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We asked a few of the top investors in LA tech companies what companies are on the way to making a big name for LA. Here are the companies that they are excited about and that should be on your radar.
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Recommended by: Gil Elbaz (Founding Partner at TenOneTen and CEO at Factual)
What they do: They are a crowdsourced platform for users to view, rank and vote on broad opinion-based questions.
What investors say: “Ranker is an example of a company that’s doing really interesting things with data,” Elbaz said. “Full disclosure: I’ve invested in them. They’re one of the most trafficked sites. It feels a little bit like a silly site that has top lists of ‘20 most interesting celebrities,’ but under the covers they are building a really interesting database of tastes. They’re building up a very interesting data set.”
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Recommended by: Matt McCall (Partner at Pritzker Group Venture Capital), Arteen Arabshahi (senior analyst at Karlin Ventures). Neither has invested in Retention Science.
What they do: They are a Retention Automation Platform that leverages big data analytics and predictive algorithms to help businesses automatically re-engage existing customers.
What investors say: “I think Jerry Jao at Retention Science has done a good job of creating a data analytics play in LA, whose ecosystem is typically not as focused on the space,” Arabshahi said. “I'm a big believer that retention matters more than acquisition so it's great to see a product that is algorithmically focusing on that.”
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Recommended by: Mark Suster (Partner at Upfront Ventures)
What they do: user personalization with Interest Graphs
What investors say: “I’m super proud of the work produced by Gravity, a local LA tech company I invested in who was recently sold to AOL for $90 million,” Suster wrote in a recent Both Sides of the Table post. “They produced algorithms and systems that helped to personalize the Internet so that you have a unique experience when you visit individual websites. They have a tremendous reputation both in LA and in the SF Bay Area for their tech chops. When AOL came calling there was another interested technology company based in the Bay Area. AOL committed to keeping the team in LA after the acquisition and in building a deeper technology team in town. This is a great result for our town and I have much respect for the accomplishments of Amit, Jim & Steve and the whole team.”
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Recommended by: Mark Suster (Partner at Upfront Ventures)
What they do: helps power the entire app lifecycle.
What investors say: “Burstly is a Santa Monica-based team that I also proudly funded,” Suster wrote in his post. “And they were allegedly acquired (or so TechMeme says) by Apple in order to absorb the great engineers that built the leading iOS testing platform TestFlight. Evan, Ryan, Trystan, Ben, Ben, Randy and a whole lot more great people created the market-leading company in mobile-ad mediation (30 billion ads monthly at its peak) and mobile testing. And if they were acquired by Apple that would be quite an accomplishment – especially for a product that will continue to live.”
