Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 10, 2012
My wife & I have a close friend who recently entered the workforce for his first-ever job. On his first day of work my wife was kind enough to write down words of wisdom from her years on the job. I don’t write about Tania very often – mostly at her request. Otherwise I’d shout from the mountain tops how smart & capable she is.
SoCal CTO
DECEMBER 19, 2012
I was talking with an early-stage founder who has a product vision and wants to get it built. He is not a technical person, but is somewhat web savvy. He wanted to get input from me on what he's doing, and he wants to begin to ask developers what it would take to build his product. I asked some of the same questions I ask in my Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions and then I get to a very common conversation: Me : Do you have specs?
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socalTECH
DECEMBER 24, 2012
Serena Ehrlich , Director of Marketing of Los Angeles-based Mogreet --and who is also well known in Los Angeles for her work with the Los Angeles chapter of the Social Media club--has been recognized by Mobile Marketer as one of its Mobile Women to Watch 2013. Ehrlich has been involved widely in the Los Angeles startup and social media community. Ehrlich joined Mogreet earlier this year.
InfoChachkie
DECEMBER 17, 2012
This article previously appeared in Forbes. It is that time of year again - annual planning season. Dynamic, growing startups consistently identify more ideas and opportunities than they have the time or resources to pursue, including: entering into potential partnerships, developing new products and accessing emerging markets. During my many years as an entrepreneur, I developed the Impact Matrix to help me prioritize such significant, long-term initiatives.
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.
Berkonomics
DECEMBER 21, 2012
OK. So I occasionally read suspense novels to break up the relative monotony of constant business books. A sentence in the one I am currently reading caught my eye. “There are three types of advice,” the wise White House Senior Counsel to the President told the young White House attorney. He referred to the three as legal advice, moral advice and political advice.
SoCal Tech Calendar
DECEMBER 6, 2012
Wednesday, December 12, 2012 -- Social Curation Summit. Leverage the Effects of Curated Commerce and Consumption Discover how brands and retailers across a wide range of business verticals can use curated stories, pictures, and videos to highlight creativity and innovation.
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
DECEMBER 10, 2012
I did a presentation recently for a graduate class from The Founder Institute around getting online/mobile products out the door. I LOVED it because, the presenting part was over quickly and we got into specific issues that the founders had in terms of getting things built. It was like having a bunch of mini- Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions all in one room.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 27, 2012
For the last week of the year, we're featuring the thoughts and reflections of some of the movers and shakers of Southern California's high tech community. We asked the same four questions of a variety of top technology entrepreneurs, investors, and others, to hear what they're thinking about, and are sharing it here over the next week. Kevin Winston , is the organizer of Digital LA , the popular and widely attended networking organization for the Los Angeles startup, web, movie, music, marketin
InfoChachkie
DECEMBER 3, 2012
This article previously appeared in Forbes. If Steve Blank and Eric Reis, two of the Founding Fathers of the Lean Startup Movement formed a band, they would produce music like the Kingsmen's Louie, Louie. The song is akin to a lean startup's minimally viable product (MVP). In less than an hour and at the cost of $50, the Kingsmen created an international hit and established garage rock as a mainstream musical genre.
Berkonomics
DECEMBER 27, 2012
Investors sometimes join into investment rounds that have been pre-negotiated by others, receiving the paperwork already created by attorneys from that negotiation. It is not uncommon for a sharp investor to discover a “stinky” clause or two in such agreements when reading them in preparation for signing. Bill Payne came across just such a stinky clause in a recent deal we both were late in the process of joining.
SoCal Tech Calendar
DECEMBER 25, 2012
Monday, December 31, 2012 -- SM New Tech Meetup November 2012 #SMNT5. 6 new tech startup companies will present their products and technology (5 min demo+5 min QandA).
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 17, 2012
I got a call Sunday from a business colleague while I was sitting in the lounge at LAX waiting for yet another delayed flight. This colleague is a lawyer with whom I work on a deal and have done so for a couple of years. By all accounts I now consider him a friend. He caught me while I was sipping a Bloody Mary and thinking a bit a business situation that bummed me out.
