Benjamin Kuo’s Blog

• TechCrunch is the authority on tech news. What they say goes.
• TechCrunch’s interpretation and analysis of technology trends and news helps me make sense of a fast changing industry.
• To stay current on technology solutions for my company / employer.
• To research technology vendors for my personal use.
• If it’s happening, it’s on TechCrunch. They’ll report it first.
• To research technology vendors for my company / employer.
• I like the funny photos.

My suggestions on what they ought to add as choices to their survey:

• It makes my day when they ream my startup competitors.
• TechCrunch is the bomb for snarky comments.
• I can’t get enough of their ridiculing PR firms and/or competitors.
• TechCrunch is my master. I bow to the supreme ruler.
• I’m just waiting for the next twisted startup-founder-stalks-Michael-Arrington story.
• Web 2.0 is my religion, and TechCrunch is my god.
• I religiously read every article, particularly for the advertisements, so that I can buy thousands of dollars of product from them.
• I don’t have much to do between classes, so I read TechCrunch.
• Valleywag isn’t producing the juicy stories (sex/scandals/drugs) I need, I’m hoping TechCrunch starts picking up on that point.
• It’s my only way of figuring out if Twitter is down.

All joking aside, at least their list is not nearly as dry and humorless as the usual “How much firewall hardware do you buy in a year? What is your highest level of spending authority? How much money do you make in a year? etc.” (For the record, my answer would be “None of the above.”)

For any entrepreneurs lurking here, I’ve got some tickets to VentureNet I am giving away. Just email or otherwise contact me, particularly if you’re an early stage startup who wished they were presenting but didn’t make the cut, etc. It’s a great opportunity to meet others in the community, see some pitches, and do some networking.

On a related note,  a good story on RingRevenue and how they got funding from the warmup session for VentureNet was recently posted on Entrepreneur Magazine. (disclaimer: I was on the selection committee for VentureNet last year. My picture of Jason Spievak of RingRevenue, at the VentureNet warmup/screening event is actually posted on Flickr). I tell entrepreneurs every year to go ahead an apply–not to pitch, but because the judges really have (in the past, at least) done their best to read through applications and see what companies are up to.

Not getting enough of Jason Nazar, founder of Santa Monica-based DocStoc, at his many Startups Uncensored events recently? Nazar gets the spotlight, pitching Kara Swisher in this video.

Not too many people I talk to realize that online e-commerce firm NewEgg is one of Southern California’s own, based in the City of Industry. Well, NewEgg is now also the latest IPO filing in Southern California, saying today in a filing with the SEC that it is looking to raise up to $175M in an IPO.  The firm hasn’t yet selected an exchange. The firm has some minor amount of investment from Insight Venture Partners, but otherwise is owned by its co-founder, Fred Chang, and current CEO Tally Liu. (full SEC filing here).

There’s been a lot of news on the electric car front in the last few weeks, including today’s announcement that Irvine-based Fisker Automotive is the recipient of a $528.7M loan from the Department of Energy to help it bootstrap its production. Other recipients of government money here are Ford, Nissan, and Tesla Motors.

In a way, the electric car industry reminds me of the early origins of the auto itself, defined by the development of the Model-T.

For those students of history, the development of the Model-T by Henry Ford ushered in the new world of assembly line manufacturing — standard parts, efficient operations, and mass production. The fact that Michigan became the center of the U.S. auto industry was directly related to Henry Ford’s success in taking automobiles from something which was expensive, experimental, and which had limited production, into something which nearly anyone could purchase.  The success of Ford’s mass production catapulted the Model T into one of the most successful automobiles of all time, and raised Ford above hundreds of wanna-be automobile manufacturers and models (the names of whom I doubt very few remember today).

Similarly, there’s a race today to determine where the next generation of automotive firms will be located, with a strong crop of contendors here in Southern California, but competition in Silicon Valley, and efforts in Detroit from the traditional auto makers; plus competition from the rest of the world. Southern California has Fisker Automotive, CODA Automotive, stealthy V-Vehicle, and Aptera, not to mention a number of firms developing batteries, power trains, and other components for various electric car makers. Northern California’s main — but highly covered prospect — is Tesla Motors.

The question is: who (if anyone) is going to create the next “Model T” — the electric car which brings technology to the masses? Will it be one of the Japanese firms who have the head start right now on hybrid/electric technology (ie, Toyota or Honda); will it be one of the old Detroit automakers; aspiring automakers in China and India; or, will it be one of the new crop of startups here? Success — which I’d define in this case as widespread adoption and purchase of an automotive model, beyond the luxury/specialty market — a modern equivalent of the “Model T”, which triggers widespread adoption from the general market. The success, or failure of companies could well determine if Southern California, Detroit, Louisiana, or Mumbai is the next center of the world’s auto industry.

Seems like a week for “hey look SoCal has a tech industry” articles. Today, in eWeek: San Diego Is A Rising Star For Clean Energy, Technology Jobs.

