Jason Nazar, CEO of local Santa Monica startup Docstoc — and relentless promoter of his company–has weighed in on the “Silicon Valley versus Los Angeles” debate with a blog post last night, saying:
Bay area founders are amazing technologists. They build obsessively user focused products, do a fantastic job at virally driving a ton of traffic, but usually have their head up their ass when it comes to making money.
Los Angeles founders are hustlers and deal makers. They are more focused on the bottom line and care more about their P&L than their products, which tend to be messy.
In my opinion, a measure of the differences in the two areas is the tilt in how businesses are start in the areas. There’s a tendency for startups in the Bay Area to be created by engineers/computer scientists/other technologists — who naturally are much more focused on products than business plan. Whereas, there tends to be more business folks/MBAs/etc. starting companies in Los Angeles. Sure, there’s plenty of good technologists here, but it does seem the balance leans toward the business folks here versus technologists.