The City of Burbank has big plans for its Tech Talks program for the remainder of the year. The city’s networking program for entrepreneurs is looking to have an event in November to coincide with Los Angeles Techweek. It also wants to have a pitch fest for entrepreneurs to present ideas to venture capitalists and others, said Mary Hamzoian, the city’s economic development manager who oversees the program. “At a minimum we should have two events we are trying to pull together by the end of the year.” The Tech Talks program began in 2016 as a replacement for another program about starting and growing a business. After the recovery from the recession, the city saw there were fewer people interested in that program and instead wanted information on how to be an entrepreneur and take an idea from start to finish, Hamzoian said. “We thought it would be better to help foster and grow that segment,” she added. During the 2017-2018 fiscal year, which ended on June 30, more than 500 people came out for the Tech Talks events. These included the Burbank Tech Summit in March in which a panel of speakers discussed the future of entertainment, technology and the health care industry; and three other networking talks in April, May and June. The programs encourage entrepreneurship in the city through speakers such as venture capitalists, attorneys and founders of startups. “We are fostering of the growth of entrepreneurship in Burbank and trying to diversify our employment portfolio,” Hamzoian said. “We know we are hub for entertainment and technology. We know those companies are here and obviously entrepreneurship is growing in Burbank.” In March, Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm in Boston, released a report about the Southern California technology ecosystem in which it identified Burbank and neighboring Glendale as “a node of excellence” for entertainment and media creation, joining such cities as Irvine, San Diego and Santa Barbara. “These and the other nodes serve as a foundation on which to build a world-class tech ecosystem,” the report said. Last year, Burbank won the programs award for the Tech Talks events from the California Association for Local Economic Development. Wrench Presence While Ed Petersen heads up a company dedicated to repairing vehicles, he is the last person you want touching your car. “I did not come from the auto space,” Petersen said. “I am a tech guy. I have been in the tech industry my entire career.” Petersen is chief executive of Wrench Inc., a platform that allows car owners to schedule on-demand car maintenance and repair with a mechanic coming to their home or office. The Seattle-based company came into the Los Angeles market last month after establishing its service in other West Coast markets, including Orange County and San Diego. The company now operates in California, Oregon, Washington State, Arizona, Nevada, Texas and Illinois, Petersen said. In the L.A. market, the company has not opened a physical location, but it employs about 10 mechanics. “I would expect that number to be 50 as fast as we can get there,” Petersen said. “For quality control we like to hire the mechanics.” Wrench works through an app in which car owners put in their license plate number, which then gives information about the car. Through a series of questions, the software will then determine what is going wrong with the vehicle. “We use a lot of machine learning and sophisticated technology processes to start nailing down symptoms as to what is the most probable issue with the car,” Petersen said. Finally, another process determines what it will take to fix the problem, the availability and cost of parts and scheduling of the mechanic to do the work. The car owner must give the OK on the cost. “The back end to make that happen, from beginning to end, to completely solve the problem, is really complex and that is why we say this is driven by technology,” Petersen said. Hub101 Donation PureSpectrum donated $10,000 to Hub101, the tech incubator of California Lutheran University, during an event at the incubator on Oct. 3. Chief Executive Michael McCrary credited the incubator with attracting the kind of talent and resources that led to growth and profitability for his Westlake Village tech firm in less than three years. McCrary joined Hub101 as a solo entrepreneur a month after it opened in March 2016. “I have a vision that Hub101 will be the tech hub of the future,” McCrary told the crowd at the event where he made the donation. Hub101 provides co-working space and access to mentors for startups, charging between $99 and $199 a month at space at 31416 Agoura Road in Westlake Village. Staff Reporter Mark R. Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or [email protected].