Silicon Beach

Silicon Beach is the Westside region of the Los Angeles metropolitan area that is home to over 500 tech startup companies, with emphasis on the coastal strip north of LAX to Santa Monica Mountains, but the term may be applied loosely or colloquially to refer to most anywhere in the LA Basin. Major technology companies have opened offices in the region including Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, BuzzFeed, Facebook, Salesforce, AOL, Electronic Arts, EdgeCast Networks, and MySpace. Additionally, several mobile ventures seeded here like Snapchat and Tinder. In 2012, the region was considered the second- or third-hottest tech hub in the world, according to some metrics.[1][2] Nevertheless, the headquarters of these established corporate tech titans tends to be elsewhere, though the region has had startups proliferation. Unlike the traditional definition of Silicon Valley (Menlo Park to Santa Clara) where the economy is overwhelmingly technology geared, Silicon Beach, much like San Francisco, tends to have a more diversified economy whereby tourism, finance, and/or other industries also play a major role.

Detailed locations

The tech influx has had major impacts on the type and availability of office space and on home prices in Playa Vista, Playa Del Rey, Westchester, Santa Monica, and Venice, already high previously due to beachfront location, has exacerbated the situation and the region suffers from many of the same high cost issues that led companies to flee Silicon Valley/SF Bay. The effects are also spilling over into Marina del Rey, and Hermosa Beach and continues to attract tech firms, venture capital, and startups.[3] One of the amenities of the area is relatively easy access to LAX, the biggest and most connected airport of Western North America, nevertheless the massive airport represents a physical barrier to land for expansion. An exception is SpaceX in Hawthorne, located on the south side of the airport.

Start-up pockets have also emerged in nearby Culver City, West L.A., and El Segundo.[4] Other pockets include Downtown Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and Hollywood, also pricey areas even before the tech influx.[5][6] The tendency of companies to congregate in these centrally-located, high income areas has raised concerns[7] about the feasibility of racial minorities joining the workforce, as they tend to live in further outlying areas.

Startups

Silicon Beach is also home to a number of start-up incubators and accelerators, such as Amplify.LA, Science, Disney Accelerator, and TechStars Cedars Sinai.[8] Higher education institutions headquartered in Silicon Beach include Loyola Marymount University and Otis College of Art and Design.[9] Other higher education institutions in the nearby Southern California region or with satellite campuses in/nearby Silicon Beach include: Art Center College of Design, California Institute of Technology, University of California Los Angeles, University of Southern California. The RAND Corporation is headquartered in Santa Monica.[10] In the first six months of 2013, start-ups in Silicon Beach raised over $500 million in funding, and there were 94 new start-ups and nine acquisitions.[11]

History

In 1983, PC Magazine reported that "some people are starting to call" Boca Raton, Florida—where IBM had developed its Personal Computer, and other technology companies had facilities—"Silicon Beach, in deference to the great valley of the West".[12] In 1984 Silicon Beach Software was formed in San Diego, California.[13] Silicon Beach Australia was used to describe that country's internet technology community in 2008.[14] There are four significant areas in Australia that are nurturing start-ups: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth.[15]

List of startups based in Silicon Beach

Company Year founded Industry Valuation
Bitium 2012 Cloud Computing $8.9M [16]
The Bouqs Company 2012 Flowers $60M[17]
Hulu 2007 Television Streaming Services $100M [18]
Distillery 2008 Mobile Application Development, UX/UI
BeachMint 2010 E-commerce $74.7M [19]
TrueCar 2005 Automotive websites $1.65 billion[20]
Kuapay 2011 Mobile Payments $16.5M[21]
Eaze 2014 Cannabis
Whisper 2012 Social media [22]
Enplug 2012 Software $2.5M[23][24]
Fullscreen 2011 Digital Media
Snap Inc. 2011 Social media (went public on NYSE in Mar '17: SNAP) $23 billion[25]
Swagbucks / Prodege, LLC 2007 Digital Rewards & Cash Back
TigerText 2010 Messaging, Text Analytics, Communications Infrastructure $625M[26]
Dollar Shave Club 2011 Consumer packaged goods $1 billion[27]
.xyz 2014 Internet Domain Registry
Tapiture 2012 Social media
Nasty Gal 2006 retail Unknown - Chapter 11 [28][29]

