Energizing Startup Ecosystems with Rory Moore

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 captains counting beans Contador quentan frijoles founders trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy 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 Estee 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. 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 Neal Bloom, San Diego's Tech Ambassador and together we're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle. I want to take a moment to thank our friends at Cox Business who have enabled us to tell these amazing stories of local leaders, technologists, founders and funders. Cox is actually a 121-year-old family run business that thinks in terms of decades in building community a lot like we do in starting a business. For years the local Cox business team has helped us grow through partnering at San Diego Startup Week, South Dakota. Quick pitch and in celebrating our local technical leaders at the Top Tech Awards through bringing a great enterprise customer and partner. Thanks again to Cox Business and welcome back to the show. I'm your host Neil Bloom and I am joined with longtime community builder and entrepreneur Rory Moore, co founder and CEO of Evo Nexus. Rory, thanks for joining.

You're welcome Rory.

We go back a few years. I first met you when I moved to San Diego. Moved back to San Diego when Evo Nexus expanded. Accepted my first startup Portfolium into your incubator. As soon as I got in I quit my day job in aerospace from LA and moved back to San Diego. So thanks for bringing me back to town since 2013.

Well we believe that you're going to add A lot of value to the town.

I feel like we did too. And I appreciate that you gave me my starting point as a young entrepreneur. Do you want to give us a quick overview of what evo Nexus is?

Equal Nexus is basically a pro bono nonprofit incubator created by Vice Admiral Davis and I in about the 2009, 2010 timeframe to really re energize the early stage startup environment in San Diego that at the time was under great stress due to the financial crisis that was occurring than with the banking and mortgage world. So we thought that the quickest way to help the local community build more companies was to create an incubator that would accelerate and develop not just one, but 10, 20, 30 at a time. So that was the original vision of Evo Nexus.

Wow. And what an impact you guys have had since that financial crisis. Now we're in a whole new crisis. So I think we'll talk about what, what that looks like now for Evo, which will be interesting. But I want to take us back a bit and learn about a little bit your history. When did you start your first company, Neil?

Before you were born actually, but that's okay. My first company really started in the mid-70s and it was in aerospace and aviation. I was in the Air Force, went in the Air Force out of high school and following the Air Force went to the University of Michigan on the GI Bill and returned to the west after undergraduate program there and started several companies. My first again was in the mid-70s and. And we also faced a crisis in the mid-70s that is part of the history books. But it did impact my first company and that was the oil Arab embargo. And I can remember my trucks waiting in line for gas. And that was a very stressful time with my very first company. So you might say I'm battle hardened as far as going through various economic cycles and crisis.

What industry was that company in?

Aerospace.

Okay, got it. Interesting. So you eventually found your way to telecom, correct?

I did.

What led to that and what were those companies like?

Well, the first telecom company, I wouldn't call it a telecom company at all, frankly. It was not a telecom company initially and later developed products that impacted telecom telecommunications. But after having several successful companies in Arizona from the mid-70s through the late 80s and having some nice outcomes, one of my oldest friends since high school I stayed in touch with over the years. When I went into the Air Force, he went into the Navy and he became an engineer. Later became a head of microelectronics for the Navy's R and D facility in San Diego on Point Loma. And so Ron Reedy, Dr. Ron Reedy and I continue to see each other over the years and frankly I continue to push him to find a DoD government based technology that we could commercialize. Basically do a commercialization of military invented technology which really led to a lot of amazing inventions in the world that we have today. We did discover technology, we did a tech transfer out of the Navy lab in about 19 or 1989, 1990. And in February 1990 formed Peregrine Semiconductor, which is a chip company whose goal was to build communications chips. And that led to me permanently relocating from Phoenix, Arizona, Scottsdale, Arizona to San Diego, which wasn't a hard sell because I owned a boat on harbor island where I would fly my plane to Lindbergh and enjoy the weekend on my boat. So I got a chance to come over more often, live on my boat and found a company called Peregrine Semiconductor. And I've not left town since.

That's great. That plane just sits there now, right? I'm just kidding.

And Peregrine eventually became a public company, as you know.

