Los Angeles County's startup base runs along the coast from Santa Monica through Culver City, Playa Vista and El Segundo, with a second concentration around Pasadena's research institutions and a third in the Arts District downtown. It builds different companies from the Bay Area's — media, hardware, space and health rather than pure enterprise software — and that changes the equity questions in ways worth naming.
Where founders and startup employees are in Los Angeles County
The coastal corridor is the centre of it. Santa Monica and Venice carry the consumer and media companies, Culver City has absorbed the streaming and entertainment-technology build-out around the studio lots, Playa Vista holds the campuses that grew out of it, and El Segundo has become the county's hardware district — aerospace-adjacent engineering firms and defence startups sitting beside the established plants that trained their staff. Long Beach carries the space and heavy-hardware end of the same trend. Pasadena is its own thing: a research corridor around Caltech and the jet propulsion community, with deep-technology companies that look nothing like the Westside's. Downtown's Arts District and the Fashion District hold the smaller, scrappier end, and the founders themselves are spread across Brentwood, Studio City, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Hollywood and Encino.
The consequence for equity is concrete. Hardware, space, medical and media companies raise differently and exit later than software; they are more likely to be C corporations from inception because their investors require it; and their employees hold options for many years before anything is liquid. A longer hold makes the five-year clock under IRC § 1202 far more reachable — and makes the California non-conformity far more expensive when the day comes. The tech industry guide · aerospace and defence · medical devices.
There is also a category that only exists in this county: the founder who also has entertainment income. A production company, a games studio or a media startup will often leave the same person holding company equity, loan-out corporation income and residual payments at once, each taxed differently and none of them arriving on a predictable schedule. If that is you, the equity is only half the problem and the other half is cash-flow structure. The employer guides cover the W-2 side of the studio economy.
What changes locally
Two local facts land hard on founders here. The first is the City of Los Angeles' business tax: a founder consulting through their own LLC or corporation while between companies is carrying on a business in the city, has to register, and is taxed on gross receipts rather than profit — with a small-business exemption that generally has to be claimed by filing on time rather than by qualifying quietly. It is a small number relative to an exit and a genuinely annoying one to discover late. The second is Measure ULA. Post-liquidity, a great many founders buy in Brentwood, Bel Air, the Palisades or Venice — all inside the City of Los Angeles — and the city's conveyance tax of 4% above $5,400,000 and 5.5% above $10,900,000 of consideration applies to those transfers on top of the base documentary transfer tax. The tax is imposed on the conveyance and is customarily borne by the seller, but who pays it is a term of a deal rather than a law of nature, and it will be priced into the transaction either way. Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Manhattan Beach, Santa Monica and Pasadena are separate cities with their own transfer tax rules and are not subject to the City of Los Angeles' measure.
The third thing is not a tax but a habit. This county's founder culture is unusually socially connected to the entertainment industry, which means the private-deal flow — a restaurant, a club, a friend's fund, a film — arrives early and constantly. Nothing on this page says those are bad investments. It says they are illiquid, undiversified, frequently unregistered, and structurally similar to the concentrated position you already have too much of.
What we do about it
The map comes first and it is the same discipline everywhere: every grant, its instrument, dates, strike, vesting, expiry, early-exercise availability, post-termination window, and whether any 83(b) clock is running right now. What is specific to this county is the second column we usually have to add — the other income. Loan-out corporation distributions, residuals, consulting through an LLC and a spouse's W-2 all sit in the same tax year as an ISO exercise, and the AMT question cannot be modelled without them. That model belongs to your CPA; we assemble the inputs and sit in the meeting.
Then the part we own outright, which is what happens after liquidity. Decide the sell-down before the window opens and put it in writing — proportion, pace and dates — so that the decision is not being made against a price chart by someone who has just become wealthy on paper. For public shares, counsel drafts the Rule 10b5-1 plan with its cooling-off period and certifications; we help specify what the plan should do before the lawyers write it. Where a concentrated position is being held deliberately and it is suitable, covered calls inside a managed account are one tool, with their trade-offs stated rather than sold. How we use them.
Practical geography: we are in Norwalk, at the crossing of the 5 and the 605. From Santa Monica or Pasadena that is a genuine drive and most of those relationships run by video with occasional in-person meetings. From Downtown or the southeast it is half an hour. The fee is the same either way, it is published, and there is no minimum account size — which matters more than it sounds for a founder whose net worth is entirely paper and whose bank balance is a salary. Starting at zero.
The structures that apply: ISOs / NSOs / RSUs, 83(b) election, QSBS § 1202, Solo 401(k), Cash balance post-exit. The full guide for founders and startup employees goes through each one, and here is the same audience in Orange County.
Fifteen minutes, no charge
We are in Norwalk, which is inside Los Angeles County and minutes from the Orange County line. Come to us, we come to you, or we do it by video — evenings by video.
