aliso-viejo
(3)
Sixteen Years, No Funding, and the AI Nobody Demos
ITRex Group has spent sixteen years turning other companies' hardest problems into working software. Now it is doing the same with AI - the part that runs in production, not the part that looks good on stage.
Kevin "K.C." Clarke
Kevin "K.C." Clarke is a Los Angeles-based consumer brand marketer who now leads marketing at DITA Eyewear, the Aliso Viejo-headquartered luxury eyewear house whose frames are handmade in Japan. His career reads like a tour of the Southern California brand economy: Hurley and Vans in action sports, adidas and the Anaheim Ducks in sport and sponsorship, ZICO in beverage, then brand marketing leadership at golf-lifestyle label TravisMathew and VP of Marketing at car-care cult brand Chemical Guys. He holds a BS from Arizona State University's W. P. Carey School of Business and an MBA from USC's Marshall School of Business. The through-line is a preference for brands with obsessive fans rather than merely large audiences - surfers, golfers, detailing enthusiasts, and now collectors of titanium and 18k gold optical frames.
ViaLase, Inc.
ViaLase, Inc. is a clinical-stage medical technology company in Aliso Viejo, California building the first femtosecond laser designed to treat primary open-angle glaucoma without cutting into the eye. Its ViaLuxe Laser System pairs micron-level, high-definition imaging with a femtosecond laser to perform a noninvasive, image-guided trabeculotomy - branded FLigHT - that creates a drainage channel through the trabecular meshwork to lower intraocular pressure. Founded in 2019 by femtosecond-laser pioneer Tibor Juhasz, the company has raised more than $115 million, earned a CE Mark in Europe, and begun a U.S. IDE clinical trial.