I'm happy to announce the launch of the Los Angeles Tech Content Community . The goal is to create a place where it's relatively easy to find current content and highly relevant content surrounding Los Angeles Technology. To be clear Los Angeles Tech is a jump off point. This is the beginning of a content community that collects and organizes the best content from blogs and web sites. The content comes from other places.

Last month we Launched Los Angeles Tech and in the announcement we provide the Hot List for the first half of January 2009. When I drill down on that term, you can see why with posts like: Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals Lops A Third Of Company THQ Lays Off 100 Employees, Closes San Diego Office Citrix Cuts 10 Percent; Santa Barbara Hit And it's also interesting to see what geographies are being associated with "Layoffs" more often than others: Layoffs Woodland Hills Layoffs San Diego Layoffs Santa Monica Layoffs Los Angeles I guess this is a sign of the

in funding from Clearstone Venture Partners and Shasta Ventures. The company was incubated by Clearstone Ventures, which has been actively pulling together management teams and funding new startups in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Tags: clearstone capital venture tmobile application mobile geodeli Santa Monica-based Geodelic announced today that the firm is shipping a new application for local discovery, along with T-Mobile USA. According to the venture backed firm, the new software for T-Mobile's myTouch 3G, learns a user's favorite locations and helps them find local

Part IV of a Continuing Series on How to Select an Angel Group Several months before Jason Calcanis’ crusade (or jihad—depending on your political affiliation) against for-profit angel groups, I wrote a post about evaluating angel groups and the criteria to use when seeking investment. Although pitching fees—or pay to play—is a good litmus test for weeding out disreputable angel groups, you’ll also find that for-profit angel groups typically have a poor track record with these other criteria. For those that didn’t see the earlier post, the list included:

Seeing last week’s Venture Capital Dispatch in the online Wall Street Journal, When Venture Capitalists Let One Slip Away , reminded me of Jim Armstrong’s (Clearstone Venture Partners) comment last year about false negatives. “You If you think VCs and Angels have had some of the biggest investment oversights, here are some of the bigger and more amusing ones from outside the VC community: “We 8220;You can afford to have a false positive; you can afford to invest in things and fail, but because the big ones are so rare, you cannot afford a false negative. You cannot afford

The Founder Institute , the business incubation and mentoring program started by TheFunded's Adeo Ressi , is expanding into the Los Angeles area, and is accepting applications for entrepreneurs for a Spring session, the group said late last week. The Los Angeles effort is being headed by Ken Rutkowski . In an invite to an information The Founder Institute already runs programs in Silicon Valley, Seattle, New York, Washington DC, San Diego and Orange County, as well as Paris and Singapore. The group said Monday it is running an information session at Clearstone Ventures Thursday

Most of the companies Clearstone invests in have angel money. In the past few years, angels have become much more active than they were following the tech crash of 2000. As a VC, I divide angel investors into two buckets. The first group includes angel investors who know the space they are investing Perhaps they previously started a company in the same industry or were part of a successful company targeting the same market. These investors can spot a new idea with potential from a me-to copy cat with limited prospects.

My dear friend Debbie Landa, supreme queen of DealMaker Media is hosting another kick ass event in Los Angeles, and… VC Outlook 2009: If You Need Funding You’re Fuc%ed ( or are you ) - Candid Talks with VCs in Los Angeles Jim Armstrong , Managing Director, Clearstone Venture Partners I’M GIVING AWAY A TICKET TO THE EVENT (keep reading below). DECEMBER 2, 2008 Roundtable

San Diego led in the report for the quarter, with $205M in 24 deals; Los Angeles had nearly $198.6M Year to year, Los Angeles actually had an increase in investments, up from $168.8M According to the report, the most active Southern California investors (those with their headquarters in Southern California) were Clearstone Ventures, with 6 deals; followed by Miramar Ventures, Rustic Canyon Partners, Amgen, Shepherd Ventures, Avalon Ventures, NGEN Partners, and Anthem Ventures, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) released their 2008 Q4 MoneyTree Report this evening, reporting that $28.3

Last week I hosted a panel of Los Angeles Venture Capitalists with Jim Armstrong (Clearstone Ventures), Mark Suster (GRP), David Travers (Rustic Canyon), and Brian Garrett (Crosscut Ventures). There has been a lot of conjecture about how the Venture community will respond to the economic downturn. My personal opinion is that its going to be bad, really bad.