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 20, 2012
I see more and more entrepreneurs who seem to have everything going for them – vision, motivation, passion, even a good business plan, product, and money, and yet they can’t close customers. Maybe it’s time to look harder at the mantra of a new breed of gurus and successful entrepreneurs, including Steve Blank and Eric Ries , called “nail it then scale it” (NISI).
socalTECH
DECEMBER 20, 2012
What's the best way to show off what Silicon Beach has to offer? A new startup Silicon Beach LA , focused on creating a community portal for the Los Angeles and Silicon Beach community, launched Thursday, saying that it has launched a Kickstarter campaign to create a Silicon Beach themed-bus (nicknamed "Monica"), which will help promote the region at events.
InfoChachkie
DECEMBER 10, 2012
This article previously appeared in Forbes. I recently spoke with Michael Bleigh, Co-Founder and CEO of Divshot. I reached out to Michael after their surprising day at the top of Hacker News during early September. The innocuous post, which was simply titled " Divshot " generated over 110 comments and was awarded nearly 200 points by Hacker News' notoriously jaded readers.
Berkonomics
DECEMBER 13, 2012
Business cycles are a fact of life, and those of us who have lived through many cycles have gained experience in finding the proper time to step on the gas and when to use the brakes. These next several posts, we will explore a number of ways to build security into your plan, including insights relating to cash management, banker relations, and identifying recurring revenue streams that do not rise and fall with the business cycle… Often we joke together as CEOs that our goal is “world dom
SoCal Tech Calendar
DECEMBER 9, 2012
Saturday, December 15, 2012 -- Initiated by US-China Association of High-level Professionals (UCAHP), "Win in the 21st Century Startup Contest" is the first startup contest that targets entrepreneurs in U.S. and helps them to expand business in U.S. and China. By soliciting startup projects, expert judging, mentor programs and eventual funding, the contest hopes to inspire entrepreneurial spirit, lead technology innovation, invest in promising projects and further develop the global market.
Tech Zulu Event
DECEMBER 21, 2012
TechZulu is teaming up with Los Angeles based companies Earbit s and Grubwithus , to bring you a one-of-a-kind hackathon event. Instead of the traditional hackathon, let’s roll back the clock to childhood. Remember how great it was to wake up Saturday and watch the week’s best cartoons? Now hold that memory and think about your passion for coding.
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 14, 2012
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, like Simon Cowell is searching for on the X-Factor , that you can’t quite put your finger on. But the entrepreneurs that have “it” seem to be able to effortlessly get team members, investors, and customers to follow them anywhere.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 26, 2012
For the last week of the year, we're featuring the thoughts and reflections of some of the movers and shakers of Southern California's high tech community. We asked the same four questions of a variety of top technology entrepreneurs, investors, and others, to hear what they're thinking about, and are sharing it here over the next week. Today, we're featuring Erik Rannala , founder of MuckerLab , the startup accelerator focused on incubation stage Internet, software, services, and media business
socalTECH
DECEMBER 5, 2012
One of the most recently graduates of the DreamIt Ventures accelerator in Philadelphia--which is holding its Demo Day today--is none other than Los Angeles company NinjaThat. The startup operates an online marketplace that allows businesses and individuals to hire students "on-demand" to accomplish tasks for them. The startup, headed by Atif Siddiqi, said the company came out of a desire to help recent graduates, and to help them build an "employment graph" so they can leave college with more ex
socalTECH
DECEMBER 5, 2012
What's the best way to meet new people and friends? Supperking ([link] a newly launched startup, is hoping that one of those ways will be over a home cooked meal you discover over the phone's iPhone application. We spoke with CEO Kai Stubble to hear about how SupperKing is looking to create a service--inspired by collaborative consumption sites like Airbnb--which will let people host meals in their homes for strangers, to get to meet new people, show off your cooking skills, and hopefully make n
socalTECH
DECEMBER 5, 2012
What's the best way to meet new people and friends? Supperking ([link] a newly launched startup, is hoping that one of those ways will be over a home cooked meal you discover over the phone's iPhone application. We spoke with CEO Kai Stubbe to hear about how SupperKing is looking to create a service--inspired by collaborative consumption sites like Airbnb--which will let people host meals in their homes for strangers, to get to meet new people, show off your cooking skills, and hopefully make ne
socalTECH
DECEMBER 7, 2012
Lynda.com , the site which helps people learn software and other skills from online videos, has been recognized for its job creation, the firm said Friday, ranking number 1 in job creation in education by Inc. magazine. The company said it filled nearly 200 jobs from 2008 to 2011, tops in the Education industry. Lynda.com's online site offers up instructional courses on everything from software like Photoshop to Wordpress, and Excel to AutoCAD.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 3, 2012
