$\"Adam$ <\/a>

Adam Jacobs, co-founder of Santa Monica based BuddyTruk, felt the risk of a startup was wortwhile<\/p><\/div>\n

Adam Jacobs, co-founder and Content Director for BuddyTruk <\/a>\u2013 a Santa Monica based startup that aims to be the Uber for people in need of help moving \u2013 made a decision most people in their mid-20s would loathe: he moved back in with his parents.<\/p>\n

For Jacobs, though, it was merely a byproduct of \u201ctightening up the budget\u201d and taking a chance on being a part of the next big Los Angeles tech startup.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn [startup ventures], you absolutely have to be willing to take risks,\u201d said Jacobs, while sitting on the rooftop of their office two blocks from the ocean. \u201cI see it as the next step to something that is a huge success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Founder Brian Foley had the genesis for the company when he was using a U-Haul to move into his new apartment, and crashed into his roommates car before even meeting her. As he puts it, all he needed was \u201ca buddy with a truck,\u201d and he would have avoided trying to steer such a cumbersome — and expensive — vehicle.<\/p>\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\nThe idea was too good to pass up when Jacobs was approached by a mutual friend about joining the startup, and convinced the 25-year-old UCLA graduate it was worth quitting his \u201ccomfortable\u201d job at Apple to pursue full time.<\/p>\nAnd walking the halls of the office building BuddyTruk shares with more than 100 other tech startups, it becomes clear many more entrepreneurs share Jacobs\u2019s desire to be part of the changing zeitgeist in LA.<\/p>\nThe Company Town that was built on the film and entertainment industry is now becoming one of the premier locations for startup innovation. LA is now the <a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2014\/10\/08\/theres-something-going-on-in-l-a\/\" target=\"_blank\">third largest tech ecosystem<\/a> in the United States (behind Silicon Valley and New York), and the fastest growing market, according to TechCrunch.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1151\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/22\/2014\/12\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-11-at-5.22.54-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1151\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1151\" src=\"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/22\/2014\/12\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-11-at-5.22.54-PM-300x219.png\" alt=\"LA is the fastest growing startup market \" width=\"300\" height=\"219\" srcset=\"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/22\/2014\/12\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-11-at-5.22.54-PM-300x219.png 300w, http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/22\/2014\/12\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-11-at-5.22.54-PM.png 681w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>LA is the fastest growing startup market<\/p><\/div>\nAltogether, there are more than 1,000 startups in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, according to company tracker <a href=\"http:\/\/www.represent.la\/\">Represent.LA<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/siliconbeachla.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Silicon Beach<\/a> is becoming a formidable southern counterpart to Silicon Valley.<\/p>\nWhile the LA startup scene appears to be blossoming, there remain a myriad of growing pains for companies like BuddyTruk, which launched their app this past August. Development, funding, and acquiring users remain the core roadblocks to success.<\/p>\n\u201cThe first two weeks we had two transactions, so it was like \u2018ok, there\u2019s a lot of work to do,\u2019\u201d said Jacobs.<\/p>\nFinding a way to get the app name recognized became paramount. Jacobs had to set aside time for \u201cguerilla marketing\u201d by passing out flyers on his old campus.<\/p>\nThings eventually began to turn around with the college move-in season, and the company was featured on <a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2014\/08\/14\/buddytruk-is-a-sharing-service-like-lyft-for-moving\/\" target=\"_blank\">TechCrunch<\/a> and on KTLA 5 in LA. Still, the whiteboard behind Jacobs\u2019s desk outlining the company\u2019s goals for December \u2013 1,500 users, 2,000 Twitter followers, 3,100 Facebook \u201clikes\u201d \u2013 highlights the importance and difficulty of simply making your app stand out.