Building Networks of Innovators to Solve National Security Problems With Jesse Gripe of NSIN

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You want tech and tacos? Tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador Quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy and coffee my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos el gordo the tacos standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean Watch the sunset la Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom.

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Welcome to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, and I'm thrilled to have you here on the Tacos and Tech Podcast. We interview builders of technologies, of companies, of communities, and we do it weekly, so thanks for tuning in. Every Tuesday, a new interview, and on Fridays, we talk about what's new in the San Diego tech ecosystem from a news perspective. So make sure you join us there as well too. We also have a tech newsletter that comes out every other week@freshbrewedtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode. Thrilled to have longtime friend here on the podcast, Jesse Gip Pax South Regional Director of Ensign, the National Security Innovation Network. Hey, Jesse, thanks for being on the pod with us.

Yeah, thanks, Neil. Always good to be with you, my friend.

Yeah, likewise. We've gone back quite a bit. I think at least 2015, 2014, when we were, I know, working on that, the software study at the edc, if not even further back than that. It's been fun.

Yeah, I think. I think it was. I think we. That was definitely the moment that we first met when you were still trying to get to know the San Diego ecosystem as opposed to becoming the catalyst of it that you are now. So you've quickly changed your role in the community fast. So it's been fun to watch.

That's been both of us. We've been both working at this community for a while, and specifically your area in the defense community and the business community related to that, which I'm excited to talk through a bit about. Do you want to give us a one minute overview of what Ensign is?

Yeah, sure. So, Ensign, the National Security Innovation Network, is a organization within the Department of Defense. We sit under the Office of undersecretech, Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. Relatively new program within the DoD, but certainly by DoD standards. We were established six years ago with the mandate of trying to connect great talent in academic institutions and in early stage startups to natural security problems. And really that kind of stems from the understanding that the world of technology has changed a lot since the DoD has been a major investor in R and D for a long time. And that traditional mechanisms that the DoD has built over a long time to reach out to and engage the best and brightest in our country on important problems are no longer quite as effective as maybe we hope they would. And the challenges that we face in the national security space touch all kinds of technology problems that frankly, are problems that engineers from companies that have nothing to do with the DoD are working on every day. And to assume that the government is building all of the best technology in some of these fields is no longer the case. And so it's really important for the DoD to create new organizations that can facilitate bridging out to the community, to engage with great minds where they exist, and not expect that everyone who's got a great idea is inherently knocking on dod's door and trying to navigate our labyrinth to sell things to us. And so really, Ensign is built to be, you know, one of those front doors to help bring in new minds and new solutions to the complex issues that we face as a country.

Super important, especially in Pax south, and even more so in San Diego, where we're such a conglomeration of technology. Well, obviously military, specifically in San Diego, super important from both the government side and our private businesses here as well. And you've been championing that for a while. How'd you get into this space? I mean, this has been a career path that you have been pretty, I would say semi focused on, of always connecting business community and innovation and military. Was that always a dream goal of yours to. To growing up in the Valley? To be here now?

