Friday, June 23, 2017
Steve Poizner Boots Up New Southern California Tech Nonprofit
Steve Poizner, the former California gubernatorial candidate and former founder of SnapTrack (which he sold to San Diego's Qualcomm), says he has created a new group called the Alliance for Southern California Innovation, which will focus on further developing Southern California's entrepreneurial ecosystem. The new group says it will develop initiatives that encourage tech entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and top talent to locate to and stay in Southern California, complementing and extending the success of Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. The new group says it is working with Caltech, the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Southern California on its efforts, and also has a close relationship with Bill Maris, the founder and former CEO of Google Ventures, who is creating a new venture fund located in Southern California called Section 32.
The Alliance for Southern California Innovation's board includes Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs, CAA's Michael Yanover, Sherry Lansing of Paramount Pictures, Thomas Gewecke of Warner Bros., Marc Stern of The TCW Group, and Scott Wolfe of Latham and Watkins in San Diego. However, the new group has no Southern California venture capitalists, and aside from Qualcomm's Jacobs, no representation from Southern California's most prominent technology entrepreneurs. The new group lists its headquarters at Poizner's residence in Los Gatos (in Silicon Valley), where Poizner lives. Bill Maris recently opened up Section 32 as a new, $150M investment fund in San Diego.