Hey, look! TheDeal just noticed all of the tech companies in the San Fernando Valley. I think this is one of the first articles (not from our own coverage over the last ten+ years) actually noticing the tech industry along the 101 corridor. Writing in “The state of Calabasas”:

Calabasas and its neighbors suggest a far more nuanced business environment than recent mortgage-industry-based notoriety might indicate. They are corporate homes to a surprising number and variety of companies, everything from restaurant chain Cheesecake Factory Inc. and specialty retailer Guitar Center Inc. to video gamer THQ Inc. and the country’s largest landscape services provider, ValleyCrest Cos. Liquidators such as Buxbaum Holdings Inc. and the Great American Group Inc. congregate in the area. Head a little further west into Westlake Village and encounter the corporate digs of Dole Food Co., athletic shoemaker K-Swiss Inc. and researcher J.D. Power and Associates. Biotechology giant Amgen Inc. dominates an area of nearby Thousand Oaks called Newbury Park.

One argument I hear quite frequently–usually from venture capitalists from Silicon Valley–that one of Southern California’s advantages is at the intersection of entertainment and technology. Interestingly enough, as a daily observer of the startup world here I don’t find quite as many technology-plus-Hollywood startups around. Yes, you run into content startups (online video / production / celebrity / etc.); and yes, you run into technology startups, but few which are actually at the intersection of both, which take are developing technology for Hollywood. This usually is because the technologists in Southern California don’t hang out with the folks in Hollywood, and the typical folks in Hollywood wouldn’t know the first thing about a technology startup.

However, there is one area which seems to me to be a true, technology-focused, startup market where Southern California does have a new industry emerging, and where the physical proximity of Hollywood and access to technology talent really does make a difference: 3D technology. Driven by a growing adoption of 3D films in theaters, I’m starting to see companies like RealD (with a major market share in 3D projection equipment), based in Beverly Hills; In-Three (technology which helps companies turn 2D films into 3D using software), in Westlake Village; and 3ality Digital, in Burbank (3D camera rigs for filming 3D content, plus 3D production — ie U2 3D). There’s undoubtedly many, many more firms I haven’t yet heard of in the sector, but it’s cleary a new, growing market. 3D films are just at their beginnings, and 3D television is not all that far away, and 3D is now providing a huge contribution to the box office take of films.

It’s also clear that the location of these firms in Southern California, and their proximity and familiarity with the various players (studios, production, post-production, etc. etc.) in Hollywood gives them a huge advantage over firms located outside of Southern California and a few other entertainment production hubs. Even the local universities are into the act: USC recently started offering a university degree in 3D.

I spent some time recently at a 3D technology demonstration at In-Three, which has technology which takes standard, 2D content, and maps that into 3D.

The firm–whose biggest win so far has been Disney’s G-Force 3D–has developed a process and accompanying technology which extracts 3D out of 2D filmed content, essentially allowing productions which weren’t 3D in the first place to be turned into 3D; or, in some cases, makes 3D possible where the technology otherwise wouldn’t be practical. (this happened to be the case in G-Force, where the low point of view of the guinea pigs made 3D camera rigs impossible to use.) John Sanders, the firm’s Chief Technology Officer, and Damien Wader, a Senior account Manager at the firm, walked a number of members of the press through its technology and some demonstrations of the possibilities of its technology.

Among the 3D “dimensionalization” clips the firm showed as examples (none of which are ongoing projects) were 3D conversions of Star War scenes, The Matrix, and even Casablanca. The whole industry has even spawned a brand, new job title: “Stereographer” — someone who is responsible for controlling the 3D effects in films.

This new industry happens to be one of the few where the understanding of Hollywood and films absolutely impacts the technology. It’s not a Hollywood celebrity just taking advantage of your latest Web 2.0 technology; it’s something which, at its heart is technology applied to the business of Hollywood. It’s also something where an understanding of technology (in this case, computer science and graphics processing) is at the core of the operation, but where artistic vision, creativity, and the creative process is also central. In short, it’s someplace where you really do convergence and understanding of both technology and Hollywood to make these companies happen.

One of the common complaints I hear (whether valid or not) from Silicon Valley folks talking about Southern California startups, is that they aren’t as visionary, are more focused on making money, and not nearly as revolutionary as the latest hot-company-of-the-week in Palo Alto. I don’t agree (not being that close to the water cooler and Kool-Aid helps a bit actually in being different), but nevertheless it’s one of those things you hear.

So, I read, with great amusement, this article by Sarah Lacy on TechCrunch about how the crop of companies at TechCrunch50 this year weren’t trying to change the world, weren’t swinging for the fences, and weren’t ambitious enough–with the exception of CitySourced. CitySourced is actually a Los Angeles company, founded by Jason Kiesel and Kurt Daradics. From Sarah’s article:

… Tony Hsieh just said it blatantly: “I didn’t see anything that was trying to change the world.”

One big exception was CitySourced—a company that excited Kevin Rose precisely because it was trying to build something that doesn’t really exist today and would make a huge difference in people’s lives. It was the most excited I saw an expert about anything over the two-day event.

It’s clear that traditional publishers seem to be headed the way of the dinosaur, between declining readership, loss of advertisers, and an unwieldy cost structure. But, they aren’t helping much on their online efforts. In some bizarre logic, I’ve seen more and more newspapers, industry publications (CNET seems particularly bad in this regard), and magazines pepper their web sites with those ads which pop up when you roll over them and you can’t figure out how to close; interstitial ads which put themselves in front of any article click through; animated, graphical ads which are half of the “above the fold” space; and aggravating interactive “slide show” articles which require you to click 40 times to see a graphic heavy, information-poor article. Yes, we know you’re desperate for revenue. Yes, you need to run ads on your site. But, your sites are now unusable.