Inside the San Diego Angel Conference

Welcome to SDSU 2026 S-TAC.

I'm—

woo-hoo!

That's right. I'm Kathy Pucher. I'm the Executive Director of Entrepreneurship Initiatives here at SDSU. And my job is to welcome all of you. So first and foremost, I want to welcome all the SDAC 8 investors. Hands up.

All right.

Welcome. I want to welcome the top 6. Some of you might still be in the back, but the top 6 out of 135 applications, the top 6 startups, raise your hand proud. I'd like to welcome our sponsors for S-TAC 8. Raise your hands, please. We're really appreciative of your support. Keep your hand up if your name is Kevin. We have a lot of Kevins this year.

All right.

And many of the applicants are here, and we want to welcome you. We also want to welcome the founders, investors, community leaders, and members of our community that have come here to join us. Thank you so much. I want to see if Susan Hartman, Hartman of Recoup is here. Susan? She's not here yet. That is a bummer because I wanted to introduce you all to her.

She—

I'm going to give a big shout out. She's the founder of Recoup, a sparkling prebiotic beverage. Recoup received the largest check from Estac 7 last year. There were 3 investments. Recoup received the largest. And I wanted to give you a quick update. Recoup is now national in all Sprouts, just launched in 300 Target stores. And, and she said to come talk to her, all 400 of you, one-on-one about her good news with Whole Foods. So please, when she comes in, we'll make an announcement so that you could see her. So with that, I'd like to introduce the Dean of our Fowler College of Business, Dan Mashavi, to come up and share a few words with you.

Can I get a round of applause for Kathy and her team for making all this happen? How many Aztecs or Aztec-affiliated people here? All right. You can clap for that too. So if you're not familiar with San Diego Angel Conference— most of you are, but not everybody is— the mission is to activate and empower early-stage angel investors while connecting high-potential fundable startups with capital through education, professional development, and meaningful community networking. SDAC fosters regional innovation and entrepreneurial growth. And this really reflects the college's commitment to experiential learning, experiential education. We, uh, with our students, that's probably our top priority— learning by doing. A great example of this was we actually embedded 10 paid interns into the SDAC process this year that work with the investment team. Unbelievable learning for them. They also added value by building an AI agent to help the due diligence process. So that's one of many examples I could cite today that highlights the experiential learning that goes on here. But the experiential learning reflects our commitment to not only students but the broader community. And so we are delighted to host the SDSU SDAC. We're dedicated to annually bringing together a diverse group of both new and experienced investors that learn and work together for a number of months, culminating in today's finale. The finale that you are all a part of is a wonderful application of the community that our SDAC members experience. So the plan today, you will hear from the top 6 startups that resulted from the efforts of the investor group, and then later today you will hear how this group has decided to invest. So once again, thank you all for being here. Fabulous turnout. Kathy will share more about the full agenda for the day, and on behalf of the Fowler College of Business and San Diego State, welcome to SDAC 8. Thank you.

Wrong way. Oh, that button.

Dan?

I would love to officially appreciate all of the incredible sponsors that help make it possible for us to be able to not just put on this event, But SDAC is a series of events. You saw this from the pictures. We have Investor Knowledge and Network, which is programming that happens in the summer into the fall. And then in the spring, the investors get together and meet weekly until they come together today, make their final decisions, and announce it. So we wouldn't be able to do what we do if it wasn't for our sponsors. So I'm going to go ahead and do what you're not supposed to do, which is read the slides. So would like to thank Ron Fowler, Mintz, Snell Wilmer, Pillsbury, C3 Bank. Now for Mintz, Snell, Pillsbury, and C3 Bank, there are cookies in the back that have their names on it. What a treat. We have ATS coming back for another year. Procopio joining us. Thank you, Procopio. Alaska Hawaiian is brand new. Alaska will have a booth later and they'll be talking about their Atmos Rewards program for businesses. Excited to share. They're also contributing for the audience vote of the top 6, they're contributing, drum roll, 2 round-trip tickets in the United States domestic to the winning team. That wins the audience vote. I want to thank Ryman, Ross, Trinet, Cooley, The Brink, and Metis Partners for their support. Thank you very much. Okay, so we just nailed it on welcoming and open. So then what you're going to see are the top 6 presentations. We have the reception and the book signing. And while, um, before— when we do the fireside chat with Eric Ries, at that point the investors from SDAC 8 will leave the room to go do their final, final decisions. Then when we go off to do the book signing and the reception, we'll have the opportunity for them to come back and we'll do an official investment announcement. So that's what you have in store. We're super excited for Eric Ries. Anyone here read the book Lean Startup? Yeah, it's incredible. It is a great read on how to start a company. Well, the new book is all about how to start, not just start that company, but how to keep it great. So we're really excited for that. All right, so I have the pleasure of inviting up to talk Neal Bloom. So Neal, there's so much to say about Neal. So Neal Bloom is our SDAC Fund 8 fund manager. He's synonymous with the San Diego startup ecosystem. He's an exited founder, a prolific investor, a wonderful mentor and advisor and friend, a community builder. I got involved with him on a week-by-week basis at the SDSU Zip Launchpad incubator about 3 years ago. And not only did he help our student founders achieve their full potential, but he enriched their experience just by interacting with them. And he helped us build better programming. He helps make us better. So please join me in welcoming Neal Bloom to the stage.

Hello, SDAC 2026. Hello everyone.

Woo.

Well, good afternoon. I'm Neal Bloom. I am fortunate enough to be the fund manager in the 8th year of this running. Been a longtime entrepreneur building here in the community. Uh, started a few investment funds, most recently Rise and Tide Partners. I love spending my Fridays here at SDSU at the Zip Launchpad. And really the most important thing, I love empowering entrepreneurship and making sure founders can be as successful as possible. But the most actual active role I had in here today was one year ago. I was sitting right there in the audience, just like you. I was here as a guest to watch the final pitches. And I watched the, you know, all 6. I watched the investors leave and come back and deliberate. And I even saw, you know, a lot of the people who had never invested before learn how on the spot to show their conviction. Not just from their gut, but from the work that they'd put in over 2, 3 months. And before the end of that day, 1 year ago, I joined the fund on the spot. And so if you're wondering whether 1 afternoon like today can completely change how you think about startup investing, for me, it absolutely did. Now I wouldn't have been able to do this, this role of guiding us through to final investments today without a huge, amazing team here. And I have to thank the fund advisory board.

Oop, went one too far.

