Job Search Led to High-Tech Web Site

While the Digital Coast Roundtable and the Tech Coast Alliance spend months building professional Web sites to highlight Southern California’s technology companies, Benjamin Kuo has beat them to the punch with his own site dedicated to the local high-tech industry.

Kuo’s site, SocalTech, groups hundreds of companies in regions such as the “101 Technology Corridor” stretching from Calabasas to Camarillo and the “Internet Valley” of Pasadena, Altadena, Alhambra and Monrovia. The listings include a description of each company’s business, financial data, news and other information.

The site also has links to local venture capital firms, business incubators and other resources for start-up companies, plus online networking and a list of upcoming events.

Kuo, a USC-trained electrical engineer who now works for Troika Networks in Westlake Village, said he started the site with information that was left over from a job search. Soon others were contributing listings of their own, and SocalTech attracted hundreds of visitors a day, he said. Last month, he moved SocalTech off his personal home page to https://www.socaltech.com.

“Having worked both in Silicon Valley as well as Southern California, I hope to see the Los Angeles area take off with as much entrepreneurial spirit as Silicon Valley,” said Kuo, who maintains the site in his free time. The local high-tech industry “is actually quite vibrant and active once you realize how many companies truly are here.”