Accelerating Innovation Through AI, Non-Dilutive Capital, and Smarter Pathways to Market featuring Rupak Doshi

Welcome to The Connect Current, the flow of innovation in San Diego. We bring you the founders, investors, and leaders building the future across life science, tech, climate, defense, AI, and more. This is where San Diego's next chapter takes shape.

Welcome to The Connect Current, the flow of innovation in San Diego. I'm your host, James Zanewicz, and this episode is being recorded at the UC San Diego Park and Market building, and we want to thank them for their support. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Rupak Dashee, co-founder and CEO of OmniSync. Rupak leads a company focused on helping innovators and organizations navigate public and private innovation funding, market intelligence, and commercialization through AI-powered tools and services. He's a great fit for the Connect Current because this is not just about one company, it's about infrastructure for innovation itself. and how better systems can help move more ideas from bench concept or startup stage into real-world traction. It's also amazing because they're a tremendous partner to the SBDC network, of which Connect is a proud member. They're a tremendous resource to the team, and I'm looking forward to this conversation today so much. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks a lot, James. Awesome to be here. It's always great to be with Connect.

Thank you. And it's always great to be with OmniSync as well. And our team, we're onboarding our 2 new directors right now who are gonna be heavy users We're very excited. I know Dr. Peter Stegman on our team absolutely loves it. But for people not familiar with it, what are you building? What problem are you solving? And why does that matter so much right now? Because you're solving problems for a lot of people, which is really interesting.

Yeah, I mean, basically, we have always been about this mission of how do you solve the hardest problems in the world? And if you look back at that, all the hardest problems in the world ever have always been solved with deep tech as the underlying solution. Always. You pick any single one of them, be it disease, be it like economics, be it weather, anything, right? But if you look at these deep technologies, they are the ones who find it the hardest to actually get to market because it's the most complicated in the world. Not everybody understands it. Partnerships are harder because there's fewer people doing that stuff, right? So finding them is hard, and the right place, the right time, the right money, all of that's harder.

Yeah.

We're basically building that fabric that connects all these dots together to make deep tech translation into market possible and affordable.

And so where did you get this idea? How did it start?

Yeah, so I have a PhD in pharmacology, spent a lifetime in academia, spent some time in industry, and my co-founder Norman, who also has a PhD in bioengineering, both of us have had ideas that we've struggled to get to market when we were in our discovery days, I guess. And alongside that, we saw hundreds of other friends and folks in our community facing all the same problems. And that's where we were like, instead of solving the one problem that I want to solve for my own tech experience or background or whatever. I actually wanted to solve something that has a bigger, wider impact. And so I went on to solving the underlying root cause of the thing that stops all kinds of deep tech from getting to market.

What existed before that was there? Because imagine there was— it's probably just not optimal. It's probably a suboptimal system. What was there as tools before, and how did that lead to you deciding, I'm going to create a much better system tool?

Yeah, so there was mainly 2 things that existed before we did. One, it was the DIY method, which is you spend a whole bunch of time on YouTube trying to figure it out, right? You don't know who to trust, you don't know which video is current, you don't know what's real, what's not, and stuff like that. The other end of the coin was consultants who, for the most part, were fairly expensive because it's human.

Absolutely.

And at that stage of the deep tech company, they barely have money to build their prototype to test it out, which is the most important thing, let alone having money to pay consultants to help them out. So there was nothing in between.

Yeah.

And we equated that with tax filing as the industry, because that basically a few years ago before TurboTax and tax prep software became a thing, there were only 2 ways of doing it. You either fill out the IRS forms yourself by hand, or you go to a tax CPA consultant who would Otherwise have charged you much more than what they are able to charge you these days.

Yeah.

And I think the other thing with that too is if you're a small company and going to a consultant, you're the small client because you're not the big client. So you often fall to the back where with you guys it's at their fingertips at any moment when they want it, which is great. Well, you do sit with OmniSync in a really interesting place between artificial intelligence commercialization, capital access, and ecosystem enablement. So where do you think Having sat at this vantage point, kind of seeing all those pieces, that our founders and institutions are still losing the most time or momentum?

Bureaucracy still. I still think that organizations that are meant to support entrepreneurs, they still oftentimes, because they are still driven by economics at the end of the day, their hard decisions ultimately don't have the founder's best interest at heart. And it's not a bad thing for them because— oh, it's not a negative, I guess, remark on them. It's more like that's just unfortunately the nature of the business. Now, if they don't have the founder's best interest at heart, then the decisions that they're going to make are not going to be in favor of going faster and stuff like that that the startup wants. And so timing often gets misaligned. That's why you hear terms like, oh, I was lucky, right place, right time.

Mm-hmm.

When it comes to solving hard problems and deep tech development, that is a long-term play. You cannot be reliant on right place, right time. That just cannot happen. Otherwise, that's why most problems remain unsolved, because you're waiting for that lucky break. We are here, and that's what we're trying to solve for, which is how do you make this orchestrated in a way that you're not reliant on these sorts of effects that basically make it possible for one company to win but not the other? if both have technology that can actually solve a given problem.

