This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Today it has been announced that I’m leading a $15 million funding round in Tact , a new generation of Enterprise Software company along with other investors including Microsoft Ventures and previous investors Accel and Redpoint Rather than just waxing lyrically about how great the company is I thought I’d provide some context about why I invested and also about a fundamental change I see in the coming years in the way enterprise software is used.
Some types of businesses generate more and more recurring revenues over time, often growing to a size where recurring revenues pay all of the overhead of the company – an enviable position. There is a phenomenon I have observed time after time with mature companies receiving over 75% of their revenues from recurring sources. Management undertakes a simple exercise of calculating the increased profitability of shutting down all R&D, sales and subordinate operations, and universally notes wit
If you were to write a history of Silicon Valley, you could do it by looking at a series of major diaspora. Companies like Google, Yahoo, Oracle and PayPal attract top talent for years; when they reach maturity or a major liquidity event, their talent disperses and germinates into the next generation of companies. It’s quite possible that Snapchat could do the same for L.A.
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.
This holiday season, we are again sharing the reflections on 2016 from Southern California's technology ecosystem. Today's contribution is from Grant Hosford , the CEO and co-founder of codeSpark (www.codespark.com), the company behind the game The Foos (www.thefoos.com), which teaches kids to learn how to code just by playing the game. You can see all of our holiday reflections here.
A version of this article previously appeared in Forbes. There are two macro trends occuring within venture capital (VC) which are combining to have a […]. The post Good Things Happen When Two Transformative VC Trends Collide appeared first on John Greathouse.
Today is amongst the proudest days I’ve had at Upfront Ventures — getting the chance to announce that Kevin Zhang has been promoted to Partner. Watching him develop over the past 4.5 years at Upfront has been both a pleasure and also has taught me a lot about venture capital. Kevin joined Upfront in 2012 as an Associate. We generally look for associates who are deeply quantitative, have great research & analytical skills and often have the tool kit for framing and making complex decisions.
Sign up to get articles personalized to your interests!
Southern California Tech Central brings together the best content for technical professionals in Southern California from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Today is amongst the proudest days I’ve had at Upfront Ventures — getting the chance to announce that Kevin Zhang has been promoted to Partner. Watching him develop over the past 4.5 years at Upfront has been both a pleasure and also has taught me a lot about venture capital. Kevin joined Upfront in 2012 as an Associate. We generally look for associates who are deeply quantitative, have great research & analytical skills and often have the tool kit for framing and making complex decisions.
Growth CEO’s differ from those who merely station–keep their way into the status quo, protecting the enterprise by reducing risk and cost – without creating a vision and action plan for growth. Here is a way to test yourself with a tool useful for any leader seeking to create positive change. Authors Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Oglivie have created a framework for creation of a new product or service – one worth spending at least a cycle of time for review.
Many aspiring entrepreneurs are looking to the Internet as an opportunity to get rich quick, instead of a place where you can start a business you love, for very little capital and minimal technical expertise. The reality is that if you build a business you love, you may in fact make big money, but if you start a business to get rich, you will probably fail.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, is aiming to launch another rocket early next month, which would be its first attempt since a Sep. 1 explosion prompted the Hawthorne aerospace company to halt its launch schedule as it investigated the cause of the incident.
Calabasas-based surround sound and audio technology developer DTS is now officially part of Tessera , after Tessera completed its acquisition of DTS on Thursday, the companies said on Thursday afternoon. Tessera paid $850M in cash for DTS, in a deal which had originally been announced in May. Tessera said that it will introduce a new corporate name, stock ticker, brand, and logo during the first quarter of 2017 as a result of the acquisition.
Patients with spinal muscular atrophy got some good news last week when the FDA approved nusinersen (Spinraza) , making it the first marketed drug ever for the rare and potentially deadly genetic disease. But as expected, the drug, from Biogen and Ionis Pharmaceuticals, is a costly one, priced at the high end of the six figure price tags often given to treatments for rare diseases with no alternative treatments.
Dave’s note: This week we invite long-time CEO of Quicksilver Software to respond to our question: “How have you remained relevant in the gaming software business over so many years?” He and his company have worked in the video game business since the very earliest generation of games in the early 1980’s. His company is one of the oldest independent studios in the business.
At some point in their life, hopefully everyone strives to be the best in their chosen profession. Most people think that being the best requires more intelligence, more training, and more experience. In reality, in business or even in sports, the evidence is conclusive that it is as much about how you think, as what you do. I saw this illustrated a while back in the classic sports book, “ Training Camp: What the Best Do Better Than Everyone Else ”, by Jon Gordon.
Domain registry company XYZ Inc. has been granted permission by the Chinese government to sell its dot-xyz domain suffix in China, potentially opening up a huge market to the Santa Monica startup. XYZ has sold more than 6 million dot-xyz domains globally. About 2 million of those domains were registered in China with tentative permission from the Chinese government.
This holiday season, we are again sharing the reflections on 2016 from Southern California's technology ecosystem. Today's contribution is from Jaspar Weir , co-founder of TaskUs (www.taskus.com), which powers much of the back office and customer support behind some of the best known startups here in Southern California--not to mention the rest of the world, and for many established companies, too.
Monday, December 19, 2016 -- Digital Family Reunion '16. For the past eight years, the Digital Family Reunion has been the holiday event of the season for LA's vibrant technology and business communities. With our aim to connect Web 1.0 leaders with the next generation of technology professionals, DFR has always cultivated a unifying place to reconnect with colleagues and make new friends with those who share our common bond.
If you’re not much of a podcast listener and you have a sense that you’re missing out on a lot of great content, you’re absolutely right. But now is a good time to fix that, thanks to a new profusion of listening options. And to get you started, I have a few shows to suggest. Fifty of them, in fact. I’ve always been a big fan of podcasts—and I mean always, back to the days of the very first podcasts around 2004.
