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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Founder Goes Full Time on Tech Site, Plans Expansion

Benjamin Kuo, the founder of the popular Westlake Village-based technology website socaltech.com, has decided to devote his efforts to the site full time and has plans for an expansion of the brand. “The website has been doing very well of late and a few months ago, I hit the mythical crossover point when I began to make more off of the site than at my daytime job,” Kuo said. “I’ve decided to focus on it and make it a full-time venture, and I think it is very viable considering it was fairly successful as a hobby. I’ve got a lot of subscribers subscribing to our databases to find new business and use it for making venture investments.” Kuo founded the website in 1998 almost by accident when he decided to compile an online directory of all the local technology companies as a way to help him look for a new job in the area. When this site began to take off, he began sending out a simple newsletter to a small distribution list which continued to grow and grow. Eventually this newsletter has turned into the premiere technology website for the greater San Fernando Valley area, with a daily newsletter, a calendar of technology events, interviews with local entrepreneurs, a venture capital database, and other resources. And as a result of this growth, Kuo has decided to leave his day job where he formerly worked as the senior product manager for Westlake Village-based Troika Networks. Additionally, Kuo has major plans for expanding his company’s imprint. “I’ve also just launched techrockies.com, which for now is an experiment but the site is up already and has been for only a few weeks,” Kuo said. “I grew up in Salt Lake City and had some friends out here. I’m very familiar with the area plus it has a very growing technology industry. The website will cover Colorado, Utah, and parts of Arizona.” Kuo believes that the website has now become viable because after years of persistence, he has finally touched upon the right business model. Additionally, he plans on adding more features to the site within the coming months. “The business model that I’ve settled on is a combination of the membership and subscribers to our database, couple with advertisers and sponsors that we have both on the website and newsletter. It seems to be the right mix to generate substantial revenues,” Kuo said. “I haven’t yet figured out what will debut next but of late, I’ve been talking to users of the venture database, asking them what additional information they’d like to see. It’s going to play itself out over the next few months.” MGA Boosts Market Share North Hills-based MGA Entertainment Corp. has announced that the newest report from toy industry tracker NPG Group has shown that MGA’s market share increased 52 percent from October to November 2005, bringing the company’s total market share in the fashion dolls and accessory category to 41 percent. According to Anthony N. Gikas, a senior research analyst for Piper Jaffray, MGA’s latest growth comes as little surprise, as the company has been steadily and consistently eroding Mattel’s market share for the last several years. “We’ve been seeing this trend now for several years, MGA’s Bratz line has repeatedly managed to take market share from Mattel’s Barbie. At first, people thought it would be a one-product run for the company, but they’ve proven that it is a sustainable long-term business,” Gikas said. “The Bratz dolls are here to stay and they’ve been also picking up significant market share in Europe and the United Kingdom. I don’t see any reason why this trend would stop. They have some very bright executives at MGA and I think they’ll continue to take more market share in 2006.” Little Interest in Crown According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the Studio City-based Hallmark Channel has so far drawn little interest from prospective buyers and that the Channel’s parent company, Crown Media Holdings may take the firm off of the market. Most analysts speculated that any potential buyer for the Channel would likely be a massive media corporation and that speculation was confirmed, as reportedly News Corp. submitted a bid of close to $1 billion for the channel. However, Hallmark reportedly wants at least $1.2 billion for the channel and as much as $2 billion if the Hallmark Library of movies is included. The channel has struggled as the market has grown increasingly difficult for a stand-alone cable network to prosper. Such channels have less leverage than larger firms that can wield more power with cable and satellite providers. “The Hallmark channel just had less ammunition to use in getting into a basic tier than the other guys. If you’re part of the Time Warner or the Fox group or the CNN group or the CNBC/NBC group you have more leverage. Any single channel is going to have problems,” Dennis McAlpine, the managing director of McAlpine & Associates, said. “I don’t know if it will sell, it depends how bad they want to get out. But they’re right that a single channel has limited future. They need to decide how badly they want to be protected.” 3D Systems Begins Move 3D Systems Corp. has slowly begun to move its personnel to South Carolina, as it has opened up a 12,000 square-foot temporary office in Rock Hill, S.C., expected to house the company’s sales administration, human resources, finance department and field-support functions within a few weeks. According to Elizabeth Goode, 3D’s director of corporate development, everything is thus far going as planned and the company will be fully out of its previous Valencia headquarters by the end of this year. “We’re still on track and plan to be gone by the end of the year. We have a very good time frame set up for the move and it will be ongoing in gradual states as we start to build our new state-of-the-art headquarters in Rock Hill,” Goode said.” The company which makes three-dimensional printing and prototyping systems, plans to build a $10 million, 75,000 square-foot-plant for its new home. The permanent facility will have 145 employees, who are to be paid an average of $80,000 per year. The company’s temporary office is across the street from the York Technical College, which the company has contracted into a special agreement to train prospective employees for 3D’s new headquarters. The college will operate a training center at the temporary facility. Staff Reporter Jeff Weiss can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or at [email protected].

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