Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! It's officially holiday party season and there's a lot to celebrate locally. Check out all the events! What's your ugly sweater game like? Reply with a photo and we'll share on social. Also make sure to find your way to the new Cove offices to see how they...

We're nearing the end of the year and yet things keep heating up locally. UCI's The Cove is opening up its  new digs and I'm excited to see how many more events and resources they can pack under one roof. Speaking of the Cove, the Cove Fund and local VC Okapi Capital recently invested in San...

I was recently honored to give some opening remarks at the OC Innovation Summit by 41Orange . I talked about innovation in building inclusive startup and tech ecosystems. You can actually watch the talk here and Ethan Perez at The Cove wrote some takeaways here as well. I was thrilled to see...

Happy Wednesday! What's been fun over the last few months that I have been spending time in both Orange County and San Diego is the cross pollination that's happening between the ecosystems. I can't tell you how many times I come to an event in Irvine or San Clemente and run into a San Diegan who...

Hello Q4. Man that happened fast! As we fall forward, I would love to continue sharing people and resources I am meeting in real time. Recently I had the privilege of meeting two ecosystem leaders,  Carey Ransom  and  Brett Fulmer . BrokerBrett is a connector, interested in helping amplify and...

Over the last few weeks, we've been taking time to build denser communities through our Founders Dinner and CTO Dinner series. Founders Dinners bring together entrepreneurs and investors and CTO Dinners aim to connect startup and big company technical leaders. Thanks to all who have joined us and...

Happy September! Lots of great news and events in this latest issue of the newsletter. A great trend worth spotlighting is the new early stage capital coming to light. From local cyber tech company Crowdstrike  raising an early stage fund, OCTANe  accelerator raising funds, and TCA OC creating...

Summer is almost over?! It feels like it with August coming to a quick end. But there's a lot going on, especially with some of our big name OC brands. Late stage fintech startup Acorns is raising more celebrity money, Amazon is launching its fleet of delivery robots, and Surfline made an...

Happy August! I am back in the States after a great UK and Ireland trip. While there, I spent time getting to know some of the physical spaces where startup communities are growing in London, Dublin, and Belfast, and it had me thinking about density. In a lot of tech hubs, you see...

In OC, we are lucky to have an economy that brings many big tech and startup jobs. Between 600 new jobs from Epson and new funding for local startups, the tech talent growth is inspiring. To be blunt, venture funding goes directly into hiring employees. While there's a lot of great young talent...