If you’ve been in the local startup community for any time, particularly on the Westside LA or Santa Monica area, you might have run into Startups Uncensored, the series of events organized by Jason Nazar to help out other entrepreneurs figure out how to make their companies successful. However, you might also have found that it’s pretty hard to get in — the events are packed — or, if you’re like me, you haven’t been able to get to them as often as you like. In a convenient (but not unsurprising) move, Docstoc, Jason’s company, has been filming and posting the events–in full–on YouTube. They just posted Startups Uncensore #25: Strategies for Startup Sucess, and we’ve embedded it below:

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Conferences, Startups by Benjamin Kuo

(Elon Musk, center, with NASA astronauts - from SpaceX).

Here’s an interesting one for Friday: Elon Musk, who co-founded PayPal, and has taken that fortune (literally) to new heights with Tesla Motors and SpaceX, actually  spends as much time in Southern California than he does in Silicon Valley (according to Mashable).  It’s actually very interesting, if you talk with folks in Southern California, they’re familiar with both SpaceX and Tesla, but when I talk to folks from Silicon Valley, they’re mostly aware of Tesla only (despite SpaceX’s huge success in getting their commercial rockets into space and soon heading to the ISS…)

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Billionares by Benjamin Kuo

Okay, we are crying uncle. We have added back the “Google+” button on our news posts. Anyone who wants to go back and +1 all the articles on their favorite companies, please do. (Apparently, Google’s ranking algorithms are now heavily weighting search relevancy towards pages which have been +1′d and shared — and is ignoring Facebook and Twitter mentions and PageRank). We had added them, but not enough So-Cal folks had been signed up back when we did, so we removed them awhile back. They’re back now, so use them liberally!!!!

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Announcements, Google by Benjamin Kuo

I’m not sure if the folks over at Microsoft missed April Fool’s, were in a “let’s make a viral video” mood, or what, but they just announced a program to promote the use of Kinect for Xbox 360 in senior citizen’s centers around Los Angeles. In the best line ever, the video assets for the release include the best line ever (around 4:48 in): “You guys want to do Funky Town again?” (yes, those appear to be senior citizens dancing around in “bling” to Funky Town).

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Random by Benjamin Kuo

Okay, what we thought was our complete guide to accelerators and incubators is not quite so complete now, with two more to add: Frost Ventures (OC), and io/LA (Hollywood) in the last couple of weeks. We’ll be updating that list soon. Any other accelerators/incubators/coworking spaces we’re missing? We’re contemplating moving this into our live database of firms, since this area is changing so dynamically.

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Accelerators by Benjamin Kuo

One of the areas that is consistently identified here in Southern California as a way to further increase our technology base, is to increase the number of large, indigenous technology firms. Although we do have a healthy beginning there (in particular, in San Diego, with Qualcomm and the like and Orange County, with Broadcom, etc.), it’s an area that I know local leaders constantly wring their hands over. It’s interesting to note this morning that Europe has identified the same sort of issues there–a lack of large, indigenous tech companies in the region, something which would help spur more startups, create a local ecosystem, and also create jobs and employment. VC Nic Brisbourne, of DFJ Esprit, talks about Europe’s experience:

From a European perspective the important point here is that most acquisitions are made by US companies, and after that local job creation generally dwindles. Sometimes that is because the acquired business becomes core to the acquirer and new people are mostly hired in the US and other times it is because the acquisition goes badly and the acquired business withers.

That experience is one that folks in Southern California (and in particular, Los Angeles) have experienced first hand (think back to Geocities being acquired by Yahoo, Overture being acquired by Yahoo as well, etc.) Substitute “Silicon Valley companies” for instances of “US companies” in Nic’s quote above for an accurate description of the problem when successful companies/startups down here tend to be acquired by firms in Silicon Valley.

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Mergers and Acquisitions by Benjamin Kuo

In an interesting footnote to last week’s Los Angeles Venture Association awards, it’s noteworthy to see LAVA Hall of Fame winner Jon Funk (now running Ocean Road Partners, previously at Allegis Capital) has just booted up an effort to help educate entrepreneurs about receiving venture capital. Funk has just announced a plan to run a series of seminars to help startups get funding. The first–The Insider’s Guide: Fundraising For Your Startup in LA–is coming up next month, on April 5th.

Although there are plenty of seminars and events around getting funding, it’s somewhat unusual to have a successful venture capitalist share his knowledge of the process. Funk helped fund such companies as Rent.com, Shopzilla, and Sandpiper Networks. Although we’re biased (Jon has been a regular contributor and supporter of socalTECH), it’s interesting to see yet another resource here for startups looking to get funded and off the ground.

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Venture Capital by Benjamin Kuo

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Media by Benjamin Kuo

Congratulations to this year’s winners of the Los Angeles Venture Association‘s annual Venture Awards! LAVA–which tapped the resources and venture database at socalTECH to help come up with their list–gave out seven awards last night at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica. The group also awarded a special “LAVA Hall of Fame” award to venture capitalist Jon Funk, who had notable success at Allegis Capital, providing over 1.6 billion in liquidity to investors. I’ve attended a number of prior LAVA Venture Awards events, and this one was pretty well attended (230 or so folks, according to LAVA). It was also a really good year, as exits and financings go, particularly for anyone who remembers a number of years ago when there were essentially no IPOs, and few M&A deals to go around.

LAVA’s complete list of winners:

Best Venture Funding in Internet/eCommerce: TrueCar

Best Venture Funding in Internet/Ad Technology: SocialVibe

Best Venture Financing in Clean Technology and Energy: CODA Automotive

Hottest First Time Venture Funding: BetterWorks

Best IPO Exit: Cornerstone OnDemand

Best M&A Exit: Riot Games

Most Capital Efficient Exit: Accordant Technologies

Jon Funk’s award was particularly well received, although Jon (explaining that he was an engineer at heart, and therefore an introvert) was definitely nervous–enough to merit a humorous request for a shot of tequila in his acceptance speech, which someone actually made happen. Jon Funk’s best known exits are Sandpiper Networks (Westlake Village, acquired for $630 million in 2000 by Digital Island), Rent.com (Santa Monica, acquired for $430 million in 2004 by eBay) and Shopzilla (West Lost Angeles, acquired for $560 million in 2005 by the E.W. Scripps Company). Jon has been a regular contributor of analysis of the exits and investments here for socalTECH.

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Awards by Benjamin Kuo

There’s been a boom in startup accelerators in Southern California over the last few months, with quite a few different efforts (K5Launch, Amplify, EvoNexus, LaunchPadLA, UpstartLA, MuckerLab, StartEngine, Ventura Ventures, among others) all looking to help populate the startup world here in the area. There’s definitely no shortage of folks who want to help mentor, fund, and accelerate startups here. To that end, next week, StartEngine — the accelerator run by Howard Marks, who co-founded Activision--invited socalTECH to sit in on their screening sessions Wednesday and help out in screening companies to participate in their accelerator. As part of that, I’ll be sitting in on those sessions and talking with entrepreneurs. If you’d like to potentially participate, you can apply at http://www.startengine.com – the accelerator said they will be reviewing applicants and inviting them on Tuesday to the screening sessions on Wednesday.

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Accelerators, Startups by Benjamin Kuo