Adam Miller is CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand.

Remember 1999? Silicon Valley was overflowing with hundreds of millions in venture capital, thousands of dot-com business plans, and foosball tables up and down the San Francisco peninsula. I was about 3,000 miles away, incubating my own startup – a technology company designed to help democratize education by aggregating all of the training content littered across the Web – out of my one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. At the time, I had zero customers, little funding, and only a group of friends and former colleagues committed to my idea.

Startups are tough, and one cold, rainy day the thought occurred to me that I should move somewhere less expensive (and warmer), since I could really start a company anywhere. But when I shared this idea, my colleagues and advisors said that I really only had two choices: either stay in New York, where they were, or head for Silicon Valley.

So I packed my bags for sunnier climates and headed west, with one minor adjustment: instead of finding a place near Palo Alto, I landed about 400 miles south, in a place better known for beautiful beaches and Hollywood than emerging technology companies. My belief was that LA would be a less expensive place to start a company than New York or Silicon Valley, and finding high-quality business services providers would be less competitive. But more importantly, I believed that a great technology company could not only survive but thrive outside of Silicon Valley.

It turns out to have been a great decision. It’s been almost 14 years, and we’ve been through the dot-com boom and bust, September 11, and the worst economic recession in a century – and I haven’t once considered moving our headquarters out of Santa Monica. We’ve grown from a seed of an idea into a global public company with more than 11 million users around the world, and I’ve got to credit Los Angeles, my neighborhood and my neighbors for much of our success.

Setting down roots in Silicon Beach, before anyone called it that

When I started in LA, nobody called it “Silicon Beach.” Today, LA’s once sleepy tech scene is on fire, with over 500 startups lining its shores and incubators popping up regularly to turn out hungry new entrepreneurs. It makes sense that LA would become the next hotbed of tech talent. Local universities graduate more engineers than anywhere else in America. We’ve got cheaper rents, better weather and more space than our neighbors to the north. And running a cloud company for the last decade has convinced me more than ever that location, in fact, isn’t everything. We may not have the same volume of investment or caliber of success stories as Silicon Valley, but give us some time.

If you are starting a company, there are challenges to turning your back on the obvious choice of location to put down roots in lesser-charted territory. Here are four suggestions on how to succeed outside the Valley:

1. Concentrate on building greatness, not your exit strategy

In the early days, right before the bubble burst, I had flown to San Francisco to meet with AOL after months of working on a deal with them to sponsor their Research & Learn Center. This would have been quite the coup for a bootstrapped business to land such a sought-after contract. At that point in time, AOL was king – they were the ones who decided who won and lost. I was sitting at their boardroom table after months of working on this deal, and they handed me the contract and walked out of the room. I had one hour to sign. AOL was famous for doing this at the time.

I was holding the prize in my hand, but something just didn’t feel right. I put down the pen and walked out. A couple months later, the bubble burst. Had I signed, it would have likely put the company out of business. Instead, I got back on the plane, headed home to LA and didn’t look back. It was one of the hardest decisions of my life at that point. Sometimes instincts play the most vital role that forces you to think about the big picture. We determined very early on that building a strong technology company wasn’t necessarily about how much money you had in the bank or a quick exit. The fact that we bootstrapped the company for the first seven years of existence continues to influence many decisions we make today.

2. Hire for potential, not experience

When I was first building my company more than a decade ago, there were no other enterprise software companies in Santa Monica. There were no other cloud computing companies. We had to teach everyone we hired how to do it. We had to build it ourselves. So we hired for potential instead of prior experience. This forced us to think extremely carefully about our hiring decisions and invest early in folks who had the drive and the long-term vision to get us where we wanted to go.

If you’re not in Silicon Valley or New York, you likely won’t have the same abundance of skills and experience at your disposal. It’s just a question of resources. You’ve either got to scour the local talent landscape for people that have the right attributes or potential for the job, if not the exact experience, or you’ve got to broaden your search and offer the right incentives to folks in other markets who do have the skills to pick up and move.

3. Put yourself out there

It seemed like everyone around me worked in entertainment, so I made a concerted effort to meet other people dealing in tech. It was critical to find people who understood the issues I faced and the decisions that had to be made. Make sure you proactively network in your community and beyond to understand the competition, the landscape and new developments on the horizon. In the Valley, there’s a lot of osmosis going on, and everybody seems to be in the know, so you have to work harder to make those connections elsewhere.

On the flip side, there’s less competition and you’re in a smaller community, so it’s easier to get to know your neighbors better and become an influencer.

4. Surround yourself with the best

One huge challenge when getting started was raising money. Ten years ago, there was extreme resistance for Silicon Valley VCs to invest in LA. At the end of the day, they’d have to get on a plane to attend a board meeting instead of driving down the street. And there are plenty of opportunities to invest right down the street. The bar is set much higher when trying to attract those top investors. Which is why it pays to fight for those big names.

Picking your partners and service providers wisely is essential, because they’re going to become your advisors. Set your bar high and don’t settle for less. It’ll be a struggle for sure, but it’ll make you stronger in the long run.

LA skyline image via Shutterstock

Adam Miller is the founder and CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand, a leading provider of cloud-based talent management solutions. Since starting the company in 1999, Miller has led Cornerstone through over 13 years of consecutive growth and a successful IPO in 2011. Today, it is one of the world’s fastest growing publicly traded SaaS companies, with over 11 million users. In 2011, Miller was honored as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award winner. Miller has a JD from the UCLA School of Law, a MBA from the Anderson School of Business, a BS from the Wharton School, and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania.

Comedian John Oliver may joke that SnapChat is designed for sending penis pictures, but the company is destined for a lot more.

SnapChat, an app that lets people share fleeting images, has closed $13.5 million in its first round of funding led by Benchmark Capital.

Oliver joked about the popularity of “sexting” while hosting the Crunchies, an awards ceremony that honors achievements in the tech world. SnapChat won the award for “Fastest rising startup” and is heralded as an example of the startup Holy Grail:  viral growth. A report in the New York Times states that the app sends more than 60 million messages a day and has millions of users.

The popular mobile social photo sharing service, based out of Los Angeles,  enables people to share a photo with another person or group of people who can only be viewed for a very short time (a few seconds). The person you send that photo responds with one of their own, which is also only available for a few seconds — hence the name “SnapChat.”

Photo sharing is one of the obsessions of our generation. Whether it is baby pictures on Facebook, a hipster coffee shop on Instagram, roasted chicken with bread on Foodspotting, room decor on Pinterest, or that day’s vintage-inspired ensemble on a fashion blog, taking and posting images is almost second nature. Sometimes, it feels like if no-one documents the moment on the internet, it doesn’t exist.

However, not every photo needs to live forever, which is where SnapChat comes in.

People can send images to their friends that may not merit (or be appropriate) for public, permanent display. A majority of the users are between 13 and 25, and wary of embarrassing content coming back to haunt them later in life. The story of the job-seeker denied a dream job due to a unflattering Facebook photo is something of a modern urban legend.

Speaking of Facebook, SnapChat founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy claim that Mark Zuckerberg met with them in December, just before launching its own self-destructing messaging app Poke. The competition has not seemed to diminish SnapChat’s success. The company is now valued at $60 to $70 million.

