Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 22, 2009
Only Hire A+ People Who Punch Above Their Weight Class. This is part of my ongoing posts on Startup Advice. There are people who tell startups that they should hire the most senior people that they can find. I’m not one of those. I believe that you should always hire people are are looking to “punch above their weight class,&# which means to hire people who want to be one league above where they are today.
SoCal CTO
OCTOBER 6, 2009
Great post by John Shiple. He talks about a bunch of the different networking events that occur in Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California. In his post, he mentions the following events / event organizers, and you should visit his post for a bit more on each of them. LA CTO Forum Dealmaker Media Digital Family Reunion Startups Uncensored Social Media Club, LA Twiistup Mindshare LA LA Hadoop Meetup Dorkbot Geek Dinners LA Cloud Computing LA Web Application Developers LA PHP Developers
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socalTECH
OCTOBER 27, 2009
Irvine-based Fisker Automotive , a venture backed startup developing electric vehicles, said today that it has acquired a dormant GM plant in Wilmington, Delaware, to build its plug-in hybrid cars. According to Fisker, the new plant will support the firm's Project NINA, affordable plug-in hybrid sedan. Fisker said production is scheduled to begin on the new car in late 2012, and will support 2,000 factory jobs and more than 3,000 vendor and supplier jobs by 2014.
InfoChachkie
OCTOBER 20, 2009
Note: This is Part I in a three-part series on The Perfect Business Model. Click here for Part II , and Part III. Authentic, hand-crafted Persian rugs always include intentional imperfections. They are said to be, “Perfectly Imperfect, and Precisely Imprecise.” The same is true with many crafts and architecture created in Muslim cultures. I am not a Muslim scholar, but a layman’s interpretation of this tradition of intentional errors is that it arises from the belief that attempting to emulate G
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Eric Greenspan
OCTOBER 30, 2009
As promised, today’s blog entry will be about our culture at Make It Work… Make It Work is a very unique company. Employees first, customers next is one of concepts and I recently learned that Virgin and Sir Richard Branson share this philosophy. Nice to know. Simply put, if your employees love their jobs, they will love your customers.
SoCal Tech Calendar
OCTOBER 31, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009 -- Emergency Management - Incident Management, Resource Management, and Supply Chain Workshop. Science and Technology Directorate, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. See https://www.enstg.com/signup/passthru.cfm?ConferenceCode=WOR77476. (more).
Southern California Tech Central brings together the best content for technical professionals in Southern California from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
SoCal CTO
OCTOBER 8, 2009
A post by Fred Wilson pointed me to Dave McClure's Startup Metrics presentation. This is a great presentation and one that I'm going to point out to startup / early stage company CEOs. Normally, when I am talking to the founder of any startup trying to figure out what they need to do, one of the things I always try to do is understand their business at its core.
socalTECH
OCTOBER 21, 2009
This morning's interview is with Gil Elbaz , founder of Factual (www.factual.com), a new startup based here in Los Angeles focused on open data sharing and accuracy. Gil is one of the founders of Applied Semantics, the firm acquired by Google for its AdSense technology. We spoke with Gil about the purpose of Factual, and what it's trying to do. What's your new startup all about, and why did you start the company?
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 11, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. Many startup companies hire advisory boards. It’s very tempting. It’s mostly done by first-time entrepreneurs who want to persuade (bribe?) prominent industry luminaries to be closely associated with the company. It’s done partly in hopes of gaining their wisdom but it’s also done to portray the company in a positive light through association.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 15, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. This is a story of one of the risks of venture capital. When you’re an early-stage startup that hasn’t raised any institutional money you end up doing almost every job function of the company yourself. But some companies have entrepreneurs that seem talented on paper, are in a space that seems interesting to investors and are able to raise venture capital early in the company’s existence.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 25, 2009
Beware of VC Seagulls, who shit on you and then fly away (or worse yet leave you with Red Herrings). This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. I write this post as a warning to pick your VC’s carefully. I like to say to first-time entrepreneurs, picking a VC is more permanent than marriage. If you pick the wrong spouse at least you can get divorced.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 29, 2009
Advertising has driven the majority of Internet innovation. My firm GRP Partners recently funded a young LA based company named Ad.Ly that is an “in-stream advertising&# company currently focused on monetizing Twitter. This has prompted many people to question whether advertising “in stream&# and on Twitter is a good thing or a bad thing.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 17, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series about Raising Venture Capital. This posting was inspired by an email from Rajat Suri who wrote me an email in response to Chris Dixon’s blog post (link below) from August, which recently re-ran on Business Insider and has generated much Twitter chatter. A few years ago it became fashionable for large VC’s to do seed funding.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 1, 2009
In the first post in this three part series I described why I believe the VC market froze between September 2008 – April 2009. In the second post I argued that as of September 2009 the pace of VC investments has increased rapidly (at least for software / Internet investments – the only sector on which I’m competent to comment), but only for those remaining VCs who have new enough funds and aren’t plagued by “the triage problem.&# This is a direct result of innovat
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 1, 2009
In my previous post, The VC Ice Age is Thawing (for now) I wrote about the reasons why the VC market came to a screeching halt in September 2008 and remained largely shut until at least April 2009. There are now signs the VC market has gathered pace meaning it’s a great time to be fund raising. This post highlights some of the reasons why the market is moving again and what entrepreneurs should do about this.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 21, 2009
Montgomery & Co Projects Deal Volume to Grow by 167% in Just 2 Years with No End to Growth in Sight. On the third Wednesday of every month I co-chair a meeting called the SoCal VCA (venture capital alliance), which represents participants from all of the top venture capital firms in Southern California as well as prominent members of the Tech Coast Angels (TCA).