Well, you kind of intimated there that we have no shortage of companies or ideas, labs, founders, or deep tech. But from your perspective, kind of switching from where the problems we're overcoming, what do we do especially well in this region? And how can we leverage that to become even more connected?

Oh, San Diego, I think, has amongst the least attitude, like ego. I mean, just for the plain way of saying it, right? If you go to the Bay Area, everyone's everything at all times. Like, you know, every company is a unicorn or a potential unicorn or wannabe unicorn. Every investor is a big, giant, mega trillion-dollar fund, although they're not, right? Like, everyone is everything at all times. So it's kind of like being in DC and like everyone's a politician in some way or another or something like that, right? In the Bay Area, that's what ends up— in San Diego, that is not the case. Everyone is human first. And that's a huge difference. Like, when people meet each other, I don't think the first question that is asked is, what do you do for work? The first question actually asked is, what brought you to San Diego?

Right.

That's usually the conversation that starts first. How are you in here? Were you born here? Were you raised here? And that's a big, big, big difference between other communities that I've seen, Austin, Bay Area, any other community that I've seen, and here in San Diego. And I think what we should do better in that environment is Every single one of these networking events that we have, or accelerators that we have in town, or universities that we have in town, they kind of need to understand how that life kind of plays into the work that these companies are doing in a more real way. And so they have to be mindful of the things that otherwise companies have to do outside of work, the families that they have, the cultural connections that they have to communities. and stuff like that. So you shouldn't, I think, have an event where you organize something and then there's absolutely no touchpoint with your local food or something to that degree. I think that's the golden opportunity you miss if you don't have that. So I went to like a Kashif Ventures event recently, and it was an awesome event because it was at a local taco shop that nobody knew. And that's— we had all the right conversations, but in the background of that awesome food that we had.

Mm-hmm.

Right? Which is very local, true to San Diego, right? That's, I think, how we do it better over time, that just keep that culture and the human side of it connected with all the business stuff.

I've noticed that with Connect as well. And I will say, you know, Trey Brackett, who is our producer of the podcast, but also our chief brand and engagement officer, and then Elizabeth Dargie, who handle events, they're always focused on bringing something local like a caricature artist, a musician, local food, local wine. We have the Vinho guys, I think, coming to Summer Social this year. It's like, but I love that we're plugging in. Well, we do service innovation companies, Innovation is driven by creativity, and creativity comes from all types of companies and all types of people. And you can't drive that, you know, that high-tech or life science innovation without, I think, some of those cultural experiences as well. And that's what San Diego does so well.

Yeah, microenvironment plays a huge role. I mean, I— so I did my PhD back in Cambridge in England, right?

With the punting. I've been there.

That's right. That's right.

Now you know I'm legit.

I've fallen in that river.

Oh, I have not done that. They asked me if I wanted to punch, and I'm like, no, because I will fall in.

No, it's so fun. But back there, there is something about that environment on campus, and especially the pubs and stuff. I mean, there's a very famous story, like the DNA helix thing, all the discussions and stuff like that. They were at the pub called the Eagle's Pub, right, in town there. And I have been to that pub, and believe me, you sit there and you look at the environment and you absolutely want to talk science. And now there is just— the microenvironment plays such a huge role.

It's still a social way to do it. Yeah, yeah.

When it comes to creativity and, yeah, collaborative. Exactly. And that is, I think, San Diego's biggest strength because we have such a number of opportunities of that, of doing that here because we're outdoors all the time.

Yep. Well, before we hop into our last couple of questions, I just had one occur to me that I want to ask. Do you have a success story of one of your clients that have worked with you that you can tell, or maybe a couple? And I know if one's from the SBDC that Danny would be really happy.

Oh boy, there's so many.

So I know you work with companies, but you know, what's the scale? Is it tens, hundreds, thousands? How many success stories do you have out there?

We've worked with thousands of companies.

Oh, wow.

So yeah, for sure. And nationally, right from the start. Oh, Beth from Origami.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, she absolutely—

Nice.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've met them at these Connect events everywhere. So yeah, I mean, if I look at the Connect portfolio, like more than half of them are all like, you know, have been clients of ours.

I love that.

At some point or the other. All the cool companies, more than half of them, they've all worked with us at some point. So yeah, there's a lot of those, but almost every company that has a major success story with us started off as like a 1-person, 2-person company. They had nothing else and they had no ability to pay anybody anything or anything like that. And we were that affordable yet high-quality support that came in and helped them get to that next level.

And they were able to leverage your tool to do that at a much more cost-effective rate than many things out there, which is incredible. Yeah.

Yep. And that's, that's, that's why they were able to use us. Yeah. Yeah.

And if they work with the SBDC, like what you've done is enabled people through your support through the SBDC, which is incredible as well. It's a great way of giving back to the community, which we're very appreciative of at Connect. And I know all the SBDC centers who use you are as well.