There we go. Fund advisory board, Brian Engelman, Chris Civetta, Hans Baumgartner, Mark Ross, Trace Stevens. Give them a huge hand for their help. These individuals volunteered an incredible amount of time helping guide the process that has been built over years, refined and tuned, support all of the investors, the members, and ultimately help us evaluate some really difficult decisions. Uh, and I really appreciate you guys. So thank you so much for everything you've given this year and in years past as well. I think we have a lot to be proud of., for your guidance there. Um, and because of the institutional knowledge that remains within San Diego Angel Conference, uh, it rightly so has become an institution in the greater ecosystem here in town. And that's what this event really is about, celebrating the larger San Diego innovation ecosystem. And sometimes we take that for granted, to be honest, that we're a part of something bigger, enabling founders to be as successful as possible. But to do that, that takes world-class research institutes, obviously exceptional founders who continue to operate every day, the capital providers, corporate partners, universities, mentors, and the whole community that genuinely wants everyone to help— everyone helps everyone succeed. And that's why you're here, right? You're not here to just hear some pitches. You're here to connect and help the next person because we know that's going to help everyone. And so SDAC plays an amazing role in that. Specifically in— because so many institutions in town, rightly so, put the founders at the center of the universe. With F-Stack, we put the investors at the center and we make sure that yes, we need great founders, but we also need great funders. And with F-Stack, the way that we are focused on is making sure that investors have a great base of knowledge of what it is to invest, but also the responsibility that comes with that as well too, in helping our founders be successful. And that's an incredible opportunity for SDSU to step up over the years and enable this to become an institution the way it has, close to a decade now. Okay, so where did we start just a few months ago? We started in early March with 135 applications. These applications came from around the country, actually around the continent, uh, to be honest. And over time, through a very specific weekly process, we brought together over 40 investors, some who are highly experienced angel investors and venture capitalists, and some who had never touched investing at all. And that's intentional. The goal isn't to just simply find great companies, it's to learn together from our shared knowledge, our shared biases, and our shared differentiated backgrounds, all to come together and over several months review applications, interview founders, conduct deep due diligence, debate opportunities, build conviction, and ultimately narrow the field down from 135 to the top 6 that you're about to see today. And so behind each company that you see, there's dozens of volunteers, investors who spent evenings, weekends, countless Zoom hours digging into these businesses. And I thank you all for putting in the time and energy into that. One thing I'm especially proud of this year, and Dan highlighted this too, is the way that we included the SDSU student interns. Uh, it was great to not just have them along, along by the side, but really be outside the classroom and learning alongside our investors. They just as much participated in the diligence, asking questions, as well as getting a front row seat there to see how the investment part works. And that's really the magic of SDAC is learning together. Okay, so enough about the process. Let's talk about the founders, the ones we're about to hear from today. So today you'll hear from 6 companies representing very different industries, technologies, and visions for the future. They all— but they all have one thing in common. They survived one of the most competitive SDAC selection process we've ever had. So let's dive into it and let's meet the top 6. Our first company is CytoDigm, and presenting the due diligence for CytoDigm is Rick Moy of the CytoDigm diligence team. Please welcome Rick to the stage.

Hello everybody, thank you. I'm Rick Moy, local San Diegan for a long time. Grew up here and built a couple companies, and happy to be investing with this fine team. And I wanna thank Chris Giavetta, Guillaume Léger, Rob Mauri, sitting over at our table, Alan Pahn, and Swati Tahar for being part of this diligence team. I love paperwork, especially the kind that the government requires. Said nobody ever. But that is how Cytodyne was born. Not by somebody reading a market report and saying, "I can make some money there," but someone who lived the problem, hated it, and decided to do something about it. And that's how Cytodyne was born. They're the only SaaS company in our top 6 this year. And with that, I'd like to welcome DJ.

All right.

Hello everyone. Oh, my voice is nice. First pitch of the night. Uh, Neal Bloom, team, thank you again for this entire process, filling this room. It's incredible. Um, as the privileged, uh, first gets to do, we're gonna do some audience participation. So show of hands, how many of you have of you have known someone affected by cancer at all in your life? All right, well, we might not have to do more shows of hands, but we'll do one more, or actually two more. How many of you have had a headache and had to take aspirin, Tylenol? The Cytodyne Diligence team, you guys have to put your hands down, sorry. Okay, we'll do an easier one. How many of you have had to apply a Band-Aid to yourself or a loved one at any point in time? Everyone's hands, please. Yeah, okay, cool. Participation is good. So everything from a cell and gene therapy treating cancer patients all the way to a Band-Aid helping your kid with a boo-boo, uh, is required, um, to have extensive documentation and product safety monitoring. The problem is today all of this is exceptionally manual. There's months that are being wasted. Teams are being overloaded with the amount of extra work that's required. And the thing is, is that they have their own timelines that they need to adhere to. If they miss a deadline, their product can be delayed, or even worse, it can be kept from patients. This happens more times, uh, than I believe the industry is actually willing to admit. So what is the cost of getting it wrong? Well, Primarily speaking, it's patients' lives. It could also be that they just get hurt by a product or something like that, but just to give you an, an example of one of these particular cases, Philips had a CPAP machine. They ended up having to recall 5.5 million devices because they were exposing those patients to a cancer-causing substance. That resulted in them losing about 60% of their market share in the CPAP space. All of the future products that they were working towards that could have helped patients were also just cut dead in its tracks. So not only are patients at risk, but businesses are at risk when these things go wrong, and that leads to litigation that comes in. An example of that litigation would be, actually quite literally, a year from now, May 2027, biotech companies who are selling products in Europe They're going to have to adhere to a new regulation where one of the teams that we're talking to is going from 500 reports to 80,000. There's not enough professionals in the industry to make those 80,000 reports. That's a massive problem for the industry. That's where Cytodyne comes in. What do we do? We automate things like complaints, surveillance, and document control so that the experts that are working on these life-saving therapies of tomorrow can get there today. One of those examples, for many of you, uh, going through our diligence process, you remember, uh, we closed a contract, Pierre Fabre, second largest biotech company in France. Um, the case study that convinced them, um, of our platform, we were saving them 850 hours of work a year. One workflow of that 850 was 5 hours. We're reducing it to 2. Their CFO was so happy about that. Um, it was very, very happy, uh, time when they saw those numbers. But that's not actually what convinced them of buying the platform. What they ended up doing is they took 50 of their documents, they threw it onto the platform for this workflow, they got the outputs, and guess what? The system identified 2 errors that they made when they did it manually. That's potentially a patient's life that was saved by this documentation. They went back, corrected it immediately, called me up on the phone, signed the contract. So, why does Pierre Fobb and other companies treat CytoDigm, uh, and trust us with our, our platform and their critical workflows? Well, it's because we've been there. As Rick mentioned, I, this is something that I've lived for the last decade, and we know that a solution in this space is one that has to be both end-to-end automation, and it also has to be a, uh, system of record for these organizations. It has to have audit trails, it has to be trustworthy, and it has to stay up to date with all things regulatory, which is proving to be consistently more difficult as we continue. But with that being said, they're not looking for an AI chatbot that they can just sit there and prompt and get something maybe back. And the legacy vendors are slow at implementing, implementing any of these changes with regulations. And honestly, they're just absolutely horrible to use. So if you were to look at the market like our competitors do, you would see an $11 billion, uh, compliance tool space. But what they're not seeing is the $50 billion of work that they are creating for all of the people in the industry. These are manual reportings, data reentry, and literally hiring teams of people just to manage their software. It's asinine. I don't know how else to describe it. So how do we make money? It's very simple. Tiered annual subscription for the always-on workflows, and then a success-based usage model for things like regulatory reports or submissions. Our product roadmap, we started with complaint management and postmarket surveillance. With the second quarter, we moved into quality management systems, as well as electronic batch records, but the important thing is that these aren't things that we're developing and saying, oh, I wish someone would buy this. These are things that our already paying customers are begging us to make, and that's what's dictating our product roadmap. The team that's building it is a San Diego local. We're based and born out of San Diego. Myself, uh, I have 10 years of— over 10 years of experience in the biotech space, multiple market approvals, 5 FDA-approved manufacturing sites, as well as, multiple INDs too. Tammy, my COO, uh, she was responsible for over half a million of contracts that she managed as a founding employee of her last startup. And Steven, our CTO, is a two-time venture-backed founding engineer in regulated industries. With our team, we've gotten a lot of traction. Um, we have two design partnerships, one with Bio-Rad that actually, uh, just extended their design, design partnership with us. As I mentioned, Pierre Fobb, is one of our enterprise subscribers, and we have 3 contracts currently pending. And I'm actually pleased to announce today that we got verbal commitment from one of them, which we will be launching August 1st with them for both of our quality management system as well as our electronic batch recording. So this is incredible news for us. We also received some Techstars funding to help get our team started. Now, our 2026 pipeline includes a lot of logos. If you're not familiar in the space, these are big logos. These are logo acquisitions, really important, especially for companies at this stage. And the contracts that we have already in route with them, um, or pending, we're in discussions with them, I guess is the better way to put it, are totaling up to $600,000. But the more important number here is just the actual logo that we're acquiring that builds trust in us in the industry that any other thing couldn't really do. So we're raising $850,000 for our round. This is actually a different number than what we started. Part of that was due to the extensive diligence team and some coaching and advice that we got. But mostly this is generated by the contracts that we're closing are just honestly larger than we were expecting, so we need less money. We also decreased our valuation from $15 million cap to $7.5. But other than that, our goal is still the same, to get 20 customers on our platform, 2 enterprise contracts, and $1 million ARR by 2027. That's all I've got, but we're CytoDime, and what we're doing is we're building a future where the software that's supporting life-saving therapies isn't holding companies back.

