How I Built a Killer Tech Company Outside of Silicon Valley

Today, LA’s once sleepy tech scene is on fire, with over 500 startups lining its shores and incubators popping up regularly to turn out hungry new entrepreneurs.

From VentureBeat:

“Adam Miller is CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand.

Remember 1999? Silicon Valley was overflowing with hundreds of millions in venture capital, thousands of dot-com business plans, and foosball tables up and down the San Francisco peninsula. I was about 3,000 miles away, incubating my own startup – a technology company designed to help democratize education by aggregating all of the training content littered across the Web – out of my one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. At the time, I had zero customers, little funding, and only a group of friends and former colleagues committed to my idea.

Startups are tough, and one cold, rainy day the thought occurred to me that I should move somewhere less expensive (and warmer), since I could really start a company anywhere. But when I shared this idea, my colleagues and advisors said that I really only had two choices: either stay in New York, where they were, or head for Silicon Valley…”

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Cornerstone OnDemand [web]

Meet TenOneTen, a New LA Fund from Gil Elbaz and David Waxman

The plan is to write checks between $50,000 to $250,000 meaning that TenOneTen will likely be investing as part of a syndicate in most deals, be they Seed stage or Series A.

From PandoDaily:

“As discussed last week, the cat is out of the bag in terms of the rise of the Los Angeles startup ecosystem. With it has come the arrival of a number of new early stage investment funds and investors looking to capitalize on the growth wave. Unlike many newcomers, however, the latest fund to formally announce its presence is not simply hopping on the bandwagon. Rather, TenOneTen Capital has deep LA roots and serious credibility among its founders.

TenOneTen is the creation of former Applied Semantics founder and current Factual founder and CEO Gil Elbaz in partnership with former SpotRunner, PeoplePC, and Firefly Network co-founder David Waxman. Together the two have several decades of success, both in founding and in angel investing in technology ventures. They also share a strong belief in the opportunity that exists in the LA tech ecosystem and a commitment to forwarding its development…”

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How TenOneTen Ventures Is Investing In LA’s Technology Future [web]
TenOneTen Ventures [web]

Putting the Pedal to the Metal at Amplify

The Amplify partners are dedicated to helping their entrepreneurs build the best companies possible and they throw themselves into it with great passion.

From The Venture Trenches:

“For the first three months of this year, I have had the pleasure of breathing the same air as the crew from Amplify, the Venice based accelerator. As a member of NextSpace I have witnessed Amplify in operation and it is a shop that definitely believes in good rewards stemming from hard work.

As a fourteen-year veteran of the venture industry I have often heard the phrase, “value added investors”, which is usually touted by certain VC’s as their biggest differentiating quality. Typically this means occupying a seat on the board, using recruiters to retain senior management or hiring sharp legal counsel to structure complicated deals. The value that is being “added” is often at arms length or via a specialist who interacts with the entrepreneur. At Amplify I can truly say they take the value-add approach to another level by leading by example, demonstrating what hard work and dedication truly mean while exposing their founders to influential experts and industry change makers. Amplify’s portfolio companies are schooled on every challenge they need to master in order to achieve success. And they do all this in the span of four intense months…”

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Amplify [web]

Why Los Angeles Could Become the Next Technology Epicenter

Incubators and accelerators are popping up everywhere; multi-million dollar startups with worldwide recognition are tracing their roots back to L.A.; and celebrities are adopting tech companies as pet projects.

From The Next Web:

“Los Angeles is one of the world’s largest and most glamorous cities — it dominates the entertainment industry, produces tremendous wealth and stands as symbol of American promise and success.

That’s what made the city’s longtime status as a second or third tier technology hub perplexing. The emerging tech scene in the area comes nowhere close to Silicon Valley’s technological prominence. Other U.S. cities — including New York, Seattle and Boston — have also seemed to leave the City of Angels in the dust…”

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The LA Startup Scene: How is it Shaping Up?

Here’s a quick look at Silicon Valley vs LA’s startup scene; Investment trends for the LA area.

From VatorNews:

“Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. The two areas share a state, and a common trait of creativity. In other ways, however, they couldn’t be more different from each other.

Los Angeles is, of course, the area that people automatically asssociate with Hollywood, and the making of television shows and movies. It’s, perhaps unfairly, known as a place where superficiality reigns and people are celebrated for looking good rather than being smart. Silicon Valley, on the other hand, is closely associated with technology and, let’s be honest, more brains than beauty. (No casting agent in his right mind would ever put Bill Gate’s face on a movie poster for his looks. Sorry Bill!)

Funny thing is, Los Angeles is actually taking what it is best known for (beautiful people) and using them to its advantage in the tech world. As I noted in a recent article about L.A.-based start ups, many actually use celebrities…”

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“Built In L.A.” Releases Its First Los Angeles Digital Startup Report [web]
Built in LA report shows that the LA startup ecosystem has come a long, long way [web]

UCLA Launches Entrepreneur-in-Residence Program

The EIR program emerged out of the voiced need for more interaction between entrepreneurs with commercial experience and faculty and graduate students with research experience.

From UCLA Today:

“When it comes to launching startup companies to help campus researchers bring their inventions to the marketplace, UCLA is one of the nation’s leading schools, with more than 100 startups currently open for business and roughly 20 new ones being established every year. Yet for university-based inventors, stepping from the world of academia into the realm of entrepreneurial ventures can feel like wading into unfamiliar waters.

A new entrepreneur-in-residence program (EIR) launched this month by the Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Sponsored Research (OIP-ISR) comes to the aid of campus inventors by bringing in experienced entrepreneurs to provide guidance and advice…”

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UCLA EIR Program [web]

UCLA’s Dr. Kalyanam Shivkumar Joins the Board of Directors at BioSig Technologies, Inc.

BioSig Technologies, Inc., West Los Angeles, is a medical device company developing unique clinical solutions for the diagnosis and treatment of arrhythmias.

From Globe Newswire:

“LOS ANGELES, March 26, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — BioSig Technologies, Inc. (BioSig), a medical device company developing unique clinical solutions for the electrophysiology market, announced that Dr. Kalyanam Shivkumar, MD, PhD, FACC, FHRS has joined the Company’s Board of Directors.

Dr. Shivkumar is currently Professor of Medicine and Radiology at UCLA and leads the UCLA Cardiac Arrhythmia Center. Dr. Shivkumar brings to BioSig a special combination of skills as a clinician, teacher, researcher, and innovator in the field of electrophysiology and cardiovascular therapies…”

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