By DANIEL TAUB
Staff Reporter
There’s good reason L.A. has been anointed as America’s youth capital.
It’s seen each day at movie and television studios, of course, as twentysomething actors, writers and directors make a stab at a career in show business. But it’s also seen at advertising agencies, Internet companies, law firms and fashion design houses, as young people, many fresh out of college, look to Los Angeles as a land of opportunity and possibilities.
“L.A.’s a red-blood town instead of a blue-blood town,” said Lloyd Greif, president of investment bank Greif & Co. and a lifelong Angeleno. “In L.A., no one cares what family you were born into, what side of the tracks you were born on. It’s kind of a make-your-own-way city. It’s kind of a ‘Go west, young man’ sort of town. You talk about twentysomethings making it here, this is the perfect market for that.”
From an economic standpoint, the issue of L.A.’s attractiveness to young people is a very big deal especially when the city is competing with New York, San Francisco, Seattle and the Silicon Valley for the nation’s best and brightest. By retaining recent graduates from local colleges, or attracting those from other parts of the United States, L.A. can bolster its labor base for growth industries like high tech and financial services.
What attracts them here? It starts with youth-obsessed Hollywood, of course, but there’s also the region’s entrepreneurial nature, which often makes it easier to get started here than other parts of the country and allows for more responsibility at a younger age.
“There’s a certain type of respect for people who are more aggressive here, whereas on the East Coast they try to keep you in your place,” said Dee Dee Gordon, the L.A.-based director of market research for Lambesis Inc., a Del Mar-based firm that tracks trends. “Here, they’re willing to see how far you’ll push the envelope.”
Even industries not normally associated with the creative fields seem to feel that youthful spirit. While it’s hard to quantify, real estate, law and investment banking firms in L.A. are often more likely to promote young people than their counterparts on the East Coast.
“In New York, firms are much more institutionalized it’s much more structured,” said Richard A. Spitz, a managing director at executive recruiting firm Korn/Ferry International and an attorney who has practiced in both L.A. and New York. “In L.A., if you can bring in the work, you can have a client as long as you are competent to do the work.”
He noted that attorneys in New York are more likely to be dealing with traditional businesses like banking. Here, they’re more likely to be dealing with entertainment, multimedia and high-tech companies.
Vince Arena, a 28-year-old investment banker at Jefferies & Co., said that before joining his firm he interviewed with investment banks on the East Coast. But L.A.-based Jefferies, he said, seemed more willing to give responsibilities to young people like himself. “Their whole attitude was more attractive,” he said.
Because there are so many twentysomethings in positions of authority here, service industries tend to be more accepting of them. That means young people here have an easier time taking out loans, hiring contractors and finding investors.
“A lot of the L.A. services are very friendly to young entrepreneurs and young businessmen,” said David Glickman, who at the age of 26 started Culver City-based Justice Technology Corp., Inc. magazine’s fastest growing private company in 1998.
Glickman, now 33, said that, even when he was in his 20s, it was relatively easy to deal with law firms and banks. “You try to do the same thing in Boston, I just don’t think I’d have as many doors open to me as a twentysomething entrepreneur as I had in L.A.,” he said.
Hollywood plays a big part in this impression.
“Los Angeles is entrenched in the entertainment industry,” said 28-year-old David Judaken, president and chief executive of Bash Entertainment LLC, which operates the popular Garden of Eden nightclub in Hollywood. “And I think, by its nature, it is younger than the rest of the United States.”
Sometimes, the focus on youth specifically anyone under 30 can get out of hand. That led Kimberlee Kramer, a youthful-looking 32-year-old actress, to use the name Riley Weston and claim she was 18 a ruse that landed her a writing job and role on The WB’s college drama “Felicity” and a TV production deal with Walt Disney Co. Several months ago, her true age was discovered and Kramer says she is now out of work.
The story received worldwide attention, but in the context of L.A. work life, it really wasn’t that surprising. In show business, those with youth, energy and talent are promoted quickly often commanding six-figure salaries and up. A person claiming to be 18 years old would not necessarily raise suspicions.
The same is true for multimedia and Internet-related companies many of which have been started by expatriates from the entertainment industry. And multimedia, perhaps more so than any other industry, is a young person’s game, with companies almost universally founded by people well under 40.
The fact that so many twentysomethings have already started successful high-tech companies here has led to a snowball effect, with others in their 20s realizing they too can make it by starting an Internet company in L.A.
“If you’re smart, they move you through,” said Jennifer Happillon, director of cFour Partners/ITP, a Santa Monica-based executive recruiting firm that often deals with the entertainment industry. “There’s no ‘Well, you have to do this for a certain amount of time.’ ”
