Benjamin Kuo’s Blog

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Businessweek has a great interview with VC Josh Kopelman about three things not to pitch VCs. The funny thing is I was just at a screening session for VentureNet, and the exact same three “don’t pitch these” came up in a conversation with a number of local VCs on the committee. Kopelman mentions:

  1. Business plans that depend on getting acquired by Google (GOOG).

3. Businesses that piggyback on Facebook instead of picking up where Google left off.

The other big one which VCs (at least here) seem to be very tired of, is the “think of us as Facebook meets Google meets Skype meets MySpace!” (or any other combination of popular Web 2.0 site). You could almost come up with a randomly generated chain of Web 2.0 companies (Flickr + de.licio.us + eBay!) (Youtube + Upcoming + Blogger + Grouper!)  and turn up a startup trying to describe itself as such.

I spent the morning over at the E For All conference, the new computer gaming show which is attempting to step in where the former E3 Expo—now downsized, and refocused on just insiders–used to stand. E For All, however, seems like a ghost of the former E3 Expo. Despite lines crawling out the door to get in to the early “VIP” sessions today, the exhibitors there barely filled the South Hall of the LA Convention Center. The biggest exhibitors here were Nintendo, INTEL, and HP; whereas last year’s E3 Expo was dominated by enormous booths from Microsoft, Sony, and others.

On the upside (well, for socalTECH at least), there are lots of exhibitors from local So-Cal companies. And, as some others have mentioned, there are no lines for computers in the press room and registration.

More pictures, below:

Opening lines at E For All (before the lobby emptied completely).

Artist Melanie Stimmell working a mural.

The biggest booth - Nintendo’s - At E For All.

Okay, so I managed to break the Wordpress template for displaying (and posting) comments, but it’s fixed now. So if you’re wondering why you haven’t been able to view comments, that’s why. (And this is after talking about the importance on linking between So-Cal blogs!)

Or so says Dawntreader (NY) venture capitalists Ed Sim in this blog post, where he advocates flipping your startup instead of building it. The last time I heard that kind of talk was at the very peak of the Internet bubble. Interestingly enough, none of those companies I heard talking about flipping are around today–the real companies here in the area–which I define as actually providing value to users, with a sustainable business model–stuck it out through the bust and have ended up doing far better than the bubble children.

In one of my conversations with venture capitalists here in Southern California, the topic of “link love” came up — namely, the lack of it and lack of bloggers in Southern California. Browsing the list of “Top 100” blogs used by the site Techmeme–widely followed by the Silicon Valley crowd–I see very few folks who talk about Southern California technology companies. There’s the Jason Calacanis Weblog down there at number 60 (aside from his own startup Mahalo, I think Jason mentions bulldog puppies more than local tech companies), the Los Angeles Times at number 50 (skimpy So-Cal company coverage), and Paidcontent at number 13–probably the only site with decent coverage of companies here.

Who don’t I see ever mentioned on other blogs? Frank Peters with his tech focused podcast, the Frank Peters Show (latest interview with the winner of the TCVN’s Survivor program); Mark Averitt at OC VC;  Matt Ridenour with his startup advice at Momentum Ventures (recent post: advice on managing an early stage business); or this recent posting from local entrepreneur Jared Reitzin on his 7am to 7:30pm work schedule. There just isn’t the level of cross-linking and cross-blog conversations you see in the wider blog world in the tech business-focused bloggers I am aware of here in Southern California.

I think (with the exception of a Jason Calanis or perhaps a Paul Kedrosky) there isn’t nearly the “tech celebrity” driven, slightly self-promotional postings from an evangelist like Guy Kawasaki; or the constant mentions of portfolio companies like you might see with a Brad Feld. What we need is someone like a Marc Cuban or Marc Andressen who gets lots of blog attention but happens to link to Southern California bloggers and companies.

Willl Johnson, a Southern California entrepreneur and blogger, recently posted about the perceived lack of interest in working for startups here, saying:

..we probably’d don’t have the: a) same support infrastructure (meet-ups, networking events, etc.); b) history of success; and c) abundance of start-up companies (so if one fails there is another to jump on).

