A little holiday note for those in the Southern California startup and investing world, people are starting to recognize what you already know: the Tech Coast is Hot. The LA Times covered a story a couple weeks ago about the thriving tech scene in LA. They quoted some strong stats from E&Y:

  • Venture Capatilists invested $1.3 billion in Southern California tech companies in the first three quarters of this year, compared to $4.4 billion in the Bay Area over the same period.

Which in a lot of ways, shows that while Southern California does not yet rival The Valley, it is a highly emerging area that needs to be watched. Entrepeneur magazine picked up the story in their blog as well. In fact people often forget that, Entrepeneur, one of the biggest magazines in the country that tracks startup founders is located in Orange County (Irvine).

Another point of relevance is that bub.blicio.us recently covered that Dealmaker is expanding into LA. This is another good sign because it helps address, probably the biggest problem that the tech industry faces here: we are just not connected like the boys up in the valley. The more, we can get established tech companies mixing with startup entrepeneurs, mixing with new media, mixing with investors, the better. Feeding a more cohesive industry here will help produce more creative energy, better oppurtunities, and obviously stronger economic growth. Twiist-Up and Lunch 2.0 have been a good start in 2007 and hopefully the Dealmaker events will help as well.

It will be interesting to see if 2008 brings the Southern California web startup world more major success stories, beyond the ever lame Myspace.