Rumors arose in December that SnapChat was raising an $8 million round at a $50 million valuation from Benchmark’s Matt Cohler. The rumors were half true, as rumors tend to be.

In fact, it was Benchmark partner Mitch Lasky who spearheaded the financing after hearing about SnapChat from his teenage daughter. Benchmark is also an investor in Instagram, the world-famous photo sharing app that Facebook bought for $1 billion in 2012.

After returns like that, it is no surprise that the firm is going down the rose-lined photo sharing path again.

The digital economy demands a workforce that is computer-literate, fluent in technology trends, and attuned to the market. General Assembly, a global education network focused on technology, business, and design, claims it can get the masses up to speed faster than existing models of computer-science instruction.

Launched in January 2011, by Adam Pritzker, Jake Schwartz, Brad Hargreaves, and Matt Brimer, in partnership with the New York Economic Development Corporation, General Assembly offers classes to students interested in programming, web development, online marketing, and other business-related subjects. It’s got locations in New York (where it started), Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, and Hong Kong, among others.

VentureBeat recently met with Pritzker in Santa Monica where he discussed the outdated teaching models holding students back, his plan to make General Assembly a premiere educational-service-and-community around the world, and his company’s strategic partnership with local start-up accelerator Launchpad LA.

“We don’t want to teach what a professor believes is important, we want to teach what the market is demanding,” said Pritzker.

General Assembly offers a wide range of classes (more than 1,200) at multiple tiers and price points, he said. Combining online and offline instruction, Pritzker said General Assembly’s educational programming varies from hour-long classes for $25 to $50, to immersive weekend workshops for $500, to 16-week courses for $5,000.

“The product really steps up in terms of what your desires are as a student, what you’re willing to pay, and the time you’re willing to commit to learn the content,” he added.

Pritzker said his company has an interesting problem because his instructors aren’t certified teachers, but practitioners: working engineers and web developers. “They’ve done user-interface design for YouTube or they scaled Amazon’s email marketing and those are really the people our students want to learn from,” he said.

Additionally, while Pritzker said General Assembly does offer its students certification, he stated that his service does not provide accreditation, which means General Assembly doesn’t allow its students to take on debt to enroll in classes.

Pritzker declined to discuss the profitability of his business, but said that there is demand, emphasizing that over 30,000 students have enrolled in two years, and citing the company’s expansion into eight markets in the United States, Europe, and Australia. In addition to General Assembly’s flagship locations in New York and London, it has outposts in Berlin, Boston, Los Angeles, Melbourne, San Francisco, and Sydney, according to company documents.

To promote technology education around the world, Pritzker said General Assembly’s strategy includes forming partnerships with government entities, like the New York Economic Development Corporation and “10 Downing,” a colloquialism for the British government. Pritzker cited Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent visit to General Assembly’s New York headquarters to illustrate the strength of the latter partnership.

While General Assembly has expanded rapidly, Pritzker cautioned that he doesn’t want his company to grow too fast, emphasizing the importance of maintaining the quality of his content and his community.

“We’re really focused on places where we think we can be an immediate value-add to that community, and L.A. was one of those places,” he said.

In L.A., General Assembly came to an agreement with Launchpad LA for the accelerator to host its local outpost campus. Pritzker said the entertainment industry’s core expertise, combined with the emerging local tech community’s new ideas, make L.A. an ideal ecosystem for innovation in the digital space.

VentureBeat spoke with Launchpad LA Managing Director Sam Teller, who said “we’ve always been eager to offer more events and programming for the L.A. startup community at large. Joining up with GA, a leading global education startup, was the perfect way to achieve that goal.”

General Assembly has raised $14 million in Series A and B funding from Maveron, Mousse Partners, Bezos Expeditions, Learn Capital, Vegas TechFund, Alexis Ohanian, Digital Sky Technologies founder Yuri Milner, Hosain Rahman, and Alexander Asseily, according to company documents.

A representative of the company told VentureBeat that General Assembly’s closest competitors are Dev Bootcamp and Flatiron School, but that both are primarily focused on long-form courses.  Pritzker said his company employs 90 people.

Adam Pritzker image courtesy General Assembly.

Simon Walker is an entrepreneur from Melbourne, Australia. From Down Under, he struggled to find fellow innovators, venture capital dollars, and the kind of support he needed to get a startup off the ground. As the story of Mark Zuckerberg and other young Silicon Valley success stories wafted his way, he began to wonder if these tales were real. Is it really as simple as showing up to an investor’s office with nothing but a hoodie and an idea, and walking away with millions?

Walker decided to set out on a journey to uncover the truth about the American entrepreneurial ecosystem. He partnered with Startup Stay, a global community for traveling entrepreneurs, and Shoestring Media, a publishing company based in Sydney, to embark on the Leeap Project, a 10-city, 20-day tour. He would stay with local entrepreneurs, interview local influencers, and create comprehensive videos that reflect “the DNA” of each startup community.

“This project is about the realities of startup life, with the hope of creating an unbiased opportunity for entrepreneurs around the world to build an educated and informed understanding about what the grass roots of the entrepreneurial world actually looks like,” Walker said. “With no hidden agenda or preplanned storyline, the Leeap project is truly a raw, open and honest depiction of the realities of each local startup community and culture.”

His first stop was Los Angeles. He spoke with entrepreneurs, event organizers, accelerator founders, and asked them questions about the L.A. startup scene, how it has changed, its advantages and disadvantages, and their vision for the future.

Check out the this video about the startup community exploding in the Hollywood Hills:

Los Angeles’s rise as an incubator for media-driven technology startups is well-documented, but it’s also becoming a hotbed for innovation in an unexpected vertical: financial services.

In L.A.’s’ “Silicon Beach” community, fintech — technology that targets financial services customers — is booming, from high-end financial-transaction management systems to friendly banking tools for ordinary consumers.

L.A. fintech startups are offering a variety of different services, like hosting complex financial transactions in the cloud, establishing social networks for professional investors, extending credit lines to smaller web publishers, and granting microloans to low-income families and individuals .

VentureBeat spoke with the chief executives of four rising fintech startups in L.A. to learn more about the multifaceted nature of the financial technology industry. Each of the companies we profiled offers a distinct service, catering to different markets and illustrating the scope of fintech’s disruptive potential.

CapLinked homepage

Mergers & Aquisitions Made Easy: CapLinked

Launched in February 2011 by Eric Jackson and Christopher Grey, CapLinked simplifies complex business transactions, like mergers and acquisitions, by providing clients with a collaborative workspace platform that is intuitive, cloud-hosted, and affordable.

CapLinked allows clients to exchange files securely and complete transactions 50 percent faster, bringing greater efficiency to asset sales, capital raises, mergers and acquisitions, and other business deals, according to its website.

Jackson, CapLinked’s chief executive, estimates that these types of transactions have $5 billion to $6 billion of untapped revenue potential among middle-market and upper-market firms, who can’t afford the high-fixed costs associated with enterprise collaboration leaders (firms that offer document-sharing and transaction-management services) like Intralinks and Merrill DataSite.

Currently, Jackson sees real estate investment “going through the roof” and is excited about client prospects in that sector. He also said there is a lot of pent-up demand for merger-and-acquisition activity.

