Suddenly, Hollywood Is A Startup Hotbed - Business Insider
Eric Barker stashed this in Entertainment
Stashed in: Startups, 106 Miles, Celebrities, Awesome, Kardashian, Hollywood, @msuster, American Idol, @TheEllenShow, @jessicaalba, @justinbieber, @ryanseacrest, @1capplegate, @jtimberlake
@msuster says it best:
"The LA tech scene isn't coming to a head right now; it's been building," says LA-based venture capitalist Mark Suster. "We have amazing engineers and really smart people here. This is not all about the beach."
And yet, most people in Silicon Valley won't touch LA companies.
No one will say, but here's my best guess:
Silicon Valley investors like to put money into companies with defensible technology, and they believe that the most defensible technology is built by the best engineers.
You might find some good engineers in Southern California, but there's a much bigger pool of good engineers in Silicon Valley, so the risk of attracting good engineers to the Silicon Valley startup is reduced.
The biggest Silicon Valley companies that were built using venture capital are Apple, Google, Oracle, Intel, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, Salesforce, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
The biggest Southern California companies that were built using venture capital are... ???
Celebrities love startups:
The most obvious way tech and Hollywood are merging is in startups' big-name endorsers. Ryan Seacrest, Ellen DeGeneres, Christina Applegate, Justin Bieber, and Justin Timberlake are just a few A-listers who have lent their names to support entrepreneurs.
Celebrities used to endorse skincare products. Now they endorse mobile apps.
Some, like Kim Kardashian, are actually taking ownership stakes in startups, particularly in the e-commerce space, in exchange for their names.
Jessica Alba is one of few celebrities who is actually in the startup trenches. She's running the Honest Company as a full-time job.
106 Miles now has almost 1500 members in SoCal: http://meetup.com/106milesSoCal
11:32 AM Sep 17 2012