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Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

Santa Monica is getting a lot better for startups. LA is not. My brother and I just moved to downtown Santa Monica from (from LA and San Diego) to work on our company. It's been awesome so far. We just got back from a really great event where Mark Suster interviewed Amit Kapur. Amit just sold his Santa Monica-based company Gravity to AOL. There's definitely a buzz here that didn't exist two years two.

Our product is real and traditional technology innovation. It is not media/advertising/ecommerce. We have decided that if the support here is just too weak we're headed to SV. So far it looks like it might work to stay.

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You guys might enjoy working at coloft (shared office space) or keeping an eye on their calendar of events. They host a lot of interesting talks and similar events and they're based in Santa Monica, around Lincoln and Santa Monica blvd.

http://www.coloft.com

I work for Whisper. We just moved from Santa Monica to Venice. Our new office is right next door to Snapchat and not far from Google. But unfortunately, so far, I've had zero interaction with the tech scene in LA outside of my company. Part of that is because I just moved to the US and I am just getting settled.

What kind of events do you go to. How do find them? Meetup.com?

Yea, LA definitely isn't SF where every person you meet is involved in a startup. I find it very inspiring to visit SF and get hyped up about my startup and startups in general, but I love living in LA even though I don't really meet random startup people outside of my group of friends. We don't really have an ecosystem down here.

Check web sites for General Assembly, Co-loft, Launchpad LA, Meetup, Twitter "startup santa monica."

It's unfortunate that Google moved. Their location in Santa Monica was great. I'm sure it was too small though. I think it will take a long time before the Venice and Santa Monica bubbles merge.

You guys should come by Thursday Lunch some time.

http://promenade.thursdaylunch.com

I work/live in Venice (on Westminster)!

I've met many people at js.la, laruby, and events at General Assembly and CoLoft.

The huge spread out nature of Los Angeles makes it hard. I used to help run an iOS/Cocoa dev meetup on Tuesdays and half the argument was where to have it.

Meetup is pretty good, and just trying to connect with people as much as possible is very helpful. I'd often find a group just by talking to others.

sorry to break it to you, but there is no spontaneous way to meet people in los angeles. its the most socially averse city ive ever lived in.

while everywhere else you can get to know people by accident at coffee shops, supermarket lines, etc, that will never happen at LA.

that said, i still get 150k job offer for venice every week. so i have no idea what those people saying you will starve if your startup bust are talking about.

> Santa Monica is getting a lot better for startups. LA is not.

It depends on how you define "LA". Some people are referring to downtown LA, while others are referring to LA county (everything between Orange and Ventura County, including Santa Monica).

Sure, but I think people who live in LA know that referring to LA as a location is pretty meaningless.

I think downtown LA and Pasadena have some decent ecosystems building, as does Irvine. Santa Monica is definitely the heart of it though.

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