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by berberous 4581 days ago
What's the tech scene out there like? It's 30 degrees here in NY :(
2 comments

Well I took a phone call this morning on the beach while drinking some excellent Groundworks coffee . . . it was almost too hot in a t-shirt and jeans. Weather is niiiiiiice in Santa Monica.

The tech scene is healthy and not frothy. Google Venice is a large presence, as is Factual (my employer), Hulu, Snapchat with their sweet Venice boardwalk office, and assorted others (http://siliconbeachla.com/). I like it here because being in a tech startup is very different and cool, unlike in SF/SV where it seems a ridiculous number of people are doing identical work.

I moved to San Francisco last year and settled in a nice apartment on Dolores Park; I was hired at Factual to work remotely but came to the L.A. office for the first month to train up. After a week I told them I wanted to stay, and I love SF. It is just . . . really nice here.

Lots of media/content space companies from what I've gathered in the few months living here.
Agreed. Santa Monica is is a solid spot for media startups or a handful of mobile apps. Some good work being done in the recommendation / metasearch space, and a handful of crowdfunding startups. Safe to assume everyone funding you has ties to Hollywood, since that's the majority of the VC money down there.
And that's a perfect way to differentiate themselves from SF/SV, much like how many of the most prominent fashion startups have been born from NYC. :)