Taylor Frigon invests in Schmidt-backed cloud tech firm
Alongside its everyday wealth and investment management business, San Luis Obispo-based Taylor Frigon Capital Management has been quietly making venture capital investments over the past five years that are gaining attention from Silicon Valley heavyweights.
Taylor Frigon’s venture investment arm, Taylor Frigon Capital Partners, was an early investor in a company called Otoy in Los Angeles. The company has recently inked deals with a spate of big players — Firefox parent Mozilla, Amazon’s cloud services branch and Autodesk, the gold-standard for 3-D rendering software — to crack a previously unachievable goal.
$17.8M sale positions Camarillo shopping center for turnaround
The bankrupt Camarillo Plaza community shopping center has been sold to an undisclosed Beverly Hills buyer for $17.8 million after receiving 20 separate offers. The 74,072-square-foot mall is located on Daily Drive at the intersection of Brently Avenue, across Highway 101 from the Camarillo Premium Outlets.
Sharp idea: Santa Barbara razor entrepreneur taps crowdfunding
Santa Barbara entrepreneur and former hedge fund manager Steve Worthington has created BornSharp, a self-sharpening razor designed to last five years.
ValueClick reboots: Online advertising firm to sell assets, rename
The $1.6 billion Westlake Village-based digital advertising company has been under fire from investors — and trial attorneys — for its reliance acquisitions to produce revenue growth. It has also faced criticism of the steep losses it has taken on selling off business lines that didn’t work out.
Banking on a reunion: Funari and Ortega team up
Longtime Santa Barbara bankers Joanne Funari and Eloy Ortega are reunited again. The two bankers, who founded Business First National Bank together in 2001, now have their sights set on building out the The Bank of Santa Barbara on the South Coast.
Dole investors file suit over CEO’s buyout
Wall Street trusts billionaire David Murdock of Dole Food Co. to repay his debts but doesn’t agree with his valuation logic.
Murdock succeeded in taking the Westlake Village-based firm private on Oct. 31 in a deal that valued the company at more than $1.6 billion when counting net debt, fees and expenses. At the same time, investors clamored to help Murdock take on debt to finance the deal, with a reported order book of more than $10.5 billion for only $300 million in debt.
