Though LA's digital startup scene is just beginning to bloom, the area has a digital history that, through various acquistions such as Applied Semantics, intertwines the stories of Google and of LA's digital companies. And with Google's increasing presence in LA (seriously, has anyone checked out YouTube's new LA crib?), Built In LA wanted to highlight Google's influence on our tech scene - via profiles of a few people who left Google to set out on their own digital ventures...
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Nelson Cheng, mentor, MuckerLab
“I view my job as to add value for my client -- so anything,” Cheng said. “I try to be aggressive, but respectful, in bringing up significant issues that I see that may not have been raised.”
Built In LA caught up with Cheng to hear how and why he dedicates so much to LA’s digital tech community. Below is an abridged version of the interview:
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Allen Romero, founder, Hang Local
After six years at Google working on everything from AdSense to
technical operations, Allen Romero relocated from San Francisco to LA to found Hang Local, a platform that “lets you know who's available to hang out.” Right now, Romero has a few things on his plate: working on this month’s release of Hang Local’s long-awaited native iOS app and preparing to raise a seed round, hire a team and open a Venice office in 2014.
Romero took a few minutes out from the frenzied life of a founder to chat with Built In LA about his experiences at Google and beyond.
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Kai Gradert, founder and UX lead, Cheers
With experience as a senior visual designer at Google under his belt, developer Kai Gradert founded Cheers in 2010 and it has since grown into a suite of products that includes Cheers, Gripe and, most recently, Flipagram. Just launched on iOS and Android last week, Flipagram helps users to simply turn their photos into short video stories. Going into 2014, Gradert said there is a lot to look forward to with Flipagram as “early user feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.”
Aside from Cheers, Gradert is highly involved in LA’s tech community through meetups and mentoring events where he shares his advice and experiences, a few of which Built In LA captured in this interview:
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Eva Ho, general partner, Susa Ventures
Following five years in a senior product marketing manager role at Google and YouTube (which stemmed from her previous role at Applied Semantics), Eva Ho has dove headfirst into the LA startup community. Currently, she’s a mentor at MuckerLab, VP of Enterprise Sales and Operations at Factual and a managing partner at Susa Ventures. Ho said she will be spending more time getting Susa, which just launched at the beginning of the year, off the ground in 2014. Built In LA caught up with Ho to hear what she is most excited about going into the new year:
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Daniel Bornstein, VP, Global Advertising, deviantART
While at Google from 2007 to 2011, Daniel Bornstein directed the Doubleclick platform account and managed business development in UK and Ireland. He came to LA over a year ago via artist social network deviantART and now works with top 100 global brands to produce branded art-centric content initiatives as VP of Global Advertising. deviantART, with 28 million users and recent financial backing from Autodesk, gives Bornstein a chance partner with brands and engage consumers in interesting ways. Bornstein chatted with Built In LA about how he is leveraging his experiences from Google to propel deviantART’s current success:
