
Silicon Beach: Los Angeles booms as startup hub - martincmartin
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21709564-cheaper-location-tech-companies-takes-los-angeles-booms-startup-hub
======
kepano
While many of the established tech companies seem to have clustered around
Santa Monica, the younger companies are mostly on the east side (downtown,
East Hollywood, Silver Lake, etc), far from "Silicon Beach".

I have been in Los Angeles for 8 years and love it here. When my co-founder
and I moved up to Mountain View to attend YC there was no question that we
would come back to LA afterwards.

People think of LA as Hollywood/media-driven, but it's also one of the biggest
manufacturing towns in the country, the biggest port, an important hub for
science/technology (Caltech, JPL, SpaceX, Tesla, etc).

There is a lot of untapped potential for startups here. Not to mention that
rent is about half the price.

~~~
robomartin
I don't understand why these companies flock to that general area. Traffic is
impenetrable from 6:00AM until sometimes 9:00PM. If you need the 405/105/10,
etc you are hosed. It can take an hour to do ten miles.

It's horrific and it can't be good for recruiting. I know excellent engineers
who have been offered jobs in that area and refused due to having to devote 3
to 5 hours a day stuck in traffic.

To me this means they would have access to a much larger talent pool if they
strategically moved away from that impenetrable mess. Lived and worked in the
area for years, it gets old.

~~~
dima55
Traffic is a lifestyle choice. There is indeed a small minority of people that
have decided to sit in traffic 3 to 5 hours per day in order to live in a
large and/or cheap house in the boonies somewhere. But that's crazy, and most
people don't do this. You can also choose to not drive, and
walk/bike/bus/train everywhere. LA is a real city and all that.

~~~
deckard1
People love to say this. But it's total mythology.

For the vast majority of people living in LA, the bus is not an option. Your
30 minute commute will turn into a 3 hour slog.

Freedom of location is severely limited once you have a significant other or
kids. School districts in LA are total garbage, and having a significant other
means at least one of you is going to be commuting across town and sitting in
traffic for 2 hours a day.

> most people don't do this

I guess all that traffic on the 10, 101, 110, 5, and 405 is just some
collective hallucination. I was shocked when I found a number of people
commuting to Irvine from such places as DTLA. That is, until I found people
commuting to San Diego. Those are the rare ones (I hope). But there is a large
portion of LA that commutes 2-3 hours a day. Anyone that commutes from the
westside to east (or vice versa) is hitting 2 hours easy. I did it for a
number of years. And by looking at Santa Monica Blvd, Wilshire, Olympic, etc.
_many_ more people are doing the same.

I will never take a job in Santa Monica. Unless you live in SM, it's not worth
it.

~~~
eganist
And rents in SM are comparable to anywhere on the peninsula, which negates any
cost advantage anyone thinks they might have going south anyway.

This is why I'm sticking to supporting the startup scene around DC instead.

~~~
muninn_
Wait what? D.C. Is incredibly expensive and also hasn't some of the worst
traffic in the country.

I love D.C. But not sure I'm following your reasoning here....

~~~
eganist
Not as much with cities like Arlington and Tyson's Corner, which is where a
lot of startup activity is taking place.

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ariwilson
I've been living in West LA since 2008. It's certainly exploded recently in
terms of startups as Google, Snapchat, Riot Games and SpaceX have expanded
their presences.

The West LA area has always had a strong tech presence from the gaming,
advertising, and defense industries though, going back many decades.

~~~
Hydraulix989
I was kicking around the idea of looking for a tech job in LA a while back.
The names you mentioned seemed to be the ONLY ones worth pursuing. It's just
not the same as San Francisco.

~~~
LAMan5000
Yeah, I moved here about two years ago.

The other big difference between LA and SF is like, the penalty for not
working close to where you live is absolutely brutal. Taking BART or the
subway is moderately annoying, but driving from the Silver Lake to Venice
every day is absolutely horrifying.

So in Venice you got Google and Snapchat, although apparently most of Google
is getting moved down to Playa Vista, you got a handful of small startups,
lots of VR companies led by people with media rather than technical
backgrounds (maybe that's fine?), and that's about it.

Nearby you got EA in Playa del Rey (kill me), you got some old companies in
Santa Monica and a couple more startups that don't seem interesting
necessarily.