With investments from superangel investor Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Joe Lonsdale, 500 Startups, Hercules Technology Growth Fund, and Wasabi Ventures, CapLinked has secured $1.7 million in funding, said Jackson.

Jackson also said CapLinked recently closed a lucrative deal with Cornerstone Real Estate Funds in Orange County. CapLinked employs 13 people full-time and should be profitable next year, he added.

Stockr CEO Vinny Jindal

Investing gets social: Stockr

Stockr wants to become the nexus for investors, traders, and public companies to share financial information online. In short, it’s a social network for people interested in the stock market. Founded by Vinny Jindal, Tim Symington, Brendon Crawford, and Bryce Knight, the financial-social network launched in September into an open beta, said Jindal.

By incorporating a Facebook-inspired social infrastructure into his investor network, Stockr can help members discover other companies and users who might match their interests, said Jindal. Additionally, he believes he can generate sufficient revenue through targeted advertising campaigns that serve members ads “based on who they are as investors, not consumers.”

Jindal, Stockr’s chief executive, aspires to dethrone Bloomberg’s Terminal and Yahoo Finance to become the primary source for financial information online. He is critical of both platforms, arguing that Terminal’s high cost ($1,500 per month per user) disenfranchises the average investor, and that Yahoo’s reliance on sponsored content compromises the accuracy of the information exchanged.

Jindal has launched a startup in a growing field, facing competition from financial-social network startups like SumZero (cofounded by the Winkelvoss twins, who famously battled Mark Zuckerberg over the ownership of Facebook), StockTwits, and Kapitall. But Jindal believes that Stockr will prevail over the competition because his network “can leverage existing Internet revenue models, like subscription platforms, so members can access the expertise of premium Stockr users.”  In other words, at some point premium Stockr members will be able to set their own subscription fees for other users to access their content.

Stockr has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Personal Capital (an investment firm helmed by former PayPal chief executive Bill Harris), CBS investor relations honcho Adam Townsend, and Atlantic Media Group President M. Scott Havens, said Jindal.

Also, on November 29th, Jindal will host the first Los Angeles FinTech Meetup.  Former Wall Street Journal Los Angeles Bureau Chief Rob Guth is scheduled to interview former PayPal Chief Executive Bill Harris at the event.

FastPay CEO Jed Simon

Dodging digital debt: FastPay

Independent web publishers have a cash-flow problem, maintains FastPay Chief Executive Jed Simon. It can take the big brands and media agencies up to six months to pay their publishers (the websites who host the advertisements these brands and agencies buy), he said. For smaller publishers, this payment delay is a problem because they often have to pay the creative teams tasked with programming and delivering the ads much sooner than that (30 days in some cases).

With the recent advent of FastPay, a loan company catering to the digital ecosystem, smaller digital players can function more effectively with improved liquidity. Launched in 2010, FastPay grants credit lines (ranging from $100 thousand to $10 million) to lower- and-middle market digital publishers, which accelerate payments and allow firms to do more business.

Simon said the average FastPay loan is $500,000 and that in some cases, his company is fulfilling the role played by venture capital firms. Two of these cases include Giant Media and Moguldom Media. Both chose FastPay over traditional venture funding because, unlike venture capital firms, FastPay demands no equity stake in the companies they bankroll, said Simon.

Simon said his company charges an annualized fee ranging from 12 percent to 24 percent, which seems high, but is mitigated by the fact that his credit lines are supported by his clients’ account receivables.  In other words, the high interest rates are offset by the certainty that brands will pay his clients within a reasonable timeframe.

Simon also said he doesn’t like to do deals under $1 million or $2 million and that for every deal he does, he turns two down. FastPay has provided roughly 100 digital media clients with $100 million in financing and employs twenty people full-time, he said.

FastPay has received $27 million in funding from Hudson Pacific Chief Executive Victor Coleman, JMG Capital Management founder Jonathan Glaser, private equity firm SF Capital Group, and the Dallas branch of Wells Fargo Capital, the latter of which boasts a $6 billion credit line, according to Simon.

ZestFinance CEO Douglas Merrill.

A.I.-vetted microloans: Zest Finance

ZestFinance chief executive Douglas Merrill isn’t like most financial CEOs: He has a Ph.D in artificial intelligence from Princeton. (He’s also got Tetris blocks tattooed on his forearm.) Fortunately for people who don’t have access to credit — known in the industry as the “underbanked” — Merrill decided to use the expertise he gained as a graduate student to help guide them out of financial hardship.

Merrill’s company uses A.I.-based technology to grant microloans, averaging $450 per transaction, to people who lack access to traditional credit, he said. His typical client profile is a 35-year-old single mother who makes between $30,000 to $40,000 a year, said Merrill.

Merrill told VentureBeat that there are 60 million Americans who have bank accounts but are ineligible for traditional credit (the FDIC says 52 million adults are underbanked). He believes that financial institutions have designated his target market as “credit risks because they’re missing data.”

A ZestFinance loan application requires clients to answer 100 questions, and these responses produce 2,500 variables (most banks rely on six to 15 variables) that run through 10 different machine-learning algorithms. Then, it combines the 10 models into one superalgorithm, which determines a prospect’s creditworthiness. Within 30 minutes of starting their application, ZestFinance clients know if they have been approved.

“It’s like talking to your 10 smartest friends and using their group opinion to make a decision,” said Merrill.

Merrill’s primary competitors are payday loan services, which charged 30 million Americans $8 billion in fees last year, he said. Merrill said ZestFinance can cut those payday-loan customers’ fees in half.  VentureBeat asked Merrill what he charges his customers and he said his rates vary on a case-by-case basis.

ZestFinace has raised $92 million in venture funding from GRP Partners, Lighthouse Capital Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners, and Matrix Partners, said Merrill. Merrill also said his company employs 100 people, 65 of which are in L.A.

Image credits: Shark fin image courtesy Sharkdiver.com.  Image courtesy CapLinked. Image courtesy Stockr.  Image courtesy FastPay.  Image courtesy ZestFinance.

Who knew, for example, that Sydney, Australia, is global capital of “data-driven startups?” Or that the top nine startups of the last 15 years have generated nearly a trillion dollars in value, helped along by the likes of Facebook, Google, and Amazon? And while everyone would likely have guessed that Silicon Valley is the top hub of entrepreneurship on the planet, with Tel Aviv high on the list (if not exactly second), Los Angeles coming in third is a bit of a surprise.

The conclusions are based on data from startups that use the Startup Compass, a tool that helps founders make better  decisions through data. Startup Genome analyzed factors such as startup incidence, funding availability, business performance, founder mindset, technology trends, support networks, and talent availability to find the hottest locations to start and grow a company.

Here are the top 20 technology hubs, as defined by the Startup Genome:

1. Silicon Valley
2. Tel Aviv
3. Los Angeles
4. Seattle
5. New York City
6. Boston
7. London
8. Toronto
9. Vancouver
10. Chicago
11. Paris
12. Sydney
13. Sao Paulo
14. Moscow
15. Berlin
16. Waterloo (Canada)
17. Singapore
18. Melbourne
19. Bangalore
20. Santiago

More valuable than the ranking, Startup Genome provided the ranking data for each technology hub on eight key criteria. Using these criteria you can see, for example, that while Vancouver ranks 14th in the support index, probably due to being a relatively young ecosystem, it ranks second in the mindset index (indicating that it has plenty of eager and driving founders) and fourth in the talent index.

