Monday, May 14, 2012

Startup Surge in Los Angeles

Ben Kuo just posted on SoCalTech:

Are the good times for startups back?

That seemed to be the mood running through the cloud at the more-than-sellout crowd at the Fairmont Miramar in Santa Monica Thursday at the first LA Demo Day. At the event, the enthusiasm for startups was palpable. The crowd of more than 1,500 spilled out into hallways, and would-be investors were turned away from the doors, as a crush of entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, wanna-be entrepreneurs, and others looked to be part of the surge of startups emerging in Los Angeles.

Certainly it feels like there's been a recent surge in Startup activity here in Los Angeles and as well nationally.  My two big data points are:

  1. What's happening in the Los Angeles Startup Events such as popular events like LA Demo Day.
  2. Increase in the number of inquiries I've been getting for: Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions and/or other similar kinds of inquiries.

It has gone from 2 or 3 a week about a year ago to more than 5 per week. 

A lot of this action is early-stage startups and it's not clear to me how all of this will shake out given how hard it is for VCs to raise capital right now.

Are others seeing this as well?

2 comments:

Benjamin Kuo said...

The big question (yet to be answered) is: are these sustainable startups (which will either become big companies or get acquired) or is this just a lot of enthusiasm for the very early stage startup world?

Tony Karrer said...

I would be surprised if some percentage of these don't turn out to be successful. That said, will the percentage be lower because of the large number? I think good ideas have a better chance right now because of lower costs.

It will be interesting to see how this shakes out.