socalTECH

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Among the announcements at the demo day were the funding of smartphone toy company SnowShoe , and an acquisition of Smart Toy , a developer of an interactive toy. The Disney Accelerator said that Smart Toy was acquired by Los Angeles-based children''s product firm Cartwheel Kids, and that SnowShoe raised $2.2M READ MORE>>.

Class 185

Class Startup Seed Funding Entertainment 185

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 16, 2022

Most startups and investors I know don’t have unlimited funds, so the first question they should ask and do ask today, is “When is your company going to be profitable (self-sustaining)?” Solutions that may be viewed as “nice to have” or “satisfies a higher-level need” won’t get funded. Design a product or service that you can sell.

Platform 118

Platform Snapchat Startup Course 118

socalTECH

MAY 24, 2017

The Series A funding was led by Relay Ventures. The device can even set a per-person limit on access to specific applications--for example, limits on Facebook, Snapchat, or Twitter. Lance Charlish is CEO of Circle. READ MORE>>.

Media 113

Media Snapchat Content Examples 113

socalTECH

OCTOBER 23, 2018

The Water Abundance XPRIZE was funded by the Tata Group and Australian Aid. The award appears to be one of the fastest resolution of a challenge in recent years; a significant number of prior challenges have gone unawarded when teams did not meet all of the requirements.

Snapchat 133

Snapchat Venice Advertising Los Angeles 133

socalTECH

JULY 21, 2017

How is the parent company of Snapchat involved in drone development? It's a bit of a mystery, but Snapchat acquired a maker of drones in May, Ctrl Me Robotics. Snap has yet to announce any products in the area, but apparently is working on something that combines drone and the company's new "camera" focus. 5drobotics.com).

Southern California 113

Southern California Company Companies Palmdale 113

LATechDigest

JUNE 6, 2016

Fund ( link ). SNAPCHAT Acquires 3D Selfie Co ( link ). SNAPCHAT Passes Twitter with 150M DAUs ( link ). TIGERTEXT Works with Honeywell on Patient Info Product ( link ). Tons of footage from the #DnDMeltdown event on our Snapchat (id: scottperry) @Wizards_DnD @MeltdownComics pic.twitter.com/Ugd6qIeSEC.

Snapchat 40

Snapchat Pasadena Santa Monica LMU 40

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 2, 2017

Can a mobile app make creating and designing your space as easy as posting a selfie on Snapchat or Instagram? If you think about a filter on Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat, this is like putting a filter on your space so you can find a design that you love. If you see a product you like in there, you can shop for similar items.

Snapchat 100

Snapchat Design Startup West Hollywood 100

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2014

Last week displayed the best of LA last week for a gala event of all of Upfront’s portfolio companies + the CEOs of many of LA’s top technology companies + 75 VC firms from LA, SF, NY & Boston + 25 LP Funds + the Chairman of Yahoo! Burstly is a Santa Monica-based team that I also proudly funded. Maker Studios.

Startup 318

Startup Santa Monica Snapchat Yahoo 318

TechCrunch LA

AUGUST 5, 2022

The productivity at the studio is much better than the house for business and content.”. Currently, the studio is funded in part by partnerships with Monster Energy and Snap’s 523 program , which supports small content companies and creators from underrepresented groups. View this post on Instagram.

Platform 210

Platform Social Media Netflix Content 210

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2017

It’s hard to remember that in 2012 it was still hard for LA VCs to persuade investors into funds that LA was a viable market for great venture capital funds or convince many VCs that LA was a market worth investing dollars into startups. LA has only just begun.

Riot Games 191

Riot Games Los Angeles Technical Review Venture Capital 191

socalTECH

JUNE 8, 2020

in a funding round led by Octopus Ventures, and also which also included Experian Ventures, Cherry Tree Investments, Dig Ventures, Mucker Capital, Unlock Venture Partners, TechStars and Wavemaker Partners. Moving forward, this recent funding is going towards creating more personalization around that text experience.

Content 124

Content Social Media Startup Artificial Inteligence 124

socalTECH

DECEMBER 11, 2018

San Diego-based Wildfire Systems , led by startup veteran Jordan Glazier , has developed software which product referrals and automatically transform them into trackable links across email, text messaging, chat, and social messaging. We automatically add tracking and point those product references to e-commerce merchants.