Thank you.

Alright, alright, first company down. Let's keep it going. Our second company is Viam, and presenting the due diligence findings is Randall Liu of the Viam due diligence team. Please welcome Randall to the stage.

Is it working?

All right.

I'm here—

oh, thank you.

I'm here to introduce Vine. But before I do, I want to thank— could you go back a page? I want to thank our team. Back one page. I got you. You're good. OK. I just want to thank my team. First of all, where's Tracy? Stand up. She's our lead and our fab person. So thank you so much. Andrew Monarch, Peter Vandever. And who's not actually on here, what I really want to call out is our fabulous intern, Ava. So I don't know if she's in the audience, but big hands for the, uh, for the audience. And by the way, for all of you out there that have not looked in, uh, into angel investing, really encourage you to check it out. Come to our meetings. You can meet some really fantastic founders. They'll infect you with their passion and their desire to change the world. Now, Vayum is one of those companies. So what really intrigued me about Viom was really actually a story about the founders, how they met. So on one side of the country you had Devin, surgeon, inventor. He had big dreams, really, really big dreams, but he needed somebody to share those dreams with him. So one day he was looking at his device, he was getting out of surgery and said, you know, could the person that invented this device actually help me and complete that? So as all new relationships start in the modern era, he goes online. He started hitting up the, um, what, Tinder of entrepreneurs, or also known as LinkedIn. So at that point, he finds Phil, and they have a talk, they chat, one thing leads to another, then a partnership is born. So you've got Phil, the engineer, entrepreneur, he's developed multiple med devices, patents to his name. You've got Devin, surgeon, guy that uses this in clinical, uh, works on it day in and day out, uh, biostatistician, whatever the heck that is. So, right, those items. And then it's really the combination of these, of these team members and their capabilities. They've done that, done it before. That really intrigued me about their proposition. So I hope you guys check out the Angel Academy, you know, next year. But also, I hope you enjoy their talk. So, uh, Devin and Phil.

Well, thanks a lot, Randall. You've got it right. The order of the day is to talk about infection in the sinuses. 30 million people. And do I have a clicker? Is there a clicker to pass off?

Great.

30 million people in the United States, they, uh, have to deal with chronic rhinosinusitis. It's a big problem that Viome is here to solve. Uh, this is a huge market, uh, healthcare spend that affects businesses that pay for the healthcare, that affects patients that need to acquire the healthcare. And the unfortunate part about the sinusitis story is that 40% of the people that are treated recur. And we're here to stop that. I have a friend who was the chair of a major West Coast surgery department, and she spent the last 17 years of her career operating with a face mask full of snot because she had tried antibiotics, she had tried steroids, she had tried lavage. But when it got time for any sort of invasive treatment, even a surgeon was not interested in sinuplasty or functional endoscopic sinus surgery, FESS, which are the gold standards for solving this problem, because they hurt. The Viam procedure mirrors the existing workflow that ENTs know. This is sinuplasty. You cannulate the sinus, you find your way into the cavity where the green mucus exists, you put saline into it, and then our twist is a pulse that generates pressure waves. These pressure waves shake loose the biofilm, allowing that —mucus to be suctioned out, in addition to the bacteria and any other material that might be colonizing. Our procedure we've tested on the bench. As you look at this slide from left to right, you'll notice this sea of green bacteria, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the main causative agent for sinusitis, growing unhindered. As you progress to the right, there's our device alone. Followed by antibiotics. But the thing to note about this slide is the rightmost panel, a sea of red, dead bacteria. Our device helps antibiotics work 36 times better than antibiotics alone, and that is the key feature that we hope that you take away from this opportunity today. We've developed a system. You see our brand new generator from Bulgaria, uh, sitting behind the, uh, probe. And the balloon sheath. That's the Viom system. We filed the utility patent in Q3 2025 with several others coming, and we've protected the core elements of this idea. We've already begun our interaction with the FDA. We spoke to them in January. They outlined a pathway forward for us, which is de novo. They said no human tests are required, that benchtop and animal will be enough. And then we hope by Q3 2027, we're going back to them with our official submission. And following approval, we will look toward a post-market trial to really prove this in the world. ENTs already are asking us for this device. Our two KOLs, they are busy surgeons at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Alabama. Each one of them said to us, I've got 10 patients that need this. I've tried everything else in this pathway. Nothing has worked. They say that this could be the first line of treatment for a lot of folks with chronic sinusitis. An important concept because when this becomes first line, then the ENTs will also benefit financially. There's an opportunity to increase reimbursement based on existing CPT codes due to the extent of the procedure that's associated with Viam without increasing the time spent. Viam provides the only therapy that resolves the underlying cause of chronic rhinosinusitis, which is biofilm. This is a low-pain outpatient procedure that has got minimal side effects and is currently reimbursed by existing FDA codes. This is an opportunity that I don't believe anyone should pass up. We have the opportunity to progress from company in seed stage to $41 million in revenue based on our projections in about 5 years. This is a large market, and more importantly, we only really need 1.2% of it to hit this number. That equates to about 257 ENTs. Here's our plan moving forward from a revenue standpoint. I want you to note that in year 2, we will be making about $1 million a year with 2 ENTs doing 100 cases per year. Which is a low to middle range number of cases. And we already have 3 ENTs that want this device that do that number of cases and more. Viam is on par with recent medtech winners. Folks in the community know about these stories—Shockwave from up north, Intersect ENT also from the Bay Area. These companies progressed from FDA approval to multi-million dollars in revenue over the course of 2 years following that approval. We have the opportunity to mirror that pathway, starting with FDA approval. That is our first opportunity to exit, followed by several million dollars in revenue, all the way up to the moment where we are actually a viable company doing it for real, about 4 years out from FDA approval. There are several strategic partners that we have approached We have the list on that right-hand column. First and foremost, Smith Nephew, where Mr. Tetzlaff, our CEO, has experience in the ENT group running that division. This is a team with broad and deep expertise in both medicine and technology. You know, I want to mention my co-founder, Phil Tetzlaff. He's sitting right there. His hand is raised. His 25 years of experience with this type of device has brought us to this point. You know, I'd like to say that I have much to contribute, but, you know, quite honestly, I'm being dragged along. I'm a clinician, and I don't know these elements, and really I'm leaning on Mr. Tetzlaff's experience with two exits to help move us forward, as we are leaning on Dr. Cho and Dr. Snyderman to provide the clinical expertise in an academic setting. Among other advisors that we have. So this is an important piece of the puzzle for us. $1 million in seed gets Viome to Series A. $3.6 million gets us to commercial. And here's the breakdown of how we would use this money. We have some system development and some design phase tasks to complete. We have that risk analysis that the FDA wants this summer. And that's all going to lead to clearance. That's our pre-FDA plan. And as you can see from the right-hand panels, those are the commercial elements that really require a little bit more money to get to. We're not asking for an open checkbook. We are asking for a discrete amount of money to accomplish well-outlined tasks, not an open-ended research program. We'd ask that you join us. We plan to end chronic rhinosinusitis as it is today. This is a $1 million raise on a SAFE, $5 million post-money, 20% discount. This buys system development, a rabbit study, which we're going to perform next month with Dr. Cho, and then we will also approach FDA clearance and limited launch as we complete the round. So I'm Devin Zarkowski. I'm a co-founder and CMO. Ketzlaff there in the audience. Um, and we thank you for your time listening to us, uh, tell you about this project. We hope for your support.

