Representatives from a host of local start-up companies gathered at LMU on Friday, Feb. 3, to network and share business ideas during the 2017 Silicon Beach Expo.
This year's expo attracted hundreds of participants, including an estimated 150 LMU students — the largest student representation to date. From 9 a.m. to noon, the expo took over the first floor of University Hall, welcoming companies including Purple Squirrel, Name Drop, Kruze Consulting, Spectrum Business, Vocatio, StokeShare, Doggie Buddies, Cue Career, Tucker Ellis and many more.
"We were pleased that such a large number of students took advantage of the opportunity to share their ideas and network with successful entrepreneurs, innovators and organizations from throughout the community," said Branden Grimmett, associate provost for career and professional development at LMU.
The event was organized by Silicon Beach L.A. – a social network of entrepreneurs, investors, developers, designers and other members of L.A.'s tech community – in conjunction with LMU's Career and Professional Development office and Center for Entrepreneurship Studies.
Among the LMU students in attendance were those supported by the Fred Kiesner Center for Entrepreneurship's Business Incubator. Jake Tannenbaum, Dee Haney, Rayne Crossen and James Wilcox came to promote Rink, a mobile application that encourages users to compete in fun social challenges.
"The expo gave the team the opportunity to pitch their business plan to both students and professionals, gather content for social media pages, have users sign up for their beta version, and conduct a market research survey to gather feedback," Tannenbaum said.
"We had tons of students and professionals leave their resumes and business cards to ultimately connect in the future," he said. "Some of these people included lawyers, investors, marketers, data scientists, advisers, computer scientists/programmers and entrepreneurs."