California's Flourishing Startup Scene Goes Far Beyond Silicon Valley
On October 6, 2020, Techstars published an article describing all of the pieces that have come together in Los Angeles that has resulted in a growing startup scene.
“It's gone from feeling a bit like a small town to feeling like a growing city where there are always new people,” says Anna Barber, Managing Director of Techstars L.A. — one of three Techstars accelerators that make their home in Los Angeles. You can read a selection of the article below.
How SoCal Made It Happen:
Investors: A few venture funds like Upfront Ventures and Crosscut Ventures have long been supporters of the ecosystem — and an essential part of helping it to grow. They “planted flags here really early and have been leaders in advocating for the ecosystem and supporting it,” says Anna.
Universities: A large number of universities have their homes in the region, including heavy hitters like the University of Southern California (USC); the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech); University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine); Pepperdine, and many more excellent institutions of higher learning.
Universities not only produce educated talent for hire and ideas that grow into startups — they can also function as entrepreneurship hubs in their immediate communities.
In Orange County, UC Irvine stands out for its extensive community engagement, centered around UCI Beall Applied Innovation @ the Cove. Beall Applied Innovation not only supports entrepreneurs from UC Irvine, they also take pride in an overall mission that is much broader. Richard Sudek, Executive Director for Beall Applied Innovation and Chief Innovation Officer for UCI, explains, “We built our effort for the community first. Our mission is to help make Orange County into a globally recognized region for entrepreneurship.”
Corporations & Industries:
In recent years, major tech companies have created outposts — substantial ones — in L.A. Google, Netflix, and Amazon are now all present in force, lending their considerable impetus to the innovation economy. And, of course, SpaceX has been headquartered locally in Hawthorne, CA since 2002.
Outside perception aside, SoCal doesn’t begin and end with entertainment, and locales around the region have become known for their own industries:
El Segundo: space & defense (proximity to SpaceX) and fashion
Hawthorne: logistics, auto
Santa Monica: e-commerce, gaming, mobile, transportation, health tech
Playa Vista: ad tech, media, cloud computing (plus big outposts of Silicon Valley tech giants)
Culver City: content
West Adams: ed tech, frontier tech
Hollywood: music, entertainment/content
Arts District: fashion, immersive tech (AR+VR)
South Central/Watts: creative tech, ed tech, music
Inglewood: sports tech
Downtown: robotics, AI, clean tech
Pasadena: search, cloud
Orange County: biotech, fintech, medical devices, digital health
Government & News: Governments at every level are seeing the benefits of a strong startup ecosystem in their sphere of influence, and SoCal is no exception.
“In this moment of so many unprecedented challenges, Techstars, along with startups and tech leaders across Los Angeles, are leading the way, matching their innovation and ingenuity with care and compassion,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, in a video he made to congratulate the 2020 graduating class of Techstars L.A. “At the heart of our innovation economy is the never ending push to make life safer, healthier, and better for people throughout our city and across the world.”
In particular, Los Angeles has been a strong supporter of growing diversity and inclusion in the local startup community. PledgeLA was founded in 2018 by the mayor’s office in a bid to boost diversity in tech and VC. The community strongly supports this initiative, with backing coming from dozens of LA-based VCs, tech companies, and the Annenberg Foundation. PledgeLA is already making a difference, but they see plenty of work still to do. Their 2020 survey found that while “PledgeLA VCs are twice as likely to fund women entrepreneurs — women still make up just 18% of total investments. Only 6% of PledgeLA-backed founders are Latinx, 7% are Black, and 26% are Asian.”
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion: There’s broad consensus that the startup community in Southern California could be more diverse — entrepreneurship and tech skew white and male overall — but entrepreneurs and community leaders see positive change in recent years, and a lot of reasons to believe that the ecosystem is becoming more and more inclusive.
In addition to PledgeLA, All Raise is also dedicated to upping diversity in entrepreneurship and tech, specifically to “propelling female founders and funders forward.” In 2019 All Raise started an L.A. chapter, led by women active in the L.A. startup ecosystem including founder Sofia Polyakov and local investor Carmen Palafox.
A Collaborative, Supportive Community: That collaborative spirit shows in the way entrepreneurs mentor each other, show up for events, and take each other’s calls. “L.A. has evolved to be an amazing hub of innovation and an incredibly diverse community with a very collaborative and entrepreneurial spirit,” says Sam Adams, cofounder and CEO of dot.LA. Beatriz agrees: “I find it incredibly collaborative.”
You can read the full article here.
