Patrick Teng
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The innovation and industry isn't a narrative that can be told or rebranded. Innovation and Industry is where ideas are executed, demoed, and shipped to the world.
Mayor Villaraigosa has A LOT of catching up to do. Mayor Bloomberg, I think, has an innate appreciation for tech because of his company. BTW. While Ed Lee can't walk outside of the civic center without encountering a dozen startups. He even helped Twitter make the decision to stay in San Francisco and move to the tenderloins no less.
And Mayor Villaraigosa? Well... His opponent keynoted the festival this weekend. Where was Mayor Villaraigosa? And compared to San Francisco, let's face it, most startups are on the west side. The bottom line is, we're still lala land to people, and our neighbors to the north and east won't take L.A. seriously until our leaders start taking ourselves seriously.
To start. How about offering an incubator or startup entrepreneurs the same $1 lease deal that was offered to the Occupy L.A. people? Make the the new tech and entrepreneur hub. I'll be we can generate more revenue and attention for the city that way. Wouldn't that be awesome to have the brightest and hungriest minds in a 500 Startups type space right behind city hall?
Does the L.A. tech scene need a SXWS-like event like this? Or do we need an event more like Disrupt, Launch, or Demo; where startups and products are presented, launched, and championed by the press. And speaking of which. Where was the press coverage? Even our home town outlets like TechZulu, SoCalTech, and Lalawag wrote nothing about the events, the panels, or the startups at the different demo and pitch events.
Any event like this is always a positive addition to the community, but does this event and others thereafter move us forward as a whole? What did people learn from the panels and events? What war stories were shared so that younger startups can learn from it? Somehow, I don't feel like the tech community even inched forward with this event. The only thing that moved forward this weekend were the pub-crawls that happened between events and walking from Google's Venice office to Santa Monica.
But it's no small feat to pull off a festival like SBF, the Digital LA pulled off a tremendous job, and I'm definitely looking to the next SBF and the one after that. Because I'm an optimist, proud of L.A. and her diversity, and I think there's a lot more that we can show and tell to the world than what they currently think of us.
Le booo for David Sacks!
This reminds me of the "Everything is a remix" series, especially the third video. (http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/) Where copying and stealing is at the very core of creativity, and happens in three stages. First, the student copies the master. Second, the student transforms the original works with his/her own twist. Last, the student becomes the master and creates new work by combining different the works that the student has stole, copied, and transformed. :)
I think Earth Class Mail has been opening mail for people for a while. But I think Outbox's proposition of mixing virtual mass mailers along with your regular snail mail is pretty novel. I miss those PennySavers I got as a kid...
@mcarney7 @Hill_Christoph I hope their pivot is good. They have a great eng team there.
@CindyBiSV I couldn't agree more.
How far down the line does John and his wife plan to have children? I don't think there are necessarily faults in his argument for hacking family planning, but I would argue that by delaying the joys of having children him and his wife are missing out on some of the fun things that come with being younger parents. To me, a part of being a parent is interacting with your children, and not leaving them to nannies and coaches all the time. Keeping up and playing basketball with a 10 year old is a lot easier when one is 45 instead of 55. Waking up early or staying up late to wait for your son or daughter after swim or band practice takes stamina on part of the parents. All of these things, and more, my mom and dad did for me while they were in their 40s and early 50s. I'm not saying that you can't be as vibrant with your children being older parents, however, the younger parents just seem like they're having more fun with their small children when I see them at the park, the beach, and at school than older parents.
If Intel and Microsoft would stop requiring those stickers to be on the devices, then they'd have a chance.
I have to applaud Michael for writing this article with a healthy dose of skepticism. Because that's what everyone is thinking and feeling right now in L.A. All this incubator and accelerator activity are great, but there's still just that feeling in the air that they're all really just looking deal flow, and not trying to nurture the talent and eco-system.
We're still waiting to see an LA incubator to really bet on the people of the startups, like Y Combinator and TechStars do, rather than how sound their "business" model is. Like these guys, Leftronic, are CalTech alumns that was accepted YC. Like seriously, they're building an online dashboard platform, when there were already dozens out there. I honestly don't know if any LA incubators would have taken them on. However, YC did because they believed in the team.
There's a lot of talent and ideas out there in L.A., we just have to make them feel like what he/she is doing is worthwhile, and not going to be over shadowed by the stilettos, martini glasses, and the paparazzi. As a hacker I love working on new and big ideas, and know that my creation is awesome because of its merits and not because someone endorsed it. And as a hacker in L.A., I'm always being approached by people with their ideas of a new app, website, or platform. Some suck and some are really interesting. So there's definitely no shortage of ideas in L.A.
Yes, I agree a path to revenue and traction is very important, but there's only so much celebrity-endorsed-subscription-based-<insert product here> ideas I can listen to before I want to take a shower. We seem to forget that some of the biggest companies in technology were formed without a solid plan of making money. Even MySpace was born as a small side project.
So I want to wish i/o L.A. the best of luck. And no sarcasm here... but I'm really glad there's finally a place where I can spend $10 a day on coffee and be allowed to just code, and not be seen like I'm a squatter. Thanks!
1. By default, Fox News is conservative because they appeal to the conservatives.
2. And if one really wanted to be objective, you pretty much have to read academic and peer-reviewed journals.
3. WSJ does well because their readers are the 1%.
As a registered republican and NRA member. I'm actually offended that people actually think Fox news is "objective". They're just more in-your face about it.
To all the arm-chair producers and arm-chair studio executives out there...
Okay. Has anyone ever visited a Hollywood lot during production, or watched the process of planning and executing a street chase scene? These things are so elaborate, with so many moving pieces, that it would blow your mind. And really, if after seeing these productions in action, I dare any to tell me that a film like the Dark Knight Rises doesn't cost $100M to make.
And by the way, that $100 doesn't support just ONE company like a series D funding does in Silicon Valley. That $100M supports an entire eco-system of FX shops, sound shops, support crews, prop shops, writers, extras, manufacturing. And films, like the Dark Knight, do that in multiple cities across the country. Next time, sit through the credits and count the number of names then multiply that by 2.5. Yeah, that's how many people $100M needs to feed.
Everyone tries to make Hollywood the villain in this space, vilifying their vanity and greed. That Hollywood should be killed because of the greed. But seriously, what company and industry doesn't have vanity or greed? And why should anyone accept diminishing profits and budgets? People will say new revenue models, advertisement, and etc. are part of the answer. No thanks. I'd rather not have 45 minutes of ads when I sit down at my local AMC to watch Wrath Of the Titans later today. Product placements you say? Does every movie need to feature an Audi, Coke, or Microsoft Bing? But really... How do you recoup $100M without movie theaters, disc sales, or digital downloads?
Maybe it's not Hollywood that should be killed. Maybe it's the their way of thinking and our way of thinking that should be killed. Hollywood should know that we have limited budgets, limited time, but more options now. But consumers, especially tech people, should kill the way we're approaching this problem and recognize that talent, imagination, production, and those attributes at scale takes money to do. No amount of EC2 instances can produce great movies and TV shows.