Yeah, yeah, it's got a great illustrious history, ups and downs, writing a few crisises of its own, but pretty cool to have started here. I'm curious, in San Diego at that time you already had Qualcomm and you already had a bit of density around the chip world, right? Was San Diego already known for a hub of that or were you joining something pretty early?

No, they actually were not. In fact, Qualcomm was not a chip Company in 1990 at all. They hadn't even develop their first chip. They were, they were trying to basically populate their new, you know, digital communications theory platform into telecom. And at that time they were basically, if you want to look at it honestly, they were developed doing truck tracking with satellite, satellite location. So they, they had a company called Omnitrax which was installed on much of the intrastate trucks to track the trucks like we do now. So with such, you know, we do on a regular basis with Google Maps, with Uber, with everything else. So the whole area of geolocation was done many, many years ago at first Qualcomm, but it was satellite equipment installed on trucks. So Qualcomm was not a chip company. We did have Nortel had a small FAB in San Rancho Bernardo. Chip fab. Small. Burroughs had a small chip Fab. Micro Circus had a small chip fab. TRW had a small chip FAB in San Diego in the 90s and Hughes Microelectronics had a small fab up in Carlsbad. So there were probably five or six actual chip manufacturing locations in San Diego county at the time. All the small factories, so to speak. And then the Navy where Ron and I were working, we had our own prototype R and D chip fab out on Point Loma. So in long answer to your question, no semis were here when we started, but. But not, not anything that was, you know, transformational for the region.

Got it. Okay. But that obviously changed as we went on through the 90s and that just.

Grew and grew, right? Well, actually, ironically, Qualcomm tried to spin off. They started a chip group within Qualcomm and they tried to spin it off as a separate company and. And they finally decided to keep it. So again, irony comes into play one more time. You know, Irwin wanted to keep the company and in whole intact and grow a semiconductor company. And, you know, there's a lot can be said for Irwin's vision that resulted in what we have today.

Also interesting about Omnitrack that they did spin that off, which then now has just acquired SmartDrive Systems, a local San Diego company. Interestingly to see too.

Exactly. Well, Omnitrax as a business unit became kind of a small revenue generator, frankly. And a lot of competition with Omnitrax that developed. And I think that was a good move to making that acquisition because Smart Drive was not satellite, was not the old high end satellite communications gear.

Got it. So you were starting a company here in San Diego, not your first, but you had started a new one in San Diego. Were there resources at all for entrepreneurs to tap into and help them? Not just capital, but incubators and any other programs in the 90s that exist now?

No, there weren't any. I don't know when they were founded, but Bill Otterson founded Connect back in the. Probably the mid-90s, something like that. But Connect's early focus was really more in life science stuff, you know, because of the pharma companies and biotech companies developing on the MESA or by ucsd.

Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. I think Connect was a UCSD product first and then spun out.

They did, yeah.

Okay, so not a lot of resources, but you obviously maybe didn't need them to start your company and have success. Why were you compelled to look into starting things beyond just your company?

Well, again, there, there wasn't. There wasn't a Y combinator back then, obviously. There weren't any incubators or accelerators at that point. In time it was really finding your own office space, bootstrapping your company, doing the best you could. Even pre Internet. I know many of my first agreements with Peregrine were done with a fax machine. There was no, we didn't have an Internet connectivity In the early 90s there was no Internet. There was ARPANET for the government, et cetera. But you know, my browser back then was the yellow pages phone book. So yeah, it was a totally different environment, but not just for us, but also Silicon Valley. It was much the same way in Silicon Valley. Whereas you know, you started a company the old fashioned way, grab some people together, got some lousy office space or lab space, the founders put in their own money, mortgage their house, no mortgage their house, put their wife back to work and did it the old fashioned way. There were no angel funds available. If you raise angel money back then, you had to raise it from friends and family, which still exists today. And that's how we, we kept Peregrine alive was from 1990 through 1997 or 96, we raised over 18 and a half million dollars of angel money to keep the company alive.

Wow.

And along the way we had NRE agreements with corporations. You know, we had signed, you know, engineering agreements to demonstrate our technology on their product and they actually paid us to do it. So it was, you know what NRE is obviously. So it's, it's, it's, it's a great way to keep your company funded as long as the NRE is in the area you're pursuing. Right?

Yeah, yeah. Non diluted funding all day. Absolutely.