Yeah, no, I can't say as a growing up in la, I moved down here, San Diego to go to ucsd. Can't say that this was the dream. Not that it has not become a dream job, but I just didn't have maybe the vision or the foresight to map the path that I ended up taking to get here. But I've always been a student of history and really passionate about issues involving national security and how those impact people's lives. And so I've always been sort of drawn to thinking about defense and policy issues. So went to, you know, UC San Diego, studied political science there at that phenomenal institution, graduated and then right out of college went to work for one of the California state senators out here. So scratched the political itch for a little bit, Enjoyed that work. But frankly, state politics is just not as interesting to me as some of the sort of national security and defense issues. And so. But while I was there, the senator I worked for was really willing to let us take on different responsibilities and engage with partners. And so I was able to work a lot with the military bases that we have across the San Diego region and get to know some of their issues and understand how those issues cross with state politics, whether that's sort of land use issues, energy, and a variety of other ways in which there's a natural nexus. And in working with those partners and really getting to know them, it really sort of lit the fire in me to go deeper in that world. And so as I was getting ready to leave the senator's office, the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation, know, a great San Diego institution, had just really kind of redoubled down on focusing on the defense industrial base within the region, coming out of, you know, sequestration, which was a major fiscal impact to the region, and that there was going to be massive cuts to national spending, including the Department of Defense. And there were concerns from organizations like Connect and Biocom and EDC about, you know, what were the implications to the San Diego regional economy and what were we doing to advocate for ourselves and prepare for those changes. And so they really started to stand up a much more robust defense strategy started by a variety of really great leaders at that organization. And so I was able to get hired on to take over that role in helping develop and execute a strategy that they had started as an organization. And so I did that work for about five years, which was a phenomenal experience, just being able to work with the academic institutions across the region, the major military commands, the incredible defense technology that we have here, and really get to know the story that is San Diego's defense economy, which I think is something that, if you've been in San Diego for any period of time, you hear, Jeff, you see the aircraft carriers in the harbor it's hard to miss the amount of military we have here, but the defense routes run even deeper than what is visible. Stories like Qualcomm and you know, how Irwin Jacobs, you know, pre Qualcomm, before Linkabit, was working on, you know, Navy technology that helped him initially invest in what became cdma. And so really San Diego's largest private employer. One of the core technologies that led to the success of those, you know, two companies, Linkabit and then Qualcomm, was developed under Navy research. And so there are tremendous stories like that throughout our economy. And while at the edc, I really got to learn so much more about what makes me passionate about defense and what makes San Diego's economy tick. And so that continued to just grow during my time there. So that, that was a great experience. And eventually as I sort of transitioned out of that, I was the director of the World Trade center in San Diego, which was a great experience. Enjoyed that work a lot, still part of the San Diego regionally, but didn't. Wasn't as interested, frankly, in the trade issues as I was the national security issues. And so towards my end of my time there, I started to look at other opportunities and it just was perfect timing that a friend of mine, who maybe someone you guys will have on this podcast eventually, but with Harpoon Ventures, which has now become a bit of a San Diego institution, let me know about this organization called National Security Innovation Network, and that they were looking to hire someone in San Diego who had, you know, spent time getting to know the defense industrial base across this region, who knew the academic institutions, the key players across the sort of venture community, and was going to work with this DoD organization to help build out our programming across California, Arizona, Hawaii, and really all of the Indo Pacific region, including Japan and South Korea and Australia. And so I just thought that was a perfect opportunity and really couldn't have been designed better for the skills that I happened to be developing. But no, there was no straight line strategy to any of this. It's just sort of. I've been fortunate to be presented with opportunities in areas that interest me and I feel like I get to work on things that I enjoy working at.

Yeah. And especially learning the community the way you did with helping facilitate so many connections. I think something's always interesting, like a number that comes to mind is that the 1 in 5 jobs in San Diego is military related. And you hear that and you're like, wow, huge magnitude. I think a recent study about the life sciences community showed that one in 20 jobs is life sciences related and I think just that order of magnitude between the two. When you think we're such a life sciences community, it's like now we're like so much more a military related community here, even more so than that. But take us through a little bit of like what you've learned around this great military presence, but also like the innovation piece. Have they always, like you mentioned Grim and Jacobs, has there always been a tight knit connection or is it kind of come and gone over time and like who have been some of the other leaders that have kind of done military innovation? I would probably imagine the blues would be a part of that with General Atomics. But take us through a little bit of a kind of that relationship over time of military and innovators in San Diego.

