Amir Banifatemi is founder of K5 Accelerator, which is based at ChapmanCollege’s e-Village. He has extensive experience developing start up and growth companies in many different markets but focuses primarily on healthcare, internet and media technologies. While he is focused keenly on developing value, he also has an eye toward projects that have significant technological breakthroughs and significant social and economic impact.
Mehit: You’ve been quoted that the center of gravity in OrangeCounty has been around real estate and finance resulting in a very careful and staid culture. What would you like to see changed?
Amir: I would try to improve a certain number of things, one of those would be more collaboration. I think the history of OrangeCounty and how people are disbursed does not promote synergies. Unfortunately, distance makes it difficult for people to meet and collaborate on projects, except on big projects.
Further if you look historically, at San Francisco or other places, when people get out of college, where do they go? They go to Hewlett Packard or the Fairchild or Intel but what do they do here? They go to a real estate company or title company. The appropriate employment environment is lacking.
Finally, people are focused on cash today instead of cash tomorrow. Your attitude, your investment of time and resource in collaboration and how you view society and community are different if you looking at cash tomorrow.
Dispatches From The Front 