Yeah, the San Diego Brink SBDC Center, they were the first SBDC. And naturally, like, we're in San Diego. So they were actually the first ones to pilot our support with their SPR, like, writing workshop. And then since then, now we serve like dozens of SBDCs across the country. But that was that pilot that we had run. So San Diego has a huge role to play in our success also. Like, all the initial pilots were all here.

Well, most companies that come on here are either looking for a raise or looking for partners or collaborators right now. I imagine you're probably more in the partner collaborator sense, but in that vein, what are you looking for and what do you want those potential partners and collaborators to know?

So we are looking for any kind of organization that touches startups in any way or innovation in any way, not just startups. It could be researchers who are spinning off ideas or have cool research that they're thinking about commercializing in any way. So that basically includes all the universities, all the incubators in town, all the accelerators in town. The more deep tech, the better for us because that's where we shine and that's where the problem is the hardest, I think. But yeah, and those are all great collaborators for us and we have so many models that we work with for them. Everything, and it all depends on how hands-on this group is with their companies. I have, on one extreme, we have incubators that pretty much use our system to help their companies. And on the other end of the spectrum, we have incubators that basically use us as a resource where they pretty much send the companies our way and they're hands-off from that point. And so we have everything in between, right? Part support, this, that. So we have so many models. The one point I really would want all our partners to understand is cost is never the reason why a partner has not been able to work with us. So that's one thing immediately straight off the bat I would put at rest for any discussions to happen, which is we are never at a price point that people can't afford generally. And that's because of our relationships with the federal agencies. We've been very fortunate with that.

So if someone's listening to this and they're very curious about what you can do for them, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Oh, my email.

Your email?

Yeah, it's just rupak@omnisync.io. It's very, very easy. I'm very easy to find. My email is all over the place, and I am extremely good with email. Like, my turnaround time is basically 1 day for all emails.

That's awesome.

So I'm— yeah, that's the best and quickest and fastest, like, you know, way for getting an answer from us.

And as we close out, we have our standard signature question on the Connect Current. And that is, what drives your innovative flow?

Oh, I would say coming, like being in San Diego for the last few years, the water. Like I have, I'm actually very fortunate. So I work out of an office in the UTC area, which borders La Jolla. And so for me, getting to La Jolla Shores or any of the coastlines there is less than 10 minutes of a drive. So very easy to get to. I live in Mira Mesa, actually at the edge of Mira Mesa, which is very close to the Miramar Lake. And so on both ends, I am pretty much next to water every other day. And for me, that actually gives me the best thoughts when it comes to creativity, because you see that volume in front of you, and then you start to realize that there's endless possibilities. I think that's what— to me, that's the feeling I get when I see water in front of me, like a large body of water. It's like endless possibilities and free-flowing. That's the other thing. There's not so much that gets controlled. When it comes to water flowing in different directions. And that's, to me, that's the thought I get. And so with that thought, thinking creatively about your own problems at the company or stuff like that becomes much easier.

I love that. That's a great answer. I do want to, based off our last guests, this is a water-themed afternoon. I want to ask, do you pay attention to how much water you put in your body for your hydration? We just had Dr. Debbie Chen from Hydrastasis on.

Oh, I know Debbie.

I know.

I love that answer.

She would love that answer. She's like, yes, and this is why water is one of your vital signs you should pay attention to. It was such a great conversation, but there's just a nice little sync there in this package back to back.

Yeah, for me, I have a routine of when I drink the glass of water every day. Like at different times of the day, I have a routine. Like every day at that time of the day, there will be a glass of water in my body.

Yep, and I got to see her tech that tells you the optimal times for that and how much, which is really cool. Apparently it's sold out now, but I'm getting on the list for the next one.

And this is the, I think this is the 3rd or 4th batch that got sold out. So there should be some more. Doing very well.

Her batch 2 just sold out. She's waiting for batch 3 now.

Yeah.

That's incredible. Rupak, I want to thank you so much for joining us. I really enjoyed the conversation because I think, you know, founders come from all different technology types. And I think we've got that example in our first batch of 4 for the Connect Current. And it's not just founders who are building better products, but it's founders who are building better pathways for innovation to move forward across an entire ecosystem, regardless of their vertical, that really, really help transform a region, and that's where San Diego is so important. And thank you for taking time out of your day and sharing your story with our audience.

Absolutely. Thanks so much for— James, anything for Connect, always.

Thanks for listening to The Connect Current. As always, we'll have more information on Rupak, OmniSync, the San Diego and Imperial Small Business Development Center Network, or SBDC for short, and UC San Diego Park and Market in our show notes. We'll also have a link to The Brink. In case you want to learn more about them. If you want to learn more about CONNECT and explore resources across San Diego's innovation ecosystem, visit connect.org. We'll see you next time on the CONNECT Current, where San Diego's innovation story keeps moving forward.

Thanks for listening to the CONNECT Current. If you want to learn more about CONNECT and explore resources across San Diego's innovation ecosystem, follow us on LinkedIn, Or visit connect.org. We'll see you next time on The Connect Current, where San Diego's innovation story keeps moving forward.

This podcast was edited and produced by Resonate Recordings.