Yeah, no, it's a great question, Neil. Obviously San Diego has had significant investment from the DoD for a long period of time, you know, since, since World War II. And that investment has materialized into quite a few sort of San Diego institutions. Cubic Viasat, Qualcomm, Many of those companies wouldn't exist were it not for the DoD's presence within this region. And that's just to name a few off the top of our heads. But that story I think was sort of naturally kind of kept within its own community. I mean the military by nature is sort of a secretive community. And that the people who invest in that world were very focused on defense and national security issues, continue to work really closely together. And for a long time in San Diego that really was the technology center of excellence for the community. There wasn't a telecommunications industry that exists today because of the growth of Qualcomm. You know, you weren't seeing Amazon, you weren't seeing Apple, Google establish offices here because of the technical talent that exists within the region. And there certainly wasn't at the time which the DOD was first growing its roots here, there wasn't even a UC San Diego in the region, you know, let alone at the capacity that it is today. So it's sort of natural to understand that over time as San Diego's economy has evolved, the biotech, the life science, the non defense focused tech and software industries sort of evolved separate, even if they weren't all. And sometimes they were connected, but many times they weren't. And now I think there's an opportunity in this region to really start connecting the dots back to the defense sector between some of these really key industries that have grown over the last 15, 20 years and to become robust competitive markets that are now Starting to get the sort of the national and international recognition they deserve for being as premier at raising capital, at developing truly global innovations. On the DoD side, the things that we continue to be phenomenal at in this region are, you know, telecommunications, so satellite communications, that would include certainly with viasat here, cybersecurity, unmanned systems, These are all. And then of course, around the Navy, there's a bunch of communications technology, shipbuilding, unmanned systems, and all of those are sort of growth areas long term for the department. You know, there's. We're not going to be investing any less in cybersecurity anytime soon. And the ability to communicate over distances either by satellite or telecommunications networks, and 5G and 6G and beyond are really important to the DoD. So San Diego has a lot of really core technology capability that matters to the government and will continue to matter for the future. I think the opportunity though in San Diego is to think about how we can better catalyze the growth of what we have here. Because over that period of time that San Diego has been so successful, it's in large part just because of the scale. Right. We've got, as you mentioned, Neil, San Diego has more military personnel here than in any other part of the country, active duty military personnel. And that's sort of a startling thing for most people to realize. There are many parts of the country where you think, you know, Austin, parts of Florida, Colorado, that are now really strategically as a state with their local communities, with their universities, thinking about how do we become the future of the space industry? How do we become the future of unmanned systems and urban air mobility and all these new technology verticals that are coming that have a military application, but also a huge commercial impact. And so I think it's about time that San Diego start having the same questions asked of ourselves. How do we leverage this massive DoD investment that's always going to be a big part of our economy and pair that with these great new technologies that are being invented in industries that are not necessarily oriented towards the department, but there's things that they're investing in that have defense applications or national security applications.

Something you mentioned, the word investment, you know, is. Means a different. Few different things in a different areas. Right. On the tech side, maybe like VC investment is straight equity. What is, what does investment mean to the duty and Navy? Like what are all the areas? And that. That word kind of means.

Yeah, yeah, it's a. I appreciate you calling me out for that. So when we say investment from the DoD perspective, we mean research. And so RDTNE, which is research, development and technology, which is a massive part of the DoD's budget. Some would argue it should be a lot larger, but that's the Navy labs. It's investing in early stage technology funded at universities. You think about institutions like DARPA and what they do in partnership with academic institutions all across the country, but it's really, how do we invest in either research at a basic science level coming out of academic institutions? How do we invest in early stage startups who have. And by invest, we mean provide funding. Right. These are not equity plays. The department does not take equity investments in these companies. But we understand that there are technologies, especially hardware technologies, where the government might have a higher risk appetite to invest in something than a venture community might, and that those technologies really should be spent. We really should be allocating capital against them. And so all of the services, the army, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Space Force, have their own research and development budgets that they allocate to a variety of different technology priorities. And those investments, you know, range from direct to academic institutions in the range of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars. And likewise for companies in the same vein. So we've got, you know, CPR programs, STTRs, and now a whole range of new contracting mechanisms that have been developed in the last 10 years that are supposed to make it much easier for startups who have an interest in working with the department, but maybe don't have the experience of what it takes to navigate the DoD's bureaucracy to do so more effectively.

Pretty great to see that to come to fruition. What do you kind of know, a bit of the Ensign founding story? I don't know. I don't think you were there in the very beginning, but, like, how is it different from other R and D projects and the program itself? Like, what's its kind of main mandate?

Yeah, so Ensign was sort of an insurgency within the department, and it was really a group of individuals who, coming out of a lot of research that the department was doing that acknowledged something that I think has sort of commonly become truth for the DoD, is that we do not own the best ideas in the same way that we maybe once did as a department. And when you think about 30, 40 years, you think about all the technologies across our tech ecosystem that were developed in the department first, whether that's gps, satellite infrastructure, certainly, you know, basics for computer, for compute power, everything that you can imagine, that has become an enabling technology for most of what we would consider not necessarily defense tech. Now, a lot of that Started either in some sort of Department of Defense funded lab or program. And that that story is still true. There's still really powerful military specific technology that the military will always invest in. When you're talking about stealth capabilities and other kinetic events that are sort of inherent government functions, we, we want to be very good at that in the DoD and we still are. But there are other areas like artificial intelligence, data science programs, ar, VR technology, communications and unmanned systems, machine learning, a variety of other areas where there are massive investments that actually outweigh what the department is spending in those areas being made by non defense companies. And so what our organization really understood was that those companies aren't necessarily thinking of the government as a buyer for those technologies, which is a problem. We don't want to be buying, you know, the best AI technology 10 years after a startup has matured, gone public, finally has the infrastructure in place to hire a government affairs person and begins to sell to the government. That's we want to be seeing the best and breed of these technologies when they're still early in development so that we can think about what the implications are for the department much sooner and help influence how that technology is invested in and try to ensure that our military and our military personnel have access to things that are going to help us achieve the mission. And just to give a couple quick examples, I, you know, right now, for everyone who's tracking the news around the world these days, a lot of us have probably seen satellite images and there's one company in particular called Capella Space that came through one of our programs and you've potentially seen some of their images across your news feeds. And this company was started by a group of Stanford students about six years ago. They came through one of our programs and then they've moved on over the last couple years to become an incredibly successful commercial satellite imaging company with a technology that the department frankly didn't know how to invest in at that time. And that Capella has now provided tremendous value back to the DOD and it also has a variety of commercial applications. And so when you see new space based technologies being invented by small teams of individuals from great universities, that is sort of the game changing type of tech that Ensign was developed to try to go find. You know, share with those individuals some of the national security problems, see if their technology can be applicable, and then hopefully provide them funding through different DoD programs to continue to help them grow. And we hope that they look at both government markets and non government markets. We think in the long run, you know, dual Use technology is actually far more sustainable than if they're just focused on a government application. And we certainly hope that many of these companies don't intentionally choose to not sell to the US Government if there is an application that is viable for a mission.

