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Southern California has sun, surf... And now silicon.
"Silicon Beach", as it's being called, is attracting talent and funding for tech startups, entrepreneurs drawn to L.A.'s ability to brand and sell ideas...plus the weather.
"L.A. is such a hustler mentality," says Tony Adam, a former Paypal executive who's come to Silicon Beach to launch EventUp, a website that rents out locations for events. "Everyone wants to help each other."
"This is a place where people have come for years to make dreams happen, so why shouldn't they come here to make their technology dreams happen?" asks Michael Weir, a Silicon Valley transplant who is now Chief Marketing Officer for Sparqlight, an enterprise software startup in Santa Monica.
It sounds strange that the world's entertainment capital, and the second largest city in the country, would be seen as a "startup" in anything.
Los Angeles is home to tech companies like gaming giant Activision , but it lacks a huge tech magnet, like Apple and Google and others are to Silicon Valley, Amazon and Microsoft to Seattle, Groupon to Chicago.
So local tech incubators hope one of the startups here will be the next big thing. In just the last month, two Southern California tech companies, Savings.com and Gaikai, have each been acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars.
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