This document summarizes technology, business, and startup trends in Los Angeles and Southern California from a February 2012 presentation. It finds that the local tech scene has grown enormously in recent years, with thriving meetup communities, coworking spaces, incubators, and successful companies. Emerging technology trends include big data, natural language processing, and real-time analytics. Business trends involve lean startup practices and more location-based and SaaS offerings. The startup ecosystem provides many resources for aspiring founders.

1. LOS ANGELES AND
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
TECHNOLOGY, BUSINESS,
AND STARTUP TRENDS
FreelanceCTO – LADOTNET– February 2012

2. Tech, Business, and Startup Trends
Agenda
 Introduction and Quick Survey
 What are we talking about?
 Who am I?
 Who are you? …
 LA/SoCal Then and Now
 Technology Trends
 Business Trends
 Startups
 Questions and Wrap-Up

3. FreelanceCTO is an Alpha Nerd
 MIT Computer Science and Computer Engineering
 On the Internet since ‘89 (on the Net since ‘84)
 20+ companies over 20+ years
 Company stages include Bootstrap, Seed, Angel, VC
(Series A,B, C), Fortune 500
 Funding ranges from 0 to $60M+ over multiple rounds
 Team sizes range from under 5 to over 150
 Acquisitions range from $10M to $4B+
 Active in local community:
 LA CTO Forum, SoCal/LA Code Camp, Student4Startups

4. Questions for LADOTNET
About You:
 How many Developers/Engineers?
 FrontEnd? BackEnd? DBA? DevOps? QA? Other?
 How many Project/Product managers?
 How many CTOs/VPEs/DirEngs?
 How many CEOs/CMOs/CFOs?
 Launching a new product?
 Overhauling an existing product?
 How many of you are having problems with
Technology?

5. Los Angeles and SoCal Then
Not so long ago (1997 to 2007), LA was a vast
wasteland of a few Technology companies and few
and far between meetups:
 VIC – LA’s first networking good networking event
 TheSpot – Episodic content!
 GeoCities – A Silicon Valley story, in LA!
 DEN – Oh my.
 MySpace – LA’s first company to really spin-off lots
of talent
 All in all: Very Anemic!!!

6. Los Angeles and SoCal Now
Now we have a Vibrant Community:
 Successful companies
 Concentrated pockets of activity
 Meetups
 Conferences
 Hackfests
 Pitchfests
 Coworking facilities
 Incubator, Angels, VCs, and more
 Bootstrapping!

7. Awesome LA County Facts
 Never been easier (or harder) to start a company
 Infrastructure has achieved critical mass in SM, CC,
Hwood, Silverlake, El Segundo, and more…
 Tons and tons of meetups – now broadcast online!
 Distance is less and less a factor
 Ripe for cross-fertilization between functional
disciplines
 3 of the Top 10 CS schools are in LA County
 Local schools are revving up Technology programs
 Incubator Explosion happening RIGHT NOW

8. LA/SoCal Now and Then
From 1997 to 2012:
The Difference is
Enormous!!
People should mover HERE to start companies,
not the Bay Area!!!

9. Technology Trends
Pure Technology Supporting Technology
 BigData/MapReduce  Agile/Scrum/XP
 High Performance  Ad Optimization
Computing  Analytics
 Natural Language  Search
Processing  User Experience
 NoSQL
 Real-time/PubSub
 Web Video

10. Local Technology Trends

11. Trending Technology Brand Names

12. Future Technology Leadership
1. Participate in the community (meetups, conferences)
2. Establish relationships early (while still in school!)
3. Learn technology ACTUALLY being used
4. Contribute to Open Source – add it to your resume
5. Seek out Internships – part-time and summer
6. Learn about business, too
Special thanks to Darren Rush and
Students4Startups for this gem!

13. Business Trends
 Lean Startup and Customer Development
 Commodity business plans
 Celebrity
+ eCommerce = Revenue
 Lead Generation
 More Location Based Services
 Hyper Local Daily Deals
 Real-time Hyper Local Deals
 More PAAS and SAAS
 Easy-Peasy Analytics Companies
 More Buy, Less Build

14. Incubator Explosion
At least 9 incubators  Amplify.LA
launched in SoCal in  idealab (2.0)
the last year…  K5Launch
 LaunchpadLA
 MuckerLab
 Science
 Silverlake HQ
 StartEngine
 UpStartLA

15. Local Business Building Ecosystem
 Incubators
 Angels
 Venture Capitalists
 Bootstrapping
 And more…

16. Bootstrapping
 Build something in your spare time?
 Support someone building something?
 Commodity business models?
 Signed deals/MOUs/contracts BEFORE you build?
 Hackfests and pitchfests
Take away: Do whatever you can to get your product
into customer’s hands, get feedback, and start
generating revenue

17. Startups
 What do you want to know?

18. Why Startups?
Big Company Startup
 Never meet the CEO  Guaranteed to meet
 Test a Feature the CEO
 Projects may never see  Build Feature(s)
light of day  Projects launched in
 Employee #13412 production
 Part of core team

19. Questions?
 I have one! Do you know any…
 UX and Development Shops
 Technical Project Managers
 Developers/Engineers
 CTOs
 and more...
 What are your questions?

20. FreelanceCTO LLC
John Shiple, CEO/CTO
 John@FreelanceCTO.com
 @FreelanceCTO Events
 www.FreelanceCTO.com  www.SoCalCodeCamp.com
 310.893.3687  www.LACodeCamp.com
 @CodeCampInCoCal
 www.Students4Startups.com
 @Student4Startup
 www.LACTOForum.org