Empowering Women and Minority-Led Start-Ups with Silvia Mah

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 tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper countins 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 beer and coffee my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos El gordo, the taco stand in pesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean Watch the sunset la Hoya 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 who who believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the moon. SDTechOS with your host, Neil Bloom. Come on.

Startups get the party. Startups get the.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host, Neil Blum, San Diego's tech ambassador, and together you're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle.

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

Thanks to our friends at Cox Business for being an instrumental resource to our startup and tech community here in San Diego. As a partner in San Diego Startup Week, quick pitch and top tech awards, Cox Business has helped our ecosystem grow into the community it is today.

And welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, and I am here with adstro Ventures partner, Sylvia Ma. Sylvia, thanks for being on the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited.

I'm excited as well. We have known each other quite a bit for a while in the community, but now I get to spotlight you. I feel like you're good at spotlighting so many people, but we're going to turn the tables on you a little bit. Excited?

Oh, no. Yes, I am.

So you are known throughout the community in San Diego as an angel investor, an author, a mentor. So many things to a lot of people, but I want to get to know your background a little bit. You want to give us a Little bit about where you grew up and how you ended up here as angel investor.

Wonderful. Yeah. I don't get asked that very often, so it's really nice to go back to the childhood. Right. So I grew up in a very different environment in Caracas, Venezuela. So grew up there all my entire life until I was 17 and came here as an international student. So English was my first language. I started in an American school in kindergarten. I could not learn English for the first time three or four years. So I was definitely in the English as a Second Language program. And so it was fun to be part of an American school that had, gosh, I think we had like, 30 to 40 different countries because all the ambassadors kids went to the American school or all the oil kids from the United States were part of that school as well. So definitely grew up in a very multicultural environment. Amazing community of families. But, you know, consistently on a weekly basis, we had bomb threats because, you know, the U.S. marines would come in and, like, shut down the school. Our buses were, you know, egged. You know, sometimes we had, like, three times somebody come into our bus with things, and armed guards would come in right after that. So that's kind of what I grew up with, is a sense of just, you know, growing up overseas. But I always thought that I was Venezuelan because my mom was. Was in the Foreign Service. So she ended up in Caracas as a CIA operative. That's a whole other ball of wax. And my dad was an entrepreneur. My dad immigrated after World War II. He's Italian, from Torino, Italia, and he was an orphan during World War II. At that point, his mom had, like, seven kids. She put two of her youngest children, my dad and her. His brother, into an orphanage. And then she died in a bomb blast. She was a nurse. And then he got. Got into this orphanage even more and then became a printer. So he understood printing presses. And then he was a political prisoner in Germany printing, you know, magazines and all that. After he got out of World War II, went back to Torino, it was not, you know, a great environment because it was after World War II, and he immigrated to Venezuela to become an entrepreneur. So they met, they fell in love, the American and the Italian, and then, you know, basically started their. Their family. I was born and raised in Venezuela and really felt like I was there, but of course, with immigrant parents in Venezuela. So my dad went there with nothing and created a business and really made a huge name for himself in Caracas. That's where I'm coming from. So came back, came to the United States as Again, international student, went to Pepperdine and then I came here to San Diego because I was pursuing my PhD. So my PhD is in biochemistry Molecular Biological Biology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. So I was definitely a lab rat. Loved the lab. I thought I was going to be there forever. Put me in a lab, even now, I'd be super happy. So love that piece of who I am. And that's how I ended up in San Diego.

Wow. Incredible story. And hello fellow Pepperdine wave. I am as well for my mba.

Yes, yes. That's awesome.

Tell me a little about post PhD. How did you find your way towards the startup and venture side of the community in San Diego?

Great question. So after I get my PhD, I had two, actually two children throughout my PhD. So one at my first year and one about when I was able to graduate. So about three years before I graduated my PhD. That son, my second son, special needs. He has cerebral palsy and he's autistic. So at 11 months old they said, you know he's going to end up in a wheelchair. I said, well, not my son. So started doing a lot of therapy. So parents out there who have young children, who have special needs children do not give up on the therapy. It's super. But they will thrive. That's so important. So really early stage intervention on him really helped him. So at that time he was about two and a half, three years old and I couldn't leave San Diego. I literally lived at children's three or four days a week and I had to stay in San Diego. So there was a gentleman at Scripps, Wolf Berger, that gave me a job for the year to do K12 outreach with sand. So really diving into sand morphology and understanding where that sand came from, the geology around that area. So I was able to, in a 12 month time frame, build out to about 20 schools that had these sand kits that we created. So super exciting, right? But he only had a year worth of funding, typical to startup kind of life. And I didn't know at that time that was really startup life. I just basically said, well, I need a job, I need to stay in San Diego, my son's sick, gotta stay here. I'm not gonna do the academic route because I can't move anywhere after that. He allowed me to really understand this K12 educational piece of who I was. And he got me in contact with Jacobs School of engineering at UCSD and they were looking for a PhD who could do their social innovation program right, called Teams and Engineering Service. So I Said, well, why not? I need to stay here. I love serving others. I love serving my community. I love engine. My brother is a PhD engineering. I know science. I think I'm good for this job. You know, you just kind of launch yourself into something that's that exciting. So I started that opportunity again at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UCSD and really was about a program that really is cross disciplinary between engineering students that worked with nonprofit organizations to build something either like a platform or a water purification system or whatever the not for profit needed. We did a needs assessment phase with our students, put groups together and really executed on that project. And those projects, some of them ended up as, you know, kind of little companies or little things that students could do, which grew into bigger companies or they just kind of were a project in the course. And that's when I started working with the Von Nebig center, that's now Institute for the global entrepreneur@ucsd. And Rosabola Choa was a director there. And she says, you know, can you do be a judge on these, you know, pitch competitions? Sure. Can you do this? Sure. Can you do a mentor here? Sure. And then that transitioned into me joining her team as a commercialization analyst of really understanding the science behind graduate students, postdocs, faculty that are going through the Von Liebig center, through the Jacobs School of Engineering, and commercializing their technologies. So that was super exciting. About 3 to 4 years working with Rosabelle. She was an amazing mentor that really taught me how this commercialization world looked like. Right. And during that time, I think we started about four or five companies based on, oh, I can help you with this. Oh, I can be part of your team. I was on a couple of slide decks here and there with pitch competitions. And I always found that access to capital, we all know this is one of the things that is super hard to come by and especially for women, especially for minority founders. So that's kind of that transition from saying, okay, I know this really well. I know the science, I know the commercialization piece. I see, see that there's this need, Wow, I can fill those buckets with my expertise. And then I went into my MBA at Rady. And at Rady, I had a wonderful mentor as well, Dr. Starr, at the Rady School of Management. And I said, you know what, Joanne, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm either going to go into biotech, I'm going to stay with this commercialization path, or I'm going to go back and help my dad with his business. I don't know where I'm going to go, but I really need the business acumen. I understood the commercialization, I understood the science, but I don't have the business acumen. And at that time I had three children. So I really needed like a little bit of a pause to work two years on an mba but actually be at home as well. So those conversations and thought processes of a mom is what kind of defines your quest in your career. So at that point I really needed a break from, let's say academia and really went into getting my MBA and seeing what does this end up to be. During my MBA again started two or three different companies and at the end of my mba my father passed away. So that was a big like, oh my gosh, like I'm not going to go back home. And oh my gosh, he was a very successful entrepreneur that none of us knew, none of our family knew. He kept it very quiet. He was very humble. I mean he had this thought always is that he never wanted to be more than his least paying staff or employee at his, at his company. So he had like the beat up old car, like we never went on trips. He always had like the same shirt that had like stains and all that stuff on it. He never wanted to be more than the lowest paid employee at his business. So when he did pass away, we're like, oh my gosh, like this is incredible. Like wow, he really amassed a whole heck of a lot of wealth. And at that point that was a crossroads is that I'm going to work until the day I die, right? I love what I do, I love the commercialization aspect, I love the startup ecosystem. I'm going to join one team or another team or something like that. But what I can do is make a huge impact in the community by this access to capital to activate my capital for the good of the startup ecosystem. And that's when that started. In 2010, I did my first investment in and now 45 companies later, still doing it, still working hard and I'm really using that capital to help other entrepreneurs.

That's amazing. Wow, what a legacy for him to leave and for you to continue on with it by helping seed so many companies. I have to say like 11 years of angel investing, one like quite the expertise now, but also some pretty good restraint on 45 deals for how many I know you've seen in that time. Obviously you've honed and polished what you look for, which I'm curious to learn a little bit more about. But also on the investment side, you really have championed investing in specific underestimated groups, which really only recently has become quite the spotlight for investing. Probably not in 2010, that's for sure, but I got to imagine you were looking for that even from the very beginning as well. Talk a little bit about that, about how and what kind of founders you've always been attracted to and still to this day day where you like to invest in.

Yeah, thank you for that question. So I only recently realized that I was doing this like 10, 12 years ago when it wasn't, let's say the fad. And I'll go into that, but then also about the thesis and how that went forwards. But the thesis is that I only invest in female led businesses and people of color, period. I think it's a better business decision, it's industry agnostic. So I really love understanding where their business is. The product market fit as well as the founder market fit. Right. So really understanding how does that founder really is able to go into that market, is able to build the right product, the right team and be the leader that they need to be. And usually they're disruptive, right, because they're either a leader that has come out of the ashes or that they had a problem and they want to solve that problem. So really interesting ways of how they've kind of gained that awareness of the problem and really hone in on making this product that really solves a really incredible need in the marketplace. And then on top of that, it has to have some kind of impact. So throughout the evolution of, let's say my investment career, I've gone from like saying impact is really important to me, to really understanding why impact is important. And then of course diving into a venture capital firm, which was Next Wave Impact Fund, that only invests in impact. And I've grown from there. So it's really this evolution of what that looks like. While I was there, we did an mapping of the impact space. So really diving into what does impact mean as an investor. So I love that I started off kind of lukewarm in that arena and now it's like super red hot, like saying, okay, I only invest in this impact driven company. So that's the only evolution that I've had. The reason for the founder really being focused on the founder, even though my dad was very, very successful, he thought women really couldn't do much. They could be secretaries or maybe mothers. That's about it. When I got my PhD, he was like, well, I know that you worked on some Bugs. And they were actually sea urchins, but that's okay. I corrected them every single time. It was always this ongoing thing. And then when I graduated, he goes, now you can be my secretary. And I was like, no, that's awesome that you think that, but I'm going to go and carve my own way. So he always called me a silent rebel. I always was like this rebellious spirit inside because I really wanted to smash down everything that there was a box around me. I did not like it. I was always a tomboy up trees, climbing things, breaking things. Probably should have been an engineer breaking things and stuff like that. So really having that thought process my whole life of figuring something out, challenging things. And then, you know, when you get older, you realize, wow, there is something called feminism. And you want to support the women or people that are disenfranchised. So, you know, really started women's groups at Pepperdine, right? And then at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, we had, like, this big study when I was there, getting my PhD love diving into it. Then at Rady, started Rady Ladies. And that became Women MBAs. And so all throughout my career, I've always been like, okay, this is something. I'm only one of one or one of five, so why not bond together and support each other as we grow and as we grow our careers? Why not, right? Let's not be siloed. Let's not build each other up. So I think that those two things put together of this piece of who I was as a child and what I grew up with and in an environment that was not so supportive of women, and then this piece of knowing that I need to support other women. And I think the third piece that I've really just come into it based on some TEDx talks that I've given, is this awareness piece of my sister's special needs. So I grew up being her person who supports her, who protects her. And nobody gave her, let's say, a voice, right? Because it was like she looked a little bit different, she sounded a little bit different. I was always like, you're amazing. Come with me. Right? But that advocacy and that awareness of a group of people or a person who doesn't have a voice, but they so deserve that voice. I think that that's that third piece that I've grown into in the last, like, five years of saying, why is it that this is so important to me that I really advocate for the unheard and the unseen? I thought it was always women and this and this. It's really this awareness piece of this trifecta of my sister, other women, my experiences, and then of course, this big piece of me growing up. So that's the impetus of why the thesis is important. Based on data, we know that diverse leadership teams outperform, but also that piece of who I am inside in my heart and my soul.

Wow. Incredible. Such strong conviction, obviously, and not only in your own investing, but the people you surround yourself with who wholeheartedly believe in that too. I'm curious though, since you kind of feel like you've always had that. What kind of mistakes have you learned from investing over time?

Yeah, you were going to ask me that question. I was like, oh, my goodness. I feel like challenges that we have or mistakes are opportunities to learn. That's kind of my ethos. So that was a little bit of a challenging question because I don't think that there's something that was like a mistake. I think what are the opportunities that I've learned to grow is that the more that I can surround myself with people who are so much more smart than me or know so much more about investing or can educate me in different ways, that's when we make the right investment. So when I was doing it by myself, which was great, I mean, I still do a lot of it by myself. I love that environment of being around other people, learning from them. Like Next Wave Impact fund, we have 88 LPs and 12 investment committee members. And those 12 investment committee members, I learned so much from them, but I learned so much from our LPs as well. And then of course, Ad Astra Ventures, learning from Alison Nvidia that are just behemoth leaders in our community and learning with them alongside them, that's that, let's say, mistakes that I made before that. Let's say I say I really need this and I really thrive in this environment. And that kind of corroborates with a lot of data that's out there from like the halo report that you should be around a group of angel investors or unless they like your platform. Neil. Of making sure that we have other investors around, that we have great due diligence, that more people come together and really dive in to the intricacies of why this investment is super important or why this investment is, you know, a good deal based on a risk tolerance that is so varied from different people. The more people that come together to really report on this is a great deal because of these things. That awareness is only built from. From a community. And I think that that's what I would say is that learning that I've.

Done over the years, yeah, it's big as an angel. When you only have to, you know, talk yourself into it, it's not that hard. But when you have to talk others sudden now, you really have to be, you really have to show that conviction. That's for sure.

And you have that responsibility too, right?

Yeah, absolutely agree. People look to you that you've done the work and therefore you have to go do it because they're trusting you. Anyway, so you've been angel investing on your own, you've been working with others. You want to tell us a little about kind of some of the founding stories of some of these groups like Ad Astra and Next Wave that seem to be kind of of a lot of your full time that you're working on now.

Great question. So those two are the ones that I'm working on the most. Next Wave Impact Fund and Ad Astro Ventures. And of course I have she Invests, which is basically my own investment company that we have the podcast and book and all that good stuff. But these two entities that are really how we bring together investors and founders so that we can grow also Stella Labs and Stella Angels. So that's what we've been growing for the last like seven to eight years. And that's coming from an evolution of what worked and what didn't. So Next Wave Impact Fund is an impact investing fund that rose out of Rising Tide Fund, which was about six years ago. So six years ago, Rising Tide Fund came out of Kaufman Fellows, that's Trish Costello and Alicia Robb. They said, you know what, what we want to do is be able to have a learn by doing model of investing. So let's basically teach female investors or the ones that could be these aspiring angel investors to say, hey, if you invest in us, we will have a community of like minded women that we will together learn by sourcing deals as like say you do on your platform, sourcing deals and all that. And you're learning from an investment committee that has done it over and over again, over again, like Alicia and Trish during this time. That was before portfolio. Then they were able to really understand, yes, this actually works. We did it for three years. We funded a great many, like about 12, 15 types of entrepreneurs. And then basically they said, okay, then portfolio was born based on Tricia's thought process of, hey, these women who have $5,000 not lying around, but basically lying around. Instead of looking at philanthropy, let's look at investment. And of course that grew into different types of thesis of let's, this is a true investment then. Now she has about four or five funds that really focus on certain areas of expertise, like femtech or diverse founders. Alicia took the route of impact of saying, okay, we want to invest in diverse founders, but it has to have a really strong impact lens on it. And she raised a fund that was called Next Wave Impact Fund. I went from LP to investment committee, which was just a great transition about four years ago. Loved it because it was more of like, okay, I'm learning a lot. That's great. And now I can become an investment committee and have that responsibility with other women around us. We have 12 ladies in our investment committee, diverse ladies. And we have 88 LPs. So we were able to invest in about 14 companies. One was Aqua Cycle here in San Diego. So we were able to really bring in great entrepreneurs at the Seed, Seed plus level. We also invested in Series C entrepreneurs. So that was a really great kind of genesis of that piece of learning being by an lp. And that was when about six years or six, seven years ago is when I was learning through taking all of the classes that I could possibly take out there. So I took 37 Angels classes. I took Pipeline Angels, I took Golden Seeds classes. ACA was one of my, like, that's still my favorite educational platform for investors. So all of that was kind of where I was norming and storming of learning a lot while I was investing independently as an investor. So kind of that propelled into the LP of Next Wave Impact and then the ic. So about three years ago is when Alison and Vidya, all of us were sitting around and we always went out to coffee and talked about each other's portfolios and just kind of connecting. We saw each other on panels all the time in San Diego. And then we said, you know what? Why don't we do something together? Why don't we really put our forces together and see what good we can do in the San Diego ecosystem? And what's interesting is that we're. It's kind of like a Venn diagram of who we are. Video is a product guru and a master and amazing woman coming more from corporate, had invested in Rising Tide Fund, did not continue with Next Wave Impact, but had a couple of investments on the side. Allison, the amazing VC that we all know she is for the last like 10 years, at that point now 15 years in the VC world, just knew a lot about that business model vc, just heavy into that. And just like this, this, this leader of leaders. And then for me it's more of that angel, but also this feminist and this more piece of like investing in female founders and people of color. So all of us brought together, we're like. And then they didn't really have a thesis of women and they said, well why not? Why Our portfolio does not have a lot of women entrepreneurs. We need to change this. So we kind of put everything together and we created Ad Astra Ventures. We've gone from just having an accelerator model to being more of, you know, boot camps that we do on a quarterly basis. We've invest companies so far and we're building out a venture builder going forwards. And then throughout the time that about eight years ago I also started Stella Labs, which used to be Hera Labs and that's just a business accelerator for female entrepreneurs. And we do that access to capital piece. So all of that put together second, the Stella stars all aligning Stella Ad Astra Ventures type of scenario so that any woman coming through Stella Labs can have the accelerator platform mentors that they need to really launch and grow their businesses and then meet with that access to capital with the Women's Venture Summit and then really meet capital with Ad Astra Ventures and even grow even more as they, you know, build out their seed round and then their series A round. So that's kind of that evolution of where Ad Astra started Stella Labs Next wave and all of those wonderful things.

Oh man, your footprint, everything you touch is incredible. It's so wide and varied. You're helping so many, let alone just the things you do on Clubhouse, by the way, which you are on all the time. People can find you there. Doing some great rooms by the way. Okay, so all that amazing the projects you've been working on leads us to now. What's the 2021 focus? What's right in front of you that you're going to work on over these next few months?

Yeah, so our venture builder is what we're working on now at Ad Astra Ventures. So what we found was our accelerator was, you know, the typical three to four months, you have a graduation. What we found was we needed a longer period of time with those founders. So we're building out about a six month time frame that we work with entrepreneurs, we fund them from day one and they go through a discovery phase with us for about four to six weeks. That's after they do our boot camp, which is like five intense days. So we're able to kind of roll up our sleeves with them, understand where they are Ask critical questions. Not a program, just asking critical questions and saying, how do we walk alongside you to build this business in the right way? So if it means raising a $2 million round to go VC, awesome. If it means bootstrapping because you're a consumer product and you're just going to go down this path of building it from revenue generation, awesome. We're completely in back of you and really focusing in on strong, innovative, fierce founders that are women obviously, that really want to make this impact in this world. That's what we're really focusing in on. So we're launching it in the next month or so and seeing if that really proves that model. It's similar to, let's say like a VC studio, but it's, it's slightly different in the sense of a little bit earlier. We're not building with them, let's say, you know, like 20% of their company. No. Something that is typical to an accelerator, but that's why we called it a venture builder. We're building the venture with the founder, really focusing on the founder's strengths and the strengths of the product and the market that they're going after.

Got it. That's exciting. I think we are co invested in some of those companies that have gone through your great program. So you're obviously finding fantastic founders to go by. You've participated in Interlock Capital, I think in a deal or two with us as well. It's been great to co invest with you along way the, the last few years. Something we didn't get to talk about yet and that you're just coming off of is San Diego Angel Conference, which I think you've been involved with pretty heavily. Congrats on just finishing that. How does it feel to run year three?

Oh, awesome. I mean, our fund manager this year was Amy Duncan and she did a phenomenal job of really building so much more momentum for the entrepreneurs and for the investors. This year, of course, virtually is super hard. So, you know, we ended up with a virtual type of event and this weekend, so it was really exciting to have investors coming in, connecting with entrepreneurs, building those trust bridges with each other. And yeah, it's now been three years. I started off as the inaugural fund manager with Misty three years ago. So Misty's like, I have this crazy idea. This is what we're going to do. And I'm like, sure, I can be your fund manager. And she's like, really? I'm like, yeah, of course. Yeah, I can do it. And then it was pretty much a very norming and storming. Year of trying to figure out what this looks like, how do you build out a fund? And basically like three fourths of the way through it, I say, you know what, if we don't make it, I'll just fund the rest. Because we were right there. Almost right. And then the next year was Benton Moore, that was a fund manager, more processes were in place. But then of course, Covid hit right at the end. So there's a lot of dynamic pieces of San Diego Angel Conference, but really amazing active angel investors who care, care, care deeply about San Diego. Of course. I know you do, Neil, like for so many years. But it's so cool to see these new, let's say aspiring angel investors that might have been lawyers or something that we haven't seen that much, but they're diving in because they're like, oh, there's a really great platform called San Diego Angel Conference that I can tiptoe my way into with a small unit price and see where that goes. And then they go into your fund or through a lot of them. Join Tech Coast Angels with Caitlin and ashok. So really great. Just kind of this ecosystem build of, you know, people who really care about San Diego and growing this. So yeah, we're coming off of it. We had seven amazing entrepreneurs. I'm going to list them because they're so amazing. Hempress, Hygienics, Uplift, Verity, Advocat technologies, Fluid Power AI, ChargeNet Station and Digital Proteomics. So very industry agnostic, from like life science to like a hemp tampon product. So there you go, you know, that's what we breed in San Diego. Such great innovation and great founders that care and investors who want to invest in, write checks.

Yeah, it's incredible. Not just the obviously we're super passionate about helping founders, but now to also have an avenue for help create a whole ecosystem of angel investors which is since obviously part of your ethos, early stage capital and finding it from the very beginning. We've got a whole funnel for that now for helping people find their way, find their community and continue doing it after their own kind of graduation, which is awesome. Where can people find more about Sano Angel Conference and some of the other programs that you're working on?

So everything's on websites and of course my platform of choice is LinkedIn. I'm constantly on LinkedIn and because I'm involved with a bunch of different things, things, always posting about everybody's wonderful celebrations from you from Founders first with Auralia, Tech Coast Angels and all that But I think that what I find, the best place to find all these things are on their website. So San Diego Angel Conference website, Astro Adventures website, and of course LinkedIn. And if you're really trying to get really into people and seeing how do you connect is on Clubhouse or write a message to them on LinkedIn. Everybody is so open in San Diego. It's reach out, touch them and say, hey, I have a question. Be as specific as possible because then you get into the in, right? You get into the ways that we can connect you in really mindful ways to see, okay, what would be the best next step or how can we answer your ask?

Yeah, you nailed it. People are very giving of their time, very much give first as well here. And you know, we also really appreciate our food scene here, our tacos here as well. So we have to know. Sylvia, do you have a favorite taco spot?

Well, first of all, my husband's Trinexican, so he's from Mexicali. So he is. My, my, my favorite tacos are from him, obviously, because he makes it really good. But in Encinitas, the taco stand is one of our favorites. They're carnitas tacos. Sorry. I love Carnitas, so they're amazing. Probably that's, that's a lot of people's favorites, but love that site. I love Encinitas, love the coastal San Diego and really. Yeah, just supporting local is what I love to do as well. So.

Yeah, well, that's incredibly apparent. You know, you do it day in, day out. Everywhere you go, you've got a touch in helping someone else. So we appreciate it so much. Sylvia, thanks for everything you do and we're excited to continue collaborating with you.

Yeah, thanks for having me part of the show.

Absolutely.

Thanks for joining us on the tacos and tech podcast with Neil Bloom. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. Big shout out to School of Rap for our rad intro music. And thanks as well to Nest Podcast Network where we are recording live inside their studio at Nest Co Working in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Blum on Twitter eealbloom as well as Fresh brewed tech and tacos and tech Pod on Twitter too.

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 tech and tacos, Tacos in tech, you know, we got it.

Hey.