January 31st, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

Perez Hilton at Twiistup 3 - part 1 (0)

Perez Hilton at Twiistup 3 - Part 1 from mike macadaan on Vimeo.

January 30th, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

Entertainment Startup En2go Raises $1.35M (0)

LA based startup En2go is developing entertainment for TV, computers and mobile devices. They just announced that they raised 1.35M in a private placement of it’s shares. The company’s board includes Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, former EMI head of digital Ted Cohen, music industry veteran Paul Fishkin and developer John Draper. They will use the proceeds to fund it’s tech incubators in LA and Vegas and other general purposes.

January 30th, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

NBC Universal Acquires LX.tv (0)

LX.tv’s original focus was to feature New York and Los Angeles based dining and nightlife through online video. Ex-MTV’ers Morgan Hertzman and Joseph Varet’s vision has been realized since it’s debut in 2006. NBC is looking to expand to other regions as well as other ‘out of home’ experiences.

Word on the street is that NBC is looking grow their business outside of the traditional TV space, increase local content production with a focus on lifestyle and cultural programming.

If you were at Twiistup 3 you may recall seeing our guest host Shira Lazar conducting interviews. Shira also hosts local LA based shows for LX.tv.

January 30th, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

the Rubicon Project featured in LATimes (0)

Twiistup 3 ‘Best Showoff’ winner is featured in this article in the Los Angeles Times. Nice writeup by Alana Semuels on Rubicon, Frank and his crew. You can request a beta invite here.

About Rubicon Project (from rubiconproject.com)

the Rubicon Project is a group of industry-experienced, aggressive and passionate renegades dedicated to bringing a new level of efficiency to the fragmented Internet advertising space. The founders of the Rubicon Project shook up the online advertising industry in 1998 when they created L90/adMonitor, one of the most successful Internet advertising platforms that served over 3,000 of the web’s most recognized sites, reaching 65% of the Internet population before DoubleClick acquired it.

$27 Billion was spent advertising online in 2007, yet it’s still too hard for websites to sell their ad space online. While Internet advertising is an explosive market, it is an incredibly inefficient one with advertisers spending money with 300+ disparate advertising networks worldwide (e.g. Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, Tacoda, HispanoClick and Adtegrity). the Rubicon Project’s web-based, self-serve solution gives any size website the most complete access to the total available advertising market and its smart matching technology does all the work to perfectly match each ad impression with the optimal money-making opportunity. the Rubicon Project is the new online advertising standard that makes it effortless for websites to generate the mad cash they’ve always dreamed of. And, it’s free to join. Websites looking to make more money while doing less work should click here to sign-up.

January 30th, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

5M Series B round for ThisNext (0)

Social shopping site ThisNext raises 5M in a series B round. Their existing investors Clearstone Venture Partners and Anthem Venture Partners provided the additional funding. It’s been reported that their prior rounds were a venture debt round in June 2007 and a series A round in February 2006 for 3.5M. ThisNext was a featured ‘Showoff’ & Sponsor of Twiistup.

January 28th, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

Happy 50 Lego (0)

Lego’s brick patent was filed 50 years ago today.  Google is kicking off the party with this Lego-style logo.

January 25th, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

Debbie Landa of Dealmaker Media (0)

Debbie, can I post this email to LAtwiist? (x) yes

lol - just saw a pic of you and damon wayans on flickr. will he be showing something at under the radar??
Nope not this upcoming one

looks like it was a cool event, how do you think it went?
It was awesome, everyone who RSVP’d showed up despite a torrential downpour outside. It was great to see everyone so excited to be there and meet everyone face-to-face. Mike Jones said he had been exchanging emails with some of these people for the last two years and never met them in person. The crowd and atmosphere were perfect and there will be many more of these events to come. Ross Levinsohn (former Fox President) offered to host the next one at his beach club this summer.

what was your goal with this event?
Our goal was to reach out to the big industry executives and let them know that Dealmaker Media is expanding in LA and we want their commitment to becoming more involved and to support the broader community that exists in LA. We want them to encourage their teams to attend and participate as well.

was it achieved?
Yes – absolutely, this was the most enthusiastic crowd of top tier executives I’ve seen in years. I’ve had over 20 emails today thanking me and asking when the next one is.

what’s next?
Our first big mixer event is going to be on March 27 at Clearstone Ventures. This event is open to everyone in the community – entrepreneurs, investors and the executives looking to meet the new crew of hot startups in LA.

any random thoughts?
Yes – thanks for convincing me to expand to LA – I think together we will help to the LA community together. But LA is going to take some getting used to — I’m spoiled by the laid back silicon valley crowd. Now that’s irony.

Thanks and btw, I think you rule.
No — YOU RULE.

January 24th, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

Hello Dealmaker Media LA (0)

Hey look, it’s Damon Wayans and Dealmaker Media CEO & Founder Debbie Landa.  There was a Dealmaker Media event last night that we’ll share info about shortly.  In the meantime, there’s lots of pix to see here. Photo credit: Brian Solis bub.blicio.us 

January 23rd, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

Welcome to LAtwiist! (0)

We thought it might be helpful to having a place to find upcoming events, tech & media gigs and some lifestyle info on SoCal.

January 23rd, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

SpeedDate (0)