<\/p>\nUsers are essential to venture capitalists looking to fund these companies in their early stages. For most startups, the game plan becomes: gain a following first, and worry about monetizing afterwards.<\/p>\nWildly successful LA startups like Snapchat and Tinder understood the gravity of acquiring a large audience before monetizing. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/snapchat-fetches-10-billion-valuation-1409088794\" target=\"_blank\">Snapchat, valued at $10 billion<\/a>, only recently began experimenting with short advertisements.<\/p>\nFoley, the gregarious face of the startup, said the business received $175,000 in its opening round of investment, and is now trying to raise an additional half a million dollars. BuddyTruk also met with Target and Costco this month in an effort to provide their service to customers needing large items delivered.<\/p>\nFrom the outside, everything would appear to be coming up roses for the company: traction, a nice Santa Monica office, and room to grow.<\/p>\nBut Foley understands how difficult it is to create a successful startup. The native of Austin, TX started four companies before BuddyTruk. Each one of them failed.<\/p>\nRather than leaving him dejected, those disappointments galvanized the Pepperdine graduate even more when he was ready to tackle his next venture.<\/p>\n\u201cEach time we ran a company in the past and it failed, I knew exactly why,\u201d said Foley. \u201cSo this time around I was more confident than ever raising money and sticking by our mission statement.\u201d<\/p>\nIt\u2019s an attitude that entrepreneurs must have to be successful in this industry. Failure is often synonymous with tech startups.<\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/hbswk.hbs.edu\/item\/6591.html\" target=\"_blank\">70 to 80 percent of\u00a0startups<\/a> fail to see a return on their projected return on investment, according to a study by Professor Shikhar Ghosh of Harvard Business School. And the numbers are even more dire for companies\u00a0that issue projections and then coming up short of meeting them, with 95 percent falling through.<\/p>\n—<\/p>\nBlake Arnet realizes the high stakes nature of the startup world. His first company, CollegeHop, a social network to connect students with the \u201cmost fun and unique places around their area,\u201d floundered.<\/p>\n\u201cYou fail a lot before you succeed,\u201d said Arnet. \u201cBuilding connections and a small company \u2013 the whole process was invaluable.\u201d<\/p>\nThe experience of starting his own tech company left an impression on the former UCLA basketball player, though. Arnet knew he wanted to get back into the startup world, and recently launched his latest idea.<\/p>\nHis latest app, <a href=\"https:\/\/castoffapp.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Castoff<\/a>, allows users to anonymously receive votes and input on pictures from their friends. Arnet believes the idea is more efficient than sending a mass text message, and is perfect for someone trying to figure out what to wear out on the town.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/youtu.be\/rVVYCtFaQDg<\/p>\nAny residual pain from his experience with his first company has been mitigated by the allure of making Castoff a success.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m very optimistic as a person and with the app,\u201d said Arnet, sitting at the Literati Caf\u00e9 on Wilshire, two days shy of his 25th<\/sup> birthday. \u201cI think [Castoff is] a great app and if people get it in front of them, they\u2019ll like it.\u201d<\/p>\nLike Jacobs, he\u2019s driven to make his startup work by any means necessary.<\/p>\nArnet personally split the $20,000 needed to get the app off the ground with his longtime friend and co-founder, Adam Jacobson, and Jacobson\u2019s father. He\u2019s working as a private sports coach, Uber driver, and helping with his father\u2019s construction company in Orange County to give him enough time to work on the app. Coffee shops on the West Side and working from home are Castoff\u2019s office space until further funding.<\/p>\nFunding, along with acquiring users, remains the biggest hurdle. While the venture capital market is rich in LA, it still falls well short of Silicon Valley. A company starting with a well-known LA incubator like Amplify figures to raise about half as much as a company in Northern California.<\/p>\nThe high failure rate of new apps, which have been personally monetized, only exacerbates the importance of finding angel investors.