All right.

Well done. Two companies doing great so far. How's everyone feeling? All right, let's keep it going then. Our third company is Polyvascular, and presenting the due diligence here is Mo Feldenheimer of the Polyvascular diligence team. Mo, come on up.

Hi everyone, first I'd like to thank our due diligence team, the interns Dalia, May, Isabella, for all the help that you gave us. Was like a really thoughtful process that we discuss and learn more about the company and find more and more about them. So it takes a special kind of person to tackle problems that can change and reduce the burden of congenital heart disease in children, and Dr. Henry Justino is one of those people. Polyvascular is developing a minimally invasive pulmonary multiple valve designs specifically for pediatric patients with congenital heart defects who often face multiple 3 to 5 open heart surgeries before they are 18 years old. What stood out to our team was the combination of a large unmet clinical need, compelling animal studies, a capital efficient strategy,, and a founder who brings decades— he's not that old— but decades of interventional pediatric cardiologist experience, that he's on the field working with these patients every day. So it has been a privilege to work alongside such a talented group of investors, all the SDAC team. Thank you to share all the experience that you have, investors and founders, throughout this year's program. So, uh, Henry, uh, the floor is yours.

I promise I'm not Henry. Uh, my name's Katie Bales. Uh, we had a, a last-minute switch, um, today. I work with the team on kind of operations, our investor relations and fundraising. Unfortunately, Henry last minute couldn't be here today for some personal reasons, but I think that, um, I share his passion in getting this product to market. My son was born 9 years ago with a complex congenital heart defect. Uh, half of his heart didn't grow because 2 of the valves in his heart weren't formed properly. So we have spent the last 9 years talking about valve replacements and wishing that we had better technology in this space. So when Henry and his team were telling me about what they were doing, I was really excited to, to join their efforts because my son will need and has needed valve replacements. So I will tell you a bit about our valve and hopefully can do some justice to Henry's presentation here. So to give you a little bit of context, congenital heart defects are the number one birth defect in the U.S. They affect 1 in every 110 babies born. Born. This— we don't like to sit and compare diseases, right? But just to, to set the landscape of the amount of children this impacts, we lose 2 times more kids to CHDs than all childhood cancers combined. So this is a big number of children affected and dying still from this disease. Of those kids born with congenital heart defects, about 25% of them are considered complex. Meaning they need some sort of surgery in the first few months of their life in order to survive. A lot of those surgeries include a valve replacement, with the pulmonary valve being the most prevalent in the pediatric space. The problem is these valves that are surgically placed when these babies are born, they don't last long. They can't grow with the child, and they often degrade very quickly. Quickly. This means that a clinician can see a patient who is 13, 15, 17 years old, and they've already undergone 3 to 5 multiple open-heart surgeries to have that valve replaced as they continue to grow and as the valve can't keep up with them. Right now, there are no minimally invasive options for these kids. So you're seeing here the, the two different options— the surgical one that I just mentioned, These are donor valves. They require a child's chest to be cracked, opened up, and the valve is coming from a human cadaveric valve, much like a heart transplant. But instead of an entire transplant, we can take just the valve and transplant it into these patients. The problem with that— requires that open heart surgery, but it sensitizes their immune system. There's a really high risk of complications when you're in the OR during those surgeries. And on top of that, for these patients and their families, it requires really long hospital stays, really long recoveries, and it is a big burden on them both physically and psychologically. There are transcatheter valve options available. However, these only exist for our large teenagers and our adult populations. Those are animal-sourced, and they come with a high risk of infection, of endocarditis. The ones that are on the market for this older and larger population have a high indication of stent fractures. The valves degrade very quickly, and they're also really expensive and difficult to manufacture. So Henry and the other co-founders of Polyvascular saw this clinical need day after day with their patients, that they continued to have to crack open their chest and put these patients and families through these extensive open-heart surgeries and said, we have to do something about this. If we can do it for adults, we should be able to do it for kids. So they came up with the first transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement for kids as young as 2 years old. So the valve can expand as the child grows, so that eliminates that need for the repeat open-heart surgeries, which greatly improves the quality of life for these kids. It's made out of a medical-grade polymer, so you don't have any of that biologic tissues that we talked about with the animal valves and the human valves. So no risk of, or low risk of infection. And then because of the stent and the materials that we're using, our valve is very easy to manufacture compared to the other competitors on the market. So I'll take you through, the next few slides are some of our progress to date. As Mo mentioned, we have really good chronic animal results. We have 4— a 90-day trial with 4 different juvenile sheep. The explants of those valves looked fantastic. We've met with the FDA several times, had our QSUB meetings. They've approved our preclinical and study plan for our first-in-human trial. We're working with a low-cost CRO is a pediatric-focused CRO. So they've really helped us remain capital efficient because they're bringing down that cost of our trial. And then we've reached design freeze on our valve, so we're ready to move into our first-in-human. We have our own in-house ISO Class 7 cleanroom, which I think— yep, I have a picture of there in the slide. We're doing all of our manufacturing, valve testing, manufacturing, all in-house. So we're controlling every step of that process. We've gotten to this point in a very capital-efficient way. We've have over $5 million in non-dilutive grants and philanthropic funds. We raised a small $750,000 seed round 2 years ago and currently are working with an additional $3 million NIH SBIR Phase II grant. We have 4 patents issued on our design and manufacturing of the valve and a few pending. So I won't go through all the slides for the sake of time, but you'll see here at the beginning of 2027, we're hoping to initiate that first-in-human and enroll our first 15 patients. And then after the first 15, move through with the FDA into our pivotal study, which will be an additional 45 patients, which will help us reach a 60-patient PMA by the end of 2031. So we are raising right now a $6 million Series A-1. This will help us complete the rest of our verification and validation studies, set up those clinical sites with that CRO that I mentioned before, and initiate the first and implant those first 15 patients for our early feasibility study. Here's a quick snapshot of our team. So Dr. Henry Justino there on the top left that you're seeing is one of our co-founders. He's an interventional cardiologist at Rady Children's Hospital here in San Diego. We actually fly every 6 months with my son to come see him because he is one of the best interventional cardiologists in the pediatric space. So he is leading this great team along with his co-founder, Dr. Dan Harrington, who is a tissue engineer, and then several other biomedical engineers and medtech entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs. So thank you for letting us be here. I'm very excited for the opportunity for potential investments and for one day this valve to be on the market so kids like my son and the thousands of other kids that need valve replacements have access to more innovative devices. Thank you. Thank you.

