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Announcing The socalTECH 50, 2015 Edition

Who are the top 50 people to watch in Southern California? We've attempted to do that for the last three years, trying to ferret out exactly who the people--not companies--are to watch in the region's technology industry. It's a thankless, unforgiving, made more difficult in that there are no repeats on this list from our prior two years (many were nominated), and our specific exclusion of serial entrepreneurs (who make up a big chunk of Southern California's startup activity), and our exclusion of the influencers from the venture capital, angel investing, and finance side of the industry, in addition to service providers.

The socalTECH 50 is aimed at identifying and highlighting the top 50 people in the technology industry here, who are most likely to create the next big thing, produce the next big exit, or influence the industry in a significant way. This list--like any list--is highly subjective, and we've undoubtedly left out many worthy people on this list. Where did these names come from? These nominees came from (many) reader suggestions; suggestions by a wide range of industry insiders who served as an informal nominating committee; and our own and other editorial coverage. Another note: for some nominees, our nominating committee was unable to separate closely tied founders of startups, and so we've listed those founders together for convenience.

Here are this year's winners, along with the companies they are associated with:

Brett Bouttier, AwesomenessTV
Kevin Anderson, Appetize
Brian Baumgart, Conversion Logic
Julien Bellanger, Prevoty
Chad Billmeyer, Panjo
Mike Bonin, Council Member, City of Los Angeles
Daniel and Michael Broukhim, FabFitFun
Howard Brown, RingDNA
Phillipe Browning, SnapChat
Brent Bushnell, Two Bit Circus
Cavan Canavan, FocusMotion
Damir Davidovic, NeoGov
Chris Davis, LootCrate
Joe Devon, CTO Mixers
Renee Dua, Heal
Roie Edery, Eaze
Eric Futoran, Scopely
Phoebe Hayman, Seedling
Jilliene Helman, RealtyMogul
Mike Hopkins, Ice Energy
Grant Hosford, codeSpark
Joe Huff and Bridget Hilton, LSTN Sound Company
Donovan Janus, 17hats
Tucker Kain, LA Dodgers Accelerator
Sean Kane, Honest Co.
Agnes Kozera, Famebit
Scott Kriz, Bitium
Julie Lee, edtwist
Gunnar Lovelace and Nick Green, Thrive Market
Joanna McFarland, HopSkipDrive
Staci Miller, Momstamp
Brian Nolan, Sellbrite
Steven Oh, The Young Turks
Chris Ovitz and Reed Shaffner, Workpop
Meredith Perry, uBeam
Whit Richards, Fullscreen
Josh Roth, Ring
Andrew Stalbow, Seriously
Dean Stoeker, Alteryx
Stephen Stokols, FreedomPop
Harrison Tang, Spokeo
Alice Taylor, MakieLab
Brian Thomas, Clutter
Therese Tucker, Blackline Systems
Chris Webb, ChowNow
Josh Yguado, SGN

Congratulations to our third class of the socalTECH 50!