So that's how we existed in our first formal venture round was in 97 or 98, something in that timeframe and. But $18.5 million of, of angel money.

Yeah, that's a lot of knocking on doors for sure.

I don't think anybody's ever done that since.

Probably not just knocking on doors and who's who for sure, but it also has never been, hasn't like you say there were now is networks for angels, there's now communities. So you were kind of on the forefront of seeing those, but they didn't exist for you. Why did you feel like you needed to build them for other entrepreneurs?

Well, I really never felt like I needed to do that until the financial crisis hit. And then I had friends that were starting companies that couldn't raise money. I saw back then layoffs occurring in large corporations like Qualcomm and Viasat. They were laying off people during the crisis. They couldn't meet their earnings forecast because as you may recall, that was a tough time for Wall street in general. So Abdul and I looked around and we saw a bit of a train wreck out there with early stage. And we both like early stage startups. And so instead of starting our own, we thought we'd start five or six of them at once. So the whole idea of an incubator, an accelerator was done really out of what we thought was a perceived need. I had made some money in the past. The Admiral had made money for the Navy and everything. So we really didn't need a paycheck. And we thought we'd do something that would be fun, exciting and at the same time valuable to San Diego.

Got it. So what did that look like to go from paper to putting up a shingle and saying we're now an incubator?

Well, first of all, we had to find somebody to support it. Admiral and I weren't going to go out and spend our money to rent office space or lab space. So we had to find a companies that would support this pro bono, basically free incubator. And we had good connections in the area, of course, so we convinced the large companies like viasat, Qualcomm and others that they needed to support this effort that we had. I convinced the Irvine company that this was a great way of, you know, of economic development, which, you know, Irvine Committee cares about broad economic development, as you might imagine. So I convinced the Irvine company that they should give us free space and, and everybody did. So we started it with a, with, loaned, with a loaned location from Cricket Leap Wireless. Doug Hutchinson, who was the CEO of Cricket back then, was an old friend of mine, Qualcomm Days, and he was moving out of his offices over in Sorrento Valley to a brand new building off the 52 and had another year to go on his lease. So I asked Doug to give me the space for the remaining year of his lease, which you couldn't rent it out anyway. So he did and he gave me time to make a terrific arrangement with the Irvine company for our next location. And that next location was ultimately in the utc, one of the UTC buildings. And that led to another location in downtown. And rest with the Irvine Company is really much, pretty much history.

Yeah. Back on, on the big companies joining in. Can you just, it's, it's, it's obvious to me because I was in the program, but what are the Qualcomms Viasats getting out of? Why would they join in early on to help start tiny little new startups.

Well, they understand that the early stage ecosystem matters to them. That's what's really built the Silicon Valley were early stage startups that later got acquired, became larger companies. So it wasn't hard to convince at the time. Let's see, what time frame was that? It was either Paul or Irwin. I don't remember who I sold this to at the time, but either Paul or Irwin at Qualcomm and I think it was Mark Dankberg and rick Baldrege at ViaSat and Steve Hart and I could go down the list of the companies that we had meetings with to convince them that the region needed a real program for early stage companies to keep them going through the crisis, and a support system that was pro bono provided by the companies that cared about the economy here, that cared about keeping the best and brightest talent here, that cared about attracting more venture capital to the region. And venture capital comes when you have high quality deals. If you don't, you're not going to get venture capital. That's just the bottom line. And the other area we saw vividly back then was there was no venture capital in San Diego to speak of, and there never really has been, except for life science. But in tech, there's never been a plethora of tech venture money here. We've had some smaller funds like Mission and a few others, but in reality nowhere in comparison to other parts of the country like Boston, the Silicon Valley. So in order to attract capital here, we had to create interesting companies that competed for that capital with startups right in the neighborhood of the venture world in Silicon Valley. So those are all things that had to develop, come into play, had to convince the corporations that what Avalon, our vision was really a worthwhile vision and really a bare budget to execute. We weren't asking sponsors for millions and millions of dollars. We were pro bono, Admiral and I, completely pro bono. So it was a local. We were going to run it with volunteers. Much of it was run by volunteers. And really it was something that resonated with the, with the leadership of San Diego. And I guess you could say that Admiral and Roy were pretty convincing.

