From Dogtown and Z-boys to Silicon Beach, the mix of media, business, and technology on the Westside of Los Angeles has changed both the culture and economy of the city. Its tech area, Silicon Beach, is no different. It started with a small number of potential startups and has grown into a global tech powerhouse.
But who got there first? The Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at USC is the clear answer. ISI was started in 1972 when the first staff moved into the brand-new Marina Towers in Marina Del Rey. At the time, some floors of the building didn’t have walls on the outside.
At the time, they rented the 12th floor and the top of the building. Now, they are the main renter of the South Tower (there are only three floors left!). Even though their computers still have the best view of the Pacific Ocean, the tech scene on land looks very different.
Since ISI was started, even USC has grown in the field. In 1999, the US Army started funding the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), which is a University Affiliated Research Center.
The Apple logo is probably the most well-known symbol of the tech industry in San Francisco. In Los Angeles, however, one of the most successful companies, Snap, formerly known as Snapchat, has a less subtle bright yellow image with a ghost.
Silicon Beach, which goes from Santa Monica to Playa Vista, is now home to more than 500 internet companies, including Google, YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, TikTok, Hulu, and Postmates, which are all big names in their fields. Multibillion-dollar deals like Honey and Oculus have made Silicon Beach a major player in the global tech industry. This is a long way from where the area started.
Google has been a sign of how Silicon Beach has changed. It opened its first office in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, in 2003. This brought other IT companies to the area. Then, in 2011, it opened a brand-new campus in Venice. It has three connected buildings, one of which is the Binoculars Building, which is 100,000 square feet and was built by Frank Gehry. Nearby, in Playa Vista, Google grew in the old Spruce Goose hangar, which was turned into an office building.
Smaller businesses once again copied the model, and now they have big campuses with beautiful design, just like Amazon is doing in Culver City, where they are still spending $620 million to grow. Hulu and Twitter are in Santa Monica, while Facebook and YouTube are in Playa Vista. Venice is still the most important city in the area.
The mayor of Culver City, Daniel Lee, said that this growth had to happen. Think about Sony, which has been in Culver City for 20 years. Because Sony is close by, many smaller businesses that help the film industry have moved here so they can work together and share information. He said that there weren’t a lot of active efforts to get the big companies here. Some of the younger media companies, like TikTok, which was also started in Culver City, want to be closer to established media in order to be taken more seriously sooner.
During the last ten years, the technology industry in Santa Monica has also grown and changed a lot. By 2022, there will be 3,166 businesses in this sector in Santa Monica. These businesses will hire 29,000 people, which is 37% of the city’s workforce (and 63% of its quarterly payroll! ), and bring in around $2 billion each quarter. Snap, which started in nearby Venice and now has its headquarters in Santa Monica and employs about 2,200 people, is the largest private company in the area.
Jennifer Taylor, Santa Monica’s Economic Development Manager, said this about Silicon Beach’s growth in recent years: “We have a lot of traditional L.A.-type industries that have been around for a long time in Santa Monica, but we have seen tech companies change in the last four or five years, with crossovers between fields: tech confluence with healthcare businesses, fintech businesses, and many tech businesses mixed with another industry.”
Activision Blizzard, whose headquarters have been in Santa Monica since 2008 and whose games include Candy Crush, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Guitar Hero, is the leader in the city’s video game business. Video games are the best way to learn about technology and have fun at the same time.
GoodRx is another business that works in more than one field. It combines technology and health care to sell cheap prescription drugs to people all over the world.
Santa Monica is very appealing to businesses because it is easy to find places to spend. The city’s culture of entrepreneurship brings in a lot of money, and by 2020, venture investment is expected to hit $7.8 billion, making it the perfect place to develop new technologies.
According to Taylor, when they asked businesses why they moved to Santa Monica, many said it was because of the high quality of life and easy access to highly qualified workers.” They also talked about the ecosystem in the area, which gives businesses access to startup capital. Businesses have told us this many times. The Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce has been working hard to bring new businesses into the growing digital and creative industries by convincing business agents and industry giants to do the same.
As Silicon Beach’s economy has grown, a number of projects and programs have been started to make the lives of tech workers better. Culver City built protected bus and bike paths to make it easier to get to and from many tech companies. Also, its clean electricity lines have helped companies like Amazon and Apple meet the needs of their green initiatives.
The growth of Silicon Beach has helped other industries. For example, the international law company Goodwin opened a private equity and technology-focused practice in Santa Monica in 2019 and will add several early-stage technology partners to their team in June 2022. Real estate in the area has been growing steadily in response to strong buyer demand from IT workers who want to live close to their offices.
So, is there any way to stop the growth of Silicon Beach?
Sadly, that’s true. The space is limited by the way the land is set up. Santa Monica is a small city with a total area of about 16 square miles. Buildings bigger than 6 stories aren’t allowed without a special permit, which is against the city’s building rule. Successful businesses often move to places in the South that aren’t as well known, which makes Silicon Beach bigger. This is what happened to Ring, a video doorbell camera company based in Santa Monica that was bought by Amazon and just opened a new location near SpaceX in Hawthorne. On a good day, it takes about 35 minutes to get to its parent company from the new location.
Taylor agreed that space is the biggest problem when it comes to keeping businesses open. Some businesses start to grow here, but they can’t stay. Even though it’s outside the city limits, we’re just glad they can keep working in the area for everyone’s benefit. It’s a chance to invest, get venture cash, and build up the work force.
USC ISI, a leader in Silicon Beach, also wants to grow. It wants to double the number of people working there in the next five years while keeping its offices in Marina Del Rey. It also wants to be a big part of the growth and development of this Southern California tech area.