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

There’s more money going into the online advertising  sector again, with the announcement this morning that Specific Media has raised an astounding $100M to invest in mergers and acquisitions.  This space is hopping. Some local companies recently in the news in the sector: Santa Monica’s The Rubicon Project recently raised $6M in October from Clearstone for their online ad optimization software; Los Angeles-based Gorilla Nation, which reps advertising for online sites grabbed $50M in a round in May; Spot Runner raised $32M in August; and Santa Barbara’s AdECN was acquired by Microsoft in July. Not to mention, a continual swirl of rumors around whether or not ValueClick is or is not the target of acquisition.

I was sitting at a lunch the other day at a conference with David Moore, Chairman of 24/7 Real Media (which was recently acquired by advertising giant WPP for $649M) and were were talking about this, and I asked him when the merger/acquisition frenzy in the Internet advertising market was going to end. He told me that right now it’s a giant game of “whack-a-mole” — everywhere you look, a new Internet advertising firm pops up, and then some player in the industry will buy them.