It's surprising how often we run into rapidly growing companies that not many people have heard of, here in Southern California, but that's the case with El Segundo-based. NEOGOV , which has quietly built an enterprise software company supplying human resources software to the government and public sector. The firm recently showed up as one of the fastest growing companies in LA as part of the Deloitte Fast 500 rankings.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 12, 2012
What's the best way to encourage development of the technology industry in Los Angeles? A new group, headed by Major Villaraigosa and including a notable list of local entrepreneurs, investors, and others in the technology industry, announced today that it has presented the idea for a "(t)expo Line" Technology Corridor , centered around the new Expo Line light rail, which currently runs from Downtown to Culver City, and eventually will extend all the way to Santa Monica.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 19, 2012
A new study of social media activity and e-commerce, compiled from Los Angeles social tools developer Social Annex , shows that social media is--not surprisingly--playing a far bigger role in online shopping this year. The company analyzed social networking activity, and found that roughly 66 percent of users who made Black Friday / Cyber Monday purchases did so as a result of social media interaction, with 86 percent of social user making or receiving holiday gift recommendations via social net
socalTECH
DECEMBER 5, 2012
Santa Monica-based videogame developer Activision Publishing , which is a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, reports that its newly launched title, Call of Duty: Black Ops II , just crossed the $1 billion mark in retail sales. Activision said it reached that retail sales mark just fifteen days after launch. Activision said the numbers came via Chart-Track retail customer sell-through information and internal company estimates.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 12, 2012
What's the best way to capture the important things in your life on video, and share them with friends? Los Angeles-based Vyclone (www.vyclone.com) has created a mobile application which lets users capture videos, and automatically edits and combines multiple points of view from people nearby, and remixes it into an even more compelling video. The startup--which has the backing of such high profile investors as Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary's A-Grade Investments, Dreamworks, and Live Nation--als
socalTECH
DECEMBER 19, 2012
As an online shopper, do you wish you could instantly and automatically find and use all of those coupon codes floating out there--without having to search for and test them all out every time you're at an e-commerce site? That's exactly what the software from Honey (www.joinhoney.com) does, by automatically helping users of Google's Chrome Browser to find and try out e-commerce coupon codes.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 17, 2012
If you're like the typical device user today, you've got a smartphone, laptop, desktop, not to mention a dozen cloud accounts where you're storing your documents, music, video, and other files. How do you track where those files are? And how do you make sure you can access those files from anywhere? How about if it didn't matter where you stored those files, and they were available from anywhere?
socalTECH
DECEMBER 20, 2012
Club Caveman , the mobile application being developed by a team of Silicon Beach veterans, has just been released on Apple's iTunes store, six months after the group started a funding effort on Kickstarter for the mobile, interactive caveman app. The app--which currently sells for $0.99 on the iTunes store--lets users interact with a cute, humorous caveman who responds to both touch and voice commands from users.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 21, 2012
Santa Monica-based Playsino , the developer of social casino games, said Friday that it has released the first two games under its Publishing Network effort. The new games are Five-O Poker, developed by Israel-based Chiki Gaming, and Yalla Tarneed, a Middle Eastern card game developed by Yallah Games. Playsino recently announced an effort to bring third party, social casino games into its ecosystem, where it wlil help market and support games not designed by the company.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 28, 2012
For the last week of the year, we're featuring the thoughts and reflections of some of the movers and shakers of Southern California's high tech community. We asked the same four questions of a variety of top technology entrepreneurs, investors, and others, to hear what they're thinking about, and are sharing it here over the next week. Aber Whitcomb is a partner at startup co-working and incubation community io/LA , CTO of SGN , and former co-founder and CTO of MySpace. 1.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 19, 2012
MarkedUp , the latest startup out of Santa Monica-based MuckerLab , said this morning that it has begun offering up analytics for developers of both desktop and mobile applications for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. The startup--led by former Microsoft Developer Evangelist Aaron Stannard--said this morning that it is looking to provide app developers with actionable user insights and behavioral data, which can help them improve their user experience and maximize conversions of users from free to
socalTECH
DECEMBER 14, 2012
Do you have a small task (graphic design, page layout, UI) you wish you had someone do, in an affordable way? What if you could tap into a marketplace of students who could do those tasks for you? Ninjathat (www.ninjathat.com)--recently graduated from the Dreamit Ventures accelerator in Philadelphia--is a Los Angeles startup creating a marketplace for connecting students with small jobs--"missions"--for working professions, alumni, and businesses.
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