Benjamin Kuo’s Blog

Most of the people who are involved in the technology and venture capital industry spent a lot of times at conferences. Usually, things are fairly light during the summer, but it looks like conference season is just around the bend. Just glancing at our comprehensive calendar of local, Southern California events and conferences, it looks like things get into swing on September 19th. There are an astounding nine events that day  (so far — it’s still early) already. Of course, that’s spread across all of Southern California.

Om Malik is reporting today that Helio is on the brink of some job cuts, after Earthlink said it would cut 900 people (and much more) earlier this week. So far, the track record of MVNOs here in Los Angeles isn’t looking so good.

Flash - Substance

Who you know - What you know

Passive - Active

Banner ads - Text ads

Branding - Word of Mouth

MySpace profile - LinkedIn profile

Planning - Execution

Web visitors - Web revenues

Talking - Doing

Beta users - Paid customers

Building - Selling

Which side are you on? And which side is your company on?

I recently emailed out information about the Technology Council’s upcoming VentureNet event (www.venturenet.org), which is a great opportunity to get exposure for your company to venture capitalists, angel investors, and others in the community. Interestingly enough, one of the companies that I’d provided with information about the event treated my email with quite a bit of paranoia, asking on a public forum if “this is a scam”.

Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that “new” entrepreneurs–that is, people who haven’t built a business before, raised money, or worked much in a business role–tend to be fairly paranoid.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked (as a journalist) about signing an NDA — which absolutely no journalist, and no self-respecting venture capitalist–would ever do.  I’ve had entrepreneurs ask for news coverage, but don’t want to release details on what their companies actually do in fear of someone else learning about it; companies asking us not to include news coverage on their firms; and other asking to have full “approval” control over what we write on them.

Successful entrepreneurs know that:

1. You’re never going to get VC funding if you ask a VC for an NDA
2. Journalists will write what they want, and they absolutely won’t let YOU drive their coverage.
3. It’s not your idea, it’s your execution, and finally
4. You’ve got to have a level of trust in human beings to succeed

Perhaps I’m just naive, but it seems to me that the bulk of people in the technology industry — at least here in Southern California — are honestly looking to help out new entrepreneurs and companies.  For those with a vested interest in growing the community, they are willing to refer people to others, offer guidance and help, and nudge others along the path to funding and success. There might be some out there (though no one comes to mind) who are just in it to scam you out of money, but the community here is very, very supportive of new entrepreneurs.

There’s been an ongoing debate both on and off the net, on whether bloggers are journalists. Given the debate about how to classify the blog world, I read with interest this recent  post by a venture capitalist, Rick Segal, complaining about a pitch he received from a Silicon Valley PR firm. Rick complains that the PR firm offered to have their CEO talk with him about their company; and didn’t realize that his firm has an investment in a direct competitor.

It’s an interesting problem–and one which apparently has some PR firms confused–which is determining which bloggers are providing unbiased opinions, and which ones are simply shilling for companies which they have invested in, which they are running, or who are posting because someone paid them to.

Mark Cuban–no stranger to controversy, on and off the net–thinks the Internet is dead… and VC blogger Fred Wilson does not.

I missed this last week when I was on vacation, but thought it was interesting — Bill Stenstrud, formerly of San Diego venture capital firm Enterprise Partners, is selling his house for $76M. At those prices, Stenstrud could pull a variation of flipping your house to fund your startup to start a new VC fund (well, a small one maybe…)

Inc. Magazine has just rolled out their annual list of fastest growing companies, the Inc. 500–though it’s now the Inc. 5000–and browsing through the list, here are the top companies in our area in the list.

5. Genoptix, Carlsbad
10. HydraMedia, Beverly Hills
17. Bridgepoint Education, San Diego
19. Vizio, Irvine
51. Eyeonics, Aliso Viejo
52. Ethertronics, San Diego
62. Wpromote, El Segundo
72. LawCrossing, Pasadena
89. ESET, San Diego
101. Solekai Systems, San Diego
141. Net Systems, Irvine
185. Emerald Health Services, Marina del Rey
192. Oversee.net, Los Angeles
196. Mercury Equipment Finance, Rancho Santa Margarita
207. Strategic Marketing & Media, Brea
210. Gorilla Nation Media, Los Angeles
239. Test Country, San Diego
240. Blue Wave Micro, Aliso Viejo

Not surprisingly, a number of the firms on the list are driven from the technology industry. Though, it was interesting that a significant number of the firms (Hydramedia, Wpromote, Oversee, Gorilla Nation) all fall into the online advertising or related areas, and quite a few firms from San Diego. Looking farther down the list, other technology firms on the list included:

269. Sentek Consulting, San Diego
292. Superior Internet Solutions, San Diego
325. DriveCam, San Diego
389. NxTV, Woodland Hills
428. LoanToolbox, Westlake Village

I haven’t looked through all 5000 companies on the list yet, but I’m sure  there are many other companies worth noting who made the cut.

I’ve often heard said that venture capitalists will only invest companies within driving distances of their offices… Which is not always true. However, spurred on by this post by Okapi VC’s Marc Averitt on the places he hangs out in Orange County, I’ve ported our venture capital map to Google’s “My Maps”. To get to our live map, go to Google’s “My Maps”, click on “Add By URL”, and type in: http://www.socaltech.com/map/maplet.xml

You can save both Marc’s map (which includes other Orange County venture capitalists) and the socalTECH map of recent venture investments (updated real time) to Google “My Maps” feature and overlay them together.  I’m not so sure the “invest within driving distance” stereotype works so well in this case, however, since Marc’s last investment was in a New York company, My Damn Channel.

It seems that Southern California has suddenly become the center of the electric/hybrid car craze, with two fundings this week of electric car startups. SoCal has long been the center of automobile design industry (BMW, Ford, Toyota, General Motors , Volkswagen, and other automobile manufacturers all have design centers in the Los Angeles area), but the interesting mix of cleantech, automotive design, and venture money is something new here.

Yesterday, Venture Vehicles scored $6M in funding from NGEN, and today, PEHub’s Dan Primack reports that Phoenix Motorcars in Rancho Cucamonga is in the midst of closing a round from Kleiner Perkins. Venture Vehicles and Phoenix Motorcars join Aptera Motors, Idealab’s electric/hybrid vehicle effort.