@USC launches new @TechstarsLA#accelerator. Glad you're considering #SiliconBeach footprint as such a wide swatch @paulmcq_usc, "The budding tech corridor spans Los Angeles County and portions of Orange County, and it hosts several tech and biotech industry leaders..."
But, it's just getting started.
You'll need more housing, larger spaces, shared infrastructure, and more investments to keep drawing talent, enabling new companies, and building the ecosystem.
Fortunately it's all on a bedrock of a legendary Gundo history of American Industry and generational talent - some of which works at, and consults for, these new startups.
This area is no stranger to a booming, thriving manufacturing and defense tech ecosystem, with SpaceX, Anduril, Varda and many more nearby in Hawthorne and Long Beach.
What El Segundo is, is the new hardware and manufacturing startup nursery, where new companies can find footing, build their first tech, get their first customers, find a supportive community aligned in physical industries and healthy living, and together build something world-changing.
I've never seen such an optimistic future framed in the shadow of an oil refinery, but it reminds us of something basic and true - the origins of prosperity is abundant energy, and the Gundo has that in spades.
Gundo has tell-tale signs of the beginnings of something truly great - that it strikes you as weird, different, but refreshing, simple, and honest.
This is the opposite of zirpy LARPS, do-nothing virtue-signaling, or hand-wringing doomerism.
This is "shut up and build" energy
I'm walking away impressed, optimistic and relieved there are more hardware startups grounded in solid physics and engineering, and a new younger generation of founders building more than niche CRMs with better LLM calls.
For however powerful storytelling can be in creating a self fulfilling prophecy, the story being told in Gundo is a compelling one:
Build for your country, for your family.
Focus on things that are real.
Work hard, work out, live clean.
Call bullshit where you see it.
It's ironic that the contrarian deep tech founders of today, like @isaiah_p_taylor, are pro-nuclear, pro-natal, to build hydrocarbon energy abundance, are really a revival of the American Dynamism of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s that built so much of the country.
Tech needs this.
@jbullock85@vc lots of room for improvement and alternative models for getting non-traditional’s in the defense space, albeit through commercial pathways
@USCViterbi “USA engaged with its adversaries in an asymmetric and continual war of weaponized #influence#narratives, DARPA researchers point out. Adversaries exploit misinformation and true information on online multimedia content.” https://t.co/gGqi24Kp4s
Cc @phonologist FYI
In Year 1, we've ID'd and invested in 100+ emerging DOD tech leaders like @4estunderwood, @BiometricsNerd, @dhotweets, & @blackburn_lilly
(and SO many more I want to build w/for decades!)
meet all of them here: https://t.co/Vo4hHpMWRf
@IanRountree@IanRountree if academic scientists are dragging you down, recommend you call us friendly government scientists @ArmyResearchLab to help with technical due diligence. For deal flow, you may also be interested in tomorrow’s @xTechSearch pitches https://t.co/OkmfDRM8BD