This Monthly Pitching Competition in Long Beach Hopes to Kick Off a Bigger Startup Community

By: Hayley Munguia

Long Beach is known for a lot of things — Cambodia Town, the Queen Mary and the nicest weather in the country, to name a few — but being a hotbed of entrepreneurship is not high on the list.

Josh Rencher and Nick Hughes of Founders Live, a company that describes itself as “the global venue for modern entrepreneurs,” are hoping to change that.

Hughes founded the company as a way to lift up hyperlocal startup cultures and expose them to a global audience. Currently, in 30 cities around the world, Founders Live hosts regular pitching competitions in each city and live-streams them, allowing anyone to watch local entrepreneurs everywhere from Long Beach to Harare, Zimbabwe, share the story of their startups.

Rencher, who lives in Long Beach and founded the Lakewood Village coworking and event space Ironfire, started the Long Beach chapter last year after some cajoling to Hughes that Long Beach is in fact a different animal than L.A. or Orange County, which both have their own Founders Live groups.

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