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...

Happy July to you! It's already the second half of the year and we have work to do. With the $63 billion acquisit ion of Allergan, we're excited to watch for opportunities to trickle down to the community as they have local offices. Speaking of local impact, Salesforce has  partnered  with the...

It's been another great two weeks for both our startups and investors, including the Crowdstrike IPO which local VC Okapi Capital invested in. Congrats! I am seeing a lot more local investors getting mobile and moving around Southern California, which is great for our companies. We have to go...

And just like that, it's half way through the year! It's getting hot out and so is the local capital with the launch of a few new funds, like Aaron Rodger's new RX3 , which is a $50M fund based in Newport Beach. His GPs include Nate Raabe and Byron Roth as well as other athletes as LPs. Here's...

I can't believe it's already almost June. The first half of this year has flown by, especially with so much exciting stuff going on in OC including a lot of fundings and exits, helping spin our ecosystem flywheel faster. I was recently lucky enough to speak on a panel about angel investing at...