

Ask: What's The Startup Scene Like In Southern California? - stevenj

I'll be in Southern Cal (L.A. and San Diego) next week and was wondering what the startup scene (both tech and non-tech) is like there.
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ilaksh
Not an expert on any scenes or sure what you mean exactly, but I have been to
a few meetup events for the San Diego JavaScript Meetup.com group, and they
are definitely mentioning this "startup scene" thing as though they are part
of it. There is some overlap with the SD Ruby meetup.com group people. They
have a meeting on Tuesday <http://www.meetup.com/sandiegojs/events/41414182/>
Meets at 3rd Space <http://3rdspace.co/>.

Besides 3rd Space there are also places like Co-Merge <http://co-merge.com/>
and the Hive <http://www.hivehaus.net/> where some startupy types are
sometimes. There is also an HTML5 meetup.com group.

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stevenj
Cool, thanks.

I was mainly wondering if there are notable startups that are based there
and/or if there is a strong community of people working the startup life.

~~~
caseya
Yeah, there are quite a few notable startups and a strong community that is
growing very quickly. Just had Startup Weekend in Orange County with another
planned for March and one in LA in January.

Some solid Tech Meetups: \- OC: <http://www.meetup.com/OC-Tech-Startup/> \-
LA: <http://www.meetup.com/Los-Angeles-Lean-Startup-Circle/> \- SD:
<http://www.meetup.com/SanDiego-Tech-Founders/>

I'm down in Orange County so I'm more involved in the community here with
startups such as Mavenlink, Catchfree, and Drumbi. If you're going through LA,
I strongly suggest stopping by Coloft.

If you have more questions or anything, let me know.

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jmm
I'm doing a project looking at startup hubs, and some of the related factors.
Here's a map of LA startups with some neighborhood outlines:
<http://imgur.com/hiG3Y> .

The data is a crawl from crunchbase, so it's not perfect, but it provides a
rough indicator or where startups have popped up over the last 5 years.

The raster underlay is a function of point density within a set radius.

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zubr1768
I am moving back to SD next week after a ~10yr hiatus. Any anecdotal info I
could offer regarding my experience there is outdated, though I can remember
many good experiences working with web development circa 97-2002.

Very interested in finding groupings of web-oriented startups, designers,
developers and entrepreneurs to plug into. Please keep the links coming and
thanks... Looking forward to it! :D

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abbasmehdi
LA Hacker News meetup group is pretty awesome as well!

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irunbackwards
My startup is kind of detatched from either of those hubs, we're rooted in
Palm Desert. (Palm Springs) Thriving, though!

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rprasad
Check out the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, CoLoft (14th Street in
Santa Monica), Hulu (Olympic and Bundy?, Santa Monica), and Indie Desk
(Downtown Los Angeles). If you have the time to fight traffic (or if you take
the Gold Line metro from Downtown), check out Pasadena, which has numerous
technology (not software) startups.

Due south of Santa Monia, in Playa Del Rey and Marina Del Rey, you'll find
gaming giants (like EA and Activision) and gaming indies.

On your way down to SD, you can stop by Irvine, which is pretty famous for its
biotech scene.

Throughout SoCal, you'll come across food trucks. They did not actually
originate in SoCal, but they did take off here. Sites like Foodtrux and
Truxmaps can help you track down nearby trucks.

Consider using Meetup to see if there are any tech-related meetups happening
during your trip. There's usually at least one or two each week. Also, the
Miliken Institute has a startup-related panel every month.

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hendrix
How does it compare to seattle or boston?

