The Business Journal’s annual OC50 is a list that puts a spotlight on businesspeople involved in certain trends.
Our OC50 list in 2023 highlighted 50 executives at the fastest growing companies by revenue in Orange County. Last year’s OC50 featured 50 businesspeople who are influential in Orange County’s nonprofit industry.
The ability to convince other people to give you millions of dollars is a unique talent. We are, of course, talking about entrepreneurs who have a vision about the product that they want to build.
We thought our readers would like to know about rising entrepreneurs who might not be well known outside investment circles.
This list doesn’t include some of Orange County’s most famous entrepreneurs like Henry Samueli of Broadcom, Ray Cohen of Axonics or Joe Kiani of Masimo Corp.
Instead, we emphasize lesser-known entrepreneurs who have proven themselves adept at raising millions of dollars. Their stories start on page 1 and page 34. Plus, we have a special Leader Board written by three investors based in Orange County on what they seek when funding an entrepreneur.
Admittedly, some of these on the list are becoming internationally famous like Palmer Luckey, whose ventures we have been covering for more than a decade and who continues to make national news (see our page 1 article). However, most are under the public radar. We believe that if they go on to other ventures, a horde of savvy investors will follow them.
Of course, we might have missed a few. If so, please let us know.
— Peter Brennan, Orange County Business Journal Editor-in-Chief
A
Andrew Abraham | Dan Almquist |
Darin Anderson | Kamran Ansari |
Dustin Armer & Eason Abbott | Bobby Azamian |
B
Tommy Beadel | Alex & Lisa Bhathal |
Tim Britt | Kurt Busch |
C
Michael Cannavo | Justin Chen Li |
D
John Drachman & Sean Rawson |
E
Shannon Eusey |
G
Matt Gialich | Kaye Gitibin & Kavous Gitibin |
Ray Grainger | Arun Gupta |
H
Julian Hamood | John Harris |
Chris Harrison | Jason Huang |
K
Kyle Kamrooz | Anthony Katz |
Ike Kavas | Arthur Kuan |
Brent Kulp |
L
Anthony Lee | Palmer Luckey |
M
Donald McClymont | Matt McCue |
Vic Merjanian | Francisco Morales |
Newth Morris & Jared Smith |
N
Tam Nguyen | Tim Nguyen |
P
Tej Patel | Henry Pyle |
R
Nate & Rebecca Raabe | Carey Ransom |
Dan Rodriguez | Reza Rofougaran & Maryam Rofougaran |
S
RJ Scaringe | Taylor Shupe |
Matt Singer | Tony Smith |
Wil Smith |
T
Ethan Thornton |
W
Todd Watts | Ryan Westerdahl |