April 2013
2 posts
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Founder Story: Nick Bicanic
Referring to Nick Bicanic as an accomplished Silicon Beach entrepreneur is a bit of an understatement. Beginning with his days at DeltaBravo LTD where he was both Founder and Managing Director, Nick has moved on to found several other highly dynamic companies in the tech space. However, Nick’s talents extend far beyond the technology realm. Also an accomplished writer and director for his...
March 2013
2 posts
5 tags
Startup Warrior: Maker's Drew Walkup
To those of us working in the LA tech ecosystem, it is clear that the digital media revolution is well underway. The major players in digital have set up shop in our backyard in the past few years, all determined to feed off LA’s storytelling history in an attempt to radically redefine the way we consume media content.
One such company started off in a small and humble office in Venice,...
7 tags
Love at SXSWi
Guest Post by Brad Seraphin, Chief Marketing Officer of our sister company Curious Minds!
Stepping into the SXSWi 2013 convention center I found the hallways already abuzz. The 30,621 eager conference goers in attendance had shattered last year’s turnout by a whopping 24%. Happy to be amongst the throngs of attendees who had set an all-time high for conference attendance, I had but one...
February 2013
2 posts
2 tags
Time to Party, Silicon Beach Style!
We are excited to announce that we will be co-sponsoring TechZulu & Digital LA’s Black & Red Bash, taking place tomorrow night in Santa Monica! We will be joining Silicon Beach’s finest to celebrate the five year anniversaries of BOTH awesome organizations. Join us?
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Founder Story: Eric Jackson
We often hear of the so-called ‘PayPal Mafia,’ the group of early employees and founders of the online payment platform that used the success of PayPal to spawn numerous successful enterprises. Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Reid Hoffman are just some of those names that now dominate Silicon Valley. We were happy to sit down with Eric Jackson, one of the early mafia members and...
January 2013
3 posts
5 tags
Founder Story: Jamie Rosen
This blog originally started as a place to highlight the accomplishments of entrepreneurs we meet that inspire us. That motivate us. That don’t just come up with ideas but who have the guts and the gumption to execute them. Our work takes us all over the world, which poses the question: why can’t we highlight some of our friends who aren’t lucky enough to call Silicon Beach home?...
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Founder Story: Jed Simon
It is no secret that Los Angeles is the land of digital the media revolution. The digital media ecosystem is worth a reported $100 billion, encompassing content publishers, social media markers, next generation creative studios, and ad-tech shops. One LA based company has zoned in on one problem a lot of these companies face: lengthy payment cycles from advertisers. FastPay, founded in 2010 by...
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Founder Story: Hank Fortener
It’s rare to hear about a technology company that doesn’t care about profits. While in recent years we’ve seen a rise in the visibility of the “Hybrid-Ideal” perpetuated by such companies as Toms Shoes, the 100% percent model has been few and far between. Enter Hank Fortener. His LA based non-profit AdoptTogether is a crowd funding platform for families who are...
December 2012
2 posts
3 tags
Hacker Happenings: Badger Rails Launches
For those of you in the know, StartupMinds is the sister company of technology incubator Curious Minds. Founded in 2004, the team at Curious Minds have been building early-stage companies that use innovative, accessible technologies to tackle grand-scale problems.
Today the Curious Minds development team announced the launch of Badger Rails. If you are one who dreams in code, then you NEED to...
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Founder Story: WeWork's Miguel McKelvey
Miguel McKelvey is fascinated by design. Earning his degree in architecture and graduating Magna Cum Laude from The University of Oregon, McKelvey has had a successful track record as both a designer and entrepreneur. His passion for designing spaces that inspire led to his latest entrepreneurial endeavor, a chain of co-working communities known as WeWork. Spanning nine locations across...
November 2012
3 posts
5 tags
Founder Story: Jesse Draper
Jesse Draper has a penchant for fabulous, and in an industry that most would argue has trouble ligthening up, she has found a place in the hearts of some of Silicon Valley’s most formidable players. Draper’s web-based talk show, The Valley Girl Show, focuses on individual interviews with technology’s brightest minds. Names like Schmidt, Kohsla, and Cuban have all courageously...