Tel Aviv, on the other hand, ranks second in startup output and equivalent to Silicon Valley in funding, but only 12th in performance, perhaps due to Israeli startups’ sometimes-wondered-at predilection for building smaller companies, outfits that don’t turn into enormous enterprises.

The report is rich in data and many more details — you can get your own copy right here.

Image credits: Startup Genome

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And then just 12 miles from the airport to the California Science Center. Twelve miles, of course, at an average speed just .01 percent of the 17,500 miles per hour it once had to fly to at least temporarily slip the surly bonds of Earth’s gravity.

Space shuttle Endeavor is now home  in L.A. A very special team of photographers and helper combined to take amazing high-res photography of its journey, which they released just a few days ago.

Here it is in time-lapse photography:

photo credit: DUCKofD3ATH via photopin cc

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HealthBeat 2013 is a new conference showcasing how technology is transforming health care. We'll explore how IT is driving out inefficiencies on the hospital, practice, and patient levels. Check out full event details here, and register here.

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Sprint will launch 4G LTE high-speed data in another 100 cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston, in the “coming months,” the company announced today.

Sprint offers LTE in just 19 metropolitan areas in the U.S., including Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. (Check out Sprint’s coverage map here.) Verizon, on the other hand, now claims to cover 235 million Americans in 371 cities with its 4G LTE. AT&T has 60 active markets with 4G LTE but plans to have more than 100 total markets by the end of the year.

While Sprint was the first major U.S. wireless carrier to offer next-gen 4G data speeds over WiMAX, its WiMAX buildout was plagued with problems. It shifted gears to LTE with an “aggressive roll-out” last October, and it is now aiming have the majority of its LTE efforts completed by the end of 2013.

Check out the full list of upcoming Sprint LTE cities below.

• Aguadilla-Isabela-San Sebastian, Puerto Rico
• Albermarle, N.C.
• Asheville, N.C.
• Athens, Texas
• Austin, Texas
• Barnstable Town (Hyannis/Midcape), Md.
• Baton Rouge, La.
• Boston
• Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, Mass.
• Charlotte, N.C.
• Chicago
• Clarksville, Tenn.
• Cleveland, Tenn.
• Coamo, Puerto Rico
• College Station, Texas
• Columbia, Tenn.
• Columbus, Ind.
• Cookeville, Tenn.
• Crossville, Tenn.
• Daytona Beach-Deltona-Ormond Beach, Fla.
• Fayetteville, N.C.
• Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
• Gary, Ind.
• Goldsboro, N.C.
• Greenville, Tenn.
• Guayama, Puerto Rico
• Hammond, La.
• Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, N.C.
• Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, La.
• Hutchinson, Kan.
• Indianapolis
• Jacksonville, Fla.
• Jonesboro, Ark.
• Kankakee-Bradley-Bourbonnais, Ill.
• Kerrville, Texas
• Kingsport-Bristol, Tenn.
• Lakeland-Winter Haven, Fla.
• Lancaster, S.C.
• Lawrence, Kan.
• Lincolnton, S.C.
• Los Angeles
• Lumberton, N.C.
• Marion, Ind.
• McPherson, Kan.
• Memphis, Tenn.
• Miami
• Michigan City-La Porte, Ill.
• Morristown, Tenn.
• Myagez, Puerto Rico
• Nashville, Tenn.
• New Orleans
• New York
• Norfolk, Va.
• Ocala, Fla.
• Ocean Pines, Md.
• Orlando, Fla.
• Ottawa-Streator, Ill.
• Palatka, Fla.
• Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, Fla.
• Palm Coast, Fla.
• Peabody/Lawrence-Methuen/Gloucester, Mass.
• Philadelphia
• Ponce, Puerto Rico
• Port St. Lucie, Fla.
• Roanoke Rapids, N.C.
• Rochelle, Ill.
• Rockford, Ill.
• Rocky Mount, N.C.
• Salina, Kan.
• Salisbury, Md.
• Salisbury, N.C.
• San German-Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico
• San Juan, Puerto Rico
• Sebastian-Vero Beach, Fla.
• Sebring, Fla.
• Shelby, N.C.
• Sherman-Denison, Texas
• South Bend, Ind.
• Southern Pines-Pinehurst, N.C.
• Springfield, Ma.
• Statesville-Mooresville, S.C.
• Tampa, Fla.
• Topeka, Kan.
• Tullahoma, Tenn.
• Tupelo, Miss.
• Warrensburg, Mo.
• Warsaw, Ind.
• Washington, D.C.
• Waukegan-Lake County, Ill.
• West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Boynton Beach, Fla.
• Wichita, Kan.
• Wichita Falls, Texas
• Worcester-Fitchburg-Leominster, Mass.
• Yauco, Puerto Rico

L.A.’s thriving tech community is not letting up on its ongoing effort to make the rest of the country more fit and healthy.

Launching today, FitKit prompts you to take a free lifestyle assessment quiz and then doles out personalized guidance from nutritionists. The quiz was designed by nutrition experts Dr. Robin Bernhoft and Dr. Nick Bitz. It asks questions about how much alcohol you consume per week, stress levels, eating habits, and more.

“America is a land of malnutrition,” said Dr. Bernhoft, who recently joined the founding team. “Practically everyone has vitamin and mineral deficiencies which make them feel less energetic, get sick easier, have less endurance.”

On the backend, cofounder Josh Haynam explained that an algorithm works to “analyze and connect user’s lifestyle patterns with nutritional deficiencies” and pairs them with appropriate nutritional supplements. It’s ideal for people who can’t afford a one-on-one session with a nutritionist but are overwhelmed by the range of products on the market that claim to improve joint pain or boost immunity.

The cofounders, Haynam, Matthew Clark, Rohit Seth, and Ethan Paulson (pictured with Dr. Bernoft), hope to use technology to make nutrition more accessible. ”Health and fitness has been jaded by outrageous claims and false advertisements,” Haynam told me.

Haynam is a 20-year-old economics student at UCLA. He founded the company in three months after a football accident in which he broke two bones in his foot. During his recovery, he was prescribed a variety of supplements by several nutritionists, setting him back thousands of dollars in medical bills. But he couldn’t find transparent advice online. It was then that he hit on the idea for FitKit.

FitKit is easy to get confused with FitBit, one of many new companies vying for dominance in the personalized health space. FitBit makes money by using data about your health to tailor a fitness plan, which will likely be the monetization strategy for this company if it succeeds in growing its user-base. The companies recently partnered so you can integrate your FitKit data into FitBit’s quiz to improve its accuracy.

You’re emailed recommendations, but as of today, you can also purchase nutritional supplements directly from the site.

It’s early, but it is already evidence of traction — FitKit offered its beta to friends and family, but told me they have been garnering hundreds of signups per day and are spreading by word of mouth. It’s a recent graduate of StartEngine, a local tech accelerator. Through that program, it raised its first $20,000 in seed funding, and has grown to a team of seven people.

Haynam considers sites that specialize in selling nutritional supplements like VitaCost as the major competitors. However, in the long-term, FitKit may rival later-stage startups like WellnessFX that offer online health consultations and have pioneered a data-driven approach to health.

