Content and retail
October 26th, 2007 by Benjamin KuoI’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 interesting because, if you look at the track record of most of the venture firms here in Southern California (notwithstanding GRP Partners, the firm in Los Angeles which backed Costco, Starbucks, and P.F. Chang’s), the firms here almost always shy away from retail deals, and only reluctantly invest in content/Hollywood-ish companies.
Just glancing at the content deals it’s almost entirely out-of-the-area VCs investing (examples: JibJab, with Polaris; DECA with Mayfield, General Catalyst and Atomico). The only recent one with some local involvement was Okapi in My Damn Channel.