San Diego 159

San Diego Social Media Commerce Snapchat 159

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 17, 2019

Most startups and investors I know don’t have unlimited funds, so the first question they should ask and do ask today, is “When is your company going to be profitable (self-sustaining)?” Solutions that may be viewed as “nice to have” or “satisfies a higher-level need” won’t get funded. Design a product or service that you can sell.

Snapchat 74

Snapchat Startup Course Yahoo 74

socalTECH

AUGUST 6, 2019

billion in new funding, through a convertible senior note offering and private placement. Santa Monica-based Snap says it is looking to raise $1.0 According to Snap, the convertible senior notes will be due in 2026, and will be a private placement to qualified institutional buyers. million principal amount of notes. READ MORE>>.

Santa Monica 113

Santa Monica Technical Review Capital Funding 113

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2014

Not all of these products & companies came from Silicon Valley but the overwhelming majority did. I don’t need to tell you what else is LA … SnapChat, Whisper, Tinder. While the costs of starting a tech company have plummeted it still does take money to hire a team, launch products and market oneself.

Startup 390

Startup Venture Capital Capital Funding 390

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2016

This is a huge moment for Michael Dubin who had the vision, the market genius, the operating chops and the perseverance to prevail even after the venture funding markets had wrongly written off eCommerce as a category. My friend Jamey Sperans says I don’t talk often enough about my “anti portfolio” or the deals I wish I had done.

Dollar Shave Club 150

Dollar Shave Club Venture Capital News Snapchat 150

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 13, 2019

Santa Monica-based Forge Platform , which is developing software development kits used for Ethereum, has raised $1M in a seed funding, the company disclosed on Wednesday. The funding came from Manta Ray Ventures and Upfront Ventures. The company was founded by Chris Lorenz, Geoffrey Anderson, and James Borow.

Platform 113

Platform Santa Monica Seed Funding Software Development 113

socalTECH

JANUARY 16, 2015

The numbers in Southern California were significantly helped by two, mega-funding deals in Los Angeles, including $485.6M raised by SnapChat , and $320M in an investment in NantHealth. The report tallied $1.09 billion in investments in Los Angeles, near $125M in Orange County, and $106.6M in investments in San Diego.

Southern California 100

Southern California Invest Orange County San Diego 100

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2016

It can’t be funded. When we were acquired by Disney we had a product & engineering team of 55 people. Each distribution channel you sell products in has its own unique customer base but your goal is to build a relationship with those end customers. And of course SnapChat is relevant for younger video consumers.

Content 150

Content Snapchat Platform SEO 150

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

Or you know the other one — the one where Snapchat lost $2 billion in just one quarter. To grow faster businesses need resources in today to fund growth that may not come for 6 months to a year. They don’t want high burn rates but they will never fund slow growth. Is it one product line or multiple? Two-f **g-billion!

Startup 227

Startup Venture Capital Sales Course 227

socalTECH

MARCH 16, 2017

Earlier this week, Derek Norton , a long time advisor to the media, Internet, and technology industry in Los Angeles, announced a brand new venture capital fund called Watertower Ventures (www.watertowerventures.com). We sat down with Derek to learn more about the new $5M fund and what it's all about. Tell us about the new fund?

Invest 145

Invest Funding Capital Startup 145

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 15, 2017

Most startups and investors I know don’t have unlimited funds, so the first question they should ask and do ask today, is “When is your company going to be profitable (self-sustaining)?” Solutions that may be viewed as “nice to have” or “satisfies a higher-level need” won’t get funded. Design a product or service that you can sell.

Snapchat 55

Snapchat Startup Course Yahoo 55

socalTECH

MAY 12, 2017

Earlier this week, Los Angeles-based Donut Media (www.donut.media) announced a seed funding round, for its efforts to create a online, video-focused brand centered around car enthusiasts. Matt Levin: I came from Optimist TV, where I was head of product there. My co-founders, Ben and Nick, come from the production world.

Media 177

Media Content Platform Artificial Inteligence 177

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 30, 2016

I was reminded of this yesterday watching my friend Justin Kan on Snapchat with this 10-second reminder, “No matter how much you raise at your company you’ll end up spending it in 12–24 months” https://medium.com/media/8594cb16d022a083932b0f3d60b79ebd/href I would probably amend it to say 12–18 months. People do what people do.

