Just a quick note, we’re partnering with Vator to help promote their upcoming Vator Splash pitch event coming up next month. They’re currently looking for companies who’d like to pitch their companies to their audience. Prior events have been a great way for companies to gain some exposure with local and out-of-town investors, potential partners, and others.

Anyone interested in attending, you can also get discounted access by using the code “Socal15″.  It’s at the Hollywood Roosevelt on May 30th. You can register at: http://vatorsplashla2013.eventbrite.com/

Filed under:
Conferences by Benjamin Kuo

For those hanging out in the office on this Veteran’s Day, the Los Angeles Venture Association (a frequent partner to socalTECH) has a good event happening tomorrow, which we’d like to call attention to. Details below:

LAVA Breakfast Panel: Beyond the “A” Round!

Venture industry professionals discuss the challenges, pitfalls, and
successes of post "A" round venture funded companies. The three panelists-
Peter Trepp, past CFO, Service Mesh; Kim Kovacs, CEO, OptionEase and Jason
Beck, VP - Vicente Capital Partners will share their experiences during
the panel discussion. Moderated by Alan Spatz, Member, TroyGould.

Filed under:
Events by Benjamin Kuo

Congrats to Ken Rutkowski for his 100th Business Rockstars show on KFWB AM! For those of you who haven’t had the chance to catch Ken on KFWB (Ken is on 2pm to 4pm on weekdays), he regularly hosts great entrepreneurs on his show, and gives all kinds of advice about how to make your business a success.   (Ken invited me on today for a brief segment).

Filed under:
Entrepreneurship by Benjamin Kuo

I’ve been remiss in posting to the editor’s blog here (due to, for some unknown reason, a tsunami of mainline technology news on our sites). So in the usual “I have a blog but haven’t maintained it in months” post, sorry.

I know we’ve all moved to a 24/7, always on, always connected world, but the newest thing I’ve been running into over the last few months is people sending me startup pitches at inane hours.

It used to be, most folks send you email during standard business hours, Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm. You just didn’t get emails on weekends or really late in the evening. That’s not the case now. I get emails pitching startups:

• At 2am on a weekday
• Early Sunday morning at 4am
• On Christmas and/or other national/religious holiday
• Any other time of the day

I know, startups are hard at work even at 3am on a Saturday, and no one observes the Sabbath anymore (what is religion, anyway in the world of tech startups?). But really, even if you ARE at a startup where you work 7 days a week and 20 hours a day: you’ve got to time your pitches, because even folks in the go-go, always on startup world aren’t on 24/7.

The infographic recently posted by ReadWriteWeb is equally applicable to pitching editors, too: there are good, and bad times for pitching yourself to a publication like ours. It’s particularly important if you’re pitching editors who are getting (literally) hundreds of startups every week.  As I told someone (after accidentally finding their 11pm Friday night email three weeks later): sorry, your email got buried.

Particularly bad times for me (and perhaps other media):

- During a big technology conference (too busy talking with startups in the hallways, at sessions, etc.)

- On the weekend (not everyone, but I generally stay away from information overload and email on weekends)

- In the wee hours of the morning (yes, we sleep too, sometimes).

- During holidays (spend Christmas with the family, not email, thank you).

- Late evenings (usually spent networking at industry events and/or driving from industry events, or with family).

Anyway, hopefully this might help some of those startups who haven’t quite figured this one out.

Filed under:
Random by Benjamin Kuo

There’s been a lot of attention given this week to a new map being generated by Represent.LA, trying to map out the Los Angeles technology ecosystem. They’ve done a good job, but (given their sources of information) wanted to point out that it doesn’t capture all of the activity here, and that our technology industry is much more extensive than their current sample might suggest.

We’d like to humbly point at our own interactive map of Southern California’s tech industry (generated from our extensive database of technology companies, venture capitalists, service providers, etc. in the area), which we’ve actually provided for many years.  Click through to the image below to see the static version, or you can link to the live map. We’ve been collecting the locations and information on local companies in a big database for more than a dozen years. We’re hoping to help bolster Represent.LA’s map in some way with our data. (btw — keeping all that data up to date and tracking companies is all that we do, and it’s a lot of work!)