To our fourth company is Shezza. Presenting the due diligence findings for Shezza is Nathaniel Hosmer of the Shezza diligence team. Come on up.

So first of all, I'd like to thank the diligence team team that spent a ton of time on Zoom calls. Names are up here. You may notice a similar last name. It was actually really fun to get to do due diligence with my father, who I brought, uh, brought in last year at this event. So if you're thinking about becoming an investor, certainly talk to the appropriate people. So, um, Shezza is a company that started from a problem that was identified. Tiffany found that Doc Martin boots caused chafing and then decided to do something about it. She started out by sewing the pads on socks herself and from there launched this company. One of the reasons why she is standing on this stage out of 135 companies is because she's largely been able to bootstrap the company to the place that it is today from sewing the socks herself. We love that she is a very coachable founder and we liked the, the IP that she was able to generate and the global trademarks that she had. So It was a pleasure going through this due diligence process with someone who is as responsive as Tiffany, and with that, I'd like to invite her to stage.

Hello everyone, I'm Tiffany, founder of Shazza Socks, the most viral sock on the internet. Sorry, one second. From a young age, I always knew entrepreneurship was for me. Both of my parents owned small businesses, and growing up, by the time I was 8, I was answering phones at my dad's auto body shop, and I had a notebook full of inventions. I always knew I wanted to build something. I just wasn't sure what that would be. When I got my first pair of leather Dr. Martens boots, I was so excited to wear them, but I got the most painful, terrible, bloody blisters, and there were no good solutions. I wasn't alone in this. Over 70% of Americans suffer from these painful foot blisters. So determined to wear my shoes, I took a sewing class and made my own solution, which is now the Shezza Sock Shazza is the world's first foam-padded sock with a small foam cushion sewn on the inside of every sock that stops blisters from even happening in the first place. It's like having a soft protective cloud on your foot at all times. We're patent pending and trademarked all over the world. Here's a video on our Instagram that has 10 million views, and people can't get enough of us online. We have 157 organic views across Instagram and TikTok, over 112,000 followers, and over 2 million likes. We're viral for a reason, and people say our product is life-changing because they can actually wear their shoes again. We've hit $1.9 million in revenue, and we have 52,000 customers worldwide in over 100 different countries. We are bootstrapped and we're profitable. Now, a very interesting part of how I started my— I initially funded the early days. I rode a lawnmower across America for a race to win money, and it took 2 and a half months on a 5-mile-per-hour lawnmower, but I was the winner and I won. Thank you. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life, so if I could do this Running a company is the easy part. But I won $30,000, and that's how I initially funded Shazza. The whole time, the craziest part is that we weren't allowed to use our own money, and we had to basically pitch ourselves constantly for food, a place to sleep, and I was basically homeless for 2 and a half months. But I learned how to hustle. I also won $20 grand on Amazon Prime's new version of Shark Tank called Buy It Now. And I pitched in front of celebrity judges like Gwyneth Paltrow, the founder of Ring Doorbell, and Tony Hawk. Guys, if I'm able to reach $1.9 million in revenue with lawnmower money and some TV show prize, imagine what I can do with a substantial investment. For our business model, we are completely D2C, and we have a very healthy gross margin of 84%. Our CAC is about $15, and our lifetime value is $86. That's a 5.73x LTV to CAC ratio. People keep coming back for more socks, and our, as our returning customer rate is 21%. The best part about our business is that nobody is doing this. ArmaSkin is a gel sock that you have to hand wash, and they're $36. Zen Toes, they create foot care accessories. That can get sweaty and slip around on the inside of your shoe. Bombas, they create thick socks and you still might get a blister. And then Band-Aids, you have to stick 'em on every time and they just fall off. Saving the best for last, Shezza Socks, you just put a sock on and you're blister-free for life. The global sock market is $49 billion and growing at 6.9% per year. The US stock market is $10 billion, and our target market of style-conscious adults in the US metro areas is 399 million. Within the next 2 years, we plan to expand into athletes and outdoor markets. Sheza isn't just going viral, we're making headlines and have been featured in BuzzFeed, CBS, Fox News, and Amazon, and the momentum just keeps on building. Our growth engine already works. We're gonna keep going viral on social media and gain millions more views and followers. We're going to invest more into our ads that give us approximately $4.80 per $1 we spend. We're gonna continue working with influencers who've given us millions and millions of views and continue with PR to keep the buzz building. From there, we'll move into retail. And once our patent grants, we can go to Doc Martens so that we can be in every single one of their stores, or they can just buy us. We did $968,000 last year, and we are on track to hit $1.4 million this year. In 2026, we're already expanding the product line. We're already in talks with a second manufacturer and working on transitioning to a third-party logistics to do all the packing and shipping for us. And raising capital. In 2027, we'll hit $2.9 million and we'll test retail pilots and partner with 10 major music festivals and athletic teams. And we actually already did a couple events at Coachella, which were very ROI positive, and we met a lot of really great influencers that are working with us now. 2028, we'll hit $5.7 million and enter into national retail like Dick's Sporting Goods, REIs, Journeys, and Doc Martens, where we already have some connections. In 2029, 11 million, we'll land a big B2B contract such as working with the military or sports teams, and we'll expand into Canada and the UK. By 2030, we'll hit 19 million and go global. I have a strong team with experience in operations, e-commerce, and we have all been backed by the following programs sponsored by large companies like Capital One, Goldman Sachs, and Tory Burch. And we have advisors with deep expertise and experience with multimillion-dollar exits. So let's talk about our exit. I want to get acquired by a Nike, Adidas, Dr. Scholl's. And here's some category comps. Stance, local company, just got acquired last year for a private sale, and their lifetime sales were $1.7 billion. Bomba Socks, The popular sock brand that came out of Shark Tank, they're valued at $3.4 billion and produced $1.3 billion in overall sales. Fun fact, Daymond John from Shark Tank, he put in $200,000 and made 3,000 times his return. It's also the most successful company to come out of Shark Tank. Same playbook, same category, and we're on the path to follow in their footsteps. I'm raising $250K on a post-money SAFE at a $3 million cap. 40% goes to marketing, 30% to product development, manufacturing, 25% to operations, AI automation, and then 5% to IP. With this, we'll be able to hit the following milestones. We'll be able to get 10 new SKUs, which we're already working on, get our big retail first retail launch like REI, Dick's Sporting Goods, which we already have connections with. We'll get a big B2B contract with the military or sports teams, license out our socks to Doc Martens, and hit $5 million in lifetime revenue and 100,000 followers— or 100,000 customers. We've already hit $1.9 million in revenue. We're profitable, bootstrapped, patent pending, and we're very viral. But we're just getting started. Let's turn Sheza into the next Bombas. Join the comfort revolution and let's help the world walk easier while building the next billion-dollar sock brand. I encourage you to check out our booth in the very back. Thank you for your time.

