Start Yourself Up & Follow 14 Of L.A.'s Thriving Startups
Los Angeles is a hotbed for startups. Mark Suster, a long-time investor in L.A. startups, informed Business Insider of the three main areas where Los Angeles excels - online video, advertising and vertical e-commerce. He also named fourteen local startups that everyone should be following.
Machinima makes videos that appeal to gamers, including trailers and original editorial content. You've probably never heard of it unless you're into gaming, but it's absolutely huge: in May, the company showed more than 660 million videos to 73 million unique users and was the number one entertainment channel on YouTube.Maker Studios is like an old-fashioned Hollywood studio, only focused exclusively on YouTube videos. It seeks and hires talent, produces videos, then finds advertisers to back them. It now has more than 125 dedicated YouTube channels with 21 million subscribers and 300 million views a month.
MovieClips has the exclusive rights to clips from a bunch of famous movies -- not just trailers, but full clips. Users can search the site to find bits like the Spinal Tap scene in which Nigel Tufnel explains that his amps are louder because they go to 11. There's also an easy way to apply for a license to reuse certain clips.
Break Media isn't exactly a new startup, but still gets little attention outside the world of online video. The company was was founded in 2004 and started out by soliciting funny home videos for online distribution. Lionsgate owns 42% of Break Media, which they acquired in 2007. It now has 180 employees, its own production branch, a network of video sites, and a massive video advertising network. It serves more than 57 million videos per DAY to more than 100 million unique monthly viewers.
In April, Viddy launched an iPhone app that lets users take, modify, and share videos. The company plans to move its app to the iPad, Android, and other platforms as well.
Ad network Burstly helps mobile developers place ads from ad networks within their apps, while letting them retain control over exactly which ads appear.
GumGum helps ads monetize images -- not by selling banner ads, which don't work, but by placing ads over the images they're already using. It's the biggest in-image ad network in the world, serving ads to more than 100 million unique viewers a month.
Based in Beverly Hills, Ad.ly has been operating under the radar for some time now, but gained notoriety for powering Charlie Sheen's crazed love affair with Twitter earlier this year. Now, TechCrunch is reporting that Ad.ly is being courted by multiple big tech companies -- Twitter and Google being among the most likely buyers.
ShoeDazzle recently received a $30 million investment from hot Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. This Kim Kardashian-backed company that sells shoes via subscription is probably the biggest name among them.
This "next-generation e-commerce company" was founded by MySpace cofounder Josh Berman and former Slingshot Labs founder Diego Berdakin. Its first service was JewelMint, which sends users designer jewelry each month for a subscription of $30.
Pose launched in January 2011 with a simple idea: download the app, take photos of your favorite fashion finds, add info like how much they cost, and share them with the world. It's like Instagram for people who like to shop.
Altly is working a better alternative to Facebook. The company hasn't launched its first product yet, but founder Dmitry Shapiro wrote a manifesto about the need to have more control over which information you share with which friends. It sounds a lot like what Google+ is doing.
Factual was created in 2007 by Gil Elbaz (shown here), the cofounder of Applied Semantics, which Google bought to form the basis of its AdSense ad network. It builds technology to let developers insert data more easily into Web pages. The company raised $25 million last December from a who's who list of investors, and Suster is convinced it will become one of L.A.'s hottest companies.
TrueCar is not really a hidden gem -- everybody who's familiar with the L.A. tech scene mentions it, but outside L.A. it doesn't get much press. TrueCar compiles data from car sales to tell shoppers what other people are actually paying. The company has been around since 2005 and is now the number one source of referrals to car dealers, says Suster.
Investors, have at 'em!
