Setting the Stage

Well, so much for timely posting each week… Given what my past week or so was like, I’m not too sure how the other VC bloggers find the time to post to such a degree as they do. In any event, I suppose any blog about venture capital in and around Orange County should at least spend a little time setting the stage…so here goes.

Unfortunately, most outsiders’ opinions of Orange County are based on what they have seen on a variety of TV shows such as Fox’s “The OC”, MTV’s “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County” and Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Orange County“. There are a number of us here working hard to change such perceptions but it will take time and, in my humble opinion, a much more concerted effort by the various socio-economic leaders of the county.

I won’t spend too much time here trying to get folks grounded in reality, as Wikipedia does a nice job painting the picture of Orange County, but for those of you who don’t want to click through it suffices to say that OC is a county in southern California with about 3 million residents spread across roughly 950 square miles and representing 34 cities and surrounding unincorporated areas approximately equidistant between Los Angeles and San Diego. While the current predominant industries are seemingly of the real estate, action sports (think surfing) and tourism orientation, there seems to be a slowly percolating sea change toward technology and life science industries (hence my interest in being a seed and early-stage VC in Orange County rather than elsewhere; that, and you can’t beat the scenery!). Had enough of the geographic and demographic background? Fine, me too…on to the “VC ecosystem”…

Working from an unaided memory here, but I believe the NVCA has something like 470 registered venture capital funds in the U.S. (representing about 90% of the venture capital under management) - of which I believe there are 7 domiciled in OC: Crosspoint Venture Partners, Okapi Venture Capital, Palomar Ventures, SAIL Venture Partners, Versant Ventures, and Ventana Capital Management. OC is also home to a number of funds not registered with the NVCA such as Huntington Ventures, InnoCal Venture Capital, Miramar Venture Partners, and presumably others as well. Again, off the top of my head here so I apologize if I’ve missed or mis-characterized any local funds. While not a VC fund, there is a chapter of an organized angel group here called Tech Coast Angels and I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention them as they are an active player in the VC ecosystem. The primary local venture capital group is the Orange County Venture Group and most of the funds are active members in the organization. Additionally, there is a local “venture accelerator” NPO called the Orange County Technology Action Network or, appropriately, OCTANe for short. That’s basically the money-side of the equation; next post I’ll high-light some of the local VC-backed start-ups and provide some additional color commentary to the investor landscape here in beautiful OC. Until next time, adios