Startup 292

Startup Software Review Pricing Entrepreneur 292

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2013

Because at least while the VC spigot is open and flowing for high-potential individuals that fit a pattern that some VCs seem to favor they can access cheap capital that isn’t terribly dilutive and can use the to fund development and swing for the fences with limited focus on monetization. That leaves 99.99% of you. Let’s see.

Venture Capital 412

Venture Capital Startup Funding Snapchat 412

socalTECH

MAY 7, 2018

Yan tells us how the company's revenues, growth, and profits--even in the early days--drove $21M in funding from Sequoia for the company. When we started the business, we really didn't have a lot of funding, but it made a lot of sense, and we got lots of drivers on the platform. Explain what NEXT Trucking is all about? We're hiring.

Startup 173

Startup Pricing Marketing Entrepreneur 173

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

I speak a lot on college campuses and entrepreneur events and amongst the most common things I’m asked to talk about are: What do VCs fund? Do VCs really take risks on ground-breaking ideas any longer or do they just fund businesses once there is proof of traction? How does one come up with the right idea to start a company?

Design 150

Design Ideas Startup Writing 150

socalTECH

AUGUST 29, 2014

For example, if you are watching the World Cup streaming from ESPN or your favorite WB show, you can grab your favorite moments and share them across any medium, whether that''s a chat platform, Snapchat, or anywhere. Is your product available yet? Mauhan Zonozzy: We''re angel funded, and were part of Media Camp at Warner Bros.

Content 113

Content Los Angeles Seed Funding Hollywood 113

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 19, 2016

One of the companies at that intersection of video and e-commerce is IPSY (www.ipsy.com), a subscription beauty products company which uses video as a core piece of its monthly beauty products business. We understand you're backed by $100M in funding? We continue to engage with them around the products we feature each month.

Commerce 100

Commerce Content Sample Yahoo 100

LATechDigest

OCTOBER 26, 2016

Speakers included Mayor Eric Garcetti , Snapchat influencer Jake Paul (fresh off his 60 Minutes appearance), Loot Crate cofounder Chris Davis (whose company just topped the Inc 5000), and early Snapchat & Riot Games / SF-based investor Peter Lasky. — LATech Digest (@LATechDigest) October 25, 2016.

Snapchat 40

Snapchat Lootcrate Riot Games Downey 40

socalTECH

MARCH 10, 2017

funding led by Level Equity. Robert Blatt: The first stage, in 2013, was really nailing product-market-fit. Not just what the product needed to look like, but how to sell it, and to make sure that the people we sold it to were really successful using it, and stayed with us. What is MomentFeed up to nowadays?

Google 127

Google Paid Search Mobile Activity 127

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

I’ll spare you the math and point out that this means we funded 0.104% of the market. I am highly unlikely to fund your company strictly based on math and my only motive for publicly telling you what is going on privately is to help prepare you if in fact I’m right about the funding environment. Mostly, no.

Startup 150

Startup Company Companies Venture Capital 150

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2015

There are so many events to attend that one could become a full time conference attendee and you could easily feel like you’re missing out with each event that happens without you and of course there is Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat to remind you just how fun it was for everybody else. For investors life is no different.

Software Review 150

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Invest 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

Why you should set up a board at the seed round of funding I know these days with SAFE documents and rolling convertible notes many founders prefer not to set up a board early on. How does control start to change at the B-round of funding? The Limited Partners (LPs) who back funds don’t expect their dollars to be passive.

Startup 236

Startup Venture Capital Tips Capital 236

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2017

Of course our great technology industry did itself rise on the back of infrastructure created by telecommunications & cable infrastructure as well as decades of media production. Our social graphs are locked in Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. Enter the decentralized Internet. Enter blockchain.

Course 280

Course Startup Framework Marketing 280

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

Planning and dealing with extra-ordinary events: M&A, fund raising, crises. Over time you start to figure out who you customers are and how to sell to them or how to get them to adopt your products if you’re a consumer-oriented startup. how to market our products and company. Mentorship. As You Start to Mature.

Startup 325

Startup Sales Technical Review Software Review 325

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2015

In this post I advocate taking a harder stand on where your product or solution differentiates in the market – even if it means you lose some deals as a result. When we went to raise funds we faced lots of competition as there are of course many other VC funds in the country. Why Buy Anything ? You need to be different.

Sales 150

Sales SaaS Startup Venture Capital 150