Hmm. I think so. Who, who was the first company you convinced to come into the program, specifically.

To the incubator program? Probably Qualcomm.

Oh, I mean, sorry, a new startup to come in.

Oh, the first startup was either. It was one of three, I don't know the exact dates, but we admitted three companies in the first cohort. One of them was a company called medapax. It was a health. It was A med tech company. The other was the EcoATM and the other was IO Semiconductor.

Okay.

Of course, Rory would want to admit a semiconductor company in the first cohort, right?

Of course. Well, you've got your domain expertise. Why not?

That's a given. So those three were the first three. Then we had three more. And before we left the Cricket building, we admitted, I think, four or five companies in that borrowed space. And then when we moved to utc, we had grown it to six or seven. And so by the time we had a year under our belt in the new location at UTC in the Irvine property, I think we had nine.

Okay, that's great to have all working together and building density. And that really kind of proved that. I think it's proved to your sponsors and the community that it's kind of a force multiplier. It's not just you're helping one company, you're helping nine. But the nine help each other too.

But we haven't proven anything yet because we haven't had any results. No acquisitions, very little money raised. So it was still very much work in progress, even in the third year. It was Admiral and I convincing the corporate sponsors that this takes time. These companies that we admitted weren't just coming in and banging out some code in three months and we graduate them with their application working or whatever. Right. We were admitting companies that were quite different than other accelerators around the country where we knew that if we admitted a company, we may have to keep them up to two years because they're building a really complex product. It takes time. So our model is always different than Y Combinator. Always different and continues to be different. And in fact, we found it's kind of unique even today of what we call long term incubation.

Yeah, Most of the time it's three to six months max kind of thing.

For sure. It's a numbers game. And I'm not saying this because I'm disparaging Paul Graham, who started Y Combinator, Saeed Plug and Play at all. Their model was always basically admit a lot of companies and one of them just might be a Dropbox. Right?

Yeah.

So that's the goal there is to a bit of a numbers game. And if you've got a lot of deal flow, a ton of deal flow, which the Valley does, you can play that numbers game. We don't have the kind of deal full volume here we never have, and we probably won't have that kind of volume like you have up there. So we had to be much more selective when we admitted a company, we had to believe that we could get them to their A round, their venture round. And we had to believe that during the time we had them, they would leave with a minimum viable product.

Yeah. And over time, obviously naturally companies are going to grow and they're going to mature or they're going to fail. Right. There's kind of these paths. So that's happening with companies both in your incubator and once you graduate. Can you fast forward a little bit to not all the way to today, but to the point where you obviously said we should open multiple locations? Like what was working and what was happening in the environment for startups?

Actually we didn't seek to open multiple locations. We were pretty happy with just developing a nice solid incubator in the UTC Golden Triangle area. And the Irvine company actually said, you know, we own eight of the largest buildings in downtown San Diego. How about replicating what you've done in UTC downtown and making it more of a software incubator like south of Market in San Francisco. Right. And so the idea of expanding was not ours, I will tell you that straight up. But when the Irvine Company asks you to try something, we go, okay, let's try this. Right? So that's what happened. So we opened up on a location on Broadway. They wanted to bring more innovation to downtown San Diego as opposed to what, you know, what they've seen develop there. And we basically said, we'll give it a shot. And we opened up our Broadway location which was, as you know, software only. And we, we went in eyes wide open. I will tell you that, Neil, eyes wide open. The element that always concerned me and I made this crystal clear to Doug Holty, the president of the Irvine company and Mr. Brin chairman was the workforce is not downtown. And we thought, well, it's not that far away. Well, it's far enough away to where the workforce didn't want to commute downtown. The workforce is mainly, you know, if you look at where the talent is, it's basically golden triangle north and east, right. And northeast. So it was difficult to scale it down there. The location wasn't really there for a lot of intern, like UCSD internships. It was, it was a tough location. There was no angel money down there, no venture money down there, and there was no anchor companies downtown that could attract the talent. So when you look at back then, my concern was, who's the anchor down here? A big company to, to bring a south market kind of ecosystem. And when you look at San Francisco, if you go way back in history. Startups didn't really aren't, weren't the ones that started to build out somo. It were, it was large companies back in the day that had employees that were commuting all the way from the city down to Silicon Valley. And they started to basically push their companies to have satellite locations in the city. And that led to sort of a little bit of a buildup of, of, you know, a critical mass. And then startups started to develop. But somo, the only startup that really became household name in the early days in SOMO was Craigslist. And so there's a lot of myth about somo, but in reality it were, it was some of the whales in Silicon Valley that opened up branch offices in San Francisco to accommodate their workforce and started to grow from there. Well, we didn't have that anchor in San Diego downtown. In fact, I went to Qualcomm and Viasat with high level meetings and asked them to have a branch engineering location in downtown just to get things started down there. And they seriously looked at it. They sent people to meet with downtown officials, et cetera, et cetera. Met with the airline company and they also concluded that it was just too far away from their workforce base.