Another big-time Silicon Valley name has been linked to SoCal’s premier incubator, Science.

The über VCs at Andreessen Horowitz have just invested in DogVacay, a sort of Airbnb for pets whose owners need to get out of town.

The startup took a $1 million seed round from First Round Capital and a handful of others; that deal was sealed back in March around the time of the official DogVacay launch. However, Andreessen Horowitz’s participation in the company’s funding takes it all to a whole new level.

“Having Andreessen Horowitz as ‘part of the pack’ gives us the incredible opportunity to leverage their deep domain knowledge in marketplace businesses from relevant investments like Airbnb,” said co-founder and CEO Aaron Hirschhorn in a statement this morning.

“Perhaps most importantly, the company shares our love of dogs and the desire to offer a better alternative to current boarding options.”

The exact amount of Andreessen Horowitz’s contribution to DogVacay’s funding has not been disclosed.

DogVacay buys traveling dog-owners a lot of peace of mind. Using the magic of crowdsourcing and an online marketplace, DogVacay will put your canine friend in a cage-free home where he or she will receive personal attention (and where you can get pictures and updates to ensure confirmation of proper treatment).

DogVacay sitters’ homes range from modest apartments to luxo pads with extensive grounds, and animal caregivers are thoroughly screened and certified by the company. The dog owner can choose and pay for the home that’s right for his or her dog’s needs. The company’services start at $15 per day.

The seemingly fluffy premise has real value to investors, though. Petsitting and pet care services are a multi-billion dollar market, and there’s not yet a clear winner in the business of offering humane, varied, and third-party approved petsitting options. The right market for the right services aimed at the right people could stand to make a killing.

DogVacay started out offering services in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The company recently opened its sit to all U.S. cities and also Canada. The new funds will be used to support and continue that geographical expansion.

Marketplace are something of a specialty at Science, the Los Angeles startup incubator founded by former MySpace CEO Mike Jones and Color co-founder Peter Pham. And as far as funding goes, Pham told us back in March he hopes to someday bring a billion dollar VC fund to SoCal.

Another Science startup, Eventup, just raised a $1.8 million round of funding led by Lightbank, the investment vehicle of Groupon founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell.

We’ve been covering quite a few companies from Science, the latest incubator to make a splash in the L.A. tech scene.

In the above clip, VentureBeat chats with Peter Pham, one of Science’s co-founders, about how Science companies may be light on tech but make up for it with an emphasis on real monetization. Pham also talks about Los Angeles as the new land of opportunity for Silicon Valley investors.

Keep coming back — we’ve got a lot more interviews from South By Southwest coming right up.

Love the idea of having a dog, but hate the guilt of leaving your pet behind during business trips or vacations?

Dog Vacay, the latest launch from L.A. incubator Science, speaks to exactly that problem, solving it with the power of crowdsourcing and an open marketplace.

A far cry from a kennel, Dog Vacay will put your pooch in a cage-free home where he or she will receive personal attention (and where you can get pictures and updates for your own peace of mind). Environments range from modest apartments to luxo pads with extensive grounds. You pick and pay for the home that’s right for your dog, and boarding services start at $15 per day.

Also, we snagged y’all a sweet 25 percent discount; read to the end for the code.

So, what’s a dog site write-up doing on a tech outfit like VentureBeat, you ask? We’ve been big fans of most of the companies coming out of Science, which was created by former MySpace CEO Mike Jones and Color co-founder Peter Pham. Other recent launches from Science have included Eventup, a marketplace for cooler-than-usual event venues, and Wittlebee, a subscription commerce solution for fashion-forward parents and their fortunate kids.

As Eventup CEO Tony Adam told VentureBeat in a recent interview, “Science is bringing infrastructure to LA that hasn’t been there before, including access to capital.” And Jones confirmed to us, “We’re gonna build a whole breed of businesses over the next year that are incredibly successful. I think Science will be a conduit for Silicon Valley investors to feel comfortable investing in Los Angeles.”

Dog Vacay might seem fluffy to some, but Jones and Pham told us they are looking for opportunities to build marketplaces. Fluffy or not, pet boarding and related services make up a $10 billion market, and currently, consumers have few enough options for meeting those needs. Between craigslist and Google searches, there was a lot of room for improvement — and a lot of opportunity for raking in some revenue, always at the top of an L.A. startup’s list of priorities.

The startup was founded by husband-wife team Aaron Hirschhorn and Karine Nissim Hirschhorn. In addition to providing a vacation-like boarding experience for dogs with insured and verified hosts, the startup will serve as a marketplace for other services, including training, walking, and pet massage, for example.

Doggie hosts are selected with a range of criteria in mind, such as background checks, completion of web-based training and emergency certifications, and interviews conducted by Dog Vacay staff.

“Vacations were always overshadowed with the guilt of leaving our dogs, Rocky and Rambo, in a caged kennel where they may not get the attention they need,” said Nissim Hirschhorn in a statement. “We believed there was a better way of caring for dogs, so we tested out the concept for Dog Vacay in our own home, and before we knew it, we had more clients than we could handle and decided to launch the Dog Vacay platform.”

To get 25 percent off your first booking, VentureBeat readers can use the code “SXSW” — don’t say we never gave you anything.

And here’s a video showing more about the service:

Top image courtesy of ck., Shutterstock

So of course, when the couple welcomed their first child, the world expected the child to, you know, live up to the family standard. But there was a slight roadblock.

“Laurie had a lot of trouble just finding simple, solid-colored clothes without some kind of horrible logo on it,” said the Percival patriarch during a phone conversation.

“She likes putting outfits together herself, and here was a huge gap in the market.”

Percival, who had previously worked at MySpace and who was itching to get back into the e-commerce space, saw his wife’s stress and frustrations with trying to maintain basic baby-fashion essentials as an opportunity for entrepreneurship.

Kids, especially the youngest of youngsters, go through clothes at a breakneck pace; while some subscription commerce sites might be a stretch, this vertical was one that truly did call for a constantly refreshed supply of basics, from solid tees to tasteful onesies.

Percival’s solution is Wittlebee, a service that lets busy parents fill out a size and style profile and, for $40 per month, get a monthly delivery of a box of clothes that will (likely) work for their kid and their needs.

Wittlebee is the third startup this month from new Los Angeles incubator Science. The incubator is headed up by Mike Jones, former MySpace CEO who said he loved working with Percival during his days with the social network. The first Science startup to launch was Eventup, headed by Tony Adam, also a former MySpacer and friend to Jones; Eventup’s site went live just a week ago.

Percival said Wittlebee’s boxes provide a pleasing variety of choices with an American Apparel-like simplicity. Items are chosen based on the parent’s choices in color and style, with consideration for the child’s personality (e.g., a “diva” would probably get different pieces than would be delivered to a “messy” kid).

These are separates that are intended to work together for good, and best of all, it comes without the nightmare of dragging a toddler through a department store.

“The retail experience around kids’ clothes is really bad,” Percival said. “The racks are a mess; the teenage associate doesn’t know how to help a mom; and there are often no dressing rooms. And the biggest issue is companies put a huge markup on everything.”

