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 times. The Scott Sanfilippo Interview Media Optimization Firms Are Red Hot In Southern California in 2009 Proliferate

Santa Monica-based Zag, the online car buying software firm headed by former CarsDirect CEO Scott Painter, has spun out a new company called TrueCar, the firm said late Wednesday. The firm said it has scored Series A funding from Zag, Anthem Venture Partners, Global Retail Partners, Capricorn, Capital One Auto Finance, ARcturus Capital, Scott Painter, and co-founder Tom Taira. All According to TrueCar, it will provide information about new car pricing, using the actual price people have paid for cars. Painter was most recently CEO of Zag, Taira was Chief Strategy Officer

Santa Monica-based Zag , which has developed an automobile configuration and buying service for affinity organizations like credit unions and automobile organizations, has a funding round of undisclosed size. spokesperson for Zag told socalTECH that a round had closed, but would not confirm the investors or details of the round, saying that earlier disclosures by TechCrunch were incorrect. A Apparently, the company was a victim of TechCrunch's Arrington's crusade against PR embargoes, and disclosed the funding based on preliminary discussions with the firm.

Santa Monica-based Zag , which has developed an automobile configuration and buying service for affinity organizations like credit unions and automobile organizations, has raised around $32.4M spokesperson for Zag told socalTECH that a round had closed, but would not confirm the investors or details of the round. Apparently, the company was a victim of TechCrunch's Arrington's in a funding round. A

was recently interviewed for an article that appeared in Fast Company titled, “ Why you should start a business in LA .” We have many seasoned entrepreneurs who have built successful companies here and made a lot of money for investors and themselves.  But But we have a great city for building technology companies. Los Angeles.  People People either love it our hate it.  All

Santa Monica-based Zag.com , the online automotive buying firm headed by Scott Painter, announced Thursday that the company has reached an agreement with Mercedes-Benz USA to offer an additional $5000 off pricing of new Mercedes-Benz cars to members of USAA, one of the affinity groups using Zag's auto pricing and purchasing services. Zag provides a white-label version of its automotive configuration and pricing engine to USAA and other affinity groups, which provides a detailed, in-depth quoting system for "fleet" sales of automobiles. The firm said the additional offer comes on top of special member prices, rebates, and dealer incentives available to members.

Santa Monica-based SharesPost , which has created on online marketplace for sellers and buyers of private company stock, reported to its users late Friday that the firm now has sales of LinkedIn, Linden Lab, Tesla Motors, and SugarCRM going into escrow. SharesPost, headed by Greg Brogger and incubated by Brighthouse, is looking to create a Web 2.0-enabled secondary marketplace for shares in private companies, and particularly venture-backed, technology firms. The firm--which launched in early June--also said that that it now has offers to sell Facebook, Tesla, XDx, eHarmony, and LindenLab shares, as the firm's marketplace starts to gear up.

The Technology Council of Southern California kicked off awards season last night, honoring a number of local CEOs and companies for their success in the last year. In terms of the awards, Entrepreneur of the Year went to Scott Painter , of Zag and TrueCar ; CEO of the Year went to Adam Miller of Cornerstone OnDemand . Entertainment/Gaming Company of the Year was Blizzard Entertainment , Hardware/Storage The keynote was by economist Christopher Thornberg , of Beacon Economics, billed by master of ceremonies Rick Sharga (of RealtyTrac) as the “only entertaining economist in the world.”

According to the company, the new site runs on Apple iPhone, BlackBerry, and other web-enabled mobile devices. TrueCar is a spinout of Zag Automotive, which is also run by Painter. Los Angeles-based TrueCar , the online car pricing site run by Scott Painter, said today that it has launched a mobile version of its site. TrueCar said the site is accessible either by going to its main url, or to its mobile site at mobile.truecar.com .

Santa Monica-based TrueCar , the automotive pricing spinout of Zag Automotive, annoucned today that it has hired the Chief Evangelist from Edmunds. The firm said that Jesse Toprak will serve as the firm's Vice President of Industry (Tresnds & Insights) at the company, and will analyze and report on automotive related topics, trends and insights. Toprak spent nine years at Edmunds, in addition to earlier experience at automotive franchises. TrueCar is using real-world sales data from automotive dealesr to power its service, which allows both consumers and dealers to research