Interesting.

So I tried to bring Qualcomm and Biostat to downtown San Diego. It didn't quite work out.

Yeah, I think we'll find maybe you're ahead of your time because it's still building. You got probably 2 million square feet coming online between Horton Plaza and more by the water. That definitely hopes to bring anchors down. So we shall see. I know what did spin out of the downtown location was Startup San Diego putting on a 3,4000 person conference every year, always downtown. So I think you did spin in people's heads the idea of community engagement and community involvement and that definitely has grown and flourished as well as the co working spaces. Probably the most highest density of co working downtown, which is for a different kind of entrepreneur and different kind of worker as well. So maybe, maybe it's not there yet, but you definitely started something, you planted a seed.

Thank you. I've always been a little early with things.

So you eventually you, you grow to multiple locations with the most recent being you tapped into Silicon Valley a little bit. What was the thinking behind now running three different cities, incubation and economic development?

Well, actually we, after downtown we decided to combine everything downtown into utc. We got a much larger facility in UTC where we could really operate under one roof. I will be the first to admit it's really Difficult, even if you're only 10 miles away, to manage two incubators. It's much easier to have them under one roof. And so we combine downtown with utc. But at the same time, the Irvine company again reached out to me and said, we'd like you to replicate evonexis in Irvine. And that led to us developing our current operation that we have in Irvine. So again, we were pulled to that location for a variety of reasons, and we continue to operate out of Irvine as well. And then again, a corporate giant came to us about three, two years ago indicating that fintech was going to be big. Fintech was going to change a lot of things in financial services, asset management, wealth management, banking, et cetera, et cetera. And Franklin Templeton Investments, one of the world's largest asset managers, had their own campus and location, San Mateo. And they indicated that they would completely subsidize, build an incubator location for us on their campus, which they did if we would replicate Evo Nexus in San Mateo on their campus with a fintech focus, which we did in spite of the fact that Neil, everyone we talked to said that was absolutely a silly idea. There must be 50 incubators in Silicon Valley. We don't need another. No, I'm not making this up.

No, I'm sure.

And I said, well, okay, that's fine, but we've been asked to try this. They're serious about it, and if we fail, we fail daringly. Right. To quote Teddy Roosevelt. So that's how we've expanded. It was never Admiral Davis and Rory's idea to go intergalactic and, and conquer the world. It's always been something that's pulled us. Sure.

So I'm curious then, what has Covid pulled you into? You know, now at first less, less physical. Right. And people aren't bumping into each other kind of having the, the random densities that happen in a space. What's Covid been like for the incubated companies?