To get started with an initial list of a few hundred beta customers, Percival shopped clearance items and overstock, building subscription boxes around the pieces he found. Nowadays, being in a major manufacturing and distribution hub for fashion, the Wittlebee team is making wholesale buys. Soon, the startup hopes to start producing its own label, as well.

Ultimately, Percival said, the boxes will include a mix of big-brand items, boutique finds, and Wittlebee-only private label pieces.

“Every mom thinks of their child differently,” Percival continued. “‘My daughter has really long legs; my son is husky; this brand doesn’t work for him.’ It’s hard to get items that fit correctly.” So, Wittlebee will include intelligent recommendations that take into account the discrepancies between sizes produced by different brands.

Eventually, Percival hopes to not just send out new clothes but to do intake for old clothes, too. “I want to create a system where we give a return envelope when we send a box and then we donate the clothes to a local charity,” he said.

Currently, Wittlebee’s stock cuts off at around age five; soon, the range will extend to around 12 years old.

One of the most interesting parts of Wittlebee, especially from an entrepreneurial perspective, is its customer service. Noting that we live in “an Amazon world” where fast shipments and great service are expected, even for scrappy startup, Percival said the service had its first growing pains within the first couple months of beta testing.

To take care of his customers better, Percival hired a few stay-at-home mom Wittlebee members as customer service reps. This army of moms is armed with Grasshopper and Olark, which Percival uses to direct customer service calls and issues.

So when current customers call Wittlebee, he said, “They’re calling people who are intimately familiar with our system and how it works. It’s not some call center in India; it feels more natural. They have a personal connection with us at every step of the way.”

Percival, who is expecting another little one to join his family soon, is also thinking about another high-turnover vertical for kids: books.

“I have a strong affinity for kids’ books,” he told us, “and I’m thinking about ways to reinvent the book club.”

Battery Ventures led the round, which also saw participation from Qualcomm. Outside the Valley, New York’s Greycroft Ventures also joined in the financing.

Viddy, which lets users share 15-second video clips, will use the funding to bring its app to Android tablets and smartphones as well as to the iPad. BlackBerry and Windows Phone apps are also in the works.

Viddy also lets users edit unique audio tracks, visual effects, and transitions into their clips; it bills the app as a sort of Instagram for video. Videos can be shared automatically across most social platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The company credits much of its success to celebrity users like Snoop Dogg and Internet savant iJustine.

The concept is similar to that of the recently pivoted social app Color, which lets users upload 30 seconds of video, sans editing, and other micro-video apps we’ve seen come and go over the years.

“We continue to be excited by the growth and engagement of the Viddy community and by the visually entertaining quality of videos created and shared around the world every day,” said Viddy co-founder Brett O’Brien in a release today.

“Given the incredible growth numbers that we have seen, we’re looking forward to making Viddy available on more platforms and to more users globally.”

To date, the startup has taken $8.2 million in funding. Viddy was first launched in April 2011.

Image courtesy of Goodluz, Shutterstock

We took some time over the past couple of weeks to talk with Pham and Jones, as well as at least one entrepreneur who’s working with the Science team on a new startup.

As a longtime veteran of the LA startup world, your correspondent sensed a distinctly new energy during these conversations. There’s more organization, more optimism, and more stability than ever before from the tech scene to the south.

“Science is bringing infrastructure to LA that hasn’t been there before, including access to capital,” said Tony Adam in a recent trip to VentureBeat’s San Francisco office. Adam is head of Eventup, the first Science startup to reach a public launch.

Science, still a small outfit with a $10 million fund, is launching a string of startups this year, and each one has solid revenue potential. It could be the start of a new era for Los Angeles tech — and a new opportunity for NorCal investors to take the area a bit more seriously.

From MySpace’s ashes

The Los Angeles community is replete with former MySpacers, and Science itself is built from a tight-knit cadre of onetime MySpace executives still loyal to Jones. Adam is among that group, as are Science partners Mike Macadaan and Sean Percival.

But this isn’t just croneyism at work; MySpace accounted for a lot of the LA-based tech talent pool. And as the larger community evolves past MySpace, former MySpacers are taking on new roles, building new companies, and continuing to push the area forward into the technology fray.

“These are guys that I fell in love with,” said Jones in a phone conversation with VentureBeat. “I’ve worked with them for years. Coming out of MySpace … these are the guys I love to work with.”

“The alumni network [from MySpace] is actually pretty large,” said Pham, one of a few Science affiliates who wasn’t involved in the social network. “Those folks are re-participating in the community.”

Jones emphasized that the painful experience of taking a once-strong company through layoffs and a fire sale was a trial by fire for all parties involved, but that it made the core team of his confidants stronger.

“These guys understand the landscape,” he said. “They’ve been through the ups and they’ve been through the downs … and they can build the next generation of fantastic businesses.”

Money talks, empty tech walks

Noting that yes, of course, San Francisco still trumps LA when it comes to the sheer size of its talent pool, Jones countered, “In LA, there’s not that many large tech companies, so there’s not too many opportunities to build out your team. But there’s more opportunity to build out your revenue … People here want to build real businesses with profit.”

Jones advocates what appears to be a prominent theme among LA startups: real revenue from the get-go. You’re likely to see fewer tech platforms down south, but much more likely to see actual businesses with consumer-level customers either waiting in the wings or already putting their money down for product.

“We’re gonna build a whole breed of businesses over the next year that are incredibly successful,” Jones said. “I think Science will be a conduit for Silicon Valley investors to feel comfortable investing in Los Angeles.”

A conduit for cash

Bringing San Francisco’s capital down to LA’s entrepreneurs was a theme that came up frequently when VentureBeat talked in person with Pham, as well.

“A personal mission of mine is to get some larger firms to open up offices down there, to bring down a partner to invest personally,” Pham told us.

“Right now, though, I want $250 million of Sand Hill money coming down to LA, and it’s starting.”

Pham rattles off a string of recent LA-based startups that have raised money from top-tier Silicon Valley firms. “I’m getting amazing committments and term sheets being signed for deals,” he said, speaking with the energy and confidence of someone who was born for this job.

“Our plan for Science is … to bring cash in and actually start other funds down in LA,” Pham continued. “It’s starting with pockets of angel investing, and there will be a billion-dollar fund in LA within the next three to five years.”

The money from Silicon Valley to Los Angeles has been a trickle; Pham is convinced it will become a flood. All that’s needed in order to turn that vision into a reality is a bit more structure of the kind Science is providing.

“What’s been lacking is guidance and leadership,” he concluded, “and we think Science can be a tent pole.”

(Editor’s note: VentureBeat is partnering with Science on Feb 23, in our quest to find great companies to write about, as well as to invite to DEMO.)

Eventup, a marketplace for hard-to-get event venues, can make that happen.

Eventup is a brand-spanking-new startup launching today in Los Angeles, and we have to say, a startup idea like that could only have come from Los Angeles, the longtime home of entertainment of America.

“More events are thrown in LA than anywhere else; there are more venues here than anywhere else,” said Eventup CEO Tony Adam. “This couldn’t happen in San Francisco … our business could only start successfully here.”

And this particular startup idea couldn’t have happened without Science’s trademark mix of local talent and Valley capital. Science is the area’s newest tech incubator, and Eventup is the first Science company to reach a public launch.