That's a great example. And I think the way you mentioned Harpoon previously as well too, Local Fund also has that mandate, like you mentioned, where to find, you know, more commercial based companies and invest in them with the specific area of knowing that they could help them get connected to government too. So it's great to see private and public, in a sense both have those mandates, make sure that the government is a buyer for. Some of our listeners are thinking of startup ideas or are working on them already. Like what are some of the ways that they can interact with Ensign currently? Like right now, today?

Yeah. So Neil, I think there's a, there's a variety of different ways depending on sort of what their maturity level is. Ensign as an organization we, we focus on startups up through series A size. It's not a hard and fast rule, but as a general guideline. And there are a variety of different programs that we run to work with startups who have sort of graduated from a university and not that they have to have graduated from university environment, but we're thinking a company that has raised some seed funding, you know, potentially has an mvp. There's a variety of different programs that we run on an annual basis that they can compete within. And so those programs though all start with a DoD problem. So if a company wants to work with us, the best way to do so is if we have a challenge. So we run pitch competitions where we'll give out hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize funding, which is basically us writing a check with very little in terms of strings attached to be able to learn more about a particular technology. And then we work with that company to move them into an additional contract vehicle afterwards. But we'll do things in 5G AI, we've done stuff in cyber security. We'll run usually about five or six of those challenges per year on a different, what we call modernization priority area, which are just sort of these large technology buckets that have big impact on the dod. And so I would encourage startups to look at those particular programs. So those are ways to go into an Ensign program and then potentially get some funding for us from us. But beyond that, as the Pac south director for Ensign and there are other directors like myself who have a multi state jurisdiction that they cover across the United States, part of our goal is to try to be sort of a sherpa for great technology into the department. So even if there's not a program that we're actively running right now that I could recommend a particular company to apply to, I always like meeting great new companies and understanding what their technology is and try to give them some advice about who I would connect them to in the department, even if it's not us. And because of the fact that we sit at the office of Undersecretary of Defense level, we look at Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force and Intel community problems. And so we have pretty good perspective on where that given company might best be utilized and can help connect them to those individuals as quickly as possible. Just a quick example on that. There's a great San Diego company called Tag and Track that you may be tracking, Neil, no pun intended there. And they, you know, they were an evo nexus company, but they have a five bunch of Qualcomm former Qualcomm employees with a technology that's helping do sort of smart manufacturing and logistics. And I was connected to them through some research that I was doing, trying to identify some 5G technologies, got to know their problem, got to know who they are. And then I've connected them recently with a project here on Coronado at the naval base where they're looking at turning a helicopter warehouse into a 5G smart warehouse. And so Tag and Track was able to come in there and present to the leadership of that team and is now in ongoing conversations with them to see if there's a way that they can partner. And so that there was no program right there that necessarily connected us, that we were just sort of facilitating connecting a company with a good technology to an end user who's investigating that area to see if there's a good fit. And ultimately we'll see where that goes. But those types of informal connections are also part of how we can work with companies.

Yeah. And I know you have embedded team members at universities and things like that, which is great to, for people to know. I'm guessing most of the universities in San Diego are covered or still there's still some room there to get embedded more.