Your city
Los Angeles County has 88 incorporated cities and about 9.7 million residents. These are the ones where founders and startup employees concentrate, each with its own page:
- Financial advisor in Downtown Los Angeles
- Financial advisor in Los Angeles
- Financial advisor in Brentwood
- Financial advisor in Studio City
- Financial advisor in Hollywood
- Financial advisor in Silver Lake
- Financial advisor in Los Feliz
- Financial advisor in Encino
All 89 cities we publish a page for →
Our fees, published
No competing advisor page in this area publishes its fees. Here are ours.
| What | Fee |
|---|---|
| Investment management | 1.5% to 2.0% of assets per year; Advisers may set a rate below the standard schedule, as low as 0%, at their discretion — and whatever rate applies to you is disclosed in writing before you engage. Our Form ADV Part 2A, Item 5, states the fee as up to 2.00% of assets per year, subject to negotiation; the firm may waive all or part of it. Generally billed quarterly in arrears |
| Account minimum | No minimum account balance |
| Commissions and product fees | None — we are fee-only |
| Solicitor compensation | May be received or paid under disclosed arrangements |
| Initial conversation | Free, 15 minutes, no obligation |
Complete fee details in our Form ADV Part 2A, Item 5.
Questions
My company is a Delaware C corporation but I live and work in Santa Monica. Who taxes me?
California taxes its residents on income from all sources, wherever earned and wherever the company is incorporated. Delaware incorporation is a corporate-law choice; it does not move your personal tax home. Where this gets genuinely complicated is around a liquidity event and around any change of residence near one — the facts that matter are days, intent, and a long list of connections, and the Franchise Tax Board looks at all of them. That is a CPA and, if a move is contemplated, a tax-counsel question. Do not take the answer from a founder forum.
Is there anything special about equity in entertainment or games companies?
The equity itself follows the same rules. What differs is everything around it: profit participations, backend definitions, loan-out corporation income and residuals are contract terms rather than securities, they are taxed as ordinary income when they arrive, and they make the year an ISO exercise lands in much harder to predict. If your income has three sources with three schedules, the exercise decision needs a projection for the whole year before it is made.
I am buying a house on the Westside after a secondary sale.
Two things to price before you fall in love with an address. If the property is inside the City of Los Angeles — Brentwood, Bel Air, the Palisades, Venice, most of the Westside — the city's conveyance tax applies to transfers above the thresholds, and it will show up in the economics of the deal whichever party is nominally responsible for it. And a large purchase funded from a concentrated position converts one undiversified asset into another one, in the same regional economy, with a mortgage attached. That is not an argument against the house; it is an argument for deciding the sell-down and the purchase in the same conversation.
I am pre-liquidity and my salary is modest. Is there anything to do now?
Yes, and it is the least glamorous list imaginable: fund the 401(k) at work to at least the match, keep the emergency reserve in cash rather than in company stock, do not buy more exposure to your own sector with the salary, and find out today whether any 83(b) window is open on anything you hold. Those four things cost nothing and they are what makes a zero survivable. 401(k) versus IRA.
I am consulting through my own LLC between companies. Do I owe the City of Los Angeles anything?
If you are carrying on business within the city, you generally have to register with the Office of Finance and file, and the tax is measured on gross receipts rather than profit. A small-business exemption exists but is generally conditioned on filing the return on time rather than on simply qualifying. Registration, classification and the exemption are questions for the city and your CPA; get them answered in the first month of consulting, not in the first month of an audit.
Everyone in El Segundo and Pasadena tells me our company will qualify for QSBS.
Possibly, and the local company profile does make it more plausible: domestic C corporation, original issuance, an active business, and aggregate gross assets at or under $75 million ($50 million for stock issued on or before 4 July 2025). But eligibility is tested against facts at issuance and over the holding period, not against optimism, and it is the company's records that prove it. Ask the company for a QSBS attestation and give it to your CPA. Then remember the second half: whatever the federal answer, California taxes the gain in full.
Can we meet in the evening? I cannot leave in the middle of a build.
Yes. Evenings and video are normal here, and the initial call is fifteen minutes at no cost. If your question has a short answer you will get it on that call.
What does this cost, and is there a minimum?
There is no minimum to open an account. We ask for $50 a month of continuing deposits, because a plan you do not fund is not a plan. Investment management is 1.5% to 2.0% of assets per year, billed quarterly, and it is published on the site — which is more than most firms in this market will tell you before a meeting.
Do I have to have a lot saved already?
No, and that is deliberate. Most firms set a minimum precisely to avoid people at the start of this. We built the opposite: $0 to open, and the same fiduciary standard whether the account is four figures or seven.
¿Atienden en español?
Sí. Atendemos en español, y buena parte de nuestro material existe en español, escrito originalmente, no traducido por máquina.