Adam, a former MySpace employee, came by the VentureBeat office in San Francisco to chat about the company.

“You don’t want to be the bride at a hotel ballroom and watch another bride walk by,” he explained. “You want your event to be unique and memorable.”

He and the rest of the Eventup team are focused on creating entirely unique and highly memorable experiences for normal consumers. It’s a bit like Airbnb for upscale events.

“Unattainable properties are now attainable,” said Adam. “Rodeo Drive houses, Malibu beach houses … we even have access to The Bachelor mansion.”

The idea sounds hip enough, but Adam emphasizes the business model behind it, too. The company is “focused on solving a real-world consumer problem,” he continued.

“I’ve planned conferences and I know how hard it is to find a venue. I’ve spent days doing it, and even event planners can take as long as 18 hours just finding a place.”

We talked to one of Eventup’s backers, former MySpace CEO Mike Jones. Jones and Color co-founder Peter Pham founded Science to bring ideas like this one to market.

“When Peter and I were originally working on this, we started with marketplaces, places we could find underused inventory and find buyers for that inventory,” said Jones.

“At first, I said, ‘Venues — is that really that big?’ We eventually realized there are very few aggregated venue directories. We started talking to high-end real estate companies and homeowners, and we realized that these people wanted to rent out their homes.”

Eventup ended up sourcing around 400 venues in the greater Los Angeles area alone, creating a consumer marketplace just as Jones had wanted.

And the fun doesn’t stop with the venues. “We now have access to catering, insurance, DJs, entertainment, valets — once you have the venue in place, it’s just the start of the funnel of the events industry,” Adam revealed. “We’ll be getting into that, too.”

The BetterWorks platform is all about perks: the employee rewards that lie beyond salary and beyond what’s legally required. Benefits such as gym memberships, education reimbursement, daily or weekly catering, child care and more are part of many recruitment and retention programs. But Betterworks CEO Paige Craig told VentureBeat, “Our service is for companies that want to immediately save time and money as well as companies that want to invest in their employees for the long-term return on increased productivity in the workforce, longer retention of employees and better recruitment.”

The new funding will allow the startup to expand its offerings nationally, improve its core product and provide better customer service. Over the next year, the startup plans to bring its services to every major market in the United States.

In the near future, BetterWorks will also be rolling out a new product to “address the concept of intangible rewards,” said Craig, who has been a prominent angel investor in the Los Angeles area for a couple years. “Our current product focuses on tangible rewards: meals, coffee, gym, entertainment, education, etc. But we also realize that the intangible rewards are a huge winner for companies and employees alike and we’ll be rolling this out soon.”

The startup’s Perks platform lets its customers user a web-based interface to offer employees better rewards. In addition to organizing, streamlining and measuring the benefits program, Perks also connects companies to local merchants who can offer employee discounts.

Redpoint Ventures led the current funding round. The L.A.-based company has raised $10 million to date, including a previous angel round.

Redpoint’s Satish Dharmaraj will be BetterWorks’ newest board member. With regard to working with a Los Angeles-based startup, he told us, “We always look for great people using the Internet to disrupt huge markets. No matter where they are we go after them and we find them. … Sometimes its too easy to get caught up in the [Silicon] Valley culture and media. In L.A., you get the chance to build great companies outside of the spotlight. Gives you a more balanced perspective.”

Their novel idea was an instant hit, and now, one year later, the founders of Grubwithus find themselves at the helm of a fledgling startup. Is this yet another shiny social service for venture capitalists to scoop up, or is the concept rooted in something more substantive?

Having just recently undergone a sweeping redesign with a raft of new features, the L.A.-based social dining startup that graduated from Y Combinator’s Winter 2011 class finds itself at the crux of a Silicon Valley counter-reformation. As more and more of us cultivate our connections online, the service aims to break down these walls, urging us to build relationships in so-called “real-life.” If it worked for the founders, why can’t it work for the rest of us?

Seeking the answer to this question, I spent some time personally “grubbing” at four different meals myself and visiting the startup’s trendy live/work space near Venice Beach to chat up the founders about their company and its vision, startup life in L.A., and the quirks of their new, eccentric headquarters. (Disclosure: I have a friendly rapport with the co-founders.)

The service works simply enough: People visit the site (and eventually a mobile app) to browse for meals, reserve and pay for one they like, then meet at a restaurant to have a family-style meal with others who took the plunge as well. Grubwithus brings strangers together for meals, but it also brings exposure and revenue to partner restaurants, solving a discovery problem without the “cheapness” or blandness of coupon sites.

There’s a no-strings-attached flair to the service that means anyone can approach it any way they like. It’s not solely online dating, or professional networking, or foodie indulgence, but it can be all of those things if you’d like it to be.

Co-founder Daishin Sugano is more brazen in his expectations, “These are people you’ve never met, that if you do, they just might turn into the best friends of your life.”

The site’s new design makes it easier to select a preferred approach, allowing people to reserve meals based either on restaurants, people or interests.

Grubwithus, which has already registered 22,000 users (doubling from 10,000 a month prior), 4,000 reservations and 450 establishment partnerships, also overhauled the back end, ensuring speed and reliability as they expand.

Mouse clicks and chopsticks

So who are these eccentric users joining the IRL counter-revolution, displacing mouse-clicks with chopsticks? 

At the four meals in L.A. that I’ve attended, grubbers’ backgrounds have always been fairly consistent: They’re overwhelmingly single, in their twenties, college-educated, and focused on startups, technology, finance, consulting, or screenwriting.

Back at the unconventional domicile-cum-workshop that is Grubwithus headquarters, Sugano boasts how my observations neatly match the analytics the company has run on their user base. UC Berkeley, Stanford, NYU and Harvard dominate the educational backgrounds of users, while the work experience chart is crowned with employers like MTV in L.A., Google and Facebook in Silicon Valley, Accenture and others.

Though the data may reveal a clubby user-base, the redesign introduces new features that should allay the fears of those with less glamorous backgrounds.

For example, the new Interests feature allows like-minded people to navigate the site through the filter of common hobbies, occupations, sports activities, or virtually anything else. Following interests as varied as “Beach,” “Jazz,” or “Los Angeles Lakers” makes connecting with people you’ve never met as frictionless as possible.

Grass roots expansion

Grubwithus plans to expand using a new “Launch Squad” feature, prompted in part by requests from people around the world who want the site to open the service in their own hometowns.

The feature gives the passionate followers of the company admin-like access, enabling them to see statistics and usage data, and start a grassroots promotional campaign to have their city be the next to open up. If Grubwithus receives a certain number of sign-ups from any city, they’ll open it for grubbing.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is: In its early days, Facebook utilized this “pump-and-pop” methodology to generate anticipation at each college campus before opening up there.

In case it doesn’t pan out as smoothly, small teams are still sent out to each city to iron out any quirks.

Anticipating growth, the company needed to hire aggressively.

The redesign was a major product push that required hiring savvy developers to meet an aggressive feature roadmap. Amidst the tech boom, this was no small feat, but Sugano says that despite heavyweights like Apple, Google and Facebook sucking up talent like giant vacuums, they found a few technical stars who were tempted by their concept enough to turn competing offers down.