All right, down to our last two here. Well done so far. Our fifth company is Sesh, and presenting the due diligence for Sesh will be Martha Weckel of the Sesh team. Come on up, please.

Hello everyone, uh, my name is Martha Weckel, and I want to really honor my team that spent a lot of weeks and a lot of Zoom calls on diligence on Sesh. We're really excited about what Sesh has to offer. Sesh is a cancer diagnostic company that is developing a blood-based test to detect a biomarker that's called HLA-LOH. And this biomarker is going to be able to potentially guide some immunotherapy treatment options for patients with non-small cell lung cancer. And this can be used instead potentially of a tumor biopsy, which is very invasive. So we are really excited about this in the cancer field in general. What we really liked about Sesh is the founder's tenacity and determination. He discovered this technology while working as a postdoc at the NCI. And when working with his colleagues who are oncologists treating patients with non-small cell lung cancer and other solid tumor cancers, They frequently were very frustrated that they could not get a blood sample to be able to help guide another therapy option for a patient that didn't have any other options. Excuse me. And so Sesh was developed and basically decided that we're going to try and solve this problem. Everyone around Andrew said, you can't do a liquid biopsy with this biomarker. But he decided to look for a solution, and he did. So I'd like to introduce Andrew and Sesh.

Two Fridays ago, I went to a concert at the Padres Stadium sponsored by CureBound, an organization that funds cancer research in San Diego. The CEO of CuraBound got on stage and asked the audience to put their phone light in the air if they know someone affected by cancer. That entire stadium lit up, and it was just so striking to me to see how many people are really impacted by cancer. My company, Sesh, is here to improve the way cancer is treated using precision oncology. Our simple blood test is going to facilitate a new era of medicine where we get each cancer patient the right treatment to eradicate their cancer. My name is Dr. Andrew Sinco, and when I was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute, I had a big goal: to invent something that would fill a gap in oncology and save many lives. I was lucky because I had a lot of support to help me accomplish that goal. Dr. James Gulley is the clinical director of the National Cancer Institute, and he's a co-inventor of the blood test I invented. Dr. Steven Rosenberg is likely to win the Nobel Prize, and he collaborates with our company on our blood test. In addition to the best cancer researchers in the world, believing in our company. The National Cancer Institute as an agency also believes in us, and they awarded us a grant worth over $400,000, even during a time when the government was cutting a lot of grant funding. So why is our blood test so powerful and backed by the world's top oncology minds? It's because, like Martha said, it detects a biomarker that some scientists thought was impossible to detect in blood and because that biomarker is extremely important for improving treatment outcomes in cancer patients. Our blood test can be used in many cancer types, and lung cancer is our beachhead. Lung cancer is common. It often spreads quickly before it's noticed. And 50% of lung cancer patients currently have no good treatment options. So how can we fix that? Our patent-pending blood test detects that impossible biomarker called HLA-LOH, and we're going to use it to determine the right treatment for each patient to get rid of their cancer. If our blood test is not used, the wrong treatment could be used, and it could act like a placebo and not do anything, and then the cancer can just spread. Since our blood test is not yet on the market, this is actually, unfortunately, how cancer is currently treated. There's a lot of trial and error, and unfortunately, it's often just a matter of time before the patient passes away. So we're going to fix that, and our blood test is going to help determine the right treatment for each patient in an individualized fashion to get rid of their cancer. Since we're going to help many patients, our market is pretty big. In lung cancer alone, each year, the TAM is $1.6 billion. The SAM is $916 million, and the SOM is $108 million. To run our blood test, the medical staff collects the patient's blood in a tube just like this. And I can show you this.

At the booth.

The test is run in labs that use our proprietary software. We use lean startup principles like Eric Ries talks about, and so instead of spending millions of dollars to establish our own lab, we leverage existing lab infrastructure. We're going to deploy our software to many labs, and we've already deployed it to the National Cancer Institute, which has already used it to help a cancer patient, and they plan to use it to help more patients. That's our first customer. We've also gotten two LOIs from two pharma companies that also want to use our blood test. So why blood over tumor? Well, there are many reasons. It mostly comes down to the fact that tumor biopsies can rarely be collected when they're needed most. Whereas blood tests can be collected at virtually any time. We conducted customer interviews like Eric recommends, and one of our prospective customers said, tissue is the issue. We've learned that in order to make precision oncology truly a reality, we need blood tests. Sesh is the only company making serious progress on a blood test for HLA-LOH. For patients with solid cancer, meaning cancers pretty much other than leukemia. These are most of the relevant companies in our market, most of which are worth billions of dollars, and none of them can do what Sesh can do. Even Tempus, the current market leader for HLA-LOH testing, can't do it in blood. They can only do it in tumor. And so just like I talked to some scientists who thought it was impossible, I also talked to some of these companies and they too thought it was impossible. So we've got a moat because we've got this impossible biomarker that we can detect in blood and we've got a high-quality automated workflow wrapped around it and we've got great patent protection. In fact, the National Cancer Institute filed our patents and so if a competitor were to infringe, they risk getting sued by the National Cancer Institute. Our ultimate goal is to get our test FDA approved and be used as a go-to in standard oncology practice. We've already spoken with the FDA and gotten some feedback from them and learned about our path to market and our capital needs. Speaking of capital, in addition to our grant, Sesh has raised over a quarter million dollars on a SAFE. So what's next? We're going to complete our pre-seed round with an additional $750K, which will help us get an exclusive license and publish a groundbreaking scientific paper that will bring in more customers that want to use our blood test in the research setting. Then we'll raise a $3 million seed and we'll get our second SBIR grant of over $2 million and we'll also get a CureBound grant of $500K. That will help us validate the clinical use version of our blood test, and we'll use that in pharma clinical trials and generate revenue. Then we'll raise a $20 million Series A, and that will help us get FDA approval, leading to a $1 billion exit. All of that will only require $24 million in capital, meaning those who invest now won't be overly diluted. If we don't exit at that time, we'll raise a Series B and keep marching toward commercialization on our own. However, we do expect to be acquired for about $1 billion by a competitor who would rather buy than build. This will help Sesh get our technology out to cancer patients and save many lives. And for investors, it'll be a great return on investment. What I saw from the CureBound concert really stuck with me. All those people who can benefit from our technology. I'm asking you to invest in Sesh and join our mission to help all those people. Oops, back. I'll leave you with one more thought. How amazing would it be if this San Diego Angel Conference led to saving the lives of countless cancer patients.

