Andy Wilson, co-chairman of Innovate Pasadena, has for a while had a hunch that his city was home to a number of tech companies focused on the enterprise market. He had plenty of anecdotal evidence he’d bring up in press interviews and other conversations, but now his year-old tech non-profit has released some hard data to back him up.
In its inaugural census of Pasadena tech companies released last week, nearly one-third of the 150 respondents categorized themselves as a business-to-business company.
“That definitely differentiates the community from some of the others in L.A.,” such as Silicon Beach, said Innovate Pasadena’s Jennifer Chang, who oversaw the census. Many companies in the trendy coastal corridor tend to focus on consumer markets rather than selling to other businesses.
She said the number of companies utilizing the enterprise business model speaks to the maturity and veteran leadership of Pasadena’s tech scene.
“Enterprise deals tend to be pretty big deals,” she said.
Businesses that participated in the survey could choose to designate themselves in as few as one or as many as six categories. Eighty-six chose “technology,” 57 said they dealt in “software,” 37 chose “design,” 33 opted for “mobile,” and 32 self-identified as research and development oriented.
“There’s a lot of different kinds of companies in Pasadena,” Chang said. “We have a mini-ecosystem.”
Also of note: Just half of the respondents said they raised any sort of outside funding. Of those that did, 40 raised less than $1 million.
“A lot of tech companies these days are going the bootstrap route,” Chang said, particularly those in the design field.
Fifty-three of the companies said they had annual revenue of less than $1 million; four said annual revenue had exceeded $100 million.
All in the Name
Two-and-a-half years ago, Beverly Hills entrepreneur Monica Kirchner and three silent partners saw a business opportunity in the loosening of regulations concerning the creation of new top-level Internet domain names – the words to the right of the “dot” in a URL.
The group sent an application and $185,000 deposit to the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers in Marina del Rey, a non-profit Internet regulatory body, in the hopes of acquiring the .luxury Web domain. There was just one other bidder, who Kirchner and her partners beat out in a private auction for the name. The final price was not disclosed.
Kirchner, now chief executive of Beverly Hills’ .Luxury, said the entity officially launched in February. She and her partners are meeting with top luxury brands to pitch them the idea of positioning all or part of their Web presence around the dot-luxury name.
“We really are working very closely with the luxury industry,” she said. “There’s a lot of potential for developing that real estate.”
So far, more than 1,100 luxury brands have acquired .luxury domains, according to Kirchner, including Chanel, Hermes and Armani, though many have yet to go live. One that’s currently operating is HabituallyChic.luxury, a popular fashion and style blog.
Her company makes dot-luxury domain names available through registries such as GoDaddy Operating Co. in Scottsdale, Ariz., and charges customers between $600 and $800 annually to use the name. Kirchner said she and her partners have placed a high value on the domains to ensure that the brands themselves are the ones buying them rather than a third party.
“We’re basically making sure that the right people are developing those sites,” she said.
Rebooting
TrueCar Inc., a popular car comparison website in Santa Monica, has hired Alan Ohnsman as senior vice president and chief communications officer. Ohnsman, who covered the automotive beat in the L.A. bureau at Bloomberg News, will report to TrueCar President John Krafcik in this newly created position. … Portal A, an independent creative studio co-headquartered in Los Angeles and San Francisco, has hired Evan Bregman as head of original content. Bregman formerly served as executive director of digital media at West Hollywood production company Electus. Portal A also recently hired Jacob Motz, formerly Fullscreen’s head of production, as a senior producer in its L.A. office. … Hermosa Beach’s Virtual Piggy Inc., developer of Oink, a digital payment solution that allows parents to approve purchases made by their kids, has added Jordan Harris as its risk officer. Harris comes to Oink with more than 10 years of technology and security experience at tech companies including Apple Inc., Netflix Inc. and Fandango. … Nadeem Kassam has joined Santa Monica’s Appetize, a company that develops mobile ordering systems for entertainment venues, as a technology and growth adviser. Earlier this year, Kassam sold Basis Science, a San Francisco wearable tech company he co-founded, to Intel Corp. for more than $100 million.
Staff reporter Omar Shamout can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 263.
