Mark Suster Gives Two Thumbs Up To LA Startup Scene

As many of you know, or should know by now, I am the co-founder of an LA-based startup called Fashion Metric. We initially chose LA to be our home-base because, well, we lived there. However what has kept us there for the last year has been the startup scene which is growing, and fast.

from the blog www.stuckincustoms.com

From amazing co-working spaces like CoLoft and Cross Campus to innovative accelerators and incubators like LaunchPad LA and Amplify it has been amazing to watch the startup scene flourish into what it is today. There are some people who have been absolutely instrumental in making LA such a special place for startups and one of them is legendary VC Mark Suster. If you haven’t read Mark’s blog yet, stop what you’re doing and read it, honestly it is one of my top three favorite blogs and probably the blog that I now read the most regularly.

Today pandodaily featured an article about why Mark believes so much in LA and why the startup scene is poised for incredible growth.

LA will never be Silicon Valley, Suster says. And that’s perfectly okay. But understanding the differences between the two markets underscores the reasons why many of LA’s biggest success stories of the early Internet era didn’t turn into multi-billion companies, and why today’s companies have a better shot at doing so this time around. (Source – pandodaily)

I think this is a very powerful statement. Too often LA is compared to Silicon Valley, but let’s face it, it’s not Silicon Valley, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to be one of the next big places for innovation and cutting-edge startups.

But LA’s biggest strength, according to Suster, is its ability to monetize.
“They say necessity is the mother of all invention,” Suster says. “LA companies monetize early, because they must. It’s true that there have been some companies here that raised $75 million early on, but most don’t. Silicon Valley has mega funds that are willing to take mega risk on Stanford PhDs and try to build the next Cisco. That doesn’t exist here.” (source – pandodaily)

These are exciting times, and I for one feel incredibly fortunate to be in Los Angeles during what I think will be seen one-hundred years from now as a startup renaissance. With leaders like Mark in the community, we are all in very good hands!

As always, I’d love to hear from you! What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of LA?

Photo Credit: Stuck in Customs via Compfight cc

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton