Benjamin Kuo’s Blog

The Technology Council of Southern California (formerly the Software Council of Southern California) has generously passed on a code for a great discount to hear Tony Perkins of AlwaysOn speak at their annual Technology Industry Awards next week. The event is being held at the Millenium Biltmore in Los Angeles, February 28th, from 6-9pm.

Tony, as most of you know, was the founder of Red Herring magazine and a well regarded Silicon Valley speaker. The event also features recognition of a great set of area technology firms. It’s always a great event, and an opportunity to get out and network with CEOs, executives, and others in the community.

If you’re interested in going, they’ve provided me with a discount to allow readers of this blog and web site to register at their member rate, $79 (a $71 savings). Go to: http://www.tcosc.org/awards/index.html

Use discount code:  TECH08.

I’ll be at the event, feel free to say hello…

Brian Deagon of Investor’s Business Daily has two good pieces published today on the growth of the technology industry on LA’s west side, along with an overall piece on the surge in informal networking groups (Lunch 2.0, TwiistUp, etc.) in the area.

If anyone hasn’t gotten enough of technology events, there’s a boat load of events this week focused on the technology industry in the area.

First of all, out in Palm Springs, there’s Demo 2008 — where 77 new startups from all over the country are pitching what they are doing. Tradationally, lots of Silicon Valley “buzz” around those startups comes out of the conference, which has been held down here for several years now.

Second, all over Los Angeles there are a ton of events linked to Los Angeles Technology Week. The kickoff is today at lunch with a keynote by astronaut Sally Ride. Tonight’s Tech Coast Angels Fast Pitch is always very interesting. Other events of particular note is the open screening session by the Pasadena Angels, and a session on the Future of Game Development.

For those folks down in San Diego, the San Diego Venture Group has their 2008 Venture Capital outlook scheduled for Thursday. Finally, out in the Inland Empire the University of La Verne has their third annual Venture Capital conference scheduled for Wednesday — also notably spearheaded by a number of Tech Coast Angels.

One of the signs of the growing awareness of Southern California in the technology industry is a recent surge of events (both public and private) aimed at connecting the technology industry. In particular, the number of Silicon Valley-style events on the west side of Los Angeles has been increasing quite rapidly (think Lunch 2.0, Meetups, etc.). The latest of these was an event last night in Santa Monica held by DealMaker Media.

The invite-only event was the launch of a series of events in the Los Angeles area, and was held at the offices of Michael Ovitz, and catered by Ovitz’ restaurant Hamasaku. DealMaker is known for its events in Silicon Valley (Under the Radar, Dealmaker Forum, Momentum Growth Conference) and had an invite-only list of around a 100 people invited to their launch party (plus a long line on the waiting list - and apparently a bunch of other people wanting to go).

The event — which was extremely well attended despite a torrential downpour outside — was packed with venture capitalists from both Southern California and Silicon Valley, as well as entrepreneurs and executives. Among the folks I saw or talked to there were: Ross Levinsohn (now at Velocity Interactive, formerly of Fox Interactive Media); Peter Pham of Photobucket (brokered its sale to MySpace); Michael Jones of Userplane/AOL; entrepreneurs like Jason Feffer of Sodahead, Jason Nazar of Docstoc, and Adam Lilling from Biggerboat; Mashable founder Pete Cashmore; a slew of people from Google, and a huge number of venture folks (from Mohr Davidow Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Clearstone Ventures, Norwest Ventures, GRP Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Steamboat Ventures, GKM Ventures, Prism Venture Partners, Mission Ventures, Stone Canyon, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, just to name a few).

Since we don’t have a technology gossip rag like ValleyWag here in the area, here’s a few photos from the event:

Above: The art gallery that is Michael Ovitz’ office and the crowd.

Left: Jason Feffer of Sodahead; a blurry Adam Lilling of Biggerboat.

VC’s galore: Palomar Ventures’ Kevin Jacques on the left, William Quigley of Clearstone Ventures on the right

Nicole Jordan of Rubicon Project/et al; Peter Pham of Photobucket (middle); Michael Jones of Userplane/AOL (right)

Atticus Wagner at the Tech Coast Angels let me know last week that the Tech Coast Angels is now taking applications for their Fast Pitch event coming up in January. For entrepreneurs who aren’t familiar with what a “fast pitch” is, it is a very short, 60 second “elevator pitch” on your company. The idea behind the competition is to pit a number of entrepreneurs — all looking for funding — in a competition to see who can best convince an investor to make an investment in their company. It’s very informative, entertaining, and actually a useful skill to have. Last January, the winner of the Fast Pitch was Leads360. Frank Peters (podcaster and president of the Tech Coast Angels) has an archive of that winning pitch posted on his podcast page; Leads360 eventually raised $3.25M in a venture round from Rustic Canyon Partners.

Last Friday, I spent some time at a Lunch 2.0 meeting over at ThisNext in Santa Monica, getting a chance to chat with entrepreneurs, technologists, producers, and others in the high tech and entertainment community here. It’s interesting but there has been an upsurge in networking events — particularly in the Internet/Web 2.0 area — looking to connect the high tech community in Los Angeles. The Lunch 2.0 event — which is one of many, newly formed events like Twiistup (and at least 3 other private, invite-only events) which have been bubbling up here — crammed quite a few people (250 RSVPs, with whatever dropouts) into the space where ThisNext usually houses their 12 employees. Gordon Gould, CEO of ThisNext, was telling me he was wondering if the police would show up given how many people were there.

There seems to be a real hunger in the community for connecting with others in the industry. Unlike Silicon Valley, and probably other more geographically centered high tech centers, running into others in the technology industry is a little more difficult here due to “freeway distance.” Even with dozens of events every month, it’s tough to get from Santa Monica to Pasadena, or from Pasadena to Costa Mesa, or (god forbid) Santa Barbara to San Diego on any regular basis.
In any case, it’s clear that the technology community here expands there are bound to be more and more networking events trying to meet the desire for “face time.”

Most of the people who are involved in the technology and venture capital industry spent a lot of times at conferences. Usually, things are fairly light during the summer, but it looks like conference season is just around the bend. Just glancing at our comprehensive calendar of local, Southern California events and conferences, it looks like things get into swing on September 19th. There are an astounding nine events that day  (so far — it’s still early) already. Of course, that’s spread across all of Southern California.