How Startups Survive and Thrive in Santa Barbara

Much like the rains that intermittently reach the Central Coast, the influx of capital that fuels our high-growth startups can seem to pour in and then leave us with long dry spells. In recent months, the financial markets nationwide have had their share of heat waves and droughts as well. The private markets for startups seemed too hot, overvaluing massive startups like Uber and Snapchat, while the public markets dried up due to global economic storm clouds, slowing the debut of newly public companies to a near stall.

Yet as tough as the current conditions may seem, area companies have actually fared quite well. In just the last few years, more than $300 million has been raised by innovative Central Coast companies from initial public offerings (IPOs) of their stock. Three area companies, MindBody (NASDAQ: MB), Appfolio (NASDAQ: APPF), and CytomX Therapeutics (NASDAQ: CTMX), raised a combined $250 million from public investors when each IPO'ed on the NASDAQ.

Today each company is being valued at more than half a billion dollars by the public markets. Combined with the fact that startups in the 805 raised more than $200 million last year from private investors, and the Central Coast boasts nearly twice the per capita investment in innovation than the greater Los Angeles area.

Even though the larger L.A. region pumps an average of about $1 billion into startups in each financial quarter, our startups here know they are building something special in a special place. While some local entrepreneurs feel the pull to startup in either Silicon Valley or Hollywood, many fight hard to create significant businesses beyond the bright lights and big dollars of those regions.

Dozens of new, promising companies have been started in recent years, many coming directly out of UC Santa Barbara, whose New Venture Competition gave us Inogen (NASDAQ: INGN), TrackR, and Salty Girl Seafood and whose professors and research labs spawned AppScale, LastLine, and many others.

Call it the Greater Santa Barbara area, the California Central Coast or just the “805,” but this region continues to be a healthy place to start, launch, and grow remarkable biotech, medical, technology, and scientific startups. As a further sign of this ecosystem’s health, startups grown here often reach a sustained scale large enough to warrant being acquired by national or global industry leaders.

You can read the full article on Independent.

Matthew Stotts, The Santa Barbara Independent