Well, I'll get to that in a second. But our next phase started about a year ago in discussions with Qualcomm. As 5G is becoming more and more real, the 5G network, and with my wireless background and semiconductor background, you know, I know the potential of 5G do what it can't do. I'm surely not the CTO level of Qualcomm, but realize the opportunity with 5G will be could be 10x what LTE 4G is done to many industries. And so in meetings with the CEO, Qualcomm, the CTO EVPs came up with an idea of expanding the incubator even when access to a virtual model. And again, we've always been residential. We've always required the startups like we required Portfolium. You gotta be in our incubator where we can help you every day. Right? And that's been the model. We've had applicants from all over the country in North America in the last 10 years that have applied to EVO Nexus. But when we indicate you've got to relocate to California, they hang up on us. Not that they don't believe in EVO Nexus, it's just that they find California a very difficult place to, to, to, to live and pay for. Right. So we've missed some really high profile ventures over the years. And in discussions with Qualcomm, we arrived at the fact that 5G innovation use cases going to come from everywhere. Chicago, North Carolina, Boston, Austin, wherever. Right. Toronto. And so I planted the idea into their head. Let's make this a virtual program with Qualcomm where we would admit companies no matter where they are, no geographic boundaries at all. And we provide them everything except for the free rent so they don't have to move to San Diego. They can stay in Toronto, they can stay in Boston. We'll provide them all the access to the VCs, which are basically in California, access to the right mentors, the right regimented program can be done virtually. In fact, we'll admit them virtually. And actually we decided to do this long before I even heard of the word Covid. So along comes Covid and we look pretty smart because we've launched the virtual program with Qualcomm. It's on the website, it was a big press release on it. And this was done pre Covid. We're getting applications from all over the globe to enter this virtual program for 5G. We admitted a company out of India three weeks ago, Hyderabad, India, software company. They're not going to move to California, but they've got some pretty interesting software that, you know, make 5G a good use case for 5G. Right. So we're in discussions with dozens of companies all over North America about the virtual 5G program with Qualcomm. And the virtual program has been really enthusiastically received in the medtech area, in the fintech area. So while Franklin Templeton, who's based in Silicon Valley, said this is a great idea, there's terrific fintech companies in Chicago and New York and London. These, you know, the financial capital. Right. So it gives Franklin Templeton access to Clusters of startups in cities they couldn't touch. Right. Same thing for medtech. We were expanding the medtech thing into virtual as well. We'll still offer residential opportunities if you're in our local neighborhood. But the virtual program is really starting to show some great traction with big corporations who find SoCal interesting. But if we can show them a global footprint, they'll find it very interesting.

Got it. Okay, so that's already running. That's happening. Companies are in working on 5G technologies and getting hands on experience with big tech companies interested in working with them.

That's right.

Awesome. So Covid does come along. Another crisis that you've now been through. What's your take on what's happening to our startup community now? I mean, is there a new need that we now are needing to learn and build a new resource for?

Well, I don't know where this is going with COVID If there's a all clear signal out with a vaccine, a therapeutic Covid, all of a sudden we have herd immunity as a population. I think that, I think that early stage companies want to get back to working together. They're working remotely right now. It's kind of working. But when you're developing, you kind of need to be together. I mean, put yourself, go back in time, get yourself in the time machine. Neil, to you guys starting portfolio and all of a sudden you guys said, hey, we're never going to have an office. We're all going to work remotely from our home. How well would that have worked out?

Well, Adam, Adam and I were roommates, so that actually would have been the same thing as working in the office. But yes, I hear what you're saying.

So there are certain industries that can do that if they're just delivering a service. But if you're developing, you're developing anything in life science, med tech area or fintech or deep tech, wireless, if you're early, early stage, you really need to be with your, your team. Now there's some elements of your team that might be able to do remotely if they're just doing a certain thing that can be siloed off. But in reality, I think people are going to get back to being in an office location at the early stage phase of their life cycle. I don't know when that's going to happen, but I think it's going to happen. If you believe what Reed Hastings said in the Wall Street Journal last week when he was interviewed. He's the co founder, CEO of Netflix. When the reporter said, reid, how's the Remote at home, working for Netflix. He says it's not. And then the reporter asked him, well, when are your guys coming back? Or something like that. He says it's 12 hours after the vaccine's dispensed. So already you have Silicon Valley titans saying that work from home. We're getting through it, you know, we're managing it. But in reality, a number of them, if they're are saying, you know, we want to get our people back, I don't know how long it's going to take, but I know that Evo Nexus has always been an organization where we pivot frequently. You know, Neil, we're not afraid to try something new at EVO Nexus. We don't. We never put the Evo Nexus organization on autopilot. That's an aviation term. And we always want to have our hands on the stick. And Admiral and I and Marco and Gene and Rich, the group here that runs this place, really enjoy mixing it up and doing things that are different, trying stuff that's new. And so, Covid, yeah, we'll get through it. Like we did the financial crisis, like we did the Internet bubble, like we did the optical bubble. Like we did, you know, all the other challenges. I don't think entrepreneurism is going to be going away anytime soon. And I think the incubator accelerator model, though, is going to change a bit. And I think we've shown how that what we're doing to, to, you know, to really embrace some of the changes like the virtual program.

