High-Tech L.A. Seeks Name, Fame to Equal Silicon Valley

With nearly as many technology jobs as Silicon Valley and a deep reservoir of companies at the cutting edge of their industries, Southern California should get some respect as one of the nation’s key centers of high technology.

Instead, the Southland is routinely overshadowed by the Bay Area, not to mention emerging electronics, software, new media and biotechnology strongholds in New York City, Boston, Texas and North Carolina.

So some of the region’s high-tech all-stars are mobilizing to upgrade Southern California’s image as a technology powerhouse, not just the home of Hollywood, freeway shootings and palm trees.

The first weapon of choice: a nickname that will be chosen today. Although it may seem trivial, tech leaders believe that the region has paid a price in lost business by lacking a catchy moniker. Without an image, the Southland has been a weak competitor in attracting skilled labor, financing and entrepreneurs.

The nickname--the leading candidate is Tech Coast--will figure prominently in an aggressive marketing campaign designed to earn the Southland a place in the limelight.

“People think there’s no technology in Southern California, but there’s an amazing, amazing array of things, and when you compare it to Silicon Valley, we’re a little bit more diverse,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp.

With little fanfare, Los Angeles has been selected over Silicon Valley for several start-up ventures and has lured a key technology firm from the Bay Area.

By Kyser’s count, there are more than 242,600 technology-related jobs in L.A. and Orange counties alone. “This is a fertile field, and with the right type of irrigation you can grow some interesting things here.”

Among the crucial items needed by Southern California are the same kind of professional networks that have helped tech companies in the Bay Area thrive.

In the past, local start-ups were too busy to schmooze with their colleagues, but now they realize that they have more to gain by collaborating with each other and much to lose if they don’t start pooling their strengths, said Rohit Shukla, executive director of the Los Angeles Regional Technology Alliance.

For example, as companies realize that they are not working in isolation, they more often refer clients to each other and pool resources to bid for larger and more visible contracts. Such referrals, in turn, help raise the profile of companies here--drawing the attention of critical players like lawyers, venture capitalists and business services providers. That creates the kind of business infrastructure that Shukla estimates accelerated the growth of Silicon Valley by a factor of 10.

Take for example, USWeb/W3-designs, which began with three founders in a South-Central Los Angeles apartment three years ago and has gone to about 70 workers in a Culver City office that services more than 100 clients.

The firm, which develops Web sites, might have had even greater success if Southern California were better recognized as a technology center, says founder Nick Rothenberg.

“It’s because of the buzz that we haven’t been able to achieve,” Rothenberg said.

Even Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan has commissioned a technology business group--the 6-month-old Los Angeles New Media Roundtable--to define, support and promote the Southland’s special brand of technology.

The Roundtable is leading the charge to pick a nickname, and is considering, in addition to Tech Coast, such alternatives as Silicon Beach and Digital Epicenter.

Tech Coast is already on its way to becoming the de facto nickname for Southern California’s high-tech industry. It was used in a guide published last spring that features more than 300 pages of profiles of companies in the software, information technology, multimedia, electronics, aerospace, telecommunications and biotechnology industries. If the Roundtable selects anything other than Tech Coast, it is likely to face an uphill battle for acceptance.

The Roundtable originally compiled a list of hundreds of candidates culled from industry insiders and suggestions sent to a World Wide Web page. Many of them evoke things uniquely Southern Californian (Pacific Coast Hyperlink and Silicon Sprawl) or pay homage to the entertainment industry (HollyWeb and Siliwood). Still others range from kitschy (L@) to catchy (The Wired West) to just outright silly (Virtual Digicyberwood and Mo Betta Media).

Once a name is selected, the group will commission an exhaustive study to identify all of the technology companies in the Southland and use it to promote the region throughout the nation and the world with the help of the public relations firm Manning, Selvage & Lee and advertising agency TBWA/Chiat Day.

“Once we define it, we can get on to helping people understand what we have here,” said Brenda Lynch, senior vice president of the consumer technology group at Manning, Selvage & Lee. “Without a name, there’s not a way to get people to understand the concept of what L.A. is.”

Jim Jonassen, founder of LAwNMoweR (which used to be short for Los Angeles New Media Roundtable before he bequeathed the name to the mayor’s group) said he expects that the report will speak for itself.

“It’s just to get people to shut up,” Jonassen said of those who sell the Southland short. “They can check the record and look at the facts.”

But that’s only part of what is needed to help Southern California compete with other locales, according to tech leaders. Local governments, they say, can help them improve the region’s technical infrastructure, like fiber optic and coaxial cables for high-speed data transmission.

They can also make sure that start-up companies aren’t overly burdened by taxes, zoning laws and other regulations, business leaders agree.

Even in its early stages, the combined efforts have convinced at least a few companies to open up shop in Southern California instead of heading north.

“We’re finding more and more that L.A. is being regarded as the place where things are really happening,” said Natrificial Software Technologies President Donald Block, who considered launching his company in talent-rich Silicon Valley but decided to open in Santa Monica.

Bobby Kotick, chairman and chief executive of video game maker Activision, was among the first to believe in the Southland’s potential as a technology force. Shortly after acquiring a 25% stake in the company in 1991, he moved it from the heart of Silicon Valley to Santa Monica, where it is thriving.

“There’s just as much opportunity to create successful companies here as in any of the other markets,” he said.