A new report “Orange County Focus: A View of the OC’s Future” will be out this week. It’s not the first study to note the trend—but maybe the deepest—that since 2000, OC has been losing high-paying jobs and as a result, is losing its young people.
“Losing our seed corn,” said researcher Marshall Toplansky, study co-author with demographer Joel Kotkin.
If county leaders want a poster child for reversing the trend, a millennial to stand up for OC’s startup ecosystem, they could turn to Michael Griego.
The 23 year old is product manager of strategy and innovation for Cie Digital Labs, coincidentally one of five companies featured in this issue as 2018 honorees of the Business Journal’s 17th annual Excellence in Entrepreneurship Awards (page 1).
Chief Executive Anderee Berengian just put Griego though a final panel interview that Griego handled with a “deep understanding of market opportunities and competition.”
Griego spent four years at the University of California-Irvine, much of that at The Cove, honing his chops in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
His junior year, he worked at a vertically integrated cannabis startup and helped introduce the company, Clear Gold, to Kanban, a product management methodology, as a “way to get their ideas out there, find the low-hanging fruit.”
Such practical stuff out of the classroom. Not quite.
He said in college he took advantage of all the resources around him. “People who were executives, had made their money. I needed to meet these people.”
And he did, networking at The Cove.
The Cove is the entrepreneurial hub of UCI’s Applied Innovation, which connects UCI’s researchers and entrepreneurs with investors and OC’s private sector.
It connected Griego—to angels, venture capitalists, lawyers and chief financial officers, and other entrepreneurs.
“It’s not like typical meetups,” Griego said. “At The Cove they’re willing to share knowledge.”
The knowledge, network, helped Griego get his next product manager job, at Irvine-based Koder, now a blockchain platform.
He worked on an app called investround.com that “gives anyone the chance to invest in a hedge fund.” Really, democratizing hedge-fund investing?
He brought Koder three clients that Greigo said generated revenues of $200,000.
“Up at 6 a.m., office at 8, UCI for class for an hour and a half … off to The Cove,” Griego recalled.
“It was a pretty hectic time …”
The Marina High School grad had the “gene.” He developed his first mobile app with three Surf City pals—“a sort of Tinder for fashion.”
He was a weary traveler but he was traveling his golden road and taking detours to places like The Cove.
“I understood the value of going into those places. Top executives in Orange County willing to share their experience … people from Yahoo, from Facebook … teaching you how to manage software development teams and build products for the masses. These are free seminars.”
Greigo’s in that narrow subset of entrepreneurs—super-focused and in a hurry, spurred on by classmates and friends who have already arrived.
Friend Tina Aldatz of Laguna Hills founded Foot Petals, a designer of shoe cushions for high heels. Sold it to Nordstrom.
And his fellow college grads?
“All of my friends got poached. Oracle. Accenture. They’re in Boston, New York.”
But Griego wants to be here, he wants to be that poster child.
He lives in Costa Mesa, works in Irvine.
