TechCrunch LA

MAY 21, 2019

For over 100 years entrepreneurs have come to Hollywood to try their luck in the dream factory and build an empire in the business of storytelling. Propelled by new technologies, new businessmen have been landing in Los Angeles since the invention of the nickelodeon to create a studio that would dominate popular entertainment. Over the past five years, virtual reality was the latest new thing to make or break fortunes, and the founding team behind the Korean company AmazeVR are the latest would-

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Xconomy

MAY 21, 2019

New medicines, devices, and diagnostics produced by the life sciences community in California are giving clinicians better tools to fight disease and improve quality of life for patients around the world. Emerging technologies, such as stem cell and gene therapies, are beginning to make their mark. According to the California Life Sciences Association (CLSA)’s latest California Life Sciences Industry Report , California is home to more than 3,400 life sciences companies.

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L.A. Business Journal

MAY 24, 2019

Audio sharing platform Soundcloud Inc. announced May 23 it will acquire Venice-based rights distribution company Repost Network.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2019

My Commencement Speech?—?Life at Your Crossroads Photo by Justin Luebke on Unsplash Crossroads Cal Poly Pomona! What’s up!?! I’m so grateful to be up here addressing you today. Today you’re either here to graduate or support somebody graduating. A graduate is at his or her first major crossroad in life. You are faced with decisions about which road to take.

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Pomona Startup Tips Networking 253

Advertiser: Aggregage

Office leases are one of companies’ largest expenses, and if your whole team is working from home with no clear end in sight, you may be wondering what to do about your lease.

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socalTECH

MAY 22, 2019

For our interview this morning, we talked with David Wood , the Founder and CEO of Eventene (www.eventene.com), an early stage startup, bootstrapped startup developing event management software. David--a veteran of Microsoft, having been the lead developer of Microsoft Exchange--tells us why he started his company. What does Eventene do? David Wood: We make event planning software for social organizations.

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Berkonomics

MAY 9, 2019

Ever stand with someone you’ve never met when at a party, a trade show or just meet someone in the hallway? We all have. And then that person opens his or her mouth and spends a boring two minutes describing their business to you? Leaving you wondering how much of that you got and how much you might retain? We all have. So, here’s the antidote to prevent you from becoming “that” person.

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Tech.Co

MAY 1, 2019

Pranksters in Brisbane, Australia, have hacked the audio files on rentable scooters owned by transportation startup Lime. At least eight scooters had their messages switched. According to local news, the scooters had their audio messages replaced with more edgy statements, although Lime has failed to see the funny side. The news follows a series of unfortunate events for scooter companies, from criticism from environmentalists to vandalism.

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L.A. Business Journal

MAY 15, 2019

Burbank-based Shag Enterprises Inc, an artificial intelligence company that’s created a predictive platform for online ordering, announced on May 15 it raised $1.4 million in seed funding led by New York-based E&A Venture Capital.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2019

Managing Your Startup Board?—?A Short Presentation I was invited to do a keynote presentation at the Khosla Ventures CEO Summit this week in Sausalito. It was an amazing gathering of some of the most ambitious early-stage CEO’s looking to make a dent in fields related to healthcare, biology, AI and other transformative fields. It’s encouraging to know that there are still great VC firms like KV that are looking to make these short of big bets on shaping the future.

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socalTECH

MAY 6, 2019

Los Angeles-based AppOnboard says it has begun giving away its codeless app development software, AppOnboard Studio , to help developers create "instant apps" and playable ads, as well as prototypes. The startup--led by startup veteran Jonathan Zweig--said the free version of its software makes it easy for people to design and build interactive versions of their mobile apps and games.

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Xconomy

MAY 9, 2019

It will be hard to top last year’s flurry of biotech companies joining the public markets, but this week is shaping up to be the busiest for life science IPOs in recent memory. Five biotechs priced their IPOs and at least one more is coming. According to IPO research firm Renaissance Capital , 47 IPOs have priced so far this year across all sectors, down 27 percent compared to the same period in 2018.

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TechCrunch LA

MAY 25, 2019

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a newsletter published every Saturday that dives into the week’s most noteworthy venture deals, fundraises, M&A transactions and trends. Let’s take a quick moment to catch up. Last week, I wrote about an alternative to venture capital called revenue-based financing and before that, I jotted down some notes on one of VCs’ favorite spaces: cannabis tech.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 18, 2019

Elon Musk via Flickr by TED Conference To be successful as an entrepreneur, you don’t have to be a fabulous person, but it helps. Some people, and some entrepreneurs, have that something extra that you can’t quite put your finger on, like Ryan Seacrest is searching for on American Idol. But the entrepreneurs that have it, including Elon Musk and Richard Branson, seem to be able to effortlessly get team members, investors, and customers to follow them anywhere.

