I was all wrong about the Los Angeles startup community

I am proudly an LA native. Yet when I started my career in technology I chose to live in San Francisco, New York, Boston & even Seattle over Los Angeles. I had characterized my hometown as an “entertainment town” and I had chosen not to build my career in entertainment.

I moved back to LA in 2007 for family reasons while pregnant with my first child, yet did so reluctantly based on concerns it would set back my professional career.

I was wrong. Just the opposite happened. My return to Los Angeles coincided with the renaissance of the LA tech sector as the experienced leaders from Web 1.0 had begun funding or founding their second and third companies in what would blossom into the thriving ecosystem that we now find in LA.

I have since built and operated three businesses in LA and more recently joined as a partner in one of region’s leading venture capital funds, Upfront Ventures. As my decade home nears, I am even more bullish on the city and the future of our burgeoning technology community.

While it’s easy to make the case for why LA is a fantastic place to live for weather and lifestyle, I’d like to outline here why it is also an amazing place to work and to start a company.

Talent

You probably know that LA is the home of Caltech, one of the country’s most prestigious science institutions that is blocks away from the NASA-funded Jet Propulsion Laboratory, home of some of our country’s best and brightest minds. You may be surprised to learn that in addition we graduate the largest number of engineers of any region in the country and have more top-25 engineering universities than anywhere else in the US.

Previously, many of these graduates who wanted to pursue software careers would to leave for other cities, but today, an increasing number staying to work at LA’s emerging local success stories like SnapChat, Tinder, Maker Studios, or TrueCar, as well as within the growing local operations of global companies like Google and Facebook.

We are also seeing explosive growth of earlier stage start-ups (great analysis here) along with second and third generation entrepreneurs mentoring and investing in the next generation — folks like Bill Gross, Gil Elbaz, Brian Lee, Richard Rosenblatt, and Jason Nazar.

In addition, LA has a huge pool of other creative talent. Los Angeles is arguably the creative capital of the world with one out of every six people in LA employed in a creative field.

As the internet evolves from an era of building the infrastructure (routers, switches, databases) to building the applications that sit on top, the value placed on brand building, story-telling, and design becomes ever more critical. LA’s mix of different types of talent may be one reason why many of this generation’s most transformative and beloved companies are emerging in sunny LA. As our tech world moves more into virtual and augmented reality, there is no doubt LA’s star will continue to rise.

Having access to hire great talent is only one part of the equation in building a great company. The other is obviously retaining talent, as employee departures are among the most disruptive elements to building a great culture and high performing team.

I have observed that LA has lower staff turnover rates, with many of our high-profile CEOs and founders pointing to staff retention and loyalty as one of the biggest positives of building a startup in this city. And first timers to the LA tech community are surprised at how supportive the community is of its own companies, consistently rooting for local winners regardless of personal ties or investments.

Urban Culture, Manufacturing, and Distribution

Los Angeles is the most diverse county in the country, with a very interesting cross section of urban and suburban living. As a result, LA is a great launch and test market for many types of local marketplaces and on-demand businesses. Interestingly, start-ups often seek out LA-based VCs as a source of funding because LA is one of their top three launch cities.

As we move into the second wave of many on-demand services, I believe convenience will be table stakes. In turn, differentiated brand value and marketing savvy will become even more crucial to separating the winners from the losers. With this transition, great urban centers of culture like LA and NYC, which understand how to tap into cultural trends and have access to the influencers to help reach the masses, grow ever more important.

LA also has an advantage in industries that are beyond the well known areas of content, video, aerospace, and retail. LA County recently surpassed New York’s fashion district in terms of total industry jobs. We are also observing many important hardware startups are locating in LA to access our region’s decades worth of experience in building things like rockets, planes, and satellites, as well as consumer goods for companies like Mattel or Disney. Tying these industries together is the contiguous LA-Long Beach port, which is the most significant in the Western Hemisphere. As trade with Asia grows and digital & physical goods both become intertwined in the Internet of Things, LA’s star will continue to rise.

Outside the above established industries, LA offer advantages around distribution and marketing as well. In today’s information-saturated age, companies must increasingly be creative in how they acquire consumers, often through inefficient or mass media channels. Many cities now have deep performance marketing or hacking talent. But our region is unique in its access to influencers and large-scale media distribution platforms.

What’s interesting is that the power of new media distribution platforms is starting to capture the attention of mainstream software and hardware companies outside the obvious industries of gaming, content, and commerce. Recently, I have spoken to numerous startups, ranging from those involved in manufacturing to productivity software to education, that are either considering moving to LA or establishing a sizable presence here to understand and exploit this region’s unique marketing assets.

Affordability and Quality of Life

Living and building companies in LA is hardly a low-cost endeavor. But compared to other leading urban and suburban startup communities, including San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and New York, Los Angeles is significantly more affordable. Building a startup is hard enough. When living on a shoestring budget, it pays to be in a place where capital can be stretched a lot further.

Add these cost advantages to tje the undeniable quality of life advantages of living in one of the sunniest and most culturally diverse regions in the country and it’s easy to see why LA is at the top of many entrepreneurs’ list.

Summary

I’ve lived in many of the US’s top technology centers and have now returned home to my native Los Angeles. As I have chosen to build my career and family here, I have been simply astounded at what a technology hub my city has become and how much it’s transforming our local economy. If you want access to some of the best engineering talent, if you want higher retention rates, if you want lower-cost living and year-round beautiful weather — we’d love to welcome you to join us in our movement.