Benjamin Kuo’s Blog

I spent my lunch hour attending another Lunch 2.0 event in Los Angeles, this one at Shopzilla. There were boom-era size crowds at this event, and (unlike the first Lunch 2.0 in LA) the room was much better sized to the crush of people.

One of several questions I kept hearing from people at the event, was “why now?” That is, why does there seem to be so many startups and people getting funded, and why are people finally aware of some of the technology activity here?

I pretty much live and breathe technology 24/7, every day, so I have always felt we have a very strong technology industry; however, stepping back a bit I think there’s a growing realization by other people—aside from the hard core technology insiders–that there really is something happening here. I believe part of the “feeling” of the tech industry having a resurgence, is that there have been a slew of new companies being started by people coming out of the last generation of companies in the area — Overture, LowerMyBills, Homestore, Rent.com, etc. — and a corresponding increase in the visibility of companies in the region. As these companies grow, they are pulling in more and more people to work for them, and you are seeing some clusters of technology firms–for example, West LA–which are becoming much more apparent to “everyone else.”

I also think that the general upturn in the technology industry — after the long winter that was the dot com bust — is finally reaching the consciousness of the general public. Web 2.0 and related, consumer facing technology is starting to make its impact on the general public and to the general non-first adopters. Unlike Silicon Valley, there’s still a slight delay in the general public adopting new technology in Los Angeles.

Folks I saw in the crowd: VCs from Prism Ventures, Kline Hawkes; execs from ElephantDrive, Mahalo, and a few other startups in the area; a few investment bankers; and the guy who produces French Maid TV (if that’s your thing…)

Pictures from the Lunch 2.0 event:

Above: Shopzilla’s lobby sign

Below: Nicole Jordan and Andrew Warner, organizers of the event

Below: View of the crowd at Lunch 2.0

This entry was posted on Friday, November 2nd, 2007 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Conferences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.