Berkonomics
MARCH 9, 2017
Well, the numbers don’t lie, even if there are several sources of these statistics. Starting a company is HARD – in so many ways. And risky too. I read several years ago, that the average startup restaurant lasts only about a year. Ouch! Here I am a professional investor in early stage companies, and I attempt to find those with the greatest chance of success and growth in value over time.
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 2, 2017
There are so many moments from the Upfront Summit that I want to share with you — it just takes time to watch through all the videos, do write ups and still do my day job. One of the most exciting thinkers at Summit was Rebecca Kantar, the founder of Imbellus. I was excited to see her perform on stage because I’ve long been telling people how crazy smart, ambitious and talented she is but I was excited for people to hear for themselves.
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TechCrunch LA
MARCH 24, 2017
A reminder that I’ll be holding a micro-meetup at Boomtown on Broadway in Boulder, Colorado on Wednesday, March 29th at 7pm. You’ll have 2 minutes to pitch in front of two local judges and then 2 minutes of questions. No slides, no props, no costumes (Ok, maybe costumes.) Boomtown is at 2060 Broadway B1 in the basement. To get there, park around Spruce and Broadway and it’s… Read More.
socalTECH
MARCH 16, 2017
Los Angeles-based Embark Ventures , a new venture capital fund led by Yipeng Zhao and venture capitalist Peter Lee, is raising a $50M venture capital fund, according to a recent SEC filing by the firm. The filing says the firm has so far raised $45M out of a $50M target in the fund, from six limited partners. Embark's website says it is focused on pre-seed and seed stage investments in Internet and software companies.
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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.
L.A. Business Journal
MARCH 29, 2017
Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders on Wednesday unveiled a $5 billion-a- year plan for road and highway projects, to be funded chiefly by steep hikes in taxes for diesel fuel and gasoline, and a new tax on vehicle registrations.
InfoChachkie
MARCH 1, 2017
A version of this article previously appeared in Forbes. I recently had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Kobie Fuller, current Partner at Upfront Ventures and […]. The post Objective Sports: An Indicator Of Startup Success appeared first on John Greathouse.
Southern California Tech Central brings together the best content for technical professionals in Southern California from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 6, 2017
Mayor Eric Garcetti at Upfront Summit, February 2017 I first sat down with then councilman Eric Garcetti on the Ides of March 2012 — almost 5 years ago exactly. He was running to be the 42nd mayor of Los Angeles and he outlined his vision to “open up the city government to technology and innovation” if he were elected. He wanted to bring the same level of technology focus and energy that Mayor Bloomberg had brought to New York City.
TechCrunch LA
MARCH 29, 2017
A reminder that I’ll be holding a micro-meetup at Boomtown on Broadway in Boulder, Colorado tonight at 7pm. You’ll have two minutes to pitch in front of two local judges and then two minutes of questions. No slides, no props, no costumes (Ok, maybe costumes.) Boomtown is at 2060 Broadway B1 in the basement. To get there, park around Spruce and Broadway and it’s in the… Read More.
socalTECH
MARCH 27, 2017
Irvine-based Cloudvirga , a developer of automated mortgage lending software, announced this morning that it has raised $15M more in a Series B funding. The funding was led by Incenter, a Blackstone Group portfolio company. The company said the funding goes to scale its technology and product offerings. The company has now raised $22.5M in total. Cloudvirga was founded by Bill Dallas, Kyle Kamrooz and Mark Attaway.
L.A. Business Journal
MARCH 29, 2017
Santa Monica pet-sitting app-maker DogVacay was purchased Tuesday by Rover.com for an undisclosed sum, according to the companies.
InfoChachkie
MARCH 28, 2017
A version of this article previously appeared in Forbes. “Point of view is worth 80 IQ points.” Alan Curtis Kay, Personal Computer Pioneer I […]. The post If I’d Only Known Then… A Boomer’s Millennial Pep Talk appeared first on John Greathouse.
Berkonomics
MARCH 23, 2017
I have a good business friend, an experienced manager and teacher with a Harvard MBA, whose deep thinking creativity and intelligence are admired by many. But he dilutes his effectiveness with wordy PowerPoint presentations. It has become a long running joke between us, as I often remind him that most of us have a very limited attention span and ability to recall important points from a presentation.
