Alnylam Pharmaceuticals made history this afternoon. The FDA has just approved Alnylam’s patisiran (Onpattro) , making it the first medicine specifically cleared to treat a rare and deadly disease called hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis (hATTR). MORE

Here is a phenomenon I discovered over time when dealing with many small start-ups in their early revenue period. A very predictable series of rotating crises seemed to befall most every one of these young companies. MORE

Cryptocurrency investor Michael Terpin sues AT&T over “SIM swap” scam; Cargomatic raises $35M in series B round; Boeing acquires El Segundo-based satellite and flight-plan maker MORE

I just returned from a week’s vacation in the mountains where I had almost no Internet access but was aware that Ronan Farrow had published a damning sexual misconduct article about Les Moonves, the Chairman & CEO of publicly traded company CBS Corporation. MORE

Thursday, August 16, 2018 -- Global LAVA: "Exit Options in Today's Environment" Whether you are just starting a business or exploring exit options, this Global LAVA event is designed to educate entrepreneurs, investors, and service providers about the current market dynamics and opportunities to position a company for a successful exit. Come learn about the corporate MandA process, discover what financial sponsors are looking for, and understand whether an IPO is still an option. MORE

Chrome River picks up ExxonMobil; Wells leaving Netflix; Bird scooters face vandalism MORE

Monday, August 20, 2018 -- South Bay Monday Club. Monday Club helps Southern California companies improve their business plan presentations and meet experts who can help them achieve their objectives. Email fredvmc@earthlink.net for more information. MORE

Santa Monica’s sports marketing firm GumGum Sports (a division of GumGum Inc.) announced Aug. 10 it signed a multi-year agreement to provide media valuation services for the Maui Jim Maui Invitational basketball tournament MORE

After three months of discussions, Uber Elevate has selected The University of Texas at Austin as its partner alongside the U.S. Army Research Laboratory to develop new rotor technology for vehicles that the company will use in its uberAIR flying taxi network. MORE

By next Friday, the FDA could for the first time approve a medicine that uses a biological trick that was only discovered two decades ago: RNA interference , which silences a gene before it can make a harmful protein. MORE

SpaceX approved for “load-and-go” procedure; Netflix testing new ads; NTS heading to Anaheim MORE

Ford—one of the automakers competing in China’s huge car market—is now making a bid to provide China’s leading software infrastructure hub dedicated to streamlining transportation by connecting cars and riders with mobility services. Ford’s recently acquired unit Autonomic , which co-created the automaker’s Transportation Mobility Cloud (TMC), inked a deal Tuesday to partner with Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing division of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. MORE

This week, we continue our series on marketing and positioning. There can be nothing more important in your business planning that selecting the proper pricing niche, making your story clear using that niche, and the defending your position against the competition. MORE

Markets and competitors change. Are you being left behind? MORE

Sometimes smart contracts can be pretty dumb. All of the benefits of a cryptographically secured, publicly verified, anonymized transaction system can be erased by errant code, malicious actors, or poorly defined parameters of an executable agreement. MORE

Daniel Kim and Jay Lee, the two founders of AuditBoard , a Los Angeles-based provider of a risk and compliance software service for large businesses, grew up middle school friends in Cerritos, Calif. MORE

Match Group dating app subsidiary Tinder Inc. has filed a lawsuit against parent company InterActiveCorp., alleging IAC purposefully undervalued the company to avoid proper payouts to executives MORE

If Azealia Banks’ Instagram account is to be believed , Elon Musk’s tweets about Tesla’s take-private deal can be chalked up to some good ole acid and a whole lot of post-tweet frantic scrambling. Over a series of Instagram stories from the weekend, Banks (whose account should be taken with an entire salt shaker — more on that later) reported from the belly of the beast (which in this case is one of Elon Musk’s Los Angeles homes). MORE

Snapchat enlists Nicki Minaj to show how AR tools let users shop in RL; SpaceX invites guests into the Dragon X; Treyarch testing Battle Royale mode MORE

Wednesday, August 22, 2018 -- Market Research: The Fuel For Marketing Strategies. American Marketing Association (AMA). We dive into the crucial process of gathering and analyzing information about markets, industries, and products in their competitive spaces. As a result, market research is a key method for providing data and learnings that fuel marketing strategies. Consumer insights are used to discover areas of opportunity by identifying trends in the market. MORE

Risk and compliance software company AuditBoard raises $40 million; Bird, Lime lead e-scooter protest in Santa Monica; Tinder sues parent company MORE

Katzenberg’s short-form video project raises $1 billion; SpaceX hosting mars landing conference; Nexus Technologies acquires Cal Net MORE

Marina del Rey advertising blockchain firm Lucidity (an affiliate of KR8OS Inc.) announced Aug. 15 it completed a funding round of $5 million in total, comprised of investments from six venture capital firms MORE

Westlake Village-based Interlink Electronics , a developer of force sensors and other technology in the "human-machine" interface area, says that its CFO, David S. Burnett, has stepped down from the company. According to the firm, its CEO, Steven N. Bronson, will assume the role of acting Chief Financial Officer. According to Interlink, Bronson remains CFO of an OTC pink sheets traded company, BKF Capital Group, which owns 13.5 percent of the common stock of the company. READ MORE>>. MORE

Irvine-based Skyworks Solutions , which develops analog semiconductors, said late Friday that it has completed its acquisition Avnera Corporation. The acquisition had been announced on August 3rd, and is worth up to $425M in total. Skyworks said it paid cash for the acquisition. MORE

Cloud cybersecurity software developer CrowdStrike announced today that it has named Paul Bradley Shinn as its Chief Legal Officer. Shinn was previously Chief Legal Officer and Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Gigamon, and also had served at HP's Enterprise Group and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. According to Crowdstrike, Shinn's role at Gigamon included leading the company's successful initial public offering in 2013. MORE

What's the best way to build a strong portfolio of technology companies, which tap into the broadest markets and avoids the "bubble" group-think of many venture firms? For this morning's interview, we sat down with Marlon Nichols , co-founder and Managing Partner of Los Angeles-based Cross Culture Ventures (crossculturevc.com). MORE

Amazon.com Inc.’s s Amazon Web Services announced Aug. 9 that it will collaborate with the California Cloud Workforce Project (CA Cloud) and 19 community colleges in Los Angeles County to offer a regional cloud computing certificate. To date, this is the first program of its kind created by Amazon and local colleges MORE

Monday, August 20, 2018 -- Softec Techbrew. BlockChain and Crypto Currency. Marvin Byrd is a 7 year veteran of the cyber security industry who has specialized in crypto algorithm implementations. Marvin has worked with the PCI (Payment Card Industry) alliance looking at the security of credit card devices devices and side channel attacks for breaking crypto keys. Marvin will be discussing how block chain works and why it is the basis for most crypto currencies. MORE

Full Harvest, an online market for imperfect produce that previously would have been thrown out, announced it has raised $8.5 million in a Series A round of funding. The funding was led by Spark Capital and includes investors such as Cultivian Sandbox Ventures, Rent the Runway co-founder Jenny Fleiss, and John Scherr, head of strategic partnerships at CircleUp. Full Harvest raised $2 million in seed funding last year. MORE

TaskUs worth $500 million following latest funding round; Stamps.com stocks fall after Post Office comment; Heineken passes on Snapchat in favor of other social media outlets MORE