Southern California is a hotbed of technology companies that are leaders in their sector. high-tech community like this also has many bloggers and Web-based news outlets that cover our companies, venture capital, and events -- plus a number of advisers who help technologies entrepreneurial companies grow. It's been difficult to keep up on all aspects of the technology sector in Southern California. This includes MySpace, CitySearch, Ticketmaster, eHarmony, and thousands of lesser known technology companies. A

This is part of my ongoing series about Raising Venture Capital . few years ago it became fashionable for large VC’s to do seed funding.  So they set up seed programs that allowed for rapid decisions for $500k or less, often done as convertible debt for both speed and cost reasons.  If the large VC doesn’t agree This posting was inspired by an email from Rajat Suri who wrote me an email in response to Chris Dixon’s blog post (link below) from August, which recently re-ran on Business Insider and has generated much Twitter chatter. A

Review: None Added 11/8/09 by Todd Zebert Name: Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum Sites: www.entforum.caltech.edu , twitter.com/CaltechMITForum Self-description: " About the Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum The Caltech/MIT Enterprise forum is a joint venture of Caltech's Industrial Relations Center, Caltech’s Office of Technology Transfer, the Caltech Alumni Association and the MIT Alumni Association. Mission The mission of the Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum is to encourage the growth and success of technology-based entrepreneurial ventures in Southern California.

Saturday’s TechCrunch had an article with the title above…  the “end” of traditional VC has been something that we (and many others) have been predicting for a while.   So, a bigger fund means that partners take home a lot of cash before generating returns. Investors in venture capital funds have caused the problem.   The short version of the components are this: Despite the fact that fund size and fund returns are generally inverse related, all of the incentives are to raise bigger funds:

I run a monthly meeting called the VCA that represents the majority of Southern California venture capital firms.  My Tags: SoCal Stuff Start-up Advice VC Industr My goal is to bring in informative speakers who stretch our collectively thinking on topics that will influence our investment strategies and use it as a way for us to share our experiences in ways that I [...] ...Tags:

The Scott Sanfilippo Interview Media Optimization Firms Are Red Hot In Southern California in 2009 Proliferate - Aggregate - Integrate Startups Uncensored #4 - “Finding and Working with Partners” SoCal VC’s absent from Forbes Midas List Top Five Best Uses of an Entrepreneur's Legal Dollars What Data Crunchers Did for Obama An Evaluation of Web Strategy in the Musical Instrument Business Keywords Layoffs Fund Venture Capital Events Technology Angel Mahalo Zag MySpace Geni

On the third Wednesday of every month I co-chair a meeting called the SoCal VCA (venture capital alliance), which represents participants from all of the top venture capital firms in Southern California as well as prominent members of the Tech Coast Angels (TCA).  We meet to discuss trends in the industry and to find ways to work together to help with SoCal deal syndication – somethings that happens automatically on Sand Hill Road in NorCal due to proximity. Montgomery & Co Projects Deal Volume to Grow by 167% in Just 2 Years with No End to Growth in Sight

This week's release of a list of their "Top 100" venture capitalists by AlwaysOn -- based roughly on number and dollar amount of successful M&A and IPO deals between October 1, 2005 to September 30, 2009--seems to have skipped local Southern California venture capitalists, with only one Southern California VCs listed. According to the list, just Jim Gauer of Palomar Ventures , made the cut. AlwaysOn highlighted Gauer's involvement in firms AlterPoint, Network Physics, RealOps, and Cerebra in the rankings. The list came as news that Forbes

I run a monthly meeting called the VCA that represents the majority of Southern California venture capital firms.  My My goal is to bring in informative speakers who stretch our collectively thinking on topics that will influence our investment strategies and use it as a way for us to share our experiences in ways that I hope benefit the Southern California technology ecosystem. This month’s presentation In the past 6 months we’ve heard from Dmitry Shapiro on the future of online video, Ian Rogers on the future music model, David Sacks on the future of social networking and Michael Crandell on where Cloud Computing is headed.

The Technology Council of Southern California and TechEmpower are happy to announce the launch of: Southern Southern California Tech Central This This is a community of people in Southern California who have come together to help find and organize the best content from blogs, news sources and other web sites all around technology in So Cal.  The goal is [...] ...Tags: Tags: Hardware Internet Marketing Media/Entertainment Newsletter Sales Software Startups Venture Capital Video Game