SoCal CTO
OCTOBER 19, 2009
I did a presentation about the use of Social Media to a great group of people who mostly are different kinds of service professionals (attorneys, accountants, consultants, etc.). I promised that I would do a follow-up post with some thoughts out of the presentation and providing links. This is that post. Value of Blogging I started the presentation talking about the value of blogging.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 14, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. I wrote recently about the role of Advisory Boards in startups , which I expected to be a bit controversial. People love their advisers and I don’t blame them. It’s just that many companies waste equity on advisory boards, pick the wrong advisers or set up advisory boards with the wrong expectations.
socalTECH
OCTOBER 1, 2009
San Diego-based OpenCandy , which is developing products to help software publisher increase downloads and sales of their products, said Thursday that it has signed up PDF software firm PrimoPDF as a customer. According to OpenCandy, PrimoPDF is using the firm to help users discover other compelling applications when their software is being installed.
socalTECH
OCTOBER 21, 2009
Aliso Viejo-based online retailer Buy.com has made a major move into the international market today, and has opened up stores in Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The e-commerce retailer said that the firm will also sell its items through eBay in those four countries, and has plans to open up sites in Italy and Spain--and eventually, worldwide.
socalTECH
OCTOBER 6, 2009
Los Angeles-based PC-postage provider Stamps.com is looking to edge into the market for electronic postage on eBay, saying that it will waive service fees to eBay sellers signing up for its services between now and December 31st. Stamps.com said that it now supports retrieving orders, printing shipping labels, and posting back tracking numbers and other information back to eBay stores for sellers, a new feature of its latest version of software. eBay's own Internet postage service is powered by
socalTECH
OCTOBER 7, 2009
Santa Barbara-based RightSignature , online, software-as-a-service for collecting electronic signatures, took "Best of Show" at VentureNet Wednesday, after a day of presentations by thirteen Southern California startups. VentureNet, which is put on by the Technology Council of Southern California, included keynotes by Kelly Perdew of Rotohog and Zorik Gordon of ReachLocal, plus capital presentations from Cyber-Rain, FlipGloss Media, Viewdle, Social Approach, Ad.ly, Zadspace, RightSignature, Cogi
SoCal CTO
OCTOBER 15, 2009
It was great to hear from a long, lost colleague the other day. Steve Gilison worked as a market researcher and product manager at a startup where my company, TechEmpower , did the software / web development. Of course, I immediately gave him the whole spiel on Visible Networking and Steve was totally game to make our networking visible. Remind me about your background Steve?
socalTECH
OCTOBER 8, 2009
Los Angeles-based video streaming firm Hulu told its users today that it has launched two new, experimental projects in its Hulu Labs section. According to Hulu, it has launched a new publishing tool-- Hulu Publisher Tool --which helps reporters, bloggers, website editors, and others to find and embed premium video content from the site and elsewhere.
socalTECH
OCTOBER 12, 2009
Agoura Hills-based game developer THQ has launched another video game today based on Disney/Pixar's Cars movie, Cars Race-O-Rama. The firm said the videogame, for the Wii, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, and PSP, is its third installment of video games based on the Cars movie. The new title retails for $39.99 on the Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation3, $29.99 for the PSP and DS,and $19.99 for the PlayStation 2.
