Placer County’s 128% job growth over the last 15 years is the highest in the state according to a report (pdf) by the California Budget Project.  read more »

Retail pricing optimization firm Revionics announced Monday that they have tripled their customer base over the last 6 months. Fueled by this growth and their recent funding, the company is also moving from their offices on Goethe Road in Rosemont to the Granite Bay Business Park. (Hat tip Geoff )  read more »

Company: Engine Yard
Founded: Early 2006
Founders: Tom Mornini & Lance Walley  read more »

We’ve set the location for our February 22 dinner. We’ll be at Hoppy Brewing Company at 6300 Folsom Blvd near 65th Street in Sacramento. Hoppy has great food and beer, plenty of room, and free wifi.  read more »

Digital Music Group has acquired a large catalog of older video content lately. The video, which ranges from Hopalong Cassidy to Mr. Bill, isn’t something you can sell on a mass scale, but there’s certainly a niche audience who’s interested.  read more »

Web Worker Daily has a great article on working at home when you have kids.

Particularly with younger kids around, you may have to give up some of this flexibility to their needs. If there’s a part of your day that requires the utmost concentration, schedule that part during their nap time, or after their bedtime, or while they’re off at school  read more »

The Business Journal is reporting that Sacramento’s Digital Music Group’s IPO provided the second-worst return on investment of any IPO in 2006. The results are based on a Motley Fool tally of gains and losses by the year’s IPOs.  read more »

This isn’t going to be a news site for general local business — if you want that, try the Business Journal — but some general business news impacts startups. When a behemoth bank buys a local business bank, that’s a potential big deal to startups and other small companies.  read more »

Venture Beat tipped me off to an interview with former state treasurer and gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides in which he announces he’s raising a venture fund. The fund will be based in Sacramento and will focus on environmental technology with some real estate investments.

Angelides’ firm joins numerous other funds that are focused on alternative energy, including Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures. Kholsa was widely criticized for backing an alternative energy ballot measure that would benefit his investments. Khosla responded to critics by pledging to donate any direct profits to charity.

The fund will be raised from numerous sources, says Angelides. VentureBeat speculates that California’s pension funds are likely to invest as Angelides has previously served on their boards.

Sacramento web design and hosting firm American Web Services has acquired 1/5 of Enterprise Software Solutions Group, a local provider of consulting services and web publishing software, the Sacramento Business Journal is reporting.

Governor Schwarzenegger has released a health care reform plan for California that requires all Californians to have health insurance. Businesses with more than 10 employees will be required to provide health benefits to their employees. To pay for this government subsidized health coverage, doctors and hospitals will have their income taxed, and employers who don’t provide health coverage will have to pay 4% of their payroll to the state.

Most programs that state or federal government mandates for businesses apply only to larger employers. This one, however, will touch smaller employers as well, making it an important bill for startups to watch.

Although I understand the idea behind mandatory health insurance — that health care is already guaranteed and every citizen is paying for those without coverage — I’m not thrilled about the government telling me how to live my life.

Of further concern to me is how this will affect business in California. Schwarzenegger had previously instituted a number of business-friendly reforms with the goal of reducing the exodus of business from the state. Instituting mandatory benefits will drive many businesses away and could keep businesses from growing so they don’t surpass that magic 10 employee number.

SoapBox, the enterprise instant messaging product from Orangevale startup Coversant was reviewed yesterday in an InfoWorld blog.

Coversant has some pretty stiff competition including Microsoft, IBM, and Jabber, not to mention open source products and other startups like FaceTime. InfoWorld compared SoapBox to the offerings from Microsoft, IBM, and Jabber and found Coversant’s product to be faster, cheaper, and easier to use. Quite a coup.

Coversant’s software allows companies to offer XMPP (Jabber) instant messaging to their employees. The services can be integrated into existing environments by using directory services like LDAP or Active Directory for authentication. A management console provides configurable security and user roles, and all messages can be logged for regulatory compliance.  read more »

Finding a co-founder for a startup can be a tricky proposition. Unless you have a lot of capital to hire help early on, you’ll probably want to find someone to work alongside you from the beginning.

Your co-founder will need to share your vision and passion for your idea. If they don’t share the dream, they’ll lose focus and interest when things get tight.

They’ll need to have skills and a personality that compliments yours. There will be plenty of disagreements and hardship in the early days of a startup and adding to it with personality conflicts is just asking for failure.  read more »

Bob Shallit is reporting that Revionics, a Rosemont-based software company that helps mid-sized grocery retailers manage prices, closed a round of financing last week.

The company has reportedly received just under $2 million in funding.