Thanks, Neal Bloom.

Thanks a lot, Hans. And our mic guy is not here. There we go. All right. Our last company, Sixth one here, My Village Innovations. Presenting the due diligence will be Randi Sudama from the team. Come on up.

Thanks, Neal Bloom. Hi everyone, I'm Randi Sudama and I'm part of the diligence team for My Village Innovation, or MVI for short, because we all love our acronyms, right? I want to acknowledge the great team that we have, and could you please stand up? Alina, Marley, Brian, and Mark, and our incredible intern Isabella, who's an MBA student here at SDSU. Now, all the women in this room understand the problem that MVI is trying to solve. Every time you go in for your exam to your private parts, you— this happens to you. What do they do? They use that cold metal speculum. And guess what? That tool's been used for over a century. That's more than 100 years. And the problem? The patients don't like it, the doctors don't like it. It kind of does the job, but not as good as it could. And that's why MVI has designed and created the The Rose of Spec. And the reason they're here as a top 6 company out of the 135 that we went through is because not only is it an innovative femtech device that's really going to be a game changer for female health, it also has a huge global market of opportunity. Again, half the population on this planet are women, right? And they all need those exams. They have— once, once they launch the product and people know about it, it's going to easily get viral type social media growth. And the other thing we like is it has huge profit margins. And also, they're already FDA registered, and they're launching their pilot program this summer that will also start to begin generating revenue. So really an angel investor's dream. But before I bring up Annie, I do want to thank SDSU for running this amazing SDAC program. I also want to thank Misty Rusk. I think she might be here in the room somewhere, who helped create— yes, big applause. Misty, are you here? Who was one of the original creators of San Diego Angel Conference. About 8 years ago, back when she was at USD, and I've learned so much from her in the short time that I've known her, as well as met so many inspiring founders and investors. And that's really what, you know, S-Stack is really, really all about. Excuse me. So if what you learned today, if this interests you, hopefully you'll join us. If you're an accredited investor, hopefully you'll join us for S-Stack 9. That's going to kick off starting next month. And then also, once we announce the winners, it's not too late if you like the winners and want to— and again, if you're an accredited investor and you want to join us, the fund's still open for you to, uh, to jump in with us. Okay, so our team came up with a fun little tagline for MVI, and I'll leave you with this: Why the ROSA spec? Because every vagina is unique and different. Let's bring up Annie.

