On Sunday, it rained in Los Angeles.
The thunderstorm was an exhale, after weeks of raging fires and feverish news coverage. The fires are all but out now, and thousands of Angelenos are just starting to deal with the depths of the crisis as the outside world moves on.
"There are lots of people who go through something like this, natural disasters," Josh Porter, the managing partner and cofounder at FirstLook Partners, told me as we had coffee in Venice Beach. "I keep thinking about Hurricane Katrina or the Camp Fire. That’s now so real to me, when people lose everything."
Porter lost his home in Pacific Palisades, less than two months after hosting Thanksgiving with his family there for the first time. He’s been excruciatingly aware of the world slowly turning away.
"It’s been fascinating to watch this story fade from the front pages, watching it fall to the eighth or ninth story," said Porter. "This is the top story for our household, every morning. And best case, it will be for months. Maybe in a year or two, it’ll start to fade."
With so much devastation throughout the sprawling city, and so many people affected, Porter has turned his attention to a question that's crossed his inbox and his text messages thousands of times in recent weeks: How can I help?
Porter is among a group of L.A. VCs that wanted to find an answer to that question. And if there’s one thing VCs know how to do, it’s raise a fund. In L.A., the venture community has banded together, springing into action by launching The LA Tech Community Cares Fund. The emergency relief fund—which, as of this writing, has raised more than $580,000—is geared directly towards helping Angelenos affected by the fires, prioritizing those most in need.
"The fires are fading from the news," said Dustin Rosen, managing partner and founder at Wonder Ventures. "That’s why we feel that it’s the right time for giving. People are going to be rebuilding for so long."
The relief fund is powered by L.A.-based charitable giving platform Pledge, whose CEO James Citron grew up in Pacific Palisades. ("This felt like the most important thing that I could do," Citron told Fortune.) Pledge enables giving with cash, stock, crypto, and donor-advised funds. GoFundMe is also a partner, running the vetting process.
Marlon Nichols, founding managing partner at MaC Venture Capital, said the fund will serve Angelenos on a "need-based" level. He’s thinking about the possible generational effects of the fires and wants the fund to especially help people who owned homes that had been passed down through generations. In short: This relief fund is from tech, but it’s not for tech.
"That’s not to say that if you have means or work in tech you won't see a dime from this fund," Nichols told Fortune. "It’s more to say that the vast majority of these funds should go to families that are in need, for whom it’s going to be especially difficult to rebuild."
This relief fund came out of a group chat that sprung into existence on Jan. 11, still in the early days of the fires. That evening, Mark Mullen, cofounder at Bonfire Ventures, started the group chat, feeling that people sought to connect amid the tragedy—figure out who needed help, trade information, and have productive conversations without distractions.
"We wanted to put something together as a community, and I put together this WhatsApp channel with the contacts just in my phone," said Mullen. "To give credit to Dustin, Marlon, and others [including Halogen Ventures’ Jesse Draper], they immediately started saying: What should we do? Is there something we can do as a group, as a commitment to our community? It was only possible for this to come together this quickly because of a long history of collaboration among L.A. VCs." (There’s lots of passing credit around in this group, but Rosen is credited as the key organizer and Mullen is considered Father Of The Group Chat.)
In a sense, the emergency relief fund is also a testament to the VC scene that has sprouted in L.A. over the last 20 years.
VC in L.A. started out small and fragmented. There were some early proof points and investors—like Bill Gross’ Idealab—but mostly there was conviction that Silicon Valley wasn’t the only place for smart entrepreneurs. Greycroft's Dana Settle came to L.A. in 2006, and though the tech scene was "extremely sparse," the city’s entertainment roots were compelling.
"I really believe in entrepreneurship everywhere, and it occurred to me that L.A.'s actually a super entrepreneurial environment," Settle told Fortune. "Being a producer is like being an entrepreneur, being an actor is like being an entrepreneur, being a writer is like being an entrepreneur."
From the very beginning, L.A. VCs had to be collaborative, because they had primarily each other to rely on. Since those early days, the infrastructure and footprint of L.A. has expanded massively, including in the last ten years alone. In 2014, total capital invested in the L.A. metro area was about $4.15 billion, and deal count was 752, according to PitchBook. In 2024, total capital invested is about $11 billion, with deal count at 910.
But that collaborative spirit from those early years has become part of L.A. VC’s DNA, said Mullen, who characterizes the community today as competitive but fundamentally close.
"Traditionally, we've been extremely helpful and collaborative with each other," echoes Rosen. "As things got bigger and L.A. tech grew, it was like 'Okay, we both can’t fit in this round.' But it never got contentious, and I hope we never get there."
"It's like professional athletes," Nichols added. "You've spent so much of your life with these people, either playing on amateur teams, in different tournaments, and through college. Now you’re in the NBA, and you may be on different teams. But you still have a lot of respect and admiration for each other and real relationships with one another."
There’s another acknowledgement here, about how deeply tech scenes are inextricably linked to their larger communities. L.A. tech relies on a thriving L.A. And the city is undoubtedly moving forward. (For example, Upfront Summit—run by Upfront Ventures, also notably involved in The LA Tech Community Cares Fund—is on for late February.)
"L.A. is 100% open for business, never closed," said Porter. "There was maybe a fire drill, but everyone’s back and ready to write checks, and has been for much of this time. It’s business as usual for our day jobs. L.A. was strong before, and it will be even stronger now."
Because now the rains have come and the fires have almost gone out, a different kind of work really begins—together.
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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