One year ago: Luis Villalobos

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Luis Villalobos founded Tech Coast Angels, an Orange County angel investment group that expanded throughout Southern California.

When he started the group in 1997, people ‘said I was nuts. They said Orange County had no entrepreneurs or investors,’ Villalobos told the Orange County Register.

Villalobos, who died a year ago at 70, modeled the group after a similar organization in the Silicon Valley.

As of last year there were five chapters from Santa Barbara to San Diego with more than 250 members, so-called angel investors whose money is directed toward start-up firms and other entrepreneurial enterprises.

For more about Villalobos, read his obituary that appeared in The Times.

-- Keith Thursby