Los Angeles based, Interent Brands (who we covered last when they went public) today bought a bunch more companies:
Yes, I know I've been covering a lot of conferences and events lately and haven't had a chance to do any in-depth startup profiles recently. But I've got to say a lot of the events we've had lately have been fairly top notch, and remind me more of the scene up in Silicon Valley, then the typical scene down here in Socal. CommunityNext I thought was pretty good, particulary the Robert Scoble and Pete Cashmore conversation. Then the MashMeet after party with Pete and crew was one of the best LA mixers we've had to date. This is all further proof, of how hot the southern california scene is; clearly starting to organize in a meaninful way, now that we are largely recognized as being the largest area for venture capital in the country, second only to silicon valley.
Anyways, in the next couple of days, I'll be catching up and be back to digging into a bunch of companies in the socal 2.0 scene, but for now heres a list of a couple more local companies that I ran into this weekend that are worthy of some mention:
Medmania: a new media company with a network of vertical media web properties.
Girlgamer: an online community and zine for girl gamers.
Mego: digital expression by way of an interative portable profile (basically cool avatars).
Streamy: social news aggegator with a great interface.
I attended Dealmaker LA event last night and would like to say that it was a very good event. There were tons of startups, VCs, angels, attorneys, bloggers, high profile tech gurus (Pete Cashmore of Mashable), and advisers in attendance, which is no surprise seeing as the event was hosted in Santa Monica's Clear Stone Venture Partners.
The premise behind the event was a small and select group of startups were able to run their pitches by 10 different VC's in a "speed dating" session where each session lasted 5 minutes. After that it was a typical tech schmoozing party that was open to the public where everyone exchanged business cards and talked...and talked.
I will be reviewing some of the following companies in the weeks to come but here is a short list of some of the presenters I found to be interesting:
Black Closet: A fashion site that lets you see what designer clothes looked like matched together on a model, there business model was the most intriguing part of their business.
Call Fire: A VOIP company that has already surpassed $1 million in revenue.
Travature: A travel startup with an intriguing value add proposition.
HeavyBag Media: A Marketing firm whose goal is to build community around a company or product.
Overall I had a great time here and thought this event was a notch above many of the other events that have been going on in LA this week. For now I am going to take a break until the next big LA tech event. Which incidentally starts in 15 minutes.
Los Angeles Based Myspace is finally trying to catch back up on the innovation curve by releasing their apps platform today. These apps, much like the Facebook, apps, allow social widgets on your myspace profile. And while Facebook has beaten Myspace by almost a year with this functionality, there are some things to applaud Myspace over. Most of important of which is that they are the first container to go live with the much touted OpenSocial specs.
There are a number of apps that are live today (well over a hundred with more being added every moment). Here are a list of some of the cooler ones I played with:
The hype and popularity of sports is something I may never understand but that being said I hear coworkers, friends, strangers, family, and the guy who sits next to me at the bar drone on and on about their favorite sports team. Moreover it seems that everyone of them can give me a detailed analysis why Shaq going to the Suns is a good/bad trade, comments on Joe Torrey's weight, and a strong opinion with reasons why Rodger Clemens should/should not be let into the hall of fame. So needless to say I realize this market is huge and there is a huge potential for growth with anything that allows sports nuts personalize, customize, and shout out their opinions to the world.
Jacked is taking a stab at this by making customizable widget pages so you can keep your eye on all of the sports games going on. The widgets vary from play by play to you tube videos of the teams playing. They are VC funded with at least $6.5 Million and are based in Santa Monica, CA.
The Good: There web site is about a slick as it gets and even better than that the whole site is very easy to use, navigate, and customize. Also to their credit they have a ton of money and make it apparent that they have more sports related offerings (besides the widget platform) on the way. Most importantly the widgets they offer are rich in information and gave me more than I ever wanted to know about the games I was widgeting in on.
The Bad: I understand that this is supposed to be something you look at in addition to watching TV but why does it have to be that way? I would find Jacked much more useful if they had a live stream of the game(s) you are receiving information on. My idea here is that when I am watching a game on TV I really do not want to be checking my computer for other information, however if I am on my computer watching sports (ie no TV) I would gladly watch the game on my computer surrounded with the loads of data that all of these widgets can give me. Bottom line is that I want to see the actually game live broadcast along with the widgets!
Also there should be some sort of communication with other fans that getting the same information so there is a meaningful interaction going on. Let everyone share their so called sports knowledge and see what unfolds. This seems natural to me, most people have strong opinions about every aspect of sports so let them let loose, I could see a very dedicated (and violent) community developing from connecting sports users.
Overall: There is certainly room for some money to be made in this arena and Jacked.com might just be the one to do it, but until they add more user interaction and live streaming videos I do not see their idea gaining significant traction.
So everyone seems to have recognized how hot funding green tech companies were in the venture capital space last year (and it looks to be continuing this year). So how does that trickle down in to the consumer facing web 2.0 space? Well what you get is Evo.com, a Santa Monica based, aggregator site of all things environmentally friendly.
