Venture capital firm First Round Capital , the early stage venture fund whose Managing Directors include Idealab's Howard Morgan , said last night that it has created its own startup exchange fund, a fund which allows the founders of the firm's various startups to diversify their investments and share in the success of the company's portfolio. The fund is similar to Startup Exchange , a fund run by Michael Barton, which strives to do the same thing across venture firm lines. The fund allows founders of First Round Cpaital's portfolio firms to contribute some of their equity into a central pool, and share in any exit success of others who also participate in the fund.

Southern California still lacks the big VC and Private Equity funds like Silicon Vallley and Boston but entreprenuers are scrappy here as you see by the list below. Most of these companies bootstrapped themselves and bypassed local SoCal VC firms raising larger rounds with Silicon Valley based mega VC fund after achieving significant revenue growth. The combined list of companies have raised in aggregate A stealth internet advertising / publishing renaissance is quietly happening in Southern California 10 years after the dot com bubble burst. Any investor who tells you

In what can only be a strange alignment of the stars, Southern California’s three venture announcements today are all companies with “X” in their name: OpenX ( $10M ) - online advertising Tags: Venture Capita X1 Technologies ( undisclosed ) - enterprise search software Ophthonix ( $25.9M ) - medical devices/visual correction technology ...Tags: