Los Angeles
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As the LA venture market booms, Upfront closes its sixth fund with $400 million
As the firm looks ahead to its own future, Suster and the firm he’s helped grow remain committed to the future of Los Angeles. The two are paired, and these days if an investor is #LongLA (to use the hashtag the firm coined), it looks like limited partners are saying that it pays to be long on Upfront, as well. Read More
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Los Angeles tech companies take a victory lap with planned tech job fair
2016 was a good year to be a tech startup in LA, and, with the $25 billion planned public offering for the city’s startup darling, Snap Inc., coming up, the future’s so bright entrepreneurs might want to wear… Spectacles. Last year saw the city reap windfall exits from the acquisition of companies like Dollar Shave Club, and has a number of promising e-commerce companies… Read More
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Crunch Network
Snapchat will make Los Angeles a stronger tech hub
If you were to write a history of Silicon Valley, you could do it by looking at a series of major diaspora. Companies like Google, Yahoo, Oracle and PayPal attract top talent for years; when they reach maturity or a major liquidity event, their talent disperses and germinates into the next generation of companies. It’s quite possible that Snapchat could do the same for L.A. Read More
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BlackLine surges 40% in software IPO
BlackLine, a Los Angeles-based accounting software company, debuted in the U.S. markets Friday. After pricing at $17 per share, the stock closed at $23.70. In what has been a slow year for tech IPOs, BlackLine decided to go public right now because it’s “part of a longer term plan to raise awareness for what we do,” said CEO Therese Tucker. She said the IPO, which raised… Read More
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Crunch Network
Los Angeles is a transportation tech powerhouse
Los Angeles is famous for two things: entertainment and traffic. Back in the 1950s, any association with “stars” and “cars” would be the envy of any modern city. But today, that’s sometimes overshadowed by images of aggressive paparazzi and gridlocked freeways. But when it comes to transportation, there might be more to LA than just bloated commute times. Read More
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Soylent founder’s abandoned “eco-living experiment” could land him in jail
Soylent’s Rob Rhinehart is facing criminal charges and fines up to $4,000 for allegedly refusing to remove a shipping container he placed on top of a hill behind his home in the Montecito Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. The head of the meal replacement startup weirdly named after a movie where they ground up and served people in drink form was charged with unpermitted… Read More
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Crunch Network
Pop culture stimulates the evolution of the LA tech scene
It wasn’t so long ago that venture capital was a suburban California phenomenon. Los Angeles didn’t have much in terms of a real tech scene — and even San Francisco only had a few VCs or tech companies. Now, VC offices have sprung up in San Francisco, moving more of the investment energy up there. That great migration of companies and activity touches upon what is now… Read More
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Thrive Market raises $111 million for its online organic grocery store
Buy organic groceries online, at an affordable price. That’s the mantra of Los Angeles-based Thrive Market, which has raised a significant $111 million Series B funding round, led by Invus. Thrive, which competes with similar online grocery services like Vitacost, believes there is a significant market opportunity to make natural foods more accessible to consumers and they’ve… Read More
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Hyperloop One plans to project Russians across Moscow
Hyperloop One, a Los Angeles-based startup working on making Elon Musk’s crazy-fast vacuum tube transportation blueprint a reality, has agreed to partner with the Summa Group and the Russian Government to build a Hyperloop in Moscow. The Summa Group is a Russsian investment group with a large stake in infrastructure investments in the country including port logistics, engineering… Read More
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Hyperloop Technologies becomes Hyperloop One, pulls in $80 million and announces global partners
The news comes just days after rival hyperloop builder Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) announced a licensing deal to power its own prototype with magnetic levitation technology. Both Hyperloop One (formerly Hyperloop Technologies) and HTT are based in L.A. and both are working on models of Elon Musk’s Hyperloop – a vacuum tube-based transportation technology promising… Read More
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Crunch Network
Meet the foxes behind LA’s latest startup gem
Scrolling through the @shopboxfox Instagram account is enough to notice the clean-cut aesthetic: feminine, driven, artistic. However, the ladies behind LA’s BOXFOX, Chelsea Moore, Sabena Suri and Jenni Olivero, are channeling much more than their social media accounts let on; they are enhancing strategy and technology to make one of life’s favorite moments, gift giving, easier and… Read More
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Mark Suster On Falling Valuations And LA’s Tech Scene
TechCrunch sat down with Mark Suster, managing partner at Upfront Ventures. One of the most active investors in Los Angeles, Suster spoke of how local startups are able to draw upon the city’s creative talent to bring content, commerce and communication platforms to the next level. He also commented on falling tech valuations. “By any definition we’ve been in a funding… Read More
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How To Expand Your Marketplace To LA
“The theme of LA is diversity.” That is what DoorDash’s Kevin Huang told me in our conversation about how expanding on-demand marketplaces into LA differs from other markets. As an LA-based enterprise and marketplace investor, one of the most common questions I get from entrepreneurs is how to expand marketplaces into LA. While this includes all the usual difficulties of… Read More
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One Month After Lyft, UberX Finally Lands At LAX
Los Angeles Uber riders, rejoice. UberX is finally coming to LAX. The company announced that as of 8 a.m. tomorrow, riders will be able to request and get picked up by UberX cars. This comes exactly one month after Lyft launched at LAX, which was originally announced by LA’s Mayor Eric Garcetti. Uber and Lyft had battled for months with the airport and the LA city council to reach… Read More
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Chicago And Los Angeles Are Next Up For Google Fiber
You know the drill. Once a city has spoken with Google about bringing Fiber into their hood, there’s a process for the city to go through. A lengthy one. Checklists. The whole nine yards. Two new cities are exploring Fiber with Google and they are Chicago and Los Angeles. Yes, San Francisco has been skipped again and I’m going to go cry into my slow internet from… Read More
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Crunch Network
What Los Angeles Is Missing
L.A. tech has clearly hit its growth inflection point, but the City of Angels has yet to get its startup wings. Here’s the good news: In 2014 alone, we raised more than $3 billion, saw more than $5 billion realized capital across over 80 exits and became the fastest growing startup region in the U.S. Read More
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