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Innovator Interviews: USC's Dr. Karen North
This week we were happy to sit down with Dr. Karen North, the founding director of the Annenberg Program on Online Communities at the University of Southern California. The APOC program is the only Masters degree in the world that focuses solely on social and new media strategy. Every year the program produces about a dozen graduates who go on to become leaders in the world of digital and...
October 2012
4 posts
Founder Story: CoLoft's Cam Rasouli
Colofting: [koh-lawft-ing] (v.) -To Coloft. Coloft in action. Act or action of a Colofter that Colofts: exp. Colofting is awesome.
If you work in Silicon Beach and haven’t heard of CoLoft we’re going to go ahead and buy you a one way ticket out of town. The co-working space located in the heart of Santa Monica, just blocks from the beach, is a haven for startup entrepreneurs to...
Nice To Tweet You: @ReidPearson
For our second installment of Nice To Tweet You we decided to learn more about Reid Pearson. Pearson is the first employee and Director of Content/Growth for Fanlime. Founded by Marc Farrell, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School, Fanlime’s ultimate goal is to make the world of professional sports a more socially integrated vertical. When we caught up with Pearson, a graduate of...
7 tags
Nice to Tweet You: @MeredithJPowell
Recently, the team at StartupMinds has become fascinated with Twitter. Every day brings us another group of accomplished and dynamic individuals to our list. They include VC’s, entrepreneurs, Silicon Beach celebrities, and tech geeks alike. If only we had some forum where we could share the stories of some of these followers. Oh wait… WE DO! Enter: Nice To Tweet You - a new column where we...
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Pitch Perfect: RadPad
Our team has been building and investing in companies since 2004, and consequently have sat through A LOT of pitch meetings. While there is no shortage of good ideas, there is a shortage of entrepreneurs who deliver those ideas confidently and in convincing ways. Pitch Perfect is an opportunity to peek into the board room to get a look at the best recently-launched companies in Silicon Beach.
...
September 2012
7 posts
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#SMWLA POV: Derrick Ashong
“Why don’t we build our legal frameworks and our business models around the ways in which people naturally are interacting with the technology, rather than criminalizing a behavior that is so fundamental.”
-Derrick Ashong, Social Media Week LA ‘12
Social Media Week has taken over LA and, like most reading this blog, we have been fighting the traffic and altering our schedules around the plethora...
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StartupWarrior: Uber's Cat Sampson
“You have to be a fighter, you have to be a warrior, and if not, you should go do something that is a little less disruptive. I’m bringing it, I’m not sleeping. If the other guy is sleeping, I am going to kick his ass.”
-Travis Kalanick, Uber CEO
We hear a lot of pitches here at StartupMinds, and lately a lot of them have included some sort of reference to Uber. VC’s and...
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Hacker Happenings: Space Shuttle Endeavour Returns...
Last week, NASA’s youngest space shuttle returned to California after 20 years, 25 missions, 4671 orbits, and over 122 million miles. Whew! Over here at the StartupMinds office, we nearly tripped over the couches and plants on our balcony to catch a glimpse of Endeavour’s final flight from Edwards Air Force Base to LAX.
Here’s our official view of Endeavour with the Shuttle...
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StartupWarrior: ShoeDazzle's Cherie Park & Jenny...
Our team is so excited to launch StartupWarrior, a column that will highlight hardworking innovators working at some of the hottest startups in Silicon Beach. Working at a startup is tough. In the age of ‘Googlefied’ workplaces, among the foosball tables and kegerators, it is easy to forget that startup culture is not all fun and games. These awesome amenities and flip-flop culture...
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Hacker Happenings: TC Disrupt SF
This past week a small, intimate, hush-hush technology conference happened in San Francisco. No, but seriously, who hasn’t heard of TechCrunch Disrupt? It’s like TechCrunch’s version of the MTV Video Music Awards - except instead of Beyonce announcing her pregnancy, Zuckerberg announces that Facebook’s initial HTML5 mobile strategy was dead wrong. Tomato, Tomahto.
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Day One. (Kinda)
Over the past few years we have watched as many startups, accelerators, and tech giants have put down roots in our backyard. We are thrilled to see Los Angeles becoming a hotbed of innovation that fosters the entrepreneurial spirit. Who are we exactly? We are young at heart, hypnotic hipsters - programmers, marketers, and entrepreneurs who are dedicated to harnessing the power of technology...
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“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” –...”