Last week Santa Monica based Wonderhowto.com announced that the received an undisclosed investment from General Catalyst Partners. The site is basically an aggregation service for "how-to" type videos. Apparently self-help 2.0 sites are all the rage right now, as TechCrunch just covered yesterday First30Days (not socal based) which similarly focuses on positive self help articles during "the first 30 days of a major life change". And while the two companies don't exactly overlap, being funded at the same time, does imply that the venture community is recognizing the value in sites that focus on the self help niche.
We are not a big fan of Los Angeles based social network king, Myspace. Sure they helped take the social network world to the mainstream and are now the incumbent player in the space, but in the fast paced tech world, they are (at least from an innovation perspective) constantly being surpassed by upstarts as well as their key competitor: Facebook. But yesterday, Myspace finally made some huge strides to regain some confidence, by releasing their developer API.
Santa Monica based shopping 2.0 site, ThisNext, recently received another 5M in a series B round from their previous investors Clearstone Venture Partners and Anthem Venture Partners (according to Techcrunch) . This backs up their Series A round of 3.5M. They also may raise another 2-3M in debt financing (according to socalTECH).
eCost is an El Segundo based whole seller of new, refurbished, and discontinued merchandise. They are a publicly traded company (Nasdaq: PFSW), and have been around since the early 2000's, this review has come in the wake of my holiday season and not being sure where to get the best deal on all sorts of electronics. So here is a brief overview:
You get on the site and there a too much going on from blazing fires in the corner to 10 large ads trying to sell me on the newest gizmos. In reality this is not all bad, I did come here looking to purchase stuff so I was ready for the visual barrage. Next I ran a few searches and noticed that they seem to carry just about every electronic gadget on the market and best of all their prices were usually cheaper than the vast majority of the stores on Google Shopping (I still miss the catchy name of Froogle).
Upon checkout you come to realize you must have an account, this annoys me but I do realize the utility in storing user information. Right before attempting to complete the transaction I get an offer for "Platinum Premium" membership where they assure me that I will get better deals for only $39.95/year! If this doesn't irritate me enough it says that if I am upgrading from their old Platinum membership I only have to pay $8.95 to become a Platinum Premium member. This leaves me wondering how excited will eCost be when a new element more valuable than Platinum is invented so they can charge even more for "member benefits." And how long will it take eCost to change form "New Element Membership" to "New Element Premium Membership?"
I am never a fan of buying something (ie membership) before buying something (ie digital camera). Overall I could have see eCost being a solid site and a major competitor for the new meta-search technology of sites like Google Shopping but with memberships alienating their users I have doubt eCost will ever have a major impact on how we buy our electronics...
I wonder what Woot.com is selling today?
Beverly Hills based, Break.com is a video sharing social site that targets 18-30 male demographic. They basically focus on funny, crazy, stupid guy humor. As a hypertargeted Youtube clone, they have been doing well for themselves, steadily climbing to traffic upwards of 18 million uniques per month. Today they announced an ad network that extends their strong inventory reach to smaller web publishers.
I just ran across a video based social network company called stickam thats based out of LA. What I found particularly amusing was the contraversy it caused a few months ago. Stickam launched in 2006 as basicaly another myspace except it has live web cam functionality. The streaming video is actually pretty cool, and lends itself to the myspace crowd quite well. In fact particularly, at launch for the high school kids that weren't leaving Myspace for Facebook, there was a decent chunk that were leaving for Stickam.
Where do you go to get rid of your hot gadget gear from two years ago? Well besides ebay. Los Angeles based TechForward apparently is the place. These guys, closed a Series A round from First Round Capital last year, with the semi unique idea of a buy-back/recycling site focused on tech gear.
Los Angeles based Uber.com is yet another social network that tries to bring Myspace's artistic base in to the "uber-cool" web 2.o world. Uber focuses on using the social graph to make your own website. Which to me seems like doing nothing more then rewording customized profile page to make you think your getting something special.
They say that no press, is bad press, especially in the Internet world, where links are gold. However even then I don't think, Los Angeles based DreamHost is very happy that they are getting coverage all over the net (ref: TechCrunch, Infoworld, SocalTech DownloadSquad, etc, etc). So what is Dreamhost? Well basically just your everyday web hosting company.
Los Angeles based Userplane, is an application service provider that specializes in web 2.0 chat and video. They were originally founded in 2001 and were purchased by AOL in 2006. Yesterday they announced at CES that they are now supporting the friendster API so Friendster widget developers can add chat support into their own apps. They also have released their own friendster app so users can have another audio and video chat option within the friendster directory.
The mother of all music sharing programs, Los Angeles based Napster has announced that they will be converting the entire library of music to MP3 Format. This is great news considering the original rebel music sharing program has become the exact opposite of its original intent by aligning its technology platform with Windows Media "Play for Sure" DRM and all that was wrong with the music industry.
Yet another entry into local search popped up last year (wow its 2008 now) without a lot of press coverage. Santa Monica Burbank based YellowBot bills itself as "yellow pages meets del.icio.us". And while the local search space is incredibly crowded (hence why we gave a relatively harsh review of mojopages), YellowBot has a fairly attractive implementation that makes me think they have a good chance.
Today 10 year old Cooking.com (based in Santa Monica) announced that they received a $7M venture backed loan from ORIX Venture Finance.
