OC Insider
Despite reports that VC funding here is on the rise, angel investor Tom Tucker (JenStar Capital) doesn’t see it, at least from local sources: “With Enterprise (Partners) leaving, we see very little VC activity here. We’re doing a deal now, and the VC funding is from JH Whitney out of Connecticut. We looked around locally and couldn’t find a player. It was a $15 million raise. I’m surprised that void is there” Meanwhile, on the image front, there’s good news and bad news from the Nov. 23 Wall Street Journal,The combined LA-OC entry ranked as the fourth-hottest place on “The New Map of High Tech.” But OC got lost in the writeup, which labeled the region “Hollywood.com.” WSJ also referred to the area by the LA-touted designation “Digital Coast,” ignoring the OC-favored “Tech Coast” name. Broadcom and Irvine were cited. WSJ ranked Seattle first, San Francisco second and Silicon Valley only third. San Diego placed fifth, completing a West Coast sweep. Meanwhile, OC on its own ranked 9th as a high-tech hotspot in the November Entrepreneur’s Business Start-Ups mag. On this list, OC beat out Seattle, ranked 10th. Silicon Valley was ranked fourth. Austin took the top spot. Entrepreneur quoted Editor RR on OC’s assets and liabilities. One OC company, Broadcom, made Fortune’s new e-50 index Private, 700-pupil St. Anne School in Laguna Niguel has raised $750,000 in less than two months for its building campaign. More than $200,000 was netted at a Four Seasons fundraiser that drew about 500 Where’s globe-trotting UCI prof Judy Rosener been lately? Auckland, New Zealand (to give a speech), China (as a delegate to the U.S.-China Summit on Women’s Issues., where she spoke in the Great Hall of the People) and London (where she was a delegate to the U.S.-U.K. Downing Street Summit on Women in the New Economy). For her 70th birthday (unbelievable!) she was presented with a cake by U.S. Ambassador Phil Lader at a reception with British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s wife Cherie Booth and Baroness Margaret Jay, leader of the House of Lords. In April she’s off to Sydney to deliver a keynote speech on women in business. “I am beginning to think I’m the roving ambassador for GSM,” quips Rosener Development interests have prevailed in a San Clemente building controversy. The interests are those of Mark Cousineau, president of the “Keeper of the Coast” Surfrider Foundation, who recently won a permit to add a 600-square-foot garage to his Avenida Cordoba home despite neighbors’ objections. A deadlocked council approved the project after a design change. To complete what some observers saw as an environmental twist, Cousineau’s wife Jina drove to the pivotal meeting in a Chevy Suburban equipped with a toll road transponder. Cousineau branded the media attention given his home improvement hassle, including this column item, “a cheap shot” The Insider bows down: Happy OCBJ 10th anniversaries to Janet Cox and Susan Dunigan.
