Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

Today I’d like to talk about what startup communities outside of Silicon Valley look like, how they emerge and what makes them take hold. Most of what I think about startup communities came from mentorship by Brad Feld through hours of private discussion and debate. Think Fred Wilson, Tony Hsieh or Brad Feld.

Community 378

Community San Diego Silicon Valley Los Angeles 378

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

When my friend and the father of LA’s tech startup community Bill Gross first demonstrated his company GoTo.com (renamed Overture) on stage at a TED conference he was actually booed (True story. But the “monetization heart of the Internet” doesn’t stop at Overture, Applied Semantics and MySpace.

Los Angeles 376

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Seattle 376

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2014

I have never been more optimistic about the impact that the tech startup community is having on cities in America or about the role that cities outside of San Francisco / Silicon Valley can play in our future. Web Services, led by Amazon’s AWS, which reduced the costs a further 90%. But what is it we actually DO on the Internet?

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Kansas City Startup Venture Capital 390

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 15, 2011

We were talking about a company, Factual (disclosure my firm is an investor), which was founded by one of LA’s most talented Internet entrepreneurs, Gil Elbaz , who as co-founder of Applied Semantics (purchased by pre-IPO Google for $102 million and now Google AdSense) is responsible for a large portion of the Internet’s monetization.

Silicon Valley 313

Silicon Valley Southern California Los Angeles Semantic 313