Even SpaceX is a pretty far cruise from the Santa Monica/Venice area, but
there are a bunch more companies that hire engineers in that El Segundo area,
but not necessarily ones that you would want to work at.

It's interesting, certainly, and I think the Snapchat IPO will lead to a lot
of rich guys suddenly turning angel and so on. LA has basically never had any
real exits until very recently (dollar shave, snapchat), which has limited the
development of the ecosystem. Every old guy in LA is like "did you know I
founded Myspace?" Based on my time in LA, I would have to estimate the number
of founders of Myspace around 3-500. Also stamps dot com.

In summary, I would say LA is pretty much like New York City circa 2005.

The complete secret weapon of LA though is UCLA. The quality of graduates
coming out of UCLA computer science is staggering, and from the hiring side,
they're not competed for or recruited as heavily as say Stanford kids.

~~~
kaspm
Worked in Tech in Los Angeles since 2000. Although lesser known as "tech"
companies, there are several companies that have large investments in serious
technology in LA:

Disney NBCU (specifically Fandango, parts of former M-Go) Ticketmaster/Live
Nation eHarmony Edmunds.com The Honest Company

Other Tech companies left off the list: Hulu Yahoo (much smaller than before)
AOL Hyperloop One and Faraday Future are coming up

~~~
Hydraulix989
Interesting, they're all media companies.

~~~
dba7dba
Yes. In LA almost all serious tech jobs are media company related.

~~~
disordr
Factual.com Location Data company with some serious tech chops.

------
jaequery
I lived in LA for all my life and have worked at various places including
DTLA, West LA (SM, Sawtelle), and even the SFV (Sherman Oaks). But I gotta say
working at Venice (right by the beach) was truly an amazing experience. Coming
to office with shorts and flip flops is a given, but heading out to the beach
while getting some sun in the sands to get some Vitamin D while cooling off
your head is pretty much priceless! Venice also has a pretty strong bike
culture, which is pretty rare for LA standards, so you see a lot of people
bike to work, which is awesome.

And some days, which is pretty much whenever we feel like it, we would just
take our laptops and work right on the beach with the sun, with some towels
spread out, chilling, swimming, and go for a swim and come back, then go back
to work. It made me appreciate just how fun work can be and you don't have to
sacrifice quality of your life just because you are working for a startup.

To me, working by the beach is seriously a no brainer, I mean more companies
should be doing this! It is really hard to go back to working at an office
building outside of it once you've experienced the freedom and lifestyle of
being by the beach. Also, there is a big difference working close to the beach
(like SM) and actually being ON the beach (Venice). I'll take the latter any
day.

~~~
lqdc13
I don't understand how one can focus in such an environment.

I need headphones, ideally a lot of screen real estate and for nothing to be
moving in my periphery.

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angst_ridden
As a Venice OG, I can say they've been ruining what used to make the place
unique. Then again, having a Silicon Valley clone has helped my real estate
valuation.

~~~
farright
Question: if other groups are so proud of rejecting people in tech, why should
people in tech be expected to be welcoming towards outsiders. The way I see
it, if you get to have your cool hip location for yourself, we should get to
have our trillion dollar industry for ourselves.

~~~
kesselvon
Once tech moves in, a place stops being cool and hip. Just like tech gutted
San Francisco.

~~~
muad
Tech built San Francisco.

------
riffic
I mod a techLA subreddit in case anyone wants to share news of interest to the
community:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/TechLA/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TechLA/)

Some folks also tweet with the #techLA hashtag. (Keep in mind, if you tweet,
the #LATech hashtag is reserved for a university in Ruston, Louisiana.)

~~~
nickthemagicman
Just joined thanks for the info!

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mixmastamyk
Something must be going wrong up there if you're finding Santa Monica and
environs cheap, haha.

~~~
santaclaus
LA and neighbors are somehow becoming the cheap west coast urban area. Seattle
is now on par with LA, and Portland is quickly on track to overtake Seattle...

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adamnemecek
If anyone here wants to grab a $BEVERAGE sometime, hit me up. I just moved
here and I'm looking for like minded people. Email is in my profile.

~~~
mikeflynn
I too have recently moved to the area and I'm hiring a new team. Any Clojure
devs in LA?

~~~
base698
Me! Shipped one thing in production with clojure but haven't had a chance to
do anymore. There were a few startups from LA at Clojure West.

