After a week of wandering the streets of LA’s Westside, chatting up founders and investors at bars, house parties and beaches, it became clear to me that Los Angeles is a tech hub like no other.

Business comes after the party in LA. Unlike other industry meetups, people at LA Tech Week seemed to mingle first, do business second.

• Many daytime events focused on wellness, and included a morning hike, a soundbath or a breathwork class. Parties started after sunset, with mansion and rooftop soirees every night of the week.
• “LA really convenes a lot,” said Minnie Ingersoll, partner at TenOneTen Ventures. “The collaborative nature here is so wonderful and so welcoming.”
• TenOneTen’s office is almost emblematic of the LA tech scene: a big house just steps from Venice beach that Ingersoll called her “weekend surf house.” Before our talk Wednesday morning, she was on the water leading more than 80 founders and investors in a surf session.

The FOMO is also very real. If you weren’t on the list, you were likely turned away at the door.

• Ingersoll, who helped plan the week, said that the number of people who signed up for events far exceeded her expectations.
• So many people were turned away that there was an “LA Tech Rejects” meetup on Tuesday. Protocol Fintech reporter Veronica Irwin told me that while 600 people signed up, only around a dozen showed up — most of whom were founders.

But LA tech is about more than Hollywood moments. While investors and founders said that LA has long been a hub for consumer-facing businesses, influenced by the city’s red carpet roots, that's beginning to change.

• LA’s social media companies, like Snap and TikTok, have made it the place to be for creators. That’s influenced how businesses across sectors have done marketing, sales and PR.
• But consumer’s not all there is. With the biggest ports in the U.S. to the West and major manufacturing towns to the East, the B2B opportunity is plentiful.
• “LA is definitely growing in a way where people realize, ‘I don't need to be investing in just entertainment or consumer,’” Solomon Hailu of Santa Monica-based March Capital told me. “There's plenty of companies to invest behind that have global implications.”

And there’s a wealth of young talent there. As the city’s tech scene grows, grads from top universities like Caltech, USC and UCLA are sticking around instead of departing for Silicon Valley, said Eva Ho, the co-founder and a managing partner at Fika Ventures.

• But if you want someone with more experience, you still have to head north. “Here, there tends to be not as good senior talent and not as good product talent,” said Grant LaFontaine, co-founder of Whatnot.

Anyway, if you find yourself with an invitation to next year’s Tech Week, I have some advice: Make sure you pack your yoga clothes. And because it’s Los Angeles, your sharpest outfits, too.

— Nat Rubio-Licht