Sugano waxes poetic about their “lean” design methodology, clearly imparted  by Y Combinator. “[Our code] may be buggy, but we have to get it out there so we get that quick feedback,” he says. I’ve personally run into a few of these bugs; they’re not show-stoppers but are still rough edges.

Life’s a (Silicon) Beach

When pressed to talk about startup life in L.A, Sugano’s demeanor was at first characterized by worry. “After Y Combinator, you keep asking yourself if you’ll have the same opportunities, the same access to awesome resources,” he said before his mood became decidedly positive. “But you realize you’re still close enough to Silicon Valley to physically meet with investors and advisors if you have to, but also far away enough to have a minimal tech scene.”

He alludes to the lack of an established industry culture in Southern California, which allows for, in his words, “a more open-minded feel, where you can be creative around the clock, eat late if you have to, and just do things that sleepy Mountain View doesn’t offer.”

Echoing what VentureBeat’s Jolie O’Dell noted recently in her L.A. startup feature, Sugano believes that now more than ever the L.A. startup scene is burgeoning, citing his ties to other L.A. upstart BetterWorks. A year ago they were certain they’d base themselves in San Francisco or New York. Now they can’t imagine why they’d ever make that choice.

But when I referred to L.A.’s startup scene as “Silicon Beach,” the cofounder retorted, “I don’t like that term since beach implies laziness, and we’re anything but!”

Having visited their digs, this retort is certainly justified. Despite their aggressive hiring, Grubwithus is still in that phase where few people wear many hats and all of them work extremely long hours. In fact, there isn’t much of a distinction between “work” and “living,” as evidenced by the company’s headquarters.

Just a few blocks from the beach, a modern and trendy live/work space built in 2003 called Bay City Lofts is where Grubwithus (and its team) call home. Visitors are greeted with a double-high-ceiling entrance before going upstairs, where the kitchen’s island counter is littered more with MacBook chargers than food crumbs. Across, a white board is filled with user interface schematics and snippets of code.

A blue gym mat is nearby, where people can “sleep, or code — their choice.” The irony of sleeping and working on bone-hard mats in an upscale loft is not lost on me.

Things are nice, but it wasn’t always this way. Prior to moving to L.A., the founders were coding most of the site out of a Starbucks, spending such long hours there that baristas offered free coffee out of pity. Lunch and dinner consisted of five-minute runs to a next-door supermarket for PB&J sandwiches. They would hardly finish their last bites before they hit their laptops again, furiously developing their site. They even did “the minimalist thing” for a little while, living out of their car, schlepping forty-pound stuff-sacks of their life’s possessions with them.

The entrepreneurial spirit is strong in Sugano and Lu, and they’ve built a company around this ethos. They indulge in stories of “scrappiness,” recalling how they essentially tricked Y Combinator to accept their application and other tomfoolery. Their spirit is that of hard work combined with playfulness. If you’ve ever been to a Grubwithus meal, you’ll know that the experience embodies just that mix. Turning perfect strangers into trusty friends over a bite of hot chow is hard work, even for the most extroverted. Perhaps you won’t connect with anyone, but it’d be a lie to say you didn’t have fun doing it.

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L.A. isn’t just a mecca for film and video game studios. In the past three years, the Los Angeles tech scene has evolved from a small cadre of social media-happy party animals to a legitimate and sustainable tech community to rival Silicon Valley.

“Los Angeles is a town that spins a million stories every day,” says local technophile Sean Percival. “It’s the perfect backdrop for a techie looking to tell his or her own story.”

Percival is at once a gossip and a godfather in the community. A MySpace exec, he and his wife, Laurie, also became loved and feared in earlier days for their hilarious interpretations of L.A. tech life on Lalawag, a colorful blog about the local scene. Percival now characterizes the current SoCal vibe as “a lot more company-building and a lot fewer poolside mixers.”

Back in 2008, the L.A. tech scene was in its party-filled, boozy heyday. Every night of the week, Twitter advocates and wannapreneurs could be found gathering at an array of networking events. The town was crawling with social media enthusiasts, but the scene wasn’t yet the kind of primordial soup that leads to healthy young startups.

“After some big hits like Overture during the first dot-com boom,” says Percival, “the space had been somewhat dormant. At this point, we were mostly using new technologies like Twitter to help build the community and find one another. Lots of ideas were being tossed around and connections made, but not much building.”

Even so, tech in L.A. circa 2007 and 2008 was more than just empty enthusiasm. The area had MySpace going for it (and back then, it was still a strong contender among social networks). Huge entertainment companies were beginning to look toward the web more, and they were tapping local digital experts for help. A handful of thought leaders were also working on projects like Twiistup, a homebrewed startup competition.

But what’s going on in Los Angeles today is a far cry from what was happening there four or five years ago. The parties have died down, and angel investors and smart business minds are getting to work.

The city’s tech scene is a few years more mature, more realistic, more productive — and it’s making headlines for its entrepreneurial atmosphere. Meet the new face of L.A. tech.

Why Entrepreneurs Love L.A.

Paige Craig, L.A. entrepreneur & investor

One of the most prominent figures in — and advocates for — the new school of L.A.-based entrepreneurship is Paige Craig. A former Marine from the East Coast with a background in defense contracting, Craig now runs startup BetterWorks and typifies the “Silicon Beach” CEO: In the de rigeur uniform of hoodies, shorts, and flip-flops, he brims with sun-drenched charisma.

“We’re a diverse lot,” he says of L.A.’s tech scene, “but more than San Francisco/Silicon Valley startups, we have a very healthy work-hard-play-hard balance.”

Joey Flores is the dreadlocked co-founder of Earbits, a Y Combinator startup that’s making its mark on the music industry. “I love L.A. as an entrepreneur,” he tells us, “because I think it’s incredibly important to create work-life balance, and you can’t beat Los Angeles for that.

“My partners and I work extremely hard, but every other day [Earbits EVP] Yotam [Rosenbaum] and I discuss work as we walk to the beach and get some sun on the boardwalk,” Flores says. “When I’ve had a rough day, I can hit Main Street and go to one of a dozen bars, where I often run into other entrepreneurs I know. If I want to go see world-class music or stand-up comedy, I can do it on any night of the week.”

Beyond the colorful nightlife and perfect weather, Craig defines what is, for him, the crux of Los Angeles’ entrepreneurial community: a connection to average consumers’ needs and the all-important hustle.

“There’s a very ‘real’ culture here,” Craig says. “Most of us are building businesses that solve real problems and drive real revenues. We don’t have the luxury of a tech bubble down here, so we all have to figure our business models out quickly, deliver value and make the bucks.

“We’re a city of hustlers… We know how to sell, and we can put sizzle on the burger.”

Grubwithus co-founder Eddy Lu, who spent time in the Bay Area as a UC Berkeley student, echoes these sentiments, saying, “We chose to be located where our customers are (and where the sun is!). Also, we’re going to be an operations heavy company, so why compete with Facebook, Google, Zynga, Twitter, etc. for ops talent when we can have L.A. all to ourselves?”

Craig says that since he moved to Los Angeles in the fall of 2008, he’s seen a tenfold increase in the number of startups in the area. He also noted “the emergence of early and successful founders investing in and advising the new crop of companies.”

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