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L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti on Startups, Sustainability and Being a Geek

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti might be the most tech-focused mayor in America. His family car is a hybrid, he’s a self-taught coder, and the 42-year-old native Angeleno even developed his own smartphone app, which lets residents submit municipal requests for graffiti removal and pot hole repair directly to city hall.
See also: What Does Silicon Valley Win by Backing Cory Booker?
Just over 100 days into his first term, Garcetti sat down with Mashable to discuss L.A.'s growing tech sector and his plans to raise the digital profile of the entertainment capital.
Mashable: Do you consider yourself a geek?
Absolutely. I think I have since fifth or sixth grade. I'll proudly embrace that term.
What's geeky about you?
I really was into math. I did early programing, BASIC and COBOL way back when. I used to build my own websites when I was teaching [at Occidental College].
What's your relationship with technology now?
I don't do a lot of Facebook anymore. I tweet probably everyday. I don't let it get in the way of work, but it is work for me. When I have time in between appointments, I try to respond to people who are reaching out. I try to keep it personal, fast, interactive. I would describe my style as web exploration. I'll go on long journeys down rabbit holes.
What L.A. based tech companies impress you?
There's a ton. Riot Games, Docstoc, Nasty Gal, LegalZoom. I haven't used Snapchat but I think it's a good company. BeachMint and NationBuilder have some interesting stuff.
How often do you go to local tech incubators and accelerators?
Every month. I know a lot of the major funders and people who have produced and exited companies who are now the mentor class in Los Angeles. I think it's important for them to know the mayor and feel like they have a connection to city hall, which is neglected, traditionally.
How does that work?
It could be, like, Riot Games is looking for a new headquarters, so I will pick up the phone and go talk to the COO and see what their needs are and if we can help matchmake them with good real estate. They can come during office hours, which I have monthly, or neighborhood walks.
What initiatives are you working on for startups?
One is looking at talent, two is infrastructure, three is chasing leads.
I convened all the university chancellors and presidents in the area for the first time ever, to talk about engineer retention and how we bring more ideas from the classroom to the boardroom to take patents and commercialize them. One of them is an initiative retaining engineers. We're looking at starting an initiative to bring STEM education to high schools, especially in lower income areas to teach coding and entrepreneurialism.
I'm also looking at making L.A. city government a good platform. So if you want to test your product or idea, I want L.A. city to try it. I did it in my district with Parker, the first real time information app on where parking spaces are.
What are your plans on energy efficiency?
I hired the first chief sustainability officer for the city of L.A. We're looking to make sustainability not an issue area, but a value across all city operations. We're going to move to have a very aggressive feed-in tariff, which people get for putting solar on their roof. We’re looking to reduce the water we get from the Colorado River by 30% by 2020. We have a 20,000 green jobs program that's going to launch around water quality, energy efficiency and solar insulations. We have a clean tech corridor that we've put together incubating green tech companies in downtown Los Angeles.
L.A. companies got almost $500 million in venture funding in the second quarter of 2013. What are your growth expectations?  L.A. is poised to grow and potentially overtake most, if not all of the cities above us. Tech startups are looking for good storytellers, good story makers — we're the best content producing city in the world. Two, our real estate prices are dramatically cheaper than New York and Silicon Valley/SF. Forty percent on average. Three, we've got a better quality of life.
We have three top 25 universities in a single town, no one else has that ... We've had a great tech past we've never bragged about. Email was invented here, we've got JPL putting Rovers on Mars, SpaceX rethinking the launch system for NASA. We just have to retain that more, whether that's engineers staying here, or companies growing and keeping the front end and back end programmers, as opposed to just the headquarters, and continuing to create the spaces for people to collide with one another and network to get the next generation.
I think Silicon Valley and New York firms need to open up offices in L.A. and that's a real goal of mine.
What's your take on the traditional media’s relationship with tech?
It think it's really exciting. This is the collision of the two of them coming together where the older studios are recognizing they have to figure out new delivery techniques and the tech companies are realizing if they don't have content, they don't have anything. I think L.A. is a place where not only can we have a truce, but there'll be a lot of marriages here.
Image: Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Global Green

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