Yeah. So the model of the organization we have, you know, the regional directors who have these multi state kind of regions that we cover and then we have university program directors who are embedded at tier one research universities across the country. So we have more than 25 of those individuals in San Diego. We have someone who's going to be starting back up here again. Shortly who will be responsible for covering down on San Diego State and engaging with UC San Diego? I've got somebody up at USC and we have Arizona State and University of Hawaii within my region. But then across the country, you can think of most of the great tier one research universities were trying to embed someone in that person's primary existence is focused on trying to understand what technology is being developed within that university setting and then connecting those faculty members and those student teams through our programs to DoD end users who could benefit from that technology.

Okay, and the tag and track example is a great one to show kind of the breadth of technology you're looking at. Right. I think a lot of people think military. They immediately go to like weapons or weapons related kind of stuff or even hardware kinds of things, especially around that. So I think people should know that just like theoretically you're open for business, right? Like you should want to be able at least to, anyone should want to at least bring an idea to and see if there's a fit somewhere because of just how massive the DoD is in that regard.

Right? Yeah, it's a great point, Neil. There's the DOD is a giant enterprise company. So you know, any technology that you would want to sell to an enterprise customer, there's potentially a use case for in the department. We have massive HR problems, we've got massive healthcare related issues. DoD is a huge provider of healthcare for the veterans and active duty service members. We run hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, we do logistics. We have the Defense Logistics Agency, that is a massive organization. And they're shipping not just the things that go boom for the military, but also all the food, the water, the, the clothing, the gear. And so when we look at the full scope of what the DoD marketplace is, it's not just the sort of the flashy high end, you know, the F35s, the aircraft carriers, the really big ticket kind of core military technology. There's a lot of surrounding technology that the government needs, is looking to buy. And increasingly we're thinking about how to adopt sort of a philosophy that we within our organization and our parent organization call fast following, which is that in areas in which the commercial market is already making significant investments, the DoD should not think of itself as the leader in the innovation in that space, but how do we quickly buy and evaluate that technology for our use cases? And there's a lot of software, different driven technologies that fall into that category. And you could, we certainly could say 5G would be one of them. The 5G market does not exist to serve the government. And there's certainly going to be a lot of really interesting 5G use cases that have government applications. And so we want to think about how we can ride on the investment that our major telecoms are making in so many other companies who are entering that kind of market for use cases. And not everything the DOD does is on the kinetic side of things. Right. We to your point with this tag and track example? No, we run warehouses. The bases across the country are basically small cities, right? So they've got fire departments, they've got utilities, they've got all kinds of issues that you can think of that would exist in a town or city across the country. And those issues are things that we need solutions for. And so we're looking for ways to become better buyers of those solutions because that all of those little technologies that may not necessarily be the thing that changes the state of affairs in a global conflict, all of those are time savers, money savers, things that change the quality of life for our airmen and sailors and soldiers. And those are all important things to us.

Super important. I think what's also cool is I'm not cool, but the idea that you're in so many places around the world working as an, and as an enterprise in a sense to make things work, whereas we tend to think like private side, you're in your space, you're in your city, you're working with local. But an organization like the DoD has to work globally across all these places from bases, logistics and all that. And now in same in your role, you're over multiple regions as well too, right? Not just a city where you were, you previously were focused on what are kind of the things you're learning about innovation that are happening across the world or even across maybe just like across your region, like Hawaii to usc, Louisiana area to San Diego to Phoenix. Where do you see collaboration happening across those in the region itself?