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L.A. Business Journal

MAY 16, 2019

Hyperloop Technologies Inc., doing business as Virgin Hyperloop One, raised $172.2 million of a planned $224.7 million equity funding round May 13 according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 22, 2019

Announcing Projector?—?A Startup I’ve Been Excited to Tell You About for Years A few years ago I spent time in prison with Trevor O’Brien , the founder of Projector. Yes, I always imagined announcing the company that way. We were of course there to work with incarcerated men on developing entrepreneurial skills on behalf of Defy Ventures. We had met previously when Trevor was a product manager at YouTube and Upfront had funded the largest video producer on YouTube, Maker Studios.

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socalTECH

MAY 30, 2019

Our interview this morning is with Robin Richards , the CEO of Los Angeles-based CareerArc (www.careerarc.com). Richards--a serial entrepreneur who has been involved in a number of technology companies here, including NTI Group (sold to Blackboard), Internships.com, MP3.com, and Vivendi Universal Net USA, where he was also CEO. Richards also has been an active angel investor in local startups.

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Xconomy

MAY 29, 2019

Drugs that rev up a patient’s immune system have changed how we treat cancers of the skin, lung, and more, offering people whose tumors have spread a chance to live longer than ever thought possible. But until this year, the field had nothing for breast cancer, which kills more women than any other cancer type. That changed in March, when the FDA approved a combination of the immunotherapy atezolizumab (Tecentriq), made by Roche, and chemotherapy for a subset of patients with an aggressive

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TechCrunch LA

MAY 23, 2019

The Los Angeles ecosystem is $76 million stronger today as Fika Ventures , a seed-stage venture capital firm, announces its sophomore investment fund. Fika invests roughly half of its capital exclusively in startups headquartered in LA, with a particular fondness for B2B, enterprise and fintech companies. The firm was launched in 2017 by general partners Eva Ho and TX Zhuo, formerly of Susa Ventures and Karlin Ventures, respectively.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 6, 2019

Image via Flickr by Fortune Conferences In every business, especially new ones, quick and effective problem solving is a critical skill. The problems you face are more complex and moving faster than ever before, and the consequences of a poor or incomplete solution can be costly to your business, and well as to your community, human health, and the environment.

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Demand Examples Summary Tool 99

L.A. Business Journal

MAY 14, 2019

Bird working to integrate Apple Pay; Comcast sells Hulu stake; Crypto hackers arrested after West Hollywood theft

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Hulu West Hollywood Hollywood Report 140

TechCrunch LA

MAY 8, 2019

GumGum , the Los Angeles-based startup that’s spent the past decade applying machine learning technologies to advertising and sports, has spun out a new healthcare startup focused on the dental industry called Pearl. The company has raised $11 million in financing from undisclosed strategic investors and Craft Ventures, the investment firm set up by former Yammer founder, David Sacks.

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TechCrunch LA

MAY 30, 2019

In a previous life, John Underkoffler spent his days in Los Angeles dreaming up all of the possible ways men and machines would interact as a science adviser on films like Minority Report. Now, he designs those systems for the real world through his company Oblong Industries , which has labored to create a full stack of collaborative tools for business users that are every bit as high-tech as the one’s Underkoffler dreamt for the silver screen.

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TechCrunch LA

MAY 20, 2019

A conference dedicated to transportation and mobility wouldn’t be complete without hearing from Ford, the U.S. automaker with a storied 116-year history. We’re excited to announce that Ford CTO Ken Washington will participate in TechCrunch’s inaugural TC Sessions: Mobility , a one-day event on July 10, 2019 in San Jose, Calif., that’s bringing the best and brightest minds — founders, investors and technologists — who are determined to invent a future Henry Ford might neve

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TechCrunch LA

MAY 17, 2019

Even as Quibi , the short form video platform from Jeffrey Katzenberg’s WndrCo , reportedly looks to raise another $1 billion , rival service Fiction Riot continues to steadily build out its pipeline of short form serials. The Los Angeles-based company has already launched a beta version of its streaming service, Ficto , and yesterday announced a host of new shows that will appear on the app later this year.

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TechCrunch LA

MAY 14, 2019

Earlier this year, Spartan, the French manufacturer of a silver-lined underwear designed to block EMF radiation from cell phones and wireless routers, relocated to the U.S. and raised some capital from the Los Angeles-based investment firm, Science. Now the company has relaunched as Lambs and is adding a radiation-proof silver-lined beanie to its $29-per-pair underwear already on sale in the U.S.