socalTECH
OCTOBER 7, 2009
Los Angeles-based The Rubicon Project , which operates a service to optimize the selection of ads on web sites, said today that it has debuted a new technology platform is it calling REVV for Publishers. The new software expands Rubicon's product from optimizing remnant ad network impressions, and into the domain of managing direct and in-house advertising.
socalTECH
OCTOBER 26, 2009
Thousand Oaks-based Ceres , a developer of energy crops for the biofuels energy, has landed $4,989,144 in a grant from the Department of Energy, as part of a $151M effort to fund energy breakthroughs. According to the DOE, the funding--part of a effort called the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)--was part of a selection of 37 projects pursuing breakthroughs that could "fundamentally change the way we use and produce energy.
socalTECH
OCTOBER 7, 2009
For this morning's interview, we sat down and talked with Nick Desai , CEO of Global Fitness Media , which runs FitOrbit (www.fitorbit.com), an online site looking to help users put together a fitness and connect with fitness trainers. The firm is co-founded by Jake Steinfeld, of Body by Jake, and ExerciseTV, and has received investment from prolific angel investor Ron Conway and Polar Capital, the investment firm of former Google President Tim Armstrong.
SoCal CTO
OCTOBER 13, 2009
I'm hoping you can help me figure out who I should be connecting with on this. I find myself speaking at various venues in Los Angeles to tell people (most often service providers) about how I've used social media and particularly my blogs, LinkedIn, twitter and topic hubs as part of my own services business. These presentations always inspire people to do more with LinkedIn, create or improve their blog, and maybe do more with Twitter.
socalTECH
OCTOBER 23, 2009
San Clemente-based Metagenics , a developer of nutraceuticals, has raised $28.1M in a funding, according to numbers in the Q3 PricewaterhouseCoopers/NVCA MoneyTree report. Source of the funding was not revealed, however, Amway announced in August that it would take a majority stake in Metagenics, via its Alticor Corporate Enterprises arm. Metagenics told Michigan's Grand Rapid Press at the time of the investment by Alticor that it had more than $200M in sales in 2008.
socalTECH
OCTOBER 29, 2009
Pasadena-based LeisureLink , which operates an online marketplace and service for vacation rental booking, has raised $3.5M in a funding round. The round came to light through last week's PricewaterhouseCoopers/NVCA MoneyTree report. Details on the funding have not been announced by the firm. LeisureLink has previously raised funding from Clearstone Venture Partners, Group RCI, Kodiak Ventures LP, Mission Ventures, Pasadena Angels and the Tech Coast Angels.
socalTECH
OCTOBER 2, 2009
Los Angeles-based Alelo , which develops computer software that uses video games to teach language and culture training for Iraqi and other languages, reported late Friday that it has received a contract from the U.S. Department of Defense for a handheld training system. Alelo said that the contract covers a system for teaching foreign language and culture which runs on iPhone and iPod devices.
socalTECH
OCTOBER 26, 2009
Los Angeles-based SocialVibe , which develops charity-focused, brand web sites and social media applications, said this morning that it has launched a new effort to help charities raise money on Halloween. The firm said that it is launching a new program called Click 4 Good , geared towards Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter users, which allows them to visit a "virtual neighborhood" online.
socalTECH
OCTOBER 21, 2009
Santa Monica-based Demand Media , the new media venture of former MySpace chairman Richard Rosenblatt, said today that it has just published its one millionth piece of original content, and is launching an effort to extend health care benefits to freelancers creating that content for the firm. The firm claims that it is now one of the largest producers of content on the Web, distributing that to an audience of more than 80 million people.
socalTECH
OCTOBER 13, 2009
Gil Elbaz , one of the co-founders of Applied Semantics --the firm that developed the technology behind Google's AdSense--has launched a new startup, Factual. According to the Los Angeles-based firm, it is developing an online platform which allows anyone to share and mash open data. The new site--driven by an application programming interface the firm has named the Factual API--allows developers to connect their data with data from others.
socalTECH
OCTOBER 29, 2009
Aliso Viejo-based 3Tera , a developer of cloud computing software and services, announced Thursday that the firm has upgraded its AppLogic cloud computing platform. According to the firm, the updated platform includes automated diagnostics and self-healing features, including ability to monitor and detect hard drives issues; automatic volume repair; improved server isolation; and soft restarts of the system. 3Tera's software is used to manage virtual data center services, including deploying web
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