Benjamin Kuo’s Blog

I happened to run across an interview by Private Equity Hub (which is published by Thomson Private Equity), and was surprised to see a legitimate publishing organization violating copyright law. You’ll note the photo they are using (which I took; folks in Westlake Village might note that the building on the left is Brent’s Deli where Richard Wolpert and I had breakfast) is copied from the socalTECH flickr account here. Hello guys?

Update: looks like they’ve swapped in another photo. Thanks — and please ask us next time!

Many of you in the SoCal technology community have seen the events run by Andrew Warner, of Mixergy. He’s been organizing the Lunch 2.0 events here in Southern California as well as other educational seminars and useful networking events. We’ve just posted a short video from Andrew on how to keep your inbox clear in our Insights and Opinions section. It’s a nice short clip, and worth watching.

Tim Kane, a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation — which is focused on fostering entrepreneurship, and is behind many studies on the area — recently talked with a couple of venture capitalists, including Southern California’s Ted Alexander, who is at Mission Ventures, and shares his takeaways on the challenges of the venture industry.

Frank Peters, chairman of the Tech Coast Angels, emailed me last week telling me that the angel group has just topped one billion dollars in third party and venture capital funding to its portfolio companies. For those who aren’t familiar with the Tech Coast Angels, they are the largest angel investment group here (and maybe the nation), and very active in promoting and encouraging entrepreneurs in Southern California. The funding came as eventual funding rounds for the 150 startup companies the group has funded to date.

Jason Calacanis, the oft-quoted blogger who is CEO of Santa Monica-based Mahalo.com, said today that he’s retiring from blogging. You can read more on his blog posting on why, but he said he’s going to “try and build a deeper relationship with fewer people” through an email list instead.

I don’t know if Jason will be able to quit cold turkey (if nothing else, he’s known for his ability, and need, to express an opinion–usually controversial–about anything). The interesting thing I find about all of this is that the Silicon Valley bloggers consider Calacanis an “A-List” blogger, but of the many, many folks I talk to in Southern California’s technology/business community, very few actually read his blog. (Calacanis was the founder of Weblogs, Inc. which was acquired by AOL; he also is now an angel investor in a number of firms here, and a board member at Santa Monica-based ThisNext). I’m not sure if that says more about Silicon Valley’s blog culture, or Southern California’s adoption of blogs…

For those of you who do not know Omid Rahmat, he’s the former CEO of the immensely successful technology publication Tom’s Guide. I’ve been lucky enough to get to know Omid over the last year and get a slice of his insights and knowledge. Omid’s penned a new article for our insights and opinions section, on Succeeding in a Recession, which is well worth a read.

Yes, we are in a recession. Maybe not a textbook definition of one, but textbooks tend to be behind the times. So, we’re in a recession. You can feel it. You can see the change in the business climate. Interestingly enough, those who have the resources – secure funding, or wealth – are relishing the inherent contradictions of the marketplace. They know that this is a time of great opportunity.

Twitter is down much
Do not like the whale or bird
Why use it anymore?

Where oh are the tweets
I have so carefully typed
Lost forever now

What a company
Can get funding when broken
No business model?

Not a software whiz?
You can come and work for us
No need at Twitter

There’s no need for me
to twitter any more now
no one can read it
(Thanks to @mikeout for the inspiration…)

Fortune Small Business just released their list of the fastest growing, small public companies. Among the list are seven high-tech related, Southern California firms:

Trio-Tech International (#48),  semiconductor testing
Stamps.com (#50), online postage
Quality Systems (#52), software for dentists
PeopleSupport (#68), outsourced support
Iris International (#80), scientific equipment
Smith Micro Software (#85),  software
Cam Commerce (#98), IT services

The last Southern California firm — non tech — was aircraft engine leasing firm Willis International. Of the 18 companies in California, Southern California firms represented 8 of the 18.

I’m an optimist by nature, but nowadays — given the number of foreclosures I drive by in neighborhoods, and the dismal economic picture you hear talking to people on “main street,” I feel like the technology industry is happily swimming along through the ocean– unaware of a shark in the water following behind. That shark — the threat of the overall economic conditions impacting high tech companies — hasn’t bitten yet. But, I keep getting the feeling that we ought to be looking behind our shoulders somewhat.

There are reports — like this one from InformationWeek — showing that IT and other high tech jobs are starting to see recessionary pressure. Plus, you’ve got to imagine with consumer confidence at a new low, and gasoline prices at a near high, that the economy will hit the consumer–which ultimately is responsible for a huge amount of the dollars spent in the high tech economy.

Despite the overall picture, though, I constantly run into people in the high tech industry who have absolutely no worries about the economy. In fact, they are in full “boom” mode, where the only thing that seems to matter is who has the “hot startup” of the day, the best launch party, or who has raised the most money. Perhaps the startup industry — which seems to be driven more by the amount of capital invested into firms than money being made by those companies — is sufficiently disconnected from the overall economics that it won’t matter. But it seems that you can only go so far on the “sugar rush” companies get from venture funding, before the full impact of a sluggish economy will have a greater impact on startups.

Then again, maybe we’ll be lucky this time. Some CEOs have told me that they’re actually seeing an uptick in business — in particular, in the online advertising space — as the recession has caused advertisers to direct their ad dollars to the more effective online arena. I’ve also heard others in the software-as-a-service area also seeing the same kind of increase, from companies more interested in having a monthly subscription than a huge capital commit/install.  There’s a chance that maybe there are enough overall factors driving people to online companies that they’ll thrive, because, not in spite of, any recessionary environment.  One hopes so–maybe that shark won’t be  hungry enough to take a big bite out of the high tech industry…

I ran across this interesting post comparing the Los Angeles technology scene to Portland, Oregon - posted on the blog silicon florist by Heather Nordeen (formerly an employee at TagWorld):

LA is all about competition, competition, competition

I won’t go as far to say that the tech community in Los Angeles is as cut throat as their entertainment industry, but in some cases it’s a close second. With a new NDA being drawn up every minute, companies offering the world to a person to join them and leave their current position and enemy lines being drawn between social media companies, there is a definite switch in the overall feeling of community in LA.

It’s interesting because — as you’ve probably seen from my prior posts — I’ve often felt that the competition in Silicon Valley is much more intense, and cut-throat, than Los Angeles. So it’s interesting to get a perspective from someone dropping into our technology world here. I haven’t seen as much of the pressure cooker atmosphere of Silicon Valley here as Heather refers to in the post, but perhaps my perspective has been colored by having lived/worked also in Silicon Valley.

btw, for those who care, we have a socalTECH.com spinoff covering Pacific Northwest technology news, at Northwest Innovation (www.nwinnovation.com)