Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Zuma Ventures Takes On Early Stage Startups

Two, Los Angeles area startup veterans--David Carter and Allen Hurff--launched a new "venture studio" Tuesday morning aimed at helping to create and incubate early stage startups. According to the two, they have launched Zuma Ventures, a new effort to help identify early-stage technologies with large market opportunities, and use those technologies to create new, independent companies. Carter was a co-founder/partner at Amplify.LA, and also was founder of Vertical Technologies, Thoughtstar, and S5 Wireless' Hurff was formerly the EVP of Engineering at MySpace, and also was an EIR at Science Inc., the startup studio headed by Mike Jones. In addition to Carter and Hurff, the studio says it has the backing of Richard Wolpert, who is managing director at Amplify.LA, a Venture Partner at Accel Partners, and Executive Advisor at RealNetworks. Zuma said its model offers up better capital efficiency, earlier exit, and lower capital requirements than venture capital.

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