Startup Professionals Musings
MARCH 5, 2017
With the advent of LinkedIn, Facebook, and dozens of other websites profiling you, the old-fashioned written resume is an artifact of a hiring practice that is now superfluous. The real “resume” that you have to live with is everything that you or anyone else has posted about you on any site on the Internet. You can’t hide, since no Internet presence will always be a negative.
Xconomy
MARCH 2, 2017
In the venture capital business, a rising tide lifts all boats. That’s the idea, at least. A new report released today by Seattle-based PitchBook shows that U.S. venture firms have plenty of capital to invest in new companies, after 328 venture funds raised a total of $51.6 million in 2016. That’s a high-water mark for VC fund-raising in the post dot-com era.
socalTECH
MARCH 27, 2017
San Diego-based renewable energy services firm EDF Renewable Services , the operations and maintenance arm of EDF Renewable Energy, says it now has 10 gigawatts of capacity under contract. The company said its North American business has over 500 people in 27 U.S. states, four Canadian provinces, Mexico, and Chile servicing renewable energy installations.
L.A. Business Journal
MARCH 9, 2017
Telemedicine startup iExhale announced that it closed a $1.86 million seed round led by New York’s Dorilton Capital on Thursday.
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 6, 2017
Every year Upfront Ventures surveys Limited Partners (LPs) who are the main source of capital that invests in VC funds and thus the main source of capital that goes to startups to get an early-warning sense of the year ahead, leaving aside any Black Swans. The results are in (and the full deck available ) and a few things are clear: LPs are at their most optimistic phase about venture since the great recession of 2007–2009 LPs believe that the venture markets have permanently changed and there a
Berkonomics
MARCH 16, 2017
So, what do you think is more important? The quality of your management team, or the plan you execute toward success? Checking with professional investors from angels to VC’s, the answer appears to be near unanimous: the quality of the proposed or actual management team comes in a strong first, before the attractiveness of the business plan itself. The quest for a great management team is not a fluke, but rather a result of backward looks at the failure rate from past investments by those same
Startup Professionals Musings
MARCH 10, 2017
Every entrepreneur I know has a few bad habits they intended to overcome a long time ago, such as micromanaging, or failure to get enough rest and relaxation. As a result, both their business and their personal lives continue to suffer. Wouldn’t you like to know how to make that big step to get past your procrastination and get to your maximum potential once and for all?
Xconomy
MARCH 17, 2017
Stung by slow sales of its next-generation anti-cholesterol drug, Amgen hopes new clinical data, released this morning, will spur doctors to boost prescriptions and—perhaps more important—drive insurers to loosen their restrictions. The data, from a massive study of more than 27,000 patients, come at a time when drug and healthcare prices are a top U.S. political issue, and pricey new cholesterol drugs have been a key battleground.
socalTECH
MARCH 6, 2017
San Diego-based Raken has raised $2M in a funding round, for the company's construction reporting and compliance software. The funding was led by Rincon Venture Partners , and also included Eniac Ventures and Spider Capital. Raken is led and was co-founded by CEO Kyle Slager and CTO/CPO Dr. Sergey Sundukovskiy. The company develops cloud-based software used to help monitor construction project progress and compliance, and was founded in 2013.
L.A. Business Journal
MARCH 28, 2017
L.A.’s solar power industry grew by 11 percent in 2016 over 2015, but dropped to second place for most solar-related jobs in the nation’s metropolitan areas, according to a report issued Tuesday by the Solar Foundation, a Washington D.C. nonprofit dedicated to promoting the solar power industry.
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 12, 2017
Recently Upfront Ventures published its outlook for the technology startup world and venture capital overall titled it “ WTF Happened to Winter ?” The conclusion of our report was that winter did come, but it was mild and short. This was driven by the influx of corporate VCs, foreign VC money, sovereign wealth funds and the new war chests of VCs who raised new funds in the past 18 months.
Berkonomics
MARCH 2, 2017
As an early stage investor, the first test for me is whether “my” entrepreneur is flexible in both the plan and execution of his or her vision (since from experience almost everything about a business plan changes over time), and whether s/he, no matter what age or experience, is coachable. Doctoral theses have been written on this subject. Early stage investor groups often list these traits at or near the top of their list when filtering opportunities for investment.