<\/p>\n“When you’ve bootstrapped a business where you’re not drawing a salary and depleting whatever savings you have, that’s one of the very difficult things to do,” <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/SB10000872396390443720204578004980476429190\" target=\"_blank\">said Toby Stuart<\/a>, a professor at UC Berkeley\u2019s Haas School of Business to the Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\nTo take his company to the next level, Arnet is preparing to pitch Castoff to investors. His goal of $300,000 in seed money would mostly finance the marketing and front-end help necessary to bring Castoff to a larger audience.<\/p>\nStill, the hardest part of being a young entrepreneur can often be simply getting your foot in the door.<\/p>\n\u201cBeing first time entrepreneurs, that\u2019s our biggest struggle right now,\u201d said Arnet.<\/p>\n\u201cIf you\u2019re a guy like Biz Stone [co-founder of Twitter] you get money \u2018like that\u2019 \u2013 you get $100 million.\u201d<\/p>\nWith the potential funding, Arnet hopes to expand Castoff\u2019s reach to more college campuses, where anonymous apps like Yik-Yak have become increasingly popular.<\/p>\nAnd while Arnet knew a co-founder he was confident in starting his company with, for others it can be one of the more difficult and time consuming aspects of building a team.<\/p>\n—<\/p>\nThe inspiration for Nick La Maina\u2019s app, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tikr.me\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tikr<\/a>, stemmed from an overly excited friend.<\/p>\n\u201cThis girl kept posting on Facebook that her birthday was in 50 days, 49 days, 48 days,\u201d said La Maina. \u201cI was like \u2018that\u2019s so annoying, she should do this in a countdown app.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\nAfter researching and noticing the market for a social media app that would countdown to events was relatively barren, La Maina decided to pursue the idea head-on.<\/p>\nBut for the 2013 graduate of USC\u2019s Marshall School of Business, there was one main issue: he couldn\u2019t find the right person to start with.<\/p>\nIt took countless mixers, hours talking to friends and professors, and working connections to find a match. La Maina compared the experience to dating.<\/p>\n\u201cIt was really hard to find someone,\u201d said La Maina. \u201cIt too me a year and three months,\u201d to find a co-founder.<\/p>\nThe moment was both exhilarating and a relief for La Maina, but there were many other issues to solve. For tech startups, each day is like playing Whac-a-Mole, where one problem pops up the moment another has been taken care of.<\/p>\nDevelopment talent In Los Angeles is growing, but still trails Silicon Valley. Finding a developer for Tikr was a headache, with bids as high as $100,000 to design the app.<\/p>\nAs a new company working on a tight budget, La Maina felt it was imperative to get Tikr launched and<a href=\"https:\/\/www.optimizely.com\/ab-testing\/\" target=\"_blank\"> A\/B tested<\/a> as soon as possible, rather than building the most refined app. Ultimately, he was able to secure a design for under $10,000, and see Tikr featured among the Best New Apps on iPhone\u2019s store.<\/p>\nThe rush of growing their user base and trying to bring in additional seed funding makes the high-stress nature of startups worthwhile to La Maina. Like BuddyTruk, Tikr was recently featured on KTLA 5.<\/p>\n\u201cI woke up and there we like 2,000 installs in one morning. It was an amazing feeling,\u201d said La Maina.<\/p>\nLa Maina views being an LA startup as an advantage because of its proximity to the entertainment industry. Tikr did a countdown promotion\u00a0with the History Channel’s Vikings\u00a0<\/em>television show and is looking for similar deals.<\/p>\nThe 23-year-old is now an associate professor at USC, helping students outline a plan for their own startup ideas. But despite the early success, La Maina is aware the tech startup world is a minefield, and knows the odds are against having the next billion-dollar sale.<\/p>\n\u201cOverall, the app market right now is a really tough one to play in,\u201d conceded La Maina. \u201cPeople don\u2019t use a lot of apps, they\u2019re tired of downloading them, and to break into someone\u2019s daily habits is a big ask.\u201d<\/p>\nLike other young entrepreneurs looking to make their mark in LA\u2019s startup scene, he knows it\u2019ll take two things \u2013 \u201ca lot of hard work and a little luck.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adam Jacobs, co-founder and Content Director for BuddyTruk \u2013 a Santa Monica based startup that aims to be the Uber for people in need of help moving \u2013 made a decision most people in their mid-20s would loathe: he moved back in with his parents. For Jacobs, though, it was merely a byproduct of \u201ctightening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}