socalTECH
JUNE 30, 2009
Beverly Hills-based Spark Networks , which operates a number of vertically focused, online dating sites, is claiming today that the firm has now reached two million members for the firm's Christian focused dating site, ChristianMingle.com. The firm said the site--which has been around since 2001--is now the "leading" online network for Christian singles.
Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 20, 2009
Below you will find an outline for the posts I’ve done on how to raise VC.
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InfoChachkie
JUNE 25, 2009
This is a reposting of a ‘classic’ popular post. Johnnie Cochran was an effective, albeit smarmy, defense lawyer who would say or do anything to defend his clients (anyone up for a glass of OJ?). He was a master at encouraging jurors to disregard facts and base their legal verdicts on emotions and conjecture. Yet, despite his exceptional courtroom theatrics, you would be foolhardy to hire good old Johnnie to review your software cross-licensing agreement.
SoCal Tech Calendar
JUNE 28, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 -- Online and Mobile Video. The UCLA Anderson School of Management and the German American Business Association (GABA), invite you to an exciting panel discussion with top digital media executives and venture capitalists followed by a reception at the UCLA Faculty Center. Panliests Brett Brewer - President of Adknowledge, a performance-based advertising network; Myspace (Intermix Media) Co-founder (acquired by News Corp) and Advisor at Crosscut Ventures Curt Marvis - P
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.
socalTECH
JUNE 25, 2009
It seems that every week, a new, Voice-over-IP provider firm surfaces in the market, either providing PBX services, voicemail, or other similar services. Los Angeles-based XCast Labs (www.xcastlabs.com) announced earlier this month that it has raised a $2.7M round of funding from the Pasadena Angels and Frontera Capital for a voice-over-IP service, and we thought we'd talk with Cliff Rees, the firm's CEO, to understand how the firm is different from those many providers.
socalTECH
JUNE 11, 2009
Los Angeles-based SodaHead.com , the social question-and-answer and polling startup headed by former MySpace VP of Operations Jason Feffer, is morphing its focus towards the social news area, saying last night that the company is looking to become a "social newspaper." According to SodaHead.com, the site is looking to create a forum to discuss breaking news and "hot topics" which are important to users on the site.
Southern California Tech Central brings together the best content for technical professionals in Southern California from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
socalTECH
JUNE 30, 2009
San Diego-based MojoPages , which operates a white-label, online directory of local businesses, said today that it has raised $5M in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Austin Ventures. According to MojoPages, the funding will go towards expanding its local search solution for media properties. MojoPages operates a site which allows users to review and rate local companies, which it makes available to newspaper, TV, and radio station web sites.
socalTECH
JUNE 29, 2009
San Diego- and Cupertino-based ParAccel , a developer of software for massively parallel databases used for data warehousing analytics, announced today that it has raised $22M in a venture capital round. The round came from Menlo Ventures, as well as prior ivestors Bay Partners, Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV), Tao Venture Partners and Walden International.
socalTECH
JUNE 8, 2009
Los Angeles-based EdgeCast Networks , a provider of content delivery networking services, is announcing today that it has inked an intellectual property licensing agreement with Web.com. According to EdgeCast, the IP deal grants the firm a license for more than thirty issued and pending patents, covering display and delivery of rich media; automated hosting and server management; load balancing; dynamic DNS, and other technology.
socalTECH
JUNE 30, 2009
San Diego-based Mushroom Networks , a spinout of the University of California San Diego, said today that the firm is now applying its technology to the wireless market. The firm, which develops technology which combines multiple Internet connections into one, faster broadband connection, said its product PortaBella takes up to four cellular data cards and creates a single, high-speed shared connection from those four cards.
socalTECH
JUNE 18, 2009
Maverick Angels , one of the angel investment groups in the Los Angeles area, said this afternoon that the group is launching two new chapters, expanding into the Santa Barbara and South Bay area. According to a note from John Dilts, the angel group's founder and President, the move comes due to the increase in entrepreneurs coming to angel groups, given the retracting availability of funding from banks and venture capital firms.
socalTECH
JUNE 2, 2009
Santa Ana-based STEC , a manufacturer of flash-based, solid-state disk drives, reported yesterday that the firm's ZeusIOPS solid state drives are being integrated into HP's StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA). Size of the design win, or financial impact, was not discussed by the firm. HP's EVA disk arrays are sold into the enterprise market.