Startup Professionals Musings
MARCH 3, 2017
It’s easy to say to people on your team that they must be accountable for their actions, but it’s not so easy to tell them how to do it. It’s even harder to give them the mindset of wanting to be accountable. In fact, many business leaders forget that they are the role model for accountability, and don’t audit their own actions to make sure that they always practice what they preach.
Xconomy
MARCH 1, 2017
Last month, Grail publicly spread word of intentions to raise more than $1 billion in an ambitious quest to develop a blood test that can diagnose and detect cancer at its earliest stages. Today, the Menlo Park, CA, startup has revealed the crop of drugmakers and others it has secured to fund the effort. Grail said today that it has raised more than $900 million in a Series B round led by Arch Venture Partners.
socalTECH
MARCH 21, 2017
Irvine-based enterprise storage services provider Zadara Storage said today that it has expanded its support for Amazon Web Services storage regions, to AWS Beijing. Zadara said the expansion comes in a partnership with Futong, which will make Zadara's VPSA Storage Array at the Sinnet Technology Co., Ltd, data center. Zadara said the region is its sixth AWS region internationally.
L.A. Business Journal
MARCH 15, 2017
ServiceTitan, a Glendale-based provider of business software for home service businesses, announced Wednesday it closed an $80 million Series B funding round.
socalTECH
MARCH 1, 2017
Los Angeles-based inVia Robotics has rolled out a new robotics system, aimed at warehouse automation, specifically aimed at e-commerce retailers and fulfillment providers. According to inVia, its new inVia Dynamic Automated Storage and Retrieval System (AS/RS) is designed to deliver toes, trays, and others to pickers, packers, and replenishers in warehouses, to help lower human travel time and liability in warehouse aisles.
socalTECH
MARCH 7, 2017
Los Angeles-based food alternative developer Soylent has rolled out a new chatbot, called "Trish", and started accepting Bitcoin from its customers. According to Soylent, its new "nutrition-obsessed artificially intelligent spokesperson" will appear both on its virtual store on its site, as well as other channels, including broadcast, digital social, and beond.
socalTECH
MARCH 7, 2017
Remember those days of flipping hamburgers as your first job in high school? It looks like those days might be at an end, as a local startup, Miso Robotics , and hamburger chain CaliBurger have unveiled a new robot, "Flippy", which uses artificial intelligence to grill burgers in Pasadena. CaliBurger, which so far as rolled out the robot just to Pasadena, says it plans to roll out the AI-driven robots to more than 50 restaurants worldwide by the end of 2019.
socalTECH
MARCH 23, 2017
Los Angeles-based Water Planet , which develops water treatment membrane technology originally developed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), revealed today that its seed investor is none other than actor Kevin Costner. The company said that Costner and his business partner, Rod Lake, were actually the company's founding investors back in 2011.
socalTECH
MARCH 9, 2017
Los Angeles-based Local Roots Farms , a startup located at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI), says it is showing off a traveling, indoor farm at SXSW, which showcases its hydroponic technology. Local Roots said its farm is built inside a 40 foot shipping container, which is designed to grow leafy greens equal to five acres of land, with up to 99 percent less water than conventional agriculture, and without the use of pesticides and herbicides.
socalTECH
MARCH 31, 2017
San Diego-based Echo , a startup which is developing a new "hybrid" microscope aimed at replacing both upright and inverted microscopes, has raised $7.5M in a Series A funding. The funding was co-led by Dolby Family Ventures and Tech Coast Angels (TCA). According to the company, the new funding will go towards manufacturing, sales, and developing future technologies.
socalTECH
MARCH 6, 2017
Los Angeles-based Maple Media (maplemedia.io) recently announced a big, $30M funding from Shamrock Capital, to assemble a collection of mobile applications in the utility, productivity, games and entertainment verticals. We caught up with co-founder Clark Landry to chat about his new startup, which he co-founded with Michael Ritter. What's the idea behind Maple Media?
socalTECH
MARCH 10, 2017
Redlands-based GIS software maker Esri said on Thursday that it has been selected by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), to help support that lab's users. According to Esri, the deal with ORNL gives the lab's users access to spatial analysis tools in the ArcGIS platform. Financial impact of the deal were not announced. Esri said the deal is the first, major enterprise agreement between the company and a Department of Energy (DOE) laboratory.
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