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exBarrelSpoiler
Curious synergy between this article and the San Jose Mercury story about SF
Bay Area commuter traffic now being worse than LA's.

~~~
Bahamut
It's nowhere near as bad - I live in the Valley & have a nice 20-30 min
commute into the office with otherwise pretty tame traffic around just about
every day in my 2 1/2 years in the area. Meanwhile every visit I have had into
LA had pretty bad traffic at many times you'd expect it to be normal,
including after 10 am on a random Tuesday and ~1 pm on a Sunday.

There is far worse traffic in many of the worst traffic areas in the US than
the Bay Area, I'm still confused as to why some try to perpetuate this myth on
here.

~~~
mturmon
Visitors say this. I don't buy it...I feel like LA natives avoid these kind of
traffic disasters by avoiding peak times and knowing traffic patterns.

~~~
jedmeyers
Is 1 pm on a Sunday a peak time for LA?

~~~
jefurii
My sense is that 1pm Sunday is when lots of people are either a) just getting
out of church or b) just waking up with a hangover. They then try to go
somewhere they don't normally go to and don't know the directions to. Normal
weekday traffic patterns go totally out the window and it's chaos.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Prime time at the beach.

~~~
mturmon
Yep, Sunday afternoon in Venice was one of my peak traffic moments.

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dmode
Having lived in LA for over 2 years, I doubt the tech industry there would
truly rival the valley some day. I am very happy with the emerging tech scene,
but when I was in LA, it was all about "the industry" \- which was a reference
to Hollywood. Many conversations revolved around what it was like to work in
the industry or who knows whom from the industry.

The other issue with the tech industry in LA would be that it will run geeks
and nerds out of town. Appearance and looks are far more important in LA than
it will be in SF.

~~~
mixmastamyk
"The Valley" in LA means the San Fernando Valley, think "Valley Girls."

------
oriel
Can we please stop with the Silicon Beach nonsense? The only people who use it
in earnest are the yuppies at networking events. It's like calling Seattle the
Silicon Forest.

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cjensen
Silicon Alley[1], Beach[2], Desert[3], Forest[4], Gulf[5], Peach[6],
Prairie[7], Taiga[8], Wadi[9].

To paraphrase a Game of Thrones put-down, if you have to call yourself
"Silicon" to say you are like the Valley, then you aren't like the Valley.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Alley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Alley)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Beach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Beach)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Desert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Desert)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Forest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Forest)

[5]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Gulf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Gulf)

[6]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_peach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_peach)

[7]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Prairie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Prairie)

[8]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Taiga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Taiga)

[9]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Wadi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Wadi)

~~~
eggdude
Don't forget Silicon Slopes:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Slopes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Slopes)

Found the whole list on Wikipedia too:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_with_%22Silicon...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_with_%22Silicon%22_names)

~~~
aji
funny Seattle only has "Silicon Canal" for the bit around Fremont where
Google, Adobe, Tableau, GeekWire, Facebook, etc. have offices. you'd think
between Amazon, Microsoft, Expedia, Zillow, Redfin, and the countless other
tech companies with headquarters or satellite offices in the area that some
nickname would have sprung up for the whole region. "Silicon Isthmus" or
something.

maybe we're still riding the "Jet City" thing from when Boeing was here?

~~~
jbeda
I prefer "Cloud City"

~~~
boulos
I'm pretty sure my little section of SOMA was called the Cloud Corridor before
you guys were being called Cloud City, Joe ;).

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slowandlow
How unfortunate, hopefully the culture in the city doesn't go stale and
homogeneous.

~~~
Hydraulix989
My friends who are California natives say LA is what SF was like before tech
ruined it. Venice Beach is so chill and laid back, I really loved the culture
there. Sad to see it vanishing there, too, and I really empathize with the
fact that I'm part of the problem.

~~~
hueving
Your friends just sound like bitter assholes tbh. LA is a sprawling metropolis
that makes absolutely no sense to compare to San Francisco. LA as a whole
isn't 'like' anything because it has such wildly diverse areas. Do you think
Santa Monica has a similar feel to Compton or Hollywood?

~~~
Hydraulix989
See, we actually do agree here, given that the SF Bay Area has lost its
diversity and become so monolithic that you can no longer draw a comparison
anymore.

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ilaksh
That tells you something about what a clusterf*^k the Bay Area must be at this
point if they think LA is attractive.