Dave’s comment: This week we welcome our perennial favorite contributor, Kim Shepherd, CEO of Decision Toolbox, to offer us her sage advice on a subject where she is expert. Outgoing, full of creative ideas, and certainly the best person to teach us how, here is Kim on networking… By Kim Shepherd . Networking with others you want to meet is second nature to some, but it fills others with dread.
Too many entrepreneurs put their best creative thinking into the startup idea, and believe that the business implementation simply requires following tried and true business practices. In my experience as a startup advisor, nothing could be further from the truth. To win, you need to think outside the box to deliver a better customer experience, business model, and new positioning.
While Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc. might no longer be launching their products at Las Vegas’ Consumer Electronics Show, the event still has appeal for a number of L.A. companies – mainstays and upstarts alike.
This holiday season, we are again sharing the reflections on 2016 from Southern California's technology ecosystem. This morning, we have Kevin Winston of Digital LA (www.digitalla.net), the organization which is LA's largest digital networking group and which is behind the Silicon Beach Fest, the first and largest tech, startup and entertainment conference in LA.
Wednesday, December 14, 2016 -- Startups: The Year That Was and The Year That's Ahead. Cal Lutheran University Center for Entrepreneurship. Keynote Speaker: Ben Kuo, socaltech.com. We invite back Benjamin Kuo, editor and founder of socalTECH.com, for another year in review. He will talk about: What's going on in Southern California's entrepreneurial environment, and what were the noteworthy things that happened this year -- and what might be expect in the future?
Connect, the San Diego nonprofit supporting local innovation and entrepreneurship, handed out its Most Innovative New Product Awards at a dinner last night in La Jolla—recognizing innovations that range from an inflatable satellite antenna to a mobile app for art museums. Volunteer entrepreneurs, investors, and business executives evaluated 111 nominations in eight categories for the 29th annual awards.
One of my company CEO’s recently described his rule for acquisition success, and it resonated with me as a great goal for planning during acquisition exercises. This CEO states that he has made it work twice when acquiring companies, and that is enough for him to make it his rule for all future acquisitions. If the target company is able to show a ten percent EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization), then the acquisition team should be able to create a way to
Too many aspiring entrepreneurs I mentor can talk at length about their innovative ideas and passions, and ask lots of good questions, but never make much progress in building a real business. In my experience, building a business is much more about getting things done than having great ideas. The challenge is to move from ideas to specific goals, to delivered solutions.
Virtual reality video game producer Survios announced on Tuesday that it has raised $50 million in capital over two rounds this year from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Lux Capital, and other investors.
Los Angeles-based TeleSign announced this morning that it has it named Tom Powledge as the company's new Chief Product Officer. Powledge was previously Vice President and General Manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), where he managed the company's ArcSign business. Prior to HPE, Powledge was Vice President of Managed Security Services at Cisco Systems, and also spent 20 years at Symantec.
Tuesday, December 13, 2016 -- Rewind/Unwind: A Digital Video Soiree Hosted by LA Digital Video Group. Rewind and unwind at our digital video industry mixer! Our VIP panelists will share their hot takes on the year that was in online video and digital media in general. Join us for lively opinions, refreshments, and games. Special guest panelists include: Roarke Boes, Director of Content Management, Omnia Media; Brian Nickerson, CEO and Co-Founder, MagicLinks; Joe Babarsky, Director of Creative In
Molecular Assemblies , a San Diego startup developing a new enzymatic method for synthesizing DNA, said today it has raised $2.3 million in a seed financing round. The funding will be used to hire more scientists and to advance the company’s development of enzymatic DNA synthesis technology, CEO Michael Kamdar said in an interview Friday. Molecular Assemblies says its enzymatic approach for making DNA was inspired by the way nature makes DNA.
“ENGAGE LA is an in-depth look at how the digital age is evolving and transforming storytelling. We are bringing all the successful elements from our dynamic Talk Forum NYC events to our third ENGAGE LA Forum. This experience will change how you view the world of content creation and consumption, with fresh perspectives that can be applied to a variety of areas, including social, mobile, retail, video, TV and film.
Most entrepreneurs I know are individually very innovative, but a successful startup can’t be a one-man show (for long). That means they need to build an innovative team, which is not a skill that most people are born with. In fact, some very innovative individuals, known as ‘idea people’ or inventors, often end up creating the most dysfunctional teams.
A joint venture team including L.A.’s Aecom Technology Corp. has been awarded a contract for part of the decommissioning process of the shuttered San Onofre nuclear generating station in northern San Diego County.
Carpinteria-based cloud-based construction software developer Procore apparently has joined the ranks of the small number of Southern California's "unicorns"--those companies who are valued at more than $1 billion--with the funding the company announced on Thursday. According to the WSJ, the funding doubles the $500M valuation that the company had a year ago in its prior funding.
Thursday, December 8, 2016 -- Crowd Invest Summit. The first ever Crowd Invest Summit will debut December 7-8, 2016 at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel in Santa Monica, California. The summit will feature a robust agenda spanning a variety of equity crowdfunding themes including investment analysis, marketing strategies, trends and insights from industry experts.
After taking the first steps toward the development of living human liver tissue “patches” for therapeutic use, San Diego-based Organovo (NASDAQ: ONVO ) is laying out its pre-clinical data for the first time today. And the company says the results are promising enough to warrant further development of the technology. Organovo CEO Keith Murphy said in October that the company intends to use its 3D bio-printing technology to produce living human liver tissue for transplantation in patients with fa
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 5,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
197 
Let's personalize your content