TechEmpower
NOVEMBER 16, 2016
Round 13 of the ongoing Web Framework Benchmarks project is here! The project now features 230 framework implementations (of our JSON serialization test) and includes new entrants on platforms as diverse as Kotlin and Qt. Yes, that Qt. We also congratulate the ASP.NET team for the most dramatic performance improvement we've ever seen, making ASP.NET Core a top performer.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 15, 2016
I know the title “I promise you one of the most meaningful days of your life” sounds grandiose but I mean it and I hope you’ll read through to the end and choose to take one small, totally free action, that will change your life and likely those of others. On September 10th of this year I spent an entire day in California State Prison with people who had committed felonies and worked with them on business plans to help them create legal enterprise upon their release as part of Defy Ventures 6-mo
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L.A. Business Journal
OCTOBER 28, 2016
Henrik Fisker has charged back into the electric-car market with a new energy storage technology.
Berkonomics
OCTOBER 27, 2016
A friend recently told me a story that had nothing to do with business, but unintentionally had a great lesson for all of us. He had asked his arborist if he could move a mature tree from one part of his property to another – to make room for an addition to his home. “Yes,” replied the professional. “And how much would it cost?” To which the arborist responded, “We’d charge $18,000 for that.”.
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
NOVEMBER 11, 2016
Our interview this morning is with Kelly Perdew of Moonshots Capital , a Los Angeles based investment firm that makes seed stage investments in early stage companies�and in particular, for this Veterans Day, in companies founded by military veterans. Kelly is a longtime angel investor in such companies as Scopely, Bitium, UStream, Thrively,� and many others.
TechCrunch LA
DECEMBER 2, 2016
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.
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
JULY 19, 2016
I’ve had lots of conversations with fellow CTOs about the TechEmpower Web Framework Benchmarks. Some really appreciate the value that they bring to help them understand performance characteristics of different frameworks. Depending on the Technical Performance Requirements for your system, this could be really valuable information that is part of your framework selection process.
Tech.Co
NOVEMBER 7, 2016
In addition to being a tool for burgeoning startups and lucrative companies, virtual reality is also a great way to escape the stress of everyday life. Whether you’re whisking away to another planet or sitting by the beach, a little virtual relaxing can do the body good. Now, virtual reality is being used as a therapeutic meditation tool to help people find their zen and reduce stress-related health issues.
SoCal Tech Calendar
MAY 31, 2016
For today's Insights and Opinions article, we have Melinda Moore , author of How to Raise Money: The Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding , who gives us some tips on crowdfunding. Instead of getting VC funding, a lot of startups and creative projects turn to the masses or the public -- often through popular crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, AngelList or StartEngine.
TechEmpower
JULY 5, 2016
If we have a long (64-bit integer) that we serialize into JSON, we might be in trouble if JavaScript consumes that JSON. JavaScript has the equivalent of double (64-bit floating point) for its numbers, and double cannot represent the same set of numbers as long. If we are not careful, our long is mangled in transit. Consider 2 53 + 1. We can store that number in a long but not a double.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 11, 2016
Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca For the first 5 years or so after I became a VC I didn’t talk much about what I thought a VC should be excellent at since frankly I wasn’t sure. I was mostly doing my job and trying to figure out how to be better every day. After a decade on the job I’ve started to speak more openly when newer industry colleagues now ask me what I’ve learned.
Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 30, 2016
Amongst the most often asked questions I get from founders is, “How much money should I raise?” Reflexively founders want to raise as much money as they can because they figure it will give them more resources, better chances of competing and a longer runways before they have to do the often painful job of asking, yet again, for money. Every time you ask for money you’re faced with the possible of feeling literally and figuratively like a failure.
TechEmpower
FEBRUARY 10, 2016
“It was running fine.” In our performance consulting work, we often hear variations of the following: “Our web application was running fine with a few hundred users. Now when we run a promotion with our new partner and get a thousand users coming in at one time, it grinds to a halt.”. We’ve heard this from startup founders, product managers, development team leads, CTOs, and others who see their product gaining traction, but simultaneously see performance falling off a cliff.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 12, 2016
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.
TechEmpower
OCTOBER 19, 2016
I want to combine the elements of multiple Stream instances into a single Stream. What's the best way to do this? This article compares a few different solutions. Stream.concat(a, b). The JDK provides Stream.concat(a, b) for concatenating two streams. void exampleConcatTwo () {. Stream a = Stream. of ( "one" , "two" ); Stream b = Stream. of ( "three" , "four" ); Stream out = Stream. concat ( a , b ); out. forEach ( System. out :: println ); // Output: // one. // two. // three. // four. }.
L.A. Business Journal
OCTOBER 14, 2016
Record labels’ piracy lawsuit could be a tune-up in the fight against converting videos into MP3s.
TechEmpower
FEBRUARY 25, 2016
Round 12 of the ongoing Web Framework Benchmarks project is now available! A race against the clock. Recently, we were notified that the physical hardware environment we have used for Rounds 9 through 12 will be decommissioned imminently. This news made Round 12 unusual: rather than wait until we can equip and configure a new environment, we decided to conclude Round 12 while the current environment remained available.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 1, 2016
Rolf Winkler wrote a piece in the WSJ about A16Z’s returns in which he says they “lag behind Sequoia, Benchmark and Founders Fund.” Scott Kupor of A16Z responded with a comprehensive overview of valuation methodology in a post that while accurate feels more targeted at sophisticated Limited Partners (LPs) who invest in funds. Let me offer you an insider’s take.
L.A. Business Journal
OCTOBER 21, 2016
Facebook has launched an unfriendly feud by aping the features of social media upstart Snapchat.
L.A. Business Journal
NOVEMBER 25, 2016
Software giant Oracle increases footprint with record Santa Monica office deal.
Both Sides of the Table
JULY 6, 2016
I talk about failure a lot because I think it can be tremendously instructive and I think that success without failure often masks underlying lessons. I even prefer to fund entrepreneurs who have experience some level of set-backs in their careers or startups because I think it brings a humility to decision-making that I find healthy. I have experienced many first-time entrepreneurs with too much hubris if fund-raising came easily and press was fawning and employees joined in droves and customer
Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 23, 2016
Kobie Fuller, Partner at Upfront Ventures We set out to build a venture capital firm that would not only be a beacon for the rapidly growing LA tech ecosystem but also one that would compete and collaborate nationally with the best firms in the country. To do that you need to have the most talented partners and operating staff because entrepreneurs (and venture capital funds) have choices about whom they will work with and the best deals go to the best firms.
Both Sides of the Table
JULY 4, 2016
In modern society we’re all over-worked and over-loaded with information and tasks and to-dos and obligations. Nowhere is this more apparent than working in a startup where you are definitionally under-resourced and trying to make big accomplishments in compressed periods of time. That’s why focus is critical. Saying “no” often to people who want to divert you from your mission becomes obligatory if you want to make progress.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 27, 2016
I was speaking recently to the team at NuOrder , an LA-based company we’re an investor in about “realism in startups” — an impromptu talk I have given to any of our portfolio companies who ask. During the Q&A I was asked about how I make investment decisions in early-stage businesses. I was asked again in an LP meeting later in the week and then again at a founder breakfast gathering we hosted yesterday.
Both Sides of the Table
JULY 26, 2016
Many first-time founders seek advice when thinking about what ideas would be great for a startup company and receive the wrong advice that you need to focus on a billion-dollar idea. There are very few ideas that are obviously a billion-dollar idea from the start. So what should you do? I advise founders to focus on what I call “basecamp,” which is the first level of success or validation at a startup.
L.A. Business Journal
SEPTEMBER 30, 2016
Russian private aviation holding company CJSC S7 Group’s purchase of Sea Launch, a rocket launch company that operates out of the Port of Long Beach, is making waves in the Southern California aerospace industry, with a legal challenge by the Boeing Co. and concerns about the Russian company’s involvement.
Both Sides of the Table
APRIL 28, 2016
Lead — It’s hard to be a real leader. Decisions are never black or white, so most people fudge. The straddle middle grounds to keep everybody happy. They make compromises to try and hold together constituencies. On business decisions they want to hedge their bets so they do a little bit of everything but nothing extremely well. As highlighted by Brad Garlinghouse years ago in the famous “ peanut butter manifesto ”— it’s like spreading peanut butter evenly over a piece of bread.
L.A. Business Journal
OCTOBER 21, 2016
Photographers have expanded their focus to protecting copyrights in the internet age.
L.A. Business Journal
OCTOBER 14, 2016
A previous firm of Kobe Bryant’s venture capital partner Jeff Stibel netted several lawsuits with its business practices.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 13, 2016
In case you missed it, the press yesterday ran several stories questioning the viability of a wireless charging company I invested in… Continue reading on Both Sides of the Table »
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 28, 2016
I’ve been online for nearly 30 years (yes, there was CompuServe and Prodigy before the www), blogging for 10 and using social media tools since the earliest days. I love to watch networks evolve, see how crowds gather and communicate and curate and share. Twitter was the most unique social sharing platform that had emerged in my experience because it unintentionally innovated on a constraint of 140 characters (initially so that it could send messages as SMS, which it self had a size constraint).
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 14, 2016
There is much discussion online and also in small, private groups, about why the price of technology companies – public and private – are falling. Valuing any company can be difficult because it requires a degree of forecasting future growth & competition and ultimately the profits of the organization. And two big changes have happened that are widely known – in the past quarter the value of some very high profile companies such as LinkedIn and Twitter have fallen substanti
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 24, 2016
MakeSpace , the leading provider of next-generation storage for consumers, today announced an additional $17.5 million in funding on TechCrunch led by Harmony Partners and Upfront Ventures to double its footprint of 3 cities (New York, Chicago & Washington DC) to 6 in 2016. We raised this capital in what has increasingly become a difficult market for fund raising so I’d like to share with you some details on how we get it done.
Both Sides of the Table
APRIL 26, 2016
There has been a lot of public debate over the past several weeks about whether it’s a good thing to be “gross margin positive” or not and commentary always reminds me that some people at startups don’t quite understand financial metrics or even how to think about which ones are healthy. When I publicly Tweeted that all companies should be gross margin positive many people pointed out that Amazon wasn’t profitable for many years.
Both Sides of the Table
JANUARY 1, 2016
Having time to think about “leadership” at most startups feels like a luxury. It feels like something you could turn your attention to once you have tens of millions of dollars and a large staff to run operations and you could step back from it all and think about how to lead. The reality of most startups is about survival. And because running a company requires money to fuel staff and offices and acquire customers and the like, much of the time spent in early days at a start feels l
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 17, 2016
I’ve had this conversation many times. A friend calls me up from: Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, wherever and says, “I’m thinking about moving to Los Angeles (or SF, NY, etc) and I’d love to start interviewing. Let me know if you hear of anything interesting.” I usually slip into counsel mode and tell them it’s a lost cause unless they’re truly committed to living in that city and if they are they should move there first and job search second.
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