References

  1. ↑ "Startup Genome Ranks The World's Top Startup Ecosystems: Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv & L.A. Lead The Way". TechCrunch. 2012-11-20.
  2. ↑ "Silicon Beach emerges as a tech hotbed". USA Today. 2012-07-15.
  3. ↑ Logan, Tim (January 2, 2015) "Buoyed by Silicon Beach, Westchester enjoys a housing surge" Los Angeles Times
  4. ↑ Khouri, Andrew (January 15, 2016). "Bixby Land's $49-million office building sale a sign 'it's not the old El Segundo'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
  5. ↑ Chang, Andrea (March 7, 2015). "Tech scene takes hold in revitalized downtown L.A." Los Angeles Times.
  6. ↑ Ungerleider, Neal (October 31, 2014). "Why A Subway-Building Binge Could Transform L.A.'s Tech Culture". Fast Company. Retrieved 28 December 2015.
  7. ↑ "Why Tech Degrees Are Not Putting More Blacks and Hispanics Into Tech Jobs".
  8. ↑ "A list of top LA accelerators and incubators".
  9. ↑ Staff (June 2018). "Silicon Beach: The Next Wave". LMU Magazine. Loyola Marymount University. Archived from the original on 2015-08-13.
  10. ↑ "RAND Locations".
  11. ↑ "Over $500M Raised by 92 LA Startups in the First Half of 2013".
  12. ↑ Porter, Martin (November 1983). "The Talk of Boca". PC Magazine. p. 162. Retrieved 22 October 2013.
  13. ↑ Hill, Ryan (February 4, 2016) [www.triton.news/2016/02/813/ "San Diego is bringing back Silicon Beach"] [The Triton]
  14. ↑ LeMay, Renai (July 28, 2008). "Silicon Beach Australia". ZDNet. Retrieved 2013-05-30.
  15. ↑ Kohler, Alan (November 21, 2012). "Australia's "Silicon Beach" is no Entrepreneurs Paradise". The Drum. ABC.
  16. ↑ "Bitium - Crunchbase". Crunchbase.
  17. ↑ "TheBouqs.com Raises $6 Million to Deliver 'Farm-to-Table' Bouquets". Venture Capital Dispatch. Wall Street Journal. June 26, 2014. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  18. ↑ "Hulu - Crunchbase". Crunchbase.
  19. ↑ "Beachmint Profile on CrunchBase".
  20. ↑ "TrueCar, Inc. Common Stock (TRUE)". NASDAQ.com.
  21. ↑ "Kuapay Profile on CrunchBase".
  22. ↑ "Whisper - Crunchbase". Crunchbase.
  23. ↑ Lawler, Ryan. "Digital Display Startup Enplug Raises $2.5 Million Seed Round". TechCrunch. AOL. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
  24. ↑ Smith, Samantha. "LA Startup Goes from 0 to 100mph In Three Months". Forbes. Retrieved 22 May 2014.
  25. ↑ "SNAP Key Statistics | Snap Inc. Class A Common Stock Stock - Yahoo Finance". finance.yahoo.com. Retrieved 2017-03-20.
  26. ↑ "Funderbeam". www.funderbeam.com.
  27. ↑ "Unilever Buys Dollar Shave Club for $1 Billion".
  28. ↑ "Nasty Gal Profile on CrunchBase".
  29. ↑ "Can Nasty Gal Be Saved?". 26 May 2017.

Coordinates: 33°58′35″N 118°27′04″W / 33.9764°N 118.4512°W / 33.9764; -118.4512

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