Yeah, that's a great question, Neil. So I'll start by saying that I do think that there is certainly more of an appetite in the last couple years for partnership between the department and non DoD technology technology areas. And there's also sort of a, and this is I think was driven on by the pandemic even more so than current events. But people are realizing that the efficiency that we've created in our globalized market in the supply chains also comes with some really inherent risks. To have a fairly fragile supply chain and that that touches a variety of really critical medical supplies, it touches a variety of different consumables on a consumer side, and it certainly touches the DoD supply chain as well. And so you're seeing, you know, the US Government make major investments in microelectronics. There's huge new facilities being developed, new foundries in Arizona. And you just think, you know, I remember hearing the stories of when Qualcomm got out of the foundry business, right? When they were like, this is no longer a profitable market for us and we'll leave it to others. And now we're sort of coming home to say, you know what, these are really important industries. I mean, it's important not just that they are robust in general, but it's important that we sort of have a better grasp of where that supply chain exists and frankly, which countries are involved in that supply chain. So I think that's one of the biggest trends that, that we interact with a lot is that there's sort of this, this reshoring that is happening around some critical technology areas and a reevaluation of what things make sense to move offsea, offshore to a variety of different countries for speed, efficiency and cost. And what things are really important to think about bringing back closer to the United States, if not in the United States. And I think that's an area where there's going to be increasing investment. And we see that across the state of California. Obviously, you know, the Port of Los Angeles heavily impacted by things in the last couple of years. So contested logistics. How do you handle having all these critical choke points as an economy for ingesting different supplies? And how do you manage that through potential conflict or disaster, whether that's human caused conflict, natural disaster, or a pandemic. So that would be one big trend in general. The other is just the desire for the DoD to be a better partner with industry in technology areas that there's a lot of risk in. But, and the government use case might be classified, but the technology itself shouldn't be considered that way, and I think that's been really hard for the DOD and over time to deal with, is that there's some really important technology, there's artificial intelligence, machine learning, machine vision that have key defense applications. And those things may be very sensitive for the government, but if we don't communicate broadly to great innovators out there, the things that we need, then we're going to miss out on some really important technology capabilities. And that doesn't serve our purpose. So I think there's increasingly a willingness to try to figure out where, where we can be open about what we need and why that doesn't cross into disclosing things that we can't disclose, but also in a way that opens the door for those who would be otherwise willing and interesting in working with the government to share what their capabilities are and doing frankly and doing so in a, in a less painful way. Right. We don't, we shouldn't ask so much of startups upfront and we should make it easier for individuals who are passionate about national security, even if it's temporarily, to work on a problem with us. Not that not everyone who works on national security issues should have to be a DoD civilian, a former service member, or in a DoD contractor. You know, and there's some great DoD companies out there, but there are a lot of other companies that might have a specific thing they could sell to the government and they're willing to do it, but they don't want that to be their whole business. And I don't think we should expect them to change. Change that. And I think in the long run it's good for our economy.

Great points. And I just. So many ideas come to mind around interactions. I know one thing we got to do a portfolio review to see, show you our portfolio, see where there could be some interactions there. And I got to imagine other investors would want to do the same, kind of do a sit down portfolio and see who can help connect. So I'd let anyone else listening to kind of open and reach out to Jesse in that regard. But the other piece that, that you mentioned that we're really excited about is just this seems like it's just the beginning. Right. It's kind of a new way of thinking for the DOD and we're really excited for what's to come. So thanks for sharing all that about specifically about this program with Ensign. We're looking forward to hearing some new prizes and competitions that are coming up that we'll make sure we share about. But the biggest thing everyone's got to know, you've been here long enough. You know how important our taco scene is here. The DoD may be one in five jobs, but one in one, everyone in San Diego is related to tacos, that's for sure. Do you have a favorite taco spot?

Yeah, I know I was. This was a really hard one when I got this ahead of time, Neil. I was struggling to come with my. Anyone who's been in San Diego long enough, I feel like this is not the easiest question to ask. I almost thought about copying out and saying that was classified, but. So during the pandemic time, my wife and I We live in Kensington and so Ponce's has been our is, which is a phenomenal restaurant in our neighborhood, has been my saving grace for great tacos, so I'm going to go with them. There's other phenomenal taco spots across San Diego, but Ponce's has been in the neighborhood a very long time. Great Mexican family spot in our neighborhood. And their tacos are large, which is why I love them so much. They're not little tiny street tacos that you could eat 30 of in a sitting. You know, these are four tacos if you're really ambitious and normally two or three in a sitting. And they're phenomenal. So they also have strong and delicious margaritas, if that's your thing. So plus, selfishly, I'm promoting Ponce because I'd love to see more friends in the Kensington neighborhood. So anyone who wants to grab a taco, I'm available and willing to join you for taste testing.

I love it. Jesse's new office at Ponce's, which I don't think has been mentioned on this pod yet, so we're excited to add a new one to the taco database. Thanks for that, Jesse, and thanks again for being on the podcast and just continue to be a catalyst for our community. So thanks so much for being on.

Thanks, Neil. Appreciate all you're doing. Happy to be a part of this community as well.

Cheers. Thanks for tuning in to the Tacos and Tech podcast. You can find all of our episodes on freshbroodtech.com as well as on Twitter at Tacos and Tech Pod. Also, follow Fresh Breed tech on all of our social platforms and make sure to share and give a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. Thanks again.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech. You know we got it. Hey.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want tek and tacos, Tacos and text, you know we got it.

Hey.