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 its hard to build management teams and big companies in Southern California is disconnected from the real markets. Southern California still lacks the big VC and Private Equity funds like Silicon Vallley and Boston but entreprenuers are scrappy here 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.

It’s interesting to note the large number of Southern California firms with very big revenue numbers who are private — in fact, if you sort the Inc. 5000 California firms by revenue, it’s striking to see how much of the first page is almost entirely Southern California firms. Is there a tendency for So Cal companies to stay private longer (or, forever) instead of going One of the interesting things about Inc. Magazine’s “Inc 500″ list is it helps to identify all of those big, private companies — who, in

A number of Southern California technology firms have nabbed top spots in the annual Inc. San Diego-based MedVantx ranked at number 13 on the list; Woodland Hills-based ReachLocal was 39; San Diego-based BridgePoint Education was 50; Santa Monica-based International Checkout ranked at 61; Torrance-based Flipswap at 81; and Irvine-based ClinAssure was at 85. number of other technology firms throughout Southern California were ranked elsewhere in the top 500. ...Tags: 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the US. Beyond the first

so I feel I have an unbiased appreciation for BOTH Californias. But LA is not Silicon Valley and we don’t need to aspire to be so.  We So it’s always a trade-off.  You I believe you can attract people to relocate to Los Angeles but it’s likely that they’ll come from locations other than Northern California. Los Angeles.  People People either love it our hate it.  All

The Silicon Alley Insider has weighed in on its list of “ 50+ most valuable startups “, and suprisingly, they didn’t neglect Southern California. ReachLocal ($450M) – Woodland Hills 55. Of course, you’re only worth what someone is willing to pay for you — which is through an IPO or M&A—so it’s all just speculation. ...Tags: Facebook was tops, but local companies highlighted in the list: 4.

A new study of the financial outcomes for Southern California venture-backed companies in the IT sector finds that approximately $48 billion in value has been created by those companies over the period 1995-2009. The study found that the greatest values for Southern California venture-backed firms were created by companies operating in Online Services (51%), followed by Communications and Networking (15%), Software (10%) and Semiconductors (9%). The study, conducted by Jon Funk of OceanRoad Partners , includes data from socalTECH.com's proprietary venture database , Dow Jones/VentureSource, and Greg Martin of Redpoint Ventures . Funk

Perusing the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 list for this year — the ranking of the fastest growing companies in North America , based on the last five years of revenue–it’s quite surprising to note the sheer number of Southern California firms listed. However, it was interesting to note that Number 1 on the list was ReachLocal , the Woodland Hills-based provider of local search advertising services — topping the list with 146,050% growth over 5 years. Deloitte, which ranks these every year (disclaimer: Deloitte recently became a sponsor of socalTECH, though that has no influence in our coverage), uses the five year revenue numbers of companies to create their listing.

Santa Barbara-based RightSignature , online, software-as-a-service for collecting electronic signatures, took "Best of Show" at VentureNet Wednesday, after a day of presentations by thirteen Southern California startups. VentureNet, which is put on by the Technology Council of Southern California, included keynotes by Kelly Perdew of Rotohog and Zorik Gordon of ReachLocal, plus capital presentations from Cyber-Rain, FlipGloss Media, Viewdle, Social Approach, Ad.ly, Zadspace, RightSignature, Cogi, YouMail, ExpenseBay, AffordIt.com, SharesPost, and TrueCar.

This morning, ReachLocal filed for an IPO ,  in what has been a long-anticipated move for the firm. ReachLocal started releasing financial information as a private company earlier this year, saying in August it hit $147M in revenues; and has been rumored  among local tech execs to be prepping for an IPO for much of this year. There’s a lot of folks gambling on the IPO market this week, with a bunch of IPO news — both from local VCs as well as one local company. Among the investors who will benefit for an IPO there are VantagePoint Venture Partners, Galleon Group (yes,

In SoCal we are also leaders in affiliate marketing (Commission Junction), Internet video (Hulu) and bringing local businesses online (ReachLocal).  We Ian is so knowledgeable about the evolution of the digital music business and speaks with a Howard Roark like truth about where it needs to go.  He got this VC talking so effusively about his entrepreneurial instincts that my wife accused me of having a “man ExpenseBay Wins Showoff Twiistup 6 has come to an end.