Upfront Summit to draw hundreds of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs

L.A. techies, typically found close to the beach, are going east of the 405 -- at least for a day.

Hundreds of top entrepreneurs and investors are congregating at the newly opened Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday for the Upfront Summit.

The annual technology and investor conference, hosted by Santa Monica venture capital firm Upfront Ventures (formerly GRP Partners), quickly reached capacity thanks to a lineup of speakers that includes Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nate Redmond of Rustic Canyon and Dana Settle of Greycroft.

PHOTOS: 10 ways to use the sharing economy

Upfront is expecting 300 attendees. Among them: representatives from Amazon, Twitter, A-Grade Investments, 500 Startups, Factual, Amplify and Maker Studios.

The all-day summit features on-stage interviews, breakout sessions, networking opportunities and panels.

Upfront partner Mark Suster will interview Maynard Webb, chairman of Yahoo and former chief operating officer of EBay, as well as Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti during two afternoon fireside chats.

A discussion on the mobile-social breakthrough of Los Angeles will feature Sean Rad, founder and chief executive of dating app Tinder, and Michael Heyward, founder and CEO of Whisper.

ALSO:

LinkedIn makes major play for China

Google executive: We did not bid for WhatsApp

Samsung announces Galaxy S5 with fingerprint scanner, coming in April