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Zag Spins Out TrueCar

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Santa Monica-based Zag, the online car buying software firm headed by former CarsDirect CEO Scott Painter, has spun out a new company called TrueCar, the firm said late Wednesday. According to TrueCar, it will provide information about new car pricing, using the actual price people have paid for cars.

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Reflections on 2019: Kelly Perdew, Moonshots Capital

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We have invested in 13 companies out of our Fund 1 so far and are more bullish than ever on the amazing entrepreneurs we are meeting and the companies we are helping them build. We also had our first exit for Moonshots Capital Fund 1 --Threatcare. Think Google Ad Words for podcasting. Since 2010, $6.3B

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LAVA Honors Richard Riordan, Local Technology Firms

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The group, which promotes the venture capital industry in the Los Angeles area, also honored local companies for their funding and exit activity. ShoeDazzle.com , the online e-commerce startup headed by Brian Lee and whose co-founders include Kim Kardashian, scored top honors in the Best venture funding in digital media/e-commerce category.

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Beware of Ballers on a Budget

Both Sides of the Table

I researched the pricing of the car at TrueCar – not because we’re an investor – but because it gives you complete price transparency over what other people in your area paid for a car. It’s taking company resources – usually funded by angels or VCs – for personal gain. As many air bags as possible.

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Why Has LA Suddenly Gotten So Much Attention from VCs and Entrepreneurs?

Both Sides of the Table

What is perhaps different from other regions is that we have large indigenous aerospace industry and a big high-tech import/export trade as opposed to a lot of software companies. Over the past 4 years LA’s tech fundings have growing at a 30% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) which is > 4 times the US average VC CAGR (7%).

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How to Kick Start Your Community’s Startup Scene

Both Sides of the Table

To build applications we needed databases (Oracle), browsers (Netscape), servers (Sun Microsystems), storage (EMC), security (Semantic), application servers (Apache), caching software, load balancers, hosting facilities, programming languages and methods, CDNs, DSL equipment, Wifi routers and so forth. And then the world changed.

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Reflections on 2018: Kelly Perdew, Moonshots Capital

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Raising money as a first-time VC fund is hard.In Many of my friends who are VCs (and some friends who tried to raise a fund unsuccessfully) warned me that raising for a first-time fund would be very difficult. Are there any technology innovations, gadgets, devices, software, that you found most interesting in 2018?

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