Got it. Okay. One last thing on the community side, you know, if you were to, if you're looking, let's take Covid a little bit out of the picture, because when you started Evo Nexus, there was not many resources in town, maybe nothing to. Now what do we still need? What. What is the community lacking? And, and like you mentioned, there's still not much venture capital. What else do you think we can be building for the community right now?

You know, I guess, you know, I'm invited to go to roundtable discussions all the time and I typically decline because, you know, what I have to say is not going to be well received. But the venture capital tsunami is not going to happen here. There's not enough deal flow here to where nea Sequoia, Kleiner Greylock, Andreessen Horowitz is going to open up a big office here. Not going to happen. They'll do more deals here, clearly, but that'll be based on the fact that we have high quality ventures and they will do deals here as You've seen community wise, I think that there's a lot of things that are going on that keep the community, the early stage entrepreneurs realizing there is an opportunity for them to start their company. Company. And there are lots of people in town that can tell them how to do some of the basics. You're one of them. And there are others that can really give them some insight of what it's going to be like to start a company before they quit their perfectly good paying day job at ViaSat. That's a tough sell these days to quit your day job. But I think it takes a combination of people in the community that can tell them it's okay, you can make it, it's hard. But here's the, here's the support you'll have from other people that have walked in your shoes. That's important talent, you know, talents, early stage. Early talent starts at the university. And I don't know what the metrics are right now, Neil, at ucsd, but over the years a lot of the top talent at UCSD left town once they got their degree. And that's in large part because they're not from San Diego, they're out of state students. Right. So they don't have anything that ties them to the community to get their degree and leave. So we need to do a better job of keeping the best talent here in San Diego. And I think the, you know, as I've told, I'm not afraid to tell the chancellors and the presidents this. They've got to do a better job of promoting entrepreneurs. And they say they are, they say they want to have companies innovation programs, but in reality they, they've got to put, they've got to put real entrepreneurs in charge of those programs on campus and not a professor or a bureaucrat. That's just the bottom line. Yeah, and, and, and, and to this day they still have their innovation program, many of them run by basically academics, professors, you know, admins, people. But you know, if you, if you want to motivate students to start thinking about starting a company, that's got to start with somebody there that's actually started a goddamn company.

Yep, I hear that.

And they aren't doing it. And I'm not afraid to tell Pradeep that to his face.

Good. I agree. Absolutely agree. Rory, you've been in town since you said now the 90s, maybe even longer with your boat. This is the Tacos and Tech podcast. We have to know what's your favorite spot for a taco?

Geez, you know, I Hate to say this, it's not the best taco in town. Probably it's not. I. I just like taco surf.

There's no wrong answers here. And taco surf is fantastic.

Yeah, they've been around a long time. There's the. You walk in and you see all these surfboards. I mean, it's just a cool place.

It is. For me, it's more of a California burrito after a surf session, but. Yes, I hear you.

Yeah, I like, I like that location. And they've been. I think they're still doing okay. I've been there in a while, but I think they're surviving this situation.

That's good. Good to hear it.

Yeah.

Rory, I appreciate not just your insight now, but obviously what you've been building in town for decades. A lot of us have you and the Admiral to thank for at least the spark and for keeping being wide eyed and saying we'll go where we need to go and try some new things.

Let me close with this. And this is kind of his weakness. The Admiral has never met a startup he didn't like.

What do you mean? We were his baby. He loved us.

He likes them all. He likes all the puppies in the pound and I. And that's his nature. That's. He's got a good heart. He's just, he's a unique guy. And I'm the other guy that, hey, Admiral, that, that deal's going to die. You know, he goes, no, we can save them.

That's a good pair then. Good cut, bad cut.

It's a good, it's a good match.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for what you guys are doing. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Yeah. You interview the Admiral and have the Admiral talk about. Not Evo, Nexus. Have the Admiral talk about his journey through the military into technology and really how some early stage technology changed the military.

Okay, that would be great. We will do that. We'll make that happen. Thanks, Rory. 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, you can find Neil Bloom on Twitter eelbloom as well as Fresh brewed tech and tacos and Tech Pod on Twitter too.

You know, we got it.