I work at a startup called Merchant Centric out in Westlake Village (not a sexy startup hub). We make a dashboard for small businesses to manage their listings and reply to reviews on yelp, google, Facebook, etc.
I'd like to see a bigger startup community in the San Fernando Valley area. Woodland Hills/Warner Center is a hip place with lots of shopping, dining, and (shockingly) public transportation, and housing costs are half what they are in West LA.
I just became comfortable talking about code, because I have pretty bad imposter-syndrome but the true coders are few and far between. I have met some cool and capable people at coloft (a coworking space) but the other spacing and events I have gone too are mostly SEO/Marketing and publicists. It is tough finding serious people on meetup.com. Carbonfive meetup is pretty legit, but it is hard to really meet people and just discuss technology. I too wish the community was bigger.
Additionally, you'll notice a ton of media/marketing/e-commerce in LA as this is what the culture really revolves around here. You won't see much enterprise or biotech as you would see in the Valley or San Diego, respectively. Social is also popular since kids these days love the idea of "build chat app, grow user base, raise tons of money, cash out." But most of knows these lottery tickets are extremely rare.
Personally, I don't understand how companies like Nasty Gal or Dollar Shave Club are tech by any means. Rolling out some e-commerce atop en existing platform / site is simply online retail / subscription vs. having anything propriety (they don't) but this is our my problem.
At my company, we do hardware, consumer electronics, software with AI and ML and more challenging issues. Sure, we love to have fun and do things that we enjoy but the whole "start another e-commerce site" is getting real old here. I too find myself in a pickle at times trying to find people in the area who love pure tech and can discuss and play around with things that matter. Way too much "biz dev" idiots here who think a blog is the next tumblr.
DM via Twitter if you want to chat.
I base this on attendance at meetups, activity at co-working spaces, average skill/experience level of engineers I've met, and companies I've come across as a consultant.
Santa Monica, Venice and Pasadena seem to be the activity hubs.
I will say I have come across a whole lot of non-technical people looking for technical cofounders. That exists in SF as well, but much more so here (also completely unscientific).
I can't do traditional meetups here anymore, I've met maybe 2-3 technical people who even know how to code a basic webpage and I've gone to over 2 dozens in Venice/SM and some "notable organizations" - just tons of "biz dev" "marketing" and "media" people, great, but I guess WE are all looking for more hardcore tech-oriented people here.
I've met some great people at UCLA Venture Fund events (look them up) but what we should all do in this thread is organize a small HN meetup in LA.
LA is without a doubt growing, slowly but surely, and heading into the tech startup trajectory, even with all all the wantrepreneurs and media guys... Engineers and anyone with face stuck to screen for 10+ hours a day is going to have a tough time meeting like minded people in real life, hence is the nature of the beast.
What could be more powerful than bright people getting together to discuss cool stuff.
Apparently Python/Django devs are hard to find in LA... instead I hear it's a lot of Java and .NET devs. I found that surprising, considering its proximity to SV/SF compared to say in the Midwest.