Filed under:
Southern California, Startups by Benjamin Kuo

Hi all — just passing on a special discount for my readers from Vator Splash LA, which is happening June 7th at the Fairmont Hotel in Santa Monica (which seems to be the epicenter of technology events nowadays for Los Angeles). More info below:

The popular Vator Splash start-up event comes to LA

What do Peter Thiel, Mark Pincus (Zynga), Tony Hsieh (Zappos), Tim Westergren (Pandora), Dick Costolo(Twitter) have in common? They’ve all spoken at Vator Splash, sharing their advice on what it takes to build a start-up. Vator Splash is the only event dedicated to helping entrepreneurs learn from seasoned and successful entrepreneurs so you can learn from their mistakes and be energized by their determination and will to succeed. It is an event that inspires.

Vator, one of the largest business networks dedicated to high-tech entrepreneurs, is bringing its popular Vator Splash event to Hollywood! It was sold out last year, and this year it’s expected to draw an even bigger crowd.

On the evening of June 7, Vator will be holding its second-annual Vator Splash LA event at The Fairmont Hotel in Santa Monica. This upcoming Splash will showcase 10 up-and-coming tech startups (who competed out over well over 100), prominent VCs and angels, and two leading LA-based high-tech entrepreneurs to keynote that have either exited or are queued up to go IPO.

They have a stellar speaker lineup, including the top entrepreneurs, VCs, angels, investors and incubators in LA, such as Scott Painer, founder and CEO of TrueCar, which is positioned go public in the near future and Matt Coffin, who founded Lowermybills and sold it to Experian for $330 million. Hear their lessons and failures about what it takes to build a successful company from launch. Also onstage will be Neal Hansch (Rustic Canyon Partners), Bill Woodward (Anthem Venture Partners),Nate Redmond (Rustic Canyon Partners), Sam Teller(Launchpad), Allen Morgan (Idealab), David Carlick (Rho Capital Partners), David Cremin (DFJ Frontier),Howard Marks (Start Engine), Terence Fung (Senior Corp Dev lead at Zynga), Rick Smith (Crosscut Ventures),David Austin (Media Camp), Paul Bricault (Amplify), Michael Jones (co-founder Science, former CEO of MySpace), Adam Huie (Hatch Labs), Erik Rannala (Mucker Labs), Tom McInerney (entrepreneur and angel investor) and Ezra Roizen (Ackrell Capital).

Use “socal” for a 15% discount, when you register here: http://vatorsplashla2012.eventbrite.com/

Filed under:
Conferences by Benjamin Kuo

Although it’s unclear if Facebook’s IPO this morning will help any Southern California companies get to their own IPO exit, there’s one thing that’s bound to happen (given the immense amount of money just raised by Facebook): it’s bound to take Facebook to the top of the companies with the most cash and buying power on hand to acquire Internet startups. Usually, the combination of lots of cash on hand (from the IPO) and large acquisition pocketbook (cheap capital via inflated stock price) drives many a strategic acquisition in this industry. It seems that every startup pitch you see has always has some big target acquirer (it’s moved over the years from Microsoft to Google, and now it looks like Facebook). This should be interesting…

Filed under:
IPO by Benjamin Kuo

I usually avoid repeating infographics, but thought this one was a great illustration of Google+ and Google’s strategy for owning the world (at the expense of everyone else). Up until Google+ and the company force feeding it into everything, I had been a huge Google fan. I’m really not sure anymore. What happened to “don’t be evil”?

alt="Infographic: Testing Social Signals" />
Infographic authored by
TastyPlacement, a web design and SEO company, To view the original post, see the original

Social Media Infographic.

Want an Infographic for Your Site?

Filed under:
Google by Benjamin Kuo

Well, it’s not just those of us in Southern California facing a tech accelerator “epidemic” — love the headline on this article over at the folks covering New York for Betabeat: The Tech Accelerator Epidemic Has Hit New Jersey

Filed under:
Accelerators by Benjamin Kuo

Anyone thinking of going to the UCLA Entrepreneur Association Conference on May 11th? The organizers there have extended a 15 percent discount to readers of socalTECH. Use promo code SOCALTECH. More details on the conference below:

Entrepreneur Association Conference – May 11, 2012

The Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at UCLA Anderson School of Management and the UCLA Entrepreneur Association present the 2012 Entrepreneur Conference, where MBA students, alumni, faculty, entrepreneurs, investors and key industry innovators assemble to share valuable insight on current topics in entrepreneurship, critical business skills and emerging market trends. 15 percent discount for SOCALTECH readers. Use promo code: SOCALTECH.

btw, to any event organizers out there — if you have a local conference and want to provide our readers with a discount, include them in your event submission, or email us.

Filed under:
Conferences by Benjamin Kuo