UCLA School of Law Establishes Student Entrepreneurship Competition

The competition, which includes a $100,000 prize, is the first of its kind sponsored by a top American law school.

From UCLA:

UCLA School of Law has established the Lowell Milken Institute-Sandler Prize for New Entrepreneurs (“LMI-Sandler Prize”), an entrepreneurship competition designed to recognize student innovation and leadership and support the real-world launch of promising new business ventures. The competition, which includes a $100,000 prize, is the first of its kind sponsored by a top American law school. It was established through gifts totaling more than $500,000 from the Lowell Milken Family Foundation and the Richard and Ellen Sandler Family Foundation.

“The LMI-Sandler Prize is a completely new way to reward law student achievement and promote the entrepreneurial ambitions of UCLA Law students and recent graduates,” UCLA School of Law Dean Rachel F. Moran said. “The competition will provide students with an opportunity to put the principles of entrepreneurship into practice and to use their law school education as a path to careers marked by fresh perspectives and bold initiatives…”

READ FULL PRESS RELEASE [web]

Ten Tech Entrepreneurs Who Are Putting LA on the Map

Tech startup accelerators dot the landscape, feeding investments into the waiting arms of the nation’s most intelligent and driven entrepreneurs.

From Pandodaily:

“rson from outside Los Angeles is a fan of the city, dig a little and you’ll probably find that they like it for the celebrities, Hollywood not LA.

When New Yorkers talk about Los Angeles they discuss its sprawling smog and characterize it (as Woody Allen does in “Annie Hall”) as a city “where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light.” Residents of Northern California (everyone north of Bakersfield) don’t understand how we do it, constantly touting Palo Alto’s tech scene.

Well, they’re all wrong, and Los Angeles is about to prove it…”

READ FULL ARTICLE [web]
StartEngine [web]

5 things Silicon Valley gets wrong about Southern California

There are a lot of misconceptions about SoCal and it’s time we set them straight

From VentureBeat:

“For anyone from California, you know there are vast differences between the northern and southern parts of the state – so vast in fact that, to us, they could just as easily stand alone as two separate states. In a recent Forbes.com article, contributor Tara Brown wrote of her own misapprehension moving from San Francisco to Southern California, saying, “I’m a technologist and moving away from the tech hub of the world to the land of Botox seemed like a really bad career move. I assumed that the people of Los Angeles were disingenuous attention whores and didn’t know anything about technology.”

The great NorCal vs. SoCal debate is a longstanding, undeniable rivalry between the stereotypical surfer dudes of the south and environmental geeks to the north. But what Silicon Valley doesn’t know could hurt them. There are a lot of misconceptions about SoCal and it’s time we set them straight…”

READ FULL ARTICLE [web]
Why LA will Outpace Silicon Valley as the Tech Startup Capital [web]

LA Technology Scene: StartEngine Entrepreneurs Mix It Up With Mentors

It’s a warm summer night in Westwood and 35 entrepreneurs are mingling with a collection of the new SoCal silicon-set.

From SocalTech:

“StartEngine, the startup accelerator, which launched earlier this year with ten hopeful businesses, is now in the middle of its third and largest class to date. At a recent Mentor Mixer for the accelerator, held last Thursday, the group ran through pitches and mixed and mingled with mentors.

“I’m really excited for them,” said Howard Marks, StartEngine’s co-founder and patron saint. “They’re already having a lot of interaction with mentors, some of them have customers and traction, some of them even have investors already lined up.”

However, despite the good news, Marks and his entrepreneurs all agreed that their work is far from over. Besides meeting new mentors and exchanging business cards, the main focus of the night were the pitches. Five startups: Contur, Enplug, FitKit, Afterschool.me and Where My Dogs At practiced their demo pitches – a dry run in anticipation of the September 19th demo day…”

READ FULL ARTICLE [web]
StartEngine [web]
SocalTECH [web]

UCLA Launches Its First Campus Affiliated Accelerator: StartupUCLA

Several members of the UCLA faculty decided that the time was right to launch an initiative aimed at bringing a technologically focused entrepreneurial culture to the University of California, Los Angeles.

From theDISHdaily:

“This summer marks the beginning of UCLA’s very first startup accelerator program, Startup UCLA. StartupUCLA is a new campus based accelerator that aims to foster an entrepreneurial and tech savvy culture throughout the campus. This year’s program hosts nine startups and will enable the teams to refine their ideas under the guidance of experts in the field.

With the inception of the new incubator, UCLA joins the elite ranks of several other universities around the country with similar programs. This comes as part of a trend amongst universities seeking to enrich and redefine the college experience by offering students the opportunity to innovate while they have the resources of a major research institution on hand.

Stanford’s student-run StartX, Berkeley’ s Entrepreneurship Laboratory, Cornell’s eLabs, and Virginia Tech’s Knowledgeworks are examples of other university focused incubators. Syracuse University, known for spearheading tech and media development in New York, has several including the Raymond Van Dran IDEA and the Syracuse Student Sandbox at the Tech Garden. The proliferation of these incubators points to a renaissance in campus-developed businesses and perhaps even a shift away from the past trend of universities engendering the creation of large corporations toward the inception of smaller more nimble businesses able to proffer solutions to the very problems that universities study so closely…”

READ FULL ARTICLE [web]
StartupUCLA [web]
Mitra Best of PwC Discusses Innovation at StartupUCLA [web]

Startup Weekend LA – An Insider’s Story

From visualization to conception, and actually taking the product to market… We had exactly 54 hours!

From TechZulu:

“For those who haven’t heard of what Startup Weekend is all about, it’s building a company on STEROIDS! From visualization to conception, and actually taking the product to market, a company usually takes about 1-2 years to create. We had exactly 54 hours! This story highlights my experience at the event as a participant.

Pitch and form teams!

Friday Night, people started trickling in at Coloft at 6pm. There were a few hours of just networking and playing an ice breaking game to get to know people. I loved the energy of it all. People were so excited for the weekend, many of who have participated in Startup Weekend before and a few like me, who were there for the first time. People had one minute to “pitch” their idea to the group as a whole. Of the 150+ participants, about 45 people pitched that night. Out of those 45, the top 10 were voted to build teams on. I was #33 to go up and pitch my idea…”

READ FULL ARTICLE [web]
Startup Weekend LA [web]
Coloft [web]
Codewars [web]

Launchpad LA is currently accepting applications for its next class of companies

Launchpad LA was founded as a mentorship organization in 2009 by Mark Suster (GRP Partners, bothsidesofthetable.com) with the goal of helping talented local entrepreneurs build relationships, get funded, and grow while remaining in Southern California.

From LaunchpadLA:

“Launchpad LA is currently accepting applications for our next class of companies, which will start on August 1st. Admitted companies receive $50,000, free office space for four months, tons of great perks, and access to an endless network of mentors, investors, and advisors. To apply, please fill out our application form here.”

Please apply by July 13th.

Application [web]
About Launchpad LA [web]