I’d argue that it’s all a perception, rather than a reality. There are more than enough meet-ups and networking events; we’ve got plenty of examples of successes in the area; and there are plenty of startups to jump to in case of a startup failure.

In terms of meetups and networking events: the major problem here is not so much the number of events — it’s the fact that there is a fragmentation in the market. I regularly run into people promoting events who don’t realize they are running an event on exactly the same night as someone else approaching the same market. LA is so spread out and populous, that you don’t end up with a single community–you end up with multiple communities who may or may not be aware of each other. In terms of networking opportunities, just looking at the past couple of weeks, there was Thursdays In The Mix on October 4th, on the same night as an Entrepreneur’s Mixer, which was followed by VentureNet on the 5th; then a OC Innovation Mixer on Monday in OC at the Hive from the Digital Coast Roundtable;  then there was Lunch 2.0 on Friday the 12th at Yellowbot. And those are just a fraction of the networking events and opportunities here.

With the “history of success,” the issue is purely one of perception. There have been an astounding number of very successful companies spread across Southern California–but, because of the limited high tech press attention to this geography, you do not get the “branding” and awareness companies in Silicon Valley gets. Reading the local newspapers, all of the technology coverage is on Silicon Valley startups — at the expense of well funded, highly regarded local startups — because the local papers are pulling from the technology AP feeds which are based from mostly Silicon Valley writers. My favorite example (which I’ve mentioned before) is the folks at Applied Semantics (the company which developed the engine behind Google Adsense, purchased pre-IPO by Google). No one knows them. Even the bigger names - the Overtures, LowerMyBills, PriceGrabbers, ValueClicks, etc. — are not household names.

Finally, the fallacy that there aren’t many startups here is again, just another perception problem. There are an ample number of high tech startups here, it’s just not that many people are aware of them–again, because there isn’t the same, widespread coverage of companies here than of the latest Silicon Valley darlings.

Just for fun, we’ve begun encoding our RSS story feed with the latitude and longitude of the companies mentioned in the stories. So, you can now see our RSS feed geographically on, for example, Google maps (go to: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.socaltech.com/news/news.rss).  You will see each of our stories overlaid on a map, updated in real time.

There’s an interesting post this morning by Mark Davis, a VC at DFJ Gotham on Silicon Alley Insider, talking about name dropping — which is the habit of (usually green) entrepreneurs of mentioning someone famous/influential in hopes of making their idea or company sound better. Other similar things to avoid if you’re an entrepreneur:

1. Mentioning that you’ve “just met with (tier 1 VC) yesterday” or “have a meeting scheduled with (notable VC investor) tomorrow”. Lots of companies and people with not-so-great ideas can set up meetings with VC firms–that doesn’t validate your idea unless they actually fund you.

2. Including non-customers (and logos) in your PowerPoint. The typical use of this is including Oracle/IBM/Microsoft/Google/Yahoo on a slide labeled “Customers” — and after you dig in a bit into their presentation you realize these are “potential” customers on a “prospective target list”. btw — NEVER do this when a VC is on the board of your “proespective company”, you’ll never get funding when they ask their CEO what they think of your company. This also tends to be abused in “Sales Pipeline” slides.

3. Probably an LA thing, but if you’re a company selling enterprise software, the fact that you have (insert Hollywood celebrity here) on your board of directors isn’t so flattering. I run across dozens of companies who have random Hollywood actors on their board — yet, I can’t think of many Hollywood actors who are well known for their business acumen.

It appears, at least for some folks in the business blog world, the weekends are just another workday.

Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch posted four stories Saturday, and six items Sunday. Paidcontent had six items posted Sunday. Prolific VC blogger Brad Feld posted three items on Sunday, all before 8am.

This, on days where most people are enjoying their weekend, watching football, going to church, or whatever it is folks do when they’re not working. Even in the go-go world of Silicon Valley, you’ll see a lot more bicyclists (and spandex) along Sand Hill Road than venture capitalists. How many people are reading your blog at 7am in the morning on a Sunday, anyway?