socalTECH
JUNE 23, 2009
Silicon Valley electric car darling Tesla Motors said Tuesday that it has gained approval for a $465M, low interest loan from the U.S. Department of Energy, for the firm's electrical vehicles--potentially benefiting Southern California and an un-named, local city--if negotiations for a location are successful. According to Tesla, it will use $365M of the low interest loans from the DOE for production engineering and assembly of the company's Model S all-electric family sedan, which the company h
socalTECH
JUNE 16, 2009
San Diego-based life sciences and scientific software developer Accelrys reported Monday that Scipio "Max" Carnecchia has joined the company as chief executive officer and president, effective immediately. Carnecchia has also been appointed to Accelrys' board of directors. Carnecchia succeeds Todd Johnson, who had served as interim president and CEO since January.
socalTECH
JUNE 16, 2009
Los Angeles-based Boingo Wireless , which operates a network of Wi-Fi access points in airports, hotels, and other public areas, said today that it has rolled out a new hotspot finder and connection manager for Google's Android operating system. According to the firm, its software--which helps Boingo's customers determine if there's a wireless network available, and will login the user to the network--runs on all Android smartphones, including the T-Mobile G1 and Vodafone HTC Magic.
socalTECH
JUNE 18, 2009
San Diego-based V-Vehicle Company and venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers teamed up with the Governor of Louisiana and the Louisiana Economic Development agency yesterday to announce that it has purchased a defunct automotive plant in Monroe, Louisiana, to manufacture its energy efficient, environmentally friendly automobiles. According to the state of Louisiana, V-Vehicle Company is backed by KPCB, T.
socalTECH
JUNE 17, 2009
Yesterday, Santa Monica-based SharesPost (www.sharespost.com) launched a new service of particular interest to the venture capital and high tech startup market, a new, online service which facilitates the buying and selling of private company stock. We caught up with Greg Brogger , the firm's CEO, to understand the service and how it might help private investors.
socalTECH
JUNE 15, 2009
Foothill Ranch-based Applied Voice & Speech Technologies has raised $1.5M out of a $3M financing round, including equity and options, according to a regulatory filing from the firm this morning. Details on the funding have not been released by the firm. AVST develops enterprise communications infrastructure including voicemail, email and fax messaging systems.
socalTECH
JUNE 8, 2009
San Diego-based VoxOx , a consumer-focused, voice mailbox and unified communications service, announced this morning that the firm has lauunched a new feature which allows users to make low-cost, international phone calls. The firm said it is targeting summer travelers with a new SMS callback feature, which connects users with a cheap, international phone call through a SMS message.
socalTECH
JUNE 30, 2009
La Jolla-based Ortiva Wireless , which develops technology to stream video to mobile devices, reports today that it has hired on a new, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales, James D. Edson. According to the firm, Edson will help manage and grow the firm's domestic and international carrier business. Edson was most recently at Scanbuy, and has also previously served at Motorola, Qualcomm, Ericsson, PacketVideo, and Littlefeet.
socalTECH
JUNE 29, 2009
There has been a lot of recent interest in green technologies and products which attack the green/clean technology space, with a number of firms in Southern California tackling parts of that problem. One of those companies is LEHR (www.golehr.com), which develops and markets lawn and garden equipment which uses propane--not gasoline--for power. We sat down with Captain Bernardo J.
socalTECH
JUNE 25, 2009
West Hollywood-based Citysearch , the local reviews and directory service of IAC, has taken an unusual approach to finding its next business idea: it's running a contest which asks its users to submit a "brilliant" idea for web and mobile applications. According to Citysearch and IAC, the firms will award $10,000 in cash, and up to $1M in funding to develop and manage a new business venture around the idea, for users who submit the best business idea to go with its website Sidewalk.com.
socalTECH
JUNE 24, 2009
Westlake Village-based Move , which operates the online real estate site Move.com, Realtor.com, and other related properties, said today that it has sold the assets and certain liabilities of its Welcome Wagon property to South Florida Media Group. Financial terms of the sale were not disclosed. Move has been trying to sell the property since August of 2008, when the firm said it wanted to divest the unit to focus on online real estate.
socalTECH
JUNE 24, 2009
Irvine-based Local.com reports this morning that the firm has scored a win with the Dallas Morning News, the newspaper owned by A.H. Belo Corporation. According to Local.com, it will power the local search function on the Dallas Morning News' site. The new search function includes a directory of local services in the Dallas/Fort Worth MSA, plus the ability for companies to place their own sponsored search results.
socalTECH
JUNE 23, 2009
The nonprofit, economic thinktank the Milken Institute is reporting today that California is "losing a battle" with other states in retaining and attracting manufacturing jobs, including high tech, and is "hemorrhaging high-tech manufacturing jobs." The report, "Manufacturing 2.0: A More Prosperous California" cited declines in manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2007 of 21 percent, and a decline of 23 percent in high-tech manufacturing jobs in the same period.
