Silicon Beach: LA tech hub expects more unicorns to join Snapchat, DogVacay and other celebrity-invested start-ups
Close-knit community of techies and start-ups on Los Angeles’ sun-kissed beaches aren’t competing with Facebook and Google when it comes to recruitment, enjoy reasonable commercial prices
Better known for its palm trees and celebrities, Los Angeles is also emerging as a tech hub, with its so-called Silicon Beach area offering a sun-kissed alternative to Silicon Valley.
In recent years tech companies large and small, including Facebook, Google and Snapchat, have opened offices in Santa Monica, Venice or Marina del Rey - better known for shirtless surfers then web geeks.
They are joined by hundreds of cutting-edge start-ups and tech incubators like GumGum that are gobbling up space along Southern California’s Pacific coast.
At DogVacay in Santa Monica, a sort of Airbnb for pets that impressed actor Will Smith so much that he invested in it, co-founder Aaron Hirschhorn says he has never looked back on his decision to set up shop downstream from San Francisco.
“Here I am a bigger fish in a smaller pond,” said the 37-year-old, as about a dozen pooches owned or being cared for by employees lounged on cushions or strutted about in the sprawling open office space.