LOS ANGELES (MMD Newswire) April 2, 2013 -- Tech News Today has highlighted 4 tech entrepreneurs in California that are changing the internet landscape of Los Angeles forever. California has long been known to produce internet and high tech entrepreneurs. Some of the most popular and well liked internet businesses have started from Silicon Valley. Los Angeles, most known for its amazing warm weather, high priced real estate and beautiful beaches can now add something else to the list, web entrepreneurs!
Los Angeles is a melting pot of different ethnicities and races. One of them being Iranian-Americans or "Persians". They dominate the Southern California area, in particular Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and the Westside in general. They also dominate the real estate industry, clothing, textile and jewelry industries in Los Angeles. Another industry being dominated by young Iranian-Americans is the internet industry.
During the past 10 years four young Iranian-American entrepreneurs have been slowly building web empires in Los Angeles. They have done so under the radar and have amassed a great deal of wealth and recognition in the online industry while creating jobs and some of the most useful web properties on the internet. These four young, bright, successful internet CEO's have founded web businesses that collectively cater to over 100 million users per month.
Like most high tech start up's, you won't find stuffy suit wearing millionaires with these four. Each having their own individual sense of style, but all four have something in common. Jeans, tennis shoes, and t-shirts. Similar to FaceBook's Zuckerberg who made wearing a sweater and flip flops to work popular, these four internet tycoon's run massive internet empires employing a large staff while generating seven figure sum's in the process. However, if you saw them, you wouldn't even know it.
Meet the four internet whiz kid's changing the internet landscape in Los Angeles one idea at a time:
Kamran Pourzanjani
Bestcovery.com was founded in 2008 by Kamran Pourzanjani, who is also an angel investor. Bestcovery is basically a quick and easy way to find the best of everything. The company's experts help you find the product that is best for your individual needs. Before founding Bestcovery, Pourzanjani was co-founder and CEO of PriceGrabber.com. PriceGrabber quickly became one of the most popular comparison shopping websites and had an enterprise value of about $500 million when he sold it in 2005. In recognition of the company's exceptional growth and performance, Mr. Pourzanjani won the coveted Ernst & Young's "Entrepreneur of the Year" for the Business Services category in June of 2005 in Los Angeles. He is also an early investor in ShoeDazzle, Legalzoom, and Docstoc.
Robert Bobby Kalili
In 2007, Kalili founded SearchBoth.com and today serves as the CEO. SearchBoth enables users to search both Google & Yahoo side by side on one split screen. Aggregating search engines is nothing new for Kalili. He has successfully aggregated shopping sites with DiscountMore.com, travel industry with Comparison.travel and real estate industry with RentCompare.com. Today, he operates a network of over 1,000 web properties generating over 10 million users per month. Before founding his internet empire, Kalili founded Toll Free Yellow Pages, Corp; a software business that owned four very valuable toll free numbers, 1-800-YellowPages (888, 877 and 866) and Federal Trademark rights to the four words TOLL FREE YELLOW PAGES. After developing one of the first voice automated telephone software programs for the YellowPages industry, the company got acquired by AT&T for an undisclosed 8 figure sum. Kalili was also an early investor in Go2net (GNET) in 1996 which got acquired by InfoSpace in 1999 for $4.2 billion.
Farhad Mohit
Farhad Mohit is the founder and CEO of Cheerful Inc. makers of Cheers - the "like button" for the world around you, and Gripe - a much better Better Business Bureau for the age of social media. Prior to these Mohit created Shopzilla.com and helped manage it through the bubble of 2000, to profitability by 2003, and a successful acquisition for $569 million by EW Scripps (SSP) in 2005. In the process Shopzilla became and remains one of the largest, fastest growing and most successful shopping search engines in the world. Now he has a new super stealthy startup called DotSpots. The startup raised a seed round of $300,000 last September from Mohit and HitForge, the angel fund run by engineers. (HitForge is also an investor in WeGame and Mesmo.tv). Mohit hints that DotSpots "will make my other ideas to date look like child's play".
Jason Nazar
In 2007, Nazar founded Docstoc.com with co-founder Alon Schwartz. Today he is the CEO. Docstoc is an online community to find and share professional documents; it currently houses over 20 million documents with more than 25 million registered users. Before starting Docstoc, Nazar founded Choice Speakers Inc., was a partner at Venature Capital and Consulting and created Startups Uncensored, the longest running and most widely attended technology gathering in southern California, which regularly brings together thousands of entrepreneurs, techies and investors. Before starting Docstoc, he was a partner in a venture consulting firm in Los Angeles where he worked with dozens of startups. Jason was named one of the "Most Admired CEOs in Los Angeles" by the LA Business Journal, but he's more proud of his three point shot and ping pong skills.
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