July 12th, 2011
The Startup Cafe was recently given the opportunity to talk with the founder of TVtracker.com, Mark Hoebich. Mark recently sold his business to Variety Group. TVtracker tracks and analyzes all aspects of U.S. filmed entertainment, including television, feature film and digital entertainment, with coverage of everything from pilot pickups and series orders to motion picture development and post-production.
This fall, Mark will be a mentor at the LA-based startup accelerator, upStart.LA. Second video after the jump. Continue reading »
June 29th, 2011
The ballers at LeanLA have put together another fantastic event. Brett G. Durrett, the Vice President of Engineering & Operations for IMVU, will explain the basic mechanics of Continuous Deployment and discuss the value it creates for lean startups.
With continuous deployment, every commit go live to production servers. Kind of puts a new spin on “ship early, ship often.”
IMVU is a leader in Continuous Deployment, with over 5 years of experience scaling this process to support a technical staff of 50 and a business of more that $40 million in annual revenue. By the end, you should understand that releasing to customers 20+ times per day is possible and that it does scale from individual developers to large companies.
The event is going down at Coloft, tonight at 7pm.
June 28th, 2011
Equal parts clairvoyant, entrepreneur and hustler. Matthias Galica can see the future, and it is peppered with ShareSquare’s QR codes on posters, flyers, billboards, packaging, even TV screens, connecting the offline world with the mobile web. After that, it’s pretty dystopian.
As a first-time entrepreneur, it brings rare pleasure to see my team’s herculean efforts usher us into the home stretch of closing a second funding round on AngelList. Our project, ShareSquare, is a platform for connecting offline audiences with the bands and brands they love, via the mobile web & QR codes, with real-time analytics. We’re positively elated to be able fortify an early lead in the music & entertainment verticals, in addition to building out mCommerce features so highly requested it keeps me up at night. Continue reading »
June 20th, 2011
Making daily finances hassle free for online users is still an open race and there are many startups and established companies vying to help their customers reach their financial goals in a fun and easy way. Los Angeles-based Payoff is one of the those companies and its mission is simple: “Taking control of your money is the first step towards living a positive, fulfilling life.”
Adam Zarlengo, a proud Louisville, Colorado, native and a big Miles Davis fan, is the company’s Product Development Lead. Before joining Payoff he worked at Yahoo! and he also helped with web and social media strategy for Conan O’Brien and Team Coco‘s “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television Tour.” We were able to catch him between deadlines to tell us more about Payoff and their crusade against the boredom of daily finances. Continue reading »
June 20th, 2011
If you’ve read about online business at all in the past decade or so, you’ve likely come across an article from Chris Yeh. From concepts like the Chinese Landlord Principle to whether we can ever have too many startups, I’m always amazed at the powerful insights he provides. Chris has been in the internet game since 1995. He has been a founder, founding employee, or seed investor in almost a dozen startups. He’s currently the Vice President of Marketing for PBworks. Continue reading »
June 15th, 2011
Mike Mothner, Founder and CEO of Wpromote, started his business out of his dorm room in college. Today, Wpromote is a leading search engine marketing agency with 70+ employees managing more than 3,500 clients spanning a wide range of industries and verticals in over 70 countries worldwide. Mike was excited to stop by The Startup Cafe to chat about the early days of Wpromote and to provide some SEM tips for Startups.
June 9th, 2011
There has been a lot of attention this week about California Film Commission’s decision as to what projects will be receiving subsidies from the state’s $100 million fund.
Naturally, I immediately started to think about the fairness of this fund and why a fund like that does not exist for startup sector. Playing favorites should not keep city officials from exercising some foresight. They should be thinking about brand new ways to ensure our city’s dominating position in the future – especially in the times of budget shortfalls.
I am sure that a startup fund, created by the City of Los Angeles with even a small portion of the $100 million offered to film productions by the state, would result in a lot of positive attention from the tech circles and more interest from entrepreneurs. Such a decision would also present our city as one that wants to tap into its full potential and not only be riding on the fortunes of established industries. Continue reading »
June 8th, 2011
Today, as part of our ongoing series of interviews with Los Angeles-based entrepreneurs, we’re interviewing Brian Norgard, founder and product lead of Namesake. Brian is a mainstay in the Los Angeles startup scene. Prior to Namesake, Brian founded Newroo (acquired by FOX Interactive Media) and Ad.ly. He graduated with honors from Brown where he was awarded a National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance grant. Impressive stuff.
What was the idea behind Namesake?
Namesake is a global conversation community. We’re enabling meaningful conversation around topics that people love and areas of expertise. Strangely, open conversation is done extremely poorly on the Web and we want to change that as conversation is fundamental to the progress of humanity. It’s a simple yet powerful mission if we succeed. Continue reading »
June 7th, 2011
A new Los Angeles startup is set to be the first daily deals site for sports fans. Crowd Seats, which launches today, will offer sports tickets at huge discounts, up to 90% off face value. Fans who want to receive offers can simply sign up for the Deals Newsletter on their site.
There is a proven market for these kinds of deals. A handful of teams have experimented with Daily Deals/Group Buying websites in the past two years with great results. Continue reading »
June 6th, 2011
Jerome Chang is opening the newest coworking space in Santa Monica today. Located at 1450 2nd Street, the new Blankspaces Santa Monica will replace their Miracle Mile location as their flagship location.
The Santa Monica location features 20+ offices and 65 workstations. Blankspaces also offers a wide variety of membership packages with prices starting as low as $15 for five hours in the work bar during off-peak hours. You can even get a free week trial membership.
An official Launch Party is taking place on Thursday, June 23rd. Open house and tours are taking place from 1 – 5 PM, mixer from 5 – 9 PM. Appetizers, Wine and beer will be provided.
