initially?

Startup 100

Startup Entrepreneur Invest Competition 100

socalTECH

JUNE 6, 2011

Those programs--epitomized by YCombinator in the Bay Area, and TechStars in Boulder, Colorado--attract newly minted entrepreneurs with a mixture of cash and mentoring, and a program which rapidly takes ideas and turns them into viable, executing businesses. Typically, venture backed companies, always entrepreneur led.

Startup 221

Startup Mentor Southern California Incubator 221

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2012

I recommend that you start by writing down the attributes you would want people to think about when they think about your brand. I guess Santa Monica is officially “Silicon Beach” in the local people’s minds. Still, I kind like the name, well, um, … Santa Monica. Also East of the 405?

Startup 304

Startup Venture Capital Los Angeles Woodland Hills 304

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2015

Last week Fred Wilson and I sat down in Santa Monica for an hour+ discussion with the video cameras rolling. My initial blogging inspiration was actually Brad Feld because as an entrepreneur I always wanted to work with Brad after reading his advice on term sheets and the like. But Fred got me to see a broader perspective.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Startup Writing Blogging 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

I spoke a lot about the need for “personal branding” which I plan to write about soon. My mom was an entrepreneur – she was kind of my inspiration for entrepreneurship. And no one could see me as anything but a startup guy, so I started a second company and called myself a serial entrepreneur.

Startup 337

Startup Entrepreneur Ideas Venture Capital 337

socalTECH

MAY 25, 2016

Santa Monica-based March Capital Partners (www.marchcp.com) has just announced a brand new, $240M venture investment fund, led by longtime venture investing veterans Jim Armstrong, Sumant Mandal, Gregory Milken and Jamie Montgomery. It's all about the entrepreneur. That's when you start meddling in the company.

Southern California 113

Southern California Capital Funding Invest 113

socalTECH

DECEMBER 11, 2018

If I write back, and tell them to stay at the Marriott in Del Mar, we would detect the Marriott Del Mar in your message, whether that's on Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, in a text message, in an email, or whatever, and convert that into a link to one of our merchants who are part of the Wildfire network. What does that look like?

San Diego 159

San Diego Social Media Commerce Snapchat 159

Tech Zulu Event

JUNE 28, 2012

The first-ever Silicon Beach Fest attracted more than 2,000 attendees from LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Barbara, New York, Toronto, and London to celebrate LA startups and entertainment with panels, parties, pitch fests, hackathon, and beach games: volleyball, basketball and surfing lessons in Santa Monica and Venice on June 21-23, 2012.

Hollywood 67

Hollywood Technical Review Startup Rustic Canyon 67

Jason Nazar

MARCH 22, 2011

In the bay area it’s quite common for the entrepreneurs starting a company to be developers or technologists who can build the first versions of their products. When he had the idea for his company, he didn’t write a long business plan or try to raise money to hire an agency to build a website for him.

Company 111

Company Companies Startup Twiistup 111

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 16, 2013

It is meant to bring everyone together so that they can learn, network and leave with the sense that they now belong to a family of entrepreneurs, all trying to make LA a startup hub. The event is meant to provide attendees with actionable steps to take to transition into the LA tech scene.

Rustic Canyon 74

Rustic Canyon Startup Los Angeles Class 74

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. It’s funny but recently I was at the CornerstoneOnDemand conference in Santa Monica. But it still is a major force and it ain’t going away.

Email 339

Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

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. I first met him there and knew he was a talented entrepreneur that I wanted to work with some day. The product focuses on the in-store behavior of consumers.

Company 276

Company Companies Startup Southern California 276

socalTECH

JUNE 18, 2009

Our interview today is with Santa Monica-based OneCubicle (www.onecubicle.com), a new startup we ran across recently, which is looking to provide a more professional social networking site for younger people. That was the jumping off point for OneCubicle a little over 18 months ago, when we started writing the business plan and code.

Social Network 100

Social Network Entertainment Startup CTO Coach 100

socalTECH

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Last week, Santa Monica-based Revolution Prep announced its first, institutional round of funding, worth $15M, from Kennet Partners. Ramit Varma: From the entrepreneur's standpoint, we were really focused on cost, and building a business that was profitable at the margin level, from the beginning. Jake got a similar amount.

Software Review 178

Software Review Technical Review Education Startup 178

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

Tech Zulu Event

JANUARY 30, 2012

We write and create our own content for the game. Headquarted in Santa Monica, CA, CallFire is dedicated to providing high-availability systems, intuitive user interfaces, furious developer support, and unparalleled customer care in order to transform how companies do business.

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

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