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socalTECH

MAY 9, 2019

Los Angeles-based Phyn , the Belkin spinout which is developing very advanced, machine learning-driven smart water usage monitoring systms, has raised $12M more in a funding round, the company announced on Thursday. The funding came from Belkin International and Uponor, both prior investors in Phyn. According to Phyn, the new funding will go towards research and new product development, to help it grow its footprint in the U.S., and continued expansion in global markets.

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Belkin Artificial Inteligence Research Los Angeles 147

socalTECH

MAY 6, 2019

Santa Monica-based last-mile transportation startup Bird is facing big issues with keeping its scooters up and operating, according to a story from the LA Times published on Sunday. According to the LA Times, despite a massive rollout of scooters across the world, the scooters are wearing out "long before they could earn back their cost". An study shows that Bird had nearly 7,000 scooters active in Los Angeles County in January, but only 1,500 of them survived until April.

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socalTECH

MAY 15, 2019

Burbank-based CareerArc , which develops social recruiting and outplacement. technology and services, says it is in the midst of a big expansion in Los Angeles, and has added about 20 percent to its headcount over the last three months. The company said, as part of that growth, it has named Jason Blais as Executive Vice President of Sales, Linda Souza as Senior Vice President of Marketing, and also promoted Yair Riemer to President of its Career Transition Services Division.

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socalTECH

MAY 28, 2019

Santa Monica-based Cornerstone OnDemand Foundation , the nonprofit arm of Cornerstone OnDemand, says it will launch a set of free, online learning programs to help under-represented, job sekers in Los Angeles. According to Cornerstone OnDemand, it has partnered with the Bixel Exchange, a division of the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce, to provide access to a free online learning program for job seekers.

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socalTECH

MAY 23, 2019

Los Angeles-based Boring Co. , the tunnel-and-transportation startup led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, has been selected to build a small transportation system using Boring Co.'s technology, which will span the Las Vegas Convention Center. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) announced the selection of The Boring Company on Wednesday, saying it hopes to have the tunnel built and transportation system running by the Consumer Electronics Show in January of 2021.

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socalTECH

MAY 14, 2019

Pasadena-based ObEN , a developer of artificial intelligence-driven, animated avatars--which looks like and sound like real people--said its technology is being used to power the detailed, human avatar behind PAI News , an app which will deliver news on blockchain and cryptocurrency. ObEN said its 3D avatar, "Satoshi", will provide news on technology, finance, law, and education.

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socalTECH

MAY 8, 2019

Los Angeles-based J2 Global , the owner of such Internet publishing brands as IGN, Mashable, PCMag, Everyday Health, and also cloud services such as eFax, eVoice, KeepItSafe, and Livedrive, reported its quarterly results on Tuesday evening, saying that its quarterly revenues rose to a record of $299.9M. Those quarterly results were up from Q1 of 2018, when the company had revenues of $280.6M.

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socalTECH

MAY 28, 2019

A report today, from Reuters, says that the Chinese owner of Los Angeles-based gay dating app developer Grind , gave access to its Beijing-based engineers to the data of millions of Americans, despite U.S. orders to keep that data private. According to the report, Grindr's parent company, Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd gave those Chinese engineers access to private messages and HIV status of millions of Americans, and prompted the recent ruling which ordered the firm to sell Grindr as matter of Nati

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socalTECH

MAY 31, 2019

The ad serving and "creative optimization" businesses of Sizmek , the now-bankrupt developer of advertising technology which had a significant portion of its team in Los Angeles, has been acquired by Amazon , Amazon said on Friday. Financial details of the acquisition were not announced. Amazon said it has agreed to acquire both the Sizmek Ad Server and Sizmek Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) products.

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socalTECH

MAY 31, 2019

Redlands-based geographical information systems (GIS) provider Esri said on Thursday that it has partnered with a provider of software consulting and technology provider AgIntegrated , which develops a data hub for the agriculture and forestry market. AgIntegrated is the developer of Onsite API Services and QC Pro, which offers up a centralized platform for agriculture and forestry customers to connect.

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socalTECH

MAY 30, 2019

Los Angeles-based venture investor Moonshots Capital is the lead investor in a new startup, Backtracks , a developer of podcast analytics software. According to Backtracks, it has raised $2.1M in a seed funding round, which was led by Moonshots Capital, and also included Capital Factory, Sputnik ATX, Next Coast Ventures, Bull Creek Capital, and BNSG Capital.

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