socalTECH
JUNE 18, 2009
A new study released today by the Kauffman Foundation, reports that the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity belongs to people 55-64. The study --which attempts to characterize who might drive the next wave of entrepreneurial activity in the United States--also found that the average age of U.S.-born, technology founders when they started their companies was 39.
socalTECH
JUNE 16, 2009
Santa Monica-based SharesPost , a new startup out of Scott Painter's BrightHouse incubator, said Tuesday morning that the firm has launched on online platform which will match buyers and sellers of private equity. According to the firm, it will allow buyers and sellers of privately held companies to sell and buy shares in privately held firms, through secondary market transactions.
socalTECH
JUNE 16, 2009
Earlier this month, Santa Barbara-based RingRevenue (www.ringrevenue.com) announced that it had raised a round of venture funding. We caught up with the firm's CEO, Jason Spievak, to learn more about the firm's technology, as well as to hear about the company's experienced team, which came out of Callwave. Explain your technology? Jason Spievak: At a high level, what we do, is enable affiliate networks to track calls like they do clicks.
socalTECH
JUNE 11, 2009
Pasadena-based eSolar , the solar thermal energy technology backed by Idealab, has inked a deal to develop a 92 megawatt, concentrating solar power plant in southern New Mexico. According to El Paso Electric, the energy plant is being developed by NRG Energy and eSolar, and is part of NRG and eSolar's plans to develop up to 500 MW of solar thermal energy across the Southwest US.
socalTECH
JUNE 10, 2009
A study released today by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation concludes that the U.S. venture capital industry needs to shrink, in order to resuscitate the industry. According to the study, "Right-Sizing the U.S. Venture Capital Industry," the nonprofit foundation, which studies and encourage entrepreneurship, concluded that there has been stagnating and declining returns in the industry due to a "rapid expansion" of venture capital assets under management.
socalTECH
JUNE 4, 2009
Los Angeles-based iolo Technologies , best known for its consumer System Mechanic software for optimizing PC settings, said Thurusday that the firm is launching into the small business market with a new version of its product. iolo said its new product, System Mechanic Business, will be offered in bundles of 10, 25, 50, 75, or 100 PC licenses, and sold via its channel and through its own site.
socalTECH
JUNE 1, 2009
For this morning's interview, we caught up with Eden Jarrin, the President of Los Angeles-based eDivvy (www.edivvy.com). Eden told us a bit about the firm, how people are using it, as well as her own experience and what she learned from her prior startup, BeJane. Let's start with eDivvy. How did you end up here? Eden Jarrin: The company was founded by Steven Ng, and was started about a year and a half ago.
socalTECH
JUNE 30, 2009
A report released Tuesday afternoon by publisher Greentech Media says that green technology investments hits $1.2 billion in Q2, up from $836M in the first quarter of the year. According to the report, there were 85 deals in Q2 versus 59 deals in Q1. Among other numbers tallied by Greentech: solar power deals led in terms of investment category, with $33.4M in 17 deals; automotive and transportation was next with $202.5M and 8 deals; and biofuels/gasification/cleaner coal was third in terms of i
socalTECH
JUNE 30, 2009
San Diego-based Metaplace , the online virtual world startup headed by Raph Koster, disclosed today that the firm is now allowing users to easily embed virtual worlds into any web page. Metaplace said that web users can now embed the firm's Flash-based virtual worlds into blogs or webpages. The firm has been working towards allowing anyone to build their own virtual world and place it on their own web page since 2008, when it scored a funding round from Charles River Ventures, Crescendo Ventures
socalTECH
JUNE 30, 2009
San Diego-based Pyron Solar , a manufacturer of solar concentrators for the utility scale solar market, has been acquired. According to Ellis Energy Investments, it acquired the assets of Pyron, and will be adding the firm to its portfolio of companies. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Pyron Solar develops a solar concentrator which was being applied to solar plants for utilities; the firm had scored an undisclosed amount of venture capital from investment firm New Energies
socalTECH
JUNE 30, 2009
Los Angeles-based Stamps.com , a provider of PC and online postage software, has updated the firm's software, saying today that it has redesigned its user interface, along with other improvements. Stamps.com, which allows anyone with a PC to print their own, legal U.S. postage, said that version 8.0 of its product is available for download from its site; among other features are the ability to print smaller certified mail labels; printing of pre-paid return shipping labels as PDF documents, and
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