Hitting the Beach.Maybe the Internet has lost some of its glamour as an investment hot spot, but venture money continues to pour into Web companies that have a good story to tell. Last week, Woodland Hills-based NextLeft.com, an outfit with 120 employees that provides strategy, design and development services for the creation and management of online businesses (usually by existing brick-and-mortar companies), announced it has received $10 million in a second round of venture financing. The money came courtesy of unnamed individual investors, as well as from Philadelphia based Advanta Corp., and Plum Holdings LLP LLP - Lower Layer Protocol , also a Philly firm. Year-old NextLeft is certainly in a hurry; this year it has already acquired two other Web service firms -- C14 Productions and Systems Engineering Associates, both based in San Diego San Diego (săn dēā`gō), city (1990 pop. 1,110,549), seat of San Diego co., S Calif., on San Diego Bay; inc. 1850. San Diego includes the unincorporated communities of La Jolla and Spring Valley. Coronado is across the bay. . Though NextLeft is opening offices in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of and London, it is putting the brunt of its efforts into servicing companies in Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, , said Rich Harrison, vice president of operations. "We are expanding, but most of our business is in Southern California," he said. "We are strong in serving entertainment and financial companies." Interestingly, like so many other Web-centric firms, NextLeft wants to be in Santa Monica Santa Monica (săn`tə mŏn`ĭkə), city (1990 pop. 86,905), Los Angeles co., S Calif., on Santa Monica Bay; inc. 1886. Tourism and retailing are important, and the city has motion-picture, biotechnology, and software industries. , and is moving there shortly, despite office rents in the bayside bay·side adj. Situated very close to or on the shore of a bay: bayside cottages. city that are two or three times as high as in Woodland Hills. Why the switch? "Our employees want us to be there," said Harrison. "Woodland Hills is not the sort of place of place a Web firm wants to be." Economic development administrators, take note. |
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