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Uncategorized by Benjamin Kuo

I was talking to Duke Bristow, who teaches entrepreneurship and engineering courses at both USC and UCLA (yes, apparently you can work for both schools at the same time), about companies who had told me they are having difficulty finding developers. He tells me he has lots of graduating engineerings students–both undergrad and graduate–who are [...]

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Employment by Benjamin Kuo

I ran across a blog posting recently from Jason Caplain, a VC in North Carolina, talking about an entrepeneur’s complaint of developers leaving the region for Silicon Valley. Jason, while talking about NC,  had a few good points which he uses to rebut the entrepreneur–a few of which could equally apply to Southern California. The [...]

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Employment, Startups by Benjamin Kuo

Entretech, one of the organizations in Los Angeles which is focused on helping out high tech entrepreneurs and other high tech companies here, has just invited technology companies to apply for their Fifth Annual Entrepreneurship Awards. The awards deadline is November 29th. The parameters behind the awards, according to Entretech: This years’ awards will honor [...]

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Entrepreneurship by Benjamin Kuo

It’s interesting, in the last few months I’ve noticed an increase in the number of dual-headquartered companies where one of the legs is in the Southern California area. The combinations I am seeing most seem to be Los Angeles / New York City (particularly in the media and content space); Los Angeles / London (Internet [...]

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Uncategorized by Benjamin Kuo

NPR today ran a great piece on the passing of Robert Shields, an 89-year old former English teacher and pastor, who maintained a minute-by-minute diary of his life since 1972. Shields documented every 5 minutes of his life, every day, for years. Listening to NPR’s coverage in the car today, I couldn’t help but think [...]

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Blogs by Benjamin Kuo

It’s quite interesting, I’ve noticed recently where we’ve been finding out about local venture fundings, but the companies have been very eager to keep it quiet. I’m always mystified by the “hush-hush” around it, but, a few weeks or months later, I find out the companies have gotten funding from a Silicon Valley VC who [...]

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Silicon Valley, Venture Capital by Benjamin Kuo

I’ve noticed recently that there have been a lot of content-focused, and retail businesses making the rounds here looking for venture capital or angel investment. In fact, it seems like there are more content or retail startups in the past few months here in Southern California then more of the “traditional” technology startups. However, it’s [...]

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Venture Capital by Benjamin Kuo

Dan Lyons, aka “Fake Steve Jobs”, spoke at lunch at Forbes MEET today. He’s as hilarious in person as he is in his blog. For those who aren’t familiar with Fake Steve Jobs, Lyons runs a blog which “channels” Apple CEO Steve Jobs, and is a witty and usually hilarious commentator on Silicon Valley (recent [...]

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Conferences by Benjamin Kuo

Rafat Ali at Paidcontent has the details here, dug up from an 8K filing. Movielink is the video-on-demand joint venture from MGM, Paramount, Sony, Universal, and WB. The studios have invested an amazing $148M in the venture, and according to the financials they are losing a spectacular $10M on not even $2M in revenues for [...]

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Hollywood by Benjamin Kuo