Ask HN: How is the tech scene in LA?

Been in LA for 2 years now and went to college in LA 10 years ago so have some data points to compare.

Startups in LA are interesting. Back in the day, there was a lot of Ad Tech / advent of big data. This is when Snapchat and Hulu were coming up. I’d go on Angellist and see who was hiring and who’d be down to meet.

Now, especially post covid, I feel sparks of excitement. I missed the crypto hype in LA so that was probably wild and weird. a16z opened an office in Santa Monica and do their speedrun accelerator. Focused on games and media it seems.

upfront hosted some cool cowork and mingle events too.

Two meetups I regularly go to is AI Tinkerers and MLOps. Generally it’s the same small crowd. I went to a Ruby meetup which was cool too.

Less of a young startup crowd. Maybe people got older and rich and retired early.

I also went to college in LA about 10 years ago, though I haven't been back since. Most of my business travel takes me to SF.

I really enjoyed my time there and would love to hear, what surprised you most about how LA has changed?

I stay mostly on the westside but id say more density of shops but at the same time less busy? if i had to guess, things were really going well before covid. then add delivery app and now a bunch of coco delivery robots really slowed down foot traffic.

things still go viral - pop ups are very popular with the young crowd. owalla was giving out water bottles and the line was around the block and i didnt see the end of the line

The tech scene is not doing so well imo. people say gaming is cyclical but idk tbh. AI adoption in graphic design and coding is really going to squeeze an already stressed gaming labor pool. entertainment industry is much the same.

i cant name one young rising startup that was hot like snapchat. so that was disappointing when i was job hunting.

traffic is still bad. smog is less bad.

Tech seems to have reduced foot traffic but not car traffic. Kind of ironic...

> i cant name one young rising startup that was hot like snapchat. so that was disappointing when i was job hunting.

I’ve had the same thought. Maybe Tinder or Oculus (pre-acquisition), but those feel like they were a while ago now.