He was struggling to find high quality developers in Los Angeles. Just the kind of person I like to meet. :) But I was a bit surprised when he emphasized how hard it had been for them to find a web developer in Los Angeles. My flippant comment was, “If you do a Google search for Los Angeles web developer, you’ll find a LOT of people and firms.” His response was that he had done exactly that, but that the long list is not all that useful. Yesterday, I met with someone at the early stage of a startup. He has a great concept with some complexity to it.

Great by Cliff Allen Business Networking Online who I had blogged about previously in Marketing, Startups and Networking in Los Angeles . Then, face-to-face meetings and activities become much more valuable. see Visible Networking as a series of conversations around blog posts, and encouraging a group of people to actively participate. In this post, Cliff provides some feedback on what works when you move towards doing business networking online. I'm trying to get the concept of visible networking going, so his feedback is really valuable.

We brought together Peter Cowen of Groundwork Equity , Mark Suster of GRP Partners , Rick Smith of Crosscut Ventures , and Richard Yen of Saban Ventures -- all of who will be on the judging panel for the Tech Coast Angel's Fast Pitch on February 24th, to give us a their hints and tips about pitching to venture capitalists. Peter Cowen: It is a two minute fast pitch, and it's an amazing opportunity to be in front of several VCs and funds, plus the Tech Coast Angels, an angel group that continues to invest in roughly a deal a month. For this morning's interview, we thought we'd try something different, and put together a virtual panel of venture capitalists to give us a few tips on pitching your company.

Sandwiched between Boston and New York you'll find the Angel Investor Forum in Connecticut. Liddy sees a lot of activity in both cities and it's led to a year where "we've invested more in 2009 than ever before!". You haven't heard that on the show lately, so who better to be leading the Angel Capital Association's Committee for Public Policy ? Could you use a tax break? Do Do

This past week has had an interesting confluence of events that's led me to conclude that I want to start doing a lot of visible networking among the tech / web crowd here in Los Angeles. I want to take you through a bit of what brought me here, because I think it will help explain what I mean by visible networking. Networking Events – Questionable Return on Your Time Last week I posted about Networking Events in Los Angeles and Southern California and received back some interesting comments, some of the best from a LinkedIn Group. Several of the comments there echoed what I've been feeling: Person 1: I have attended a plethora of networking groups and have also found it harder and harder to continue to be motivated to go. Person 2: Very discouraging (few if any happy with their networking efforts) but not unexpected.

The Tech Coast Angels is reporting this morning that its members have now invested a total of $100M in Southern California companies, since it started in 1997. The angel investing group said the $100M was invested in more than 150 California-based companies, and included firms in the life sciences, software, Internet, biotechnology, media, business services, and consumer products areas. In addition to the lifetime Tags: tech coast angels venture capital investmen

The Angel Capital Association reported this week that investing activity by angel investments groups dropped by nine percent between 2008 and 2007, and 40 percent of angel groups expect overall investment to decrease again this year. The group, which released its ACA Angel Group Confidence Report this week, also found that the average group investment per deal was $276,918 in 2008, with total invested by groups in 2008 averaging at $1.77M. Individual group totals were not broken out. The group attributed the dropping investment levels to loss of individual

Luis Villalobos , the founder of the Tech Coast Angels , the largest and arguably the most influential angel group in Southern California, has passed away. Villalobos was instrumental in creating the Tech Coast Angels, which has been one of the most active groups in both investing, as well as mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs across Southern California. "His His passing represents an important loss Villalobos was 72, and had been in the intensive care unit at St. Joseph's in Orange for treatment of a lung infection.

There's been a lot of controversy and debate in recent months over how angel investment groups ought to be structured, if they ought to charge entrepreneurs, and other similar issues about the role of organized groups and companies in the investment process. For today's Insights and Opinions piece, we have an article from John Dilts , founder of the Maverick Angels and one of the co-founders of The BioTech Forum , the effort to jump start biotech startup activity in Ventura County. John lays out his argument on why groups like his are vital to helping shape the way angels and entrepreneurs interact.

We thought today for our interview, that we'd get an update on the angel investment environment here in Southern California from Scott Sangster , the incoming President of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Tech Coast Angels , the biggest angel investment group in Southern California. Scott sat down with us last week and gave us some hints and tips about finding angel investment nowadays, and how the economy has affected local angel investors. It It seems that the economy hit angel investors pretty badly over the last couple of years, along with everyone