Such a great job. Yeah, thank you so much. I mean, what a— what an amazing intro, right? I, I mean, I, I couldn't have asked for better. Um, with this, uh, with this Angel team, with the SDAC, we are so honored to be here. It has been the most amazing experience, and I can't thank you enough. Um, and I'm so excited to present to you today. So without further ado, my name is Annie Muñoz, and I am the CEO and co-founder of My Village Innovations. We are a medical device company concentrating in gynecology, and we have, uh, brought to you the Rosa Speculum. It is the first reimagined vaginal speculum in 180 years. That's a long time. If we think about— whoop. We'll go this way. Yeah. If we think about how innovation has changed over the last 2 centuries, we go back to 1895. That was the first X-ray. And now we have 3D CT imaging. I mean, look how gorgeous that is. Innovation has transformed healthcare everywhere except gynecology. It's very much the same design, the same rigid blades, and sadly the same blind spots that we've had for two centuries. Now I have worked as an OB-GYN clinician for the last 20 years, and I have seen firsthand how this device creates pain, anxiety, and misdiagnosis. 60% of people report pain. 30% of women aren't showing up for their exam. That's 30 million women not coming in because they hate This painful— everybody's cringing, cringing in the crowd right now— this painful, terrible device. Now the reason it's so bad is in its design. It is designed to only retract the top and the bottom. And what you don't know is from the clinician standpoint, the sidewalls cave in and we cannot see what we're doing. And because we can't see it, we're missing 20% of cancers in that population. Now that's 4,000 women who died last year in the United States from cervical cancer. This is is a preventable disease. That's not okay. Now, this Rosa Speculum, it is a soft, single-use— thank you, soft— and it is made of silicone. It's the first to be made of silicone. Now that we have these silicones, that's why it's being used. And it can be self-placed, so women who have a history of sexual trauma, they can finally be in the driver's seat of their exam, and they deserve that. As a clinician, it offering 360 degrees 360-degree retraction, no more blind spots, no more missed cancer. Here it is in use, just not playing. So I'm not sure if I have to hit play. Nope. We'll go here. This is actually a video, but I'll just show you. I have the device up here. It gets placed into the vagina. When you get to the top, it's at the cervix. It's very quick and easy, no change in workflow for the clinician. Then you remove the tabs at the top and on the sides, and the introducer comes free, and it gently opens up inside the vagina, again offering that 360-degree retraction. The collar can swivel up here, and it offers stability throughout the flute so that we can see everything we need to. It is easily reduced out. You can pinch the sides, it collapses down, you take it out, and you discard it. And you don't have to pay somebody to clean it, repurpose it, worry about infection and all of those extra costs. Oh, here it's playing now. Now you can see how it works actually in a visual for anatomy here. Now we use this device 360 million times a year in the United States alone. And this is used globally everywhere. Now I know you're all thinking once you see this, look at that gorgeous cervix. That's what a cervix looks like, folks. That's what it is. And even clinicians have a hard time seeing this. This is what it should look like. Now we did benchtop testing. Across the top right here, you're gonna see that's the Rosa speculum being used. Look at that clinical picture, it's gorgeous. You can still see that cervix. You all know what it looks like now. If you go down the side here, this is somebody with a healthy body mass index, somebody with a normal pressure. As you go into the middle, you'll see the Peterson is a regular speculum, the Graves is the biggest, widest speculum we can use, and then the plastic options. As you go across, you see how that clinical picture is being lost. You cannot see your cervix, and this is why we're missing cancers, and this is why I struggle in the exam, and this is why patients struggle. We shouldn't have to struggle. Your daughters shouldn't have to struggle. Now, nobody has come up with this circumferential. They're all trying to make just another iteration of the same two-blade design, just adding spokes on it. That is not okay. That could perforate somebody's vaginal wall. Now that the silicones are available, now we have this option for circumferential retraction on a lightweight and less expensive expensive material. That's why we outshine. That's why we get better than 70% visibility over the current other options on the market. Again, 360 million uses. It's a $7.3 billion global, global, and then it's nearly $3 billion US, and then we're targeting the $78 million, which is the private OB-GYN clinics across the United States. Over like 4,000 of those with nearly 30,000 providers in those spaces. We know it's a very hot space right now because Organon just sold their Jada device to Laboree for $465 million this year. And Hologic just went private at $18 billion. There is now a code, 99459, that just came out in 2024 that gets you reimbursed for the speculum and pelvic exam up to $22.64. That's why now is the time for us. Now we have an amazing team, over 220 years of combined experience across women's health, medtech, strategy, regulatory, commercialization, and leadership. Our team has scaled over $100 million with global rollouts and seen multiple exits. We are ready and solid. Now we already have a patent that's granted. Yes, we already have a CIP, a global patent, and a design patent, all filed. We are 510 exempt, so very little regulatory hurdles there. We have a trademark that's also been granted. We have pilot sites already located across the United States. San Diego starts next month. Yes, we have manufacturing secured. Um, we are FDA registered, uh, and, um, we already have a clinician who has developed an IRB study to show that Rosa Spec will be the standard of care. Uh, we are in Women's Health Springboard Accelerator right now. We just— we recently won Women's Venture Summit pitch, and we are the SBDC $100K winners. And then we just recently got the win with investment last weekend at TechCon, an audience choice. Our unit economics are very similar to what they're already currently paying in the office for the single-use speculums. $14 to $17 is what we're coming out, and our COGS are under $2 with a dual injection mold. That's great margins, 87% margins. We will be building out a light ring also also, which will be reusable, and we are also building surgical units as well as using sustainable materials in the future, and you should be doing that if you're building out a single-use device. We have a plan, our commercialization plan. We're going to be building out these pilots. If we just use our pilots alone and sell, we'll have over $200,000 in revenue after 12 months, and that's just our pilots, not going anywhere else. We should be hitting close to a million, just under a million by 2026, EBITDA positive in 2028. And $30 million EBITDA in 2030. Now our Phase 1 is hitting all of these clinics and then teasing out KOLs and champions. Every clinician I talk to, they're not saying, why should I change? They're saying, when can you get this to me? Can I be a champion for you? I need this yesterday. I need this 20 years ago. We have— we're going to get that feedback. We're going to— women want it. I mean, that's an easy feedback. Do you want to— hey, do you want this old archaic 200-year speculum, or would you like to try the new soft speculum? One. So that's not going to be very difficult thing to get. And then we're going to go with our distributors. We already have LOIs from clinicians, and we recently got one from a distributor who wants to— who has already given us for 50,000 units upon launch. We'll be using those distributor partnerships to scale regionally in 2027, and then going into the conferences, the ACOGs, the ASRMs. And then in Phase 3, as we hit it in 2028, we're going to do more of the international. We're going to start going global, especially now that we'll hit that sustainable materials, and then we're also going to be exploring institutional purchasing. Now as Randy said it, where is Randy, as Randy said it, all vaginas are unique. Yes, they are. I have done over 70,000 pelvic exams in my career. Building out this device was not something that happened overnight. I took in all of the patients that I have seen in my career, all of the things that they have been through and all of the hardships and the things that made the exam difficult, We deserve better care. $1.5 million seed on a $10 million cap. SAFE. Thank you so much.

All right, let's give another hand for our 6 companies.

So first and foremost, I want you all to know that if you would like to get involved with us, we would like you to get involved with us. If you're an accredited investor, we start meeting in August. Um, we start doing our casual investor networking and knowledge events. And then as we move into the spring, the members of the fund begin to meet under the direction of or facilitation of the fund manager. And then we culminate late May, early June in another finale. Hopefully Eric will write another book by then because we don't normally draw this big of a crowd. So thank you, Eric. So with that, I would like to ask Jen to come up and do the honors.

Do we have Gus?

Gus from Alaska? I need Gus from Alaska. Is Gus in the crowd? Gus, are you here? Come on down! So we're going to do your People's Choice Award, and Gus is going to get to announce who the winner is, and he's going to reiterate what Alaska is giving them for the People's Choice Award.

Good evening, everyone. Is everyone excited to hear the results? Yeah, well, first I'd like to thank everyone for having Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines here. We're very proud to be here with the San Diego community, and we're really energized by everything that we've seen today. But the winner—

can I get a drum roll?

The winner is My Village Communities. My Village Communities has earned multiple complimentary round-trip tickets in any of Hawaiian and Alaska Airlines networks. Congratulations. Thank you so much.

I hope you have a fantastic trip. Thank you.

Okay, next I want to invite Kevin up from C3 Bank, and he is going to have the honor of announcing— well, do you know what you're announcing? Okay, he's— they're gonna present— C3 Bank's gonna present, um, the two runner-up checks. Okay, so they're gonna show you who it is, but you can— yeah.

Okay, so this is the first one. Okay, first runner-up. All right. Oh, she's here. Oh, got it. Good. All right.

Yes, thank you for the drum roll.

And for the first runner-up today, we have My Village Innovations.

Yes.

Thank you. You're welcome.

I know, it's okay.

Okay, nobody drop that. So we're gonna, we're gonna give this to you and we'll do some of the photos after so you can bring it.

Thank you. And then here's the second one.

Oh, okay, okay. Our second investment.

All right. For the second investment, drum roll please. We've got Viom for $35,000.

Congratulations.

Congratulations.

Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you. Yes, please.

Okay. All right.

Our final investment of the day is going to be presented to you by Mintz, so Jason's going to come up. Can we put up his slide for Mintz, please?

Okay. Thank you, everybody. You're going to need a bigger podium. You know, Mintz is a full-service law firm. We got 600 lawyers in the US and Canada. I'm a corporate securities lawyer, and you know, if you— we're the longest-serving sponsor of the San Diego Regional Conference and proud to be its outside counsel. So if you've got a company or an investor in the innovation economy, reach out to someone at Mintz. All right. And drum roll, please, for the big winner.

Is Sesh. Sesh!

$200,000 to Sesh. Gotta celebrate up here where we can take pictures.

All right. Congratulations to everyone. Thank you all for being here. What a day. What an afternoon. And how empowering is it to help founders continue moving forward, solving the hard problems, right? So the tables in the back are still open for another 30 minutes. So go meet more companies. Make sure you say hi. Make sure you come shake the winners' hands as well too. If you still want to be a part of this year's fund, we do have the fund open for 1 month. Come find us, including me. We'll figure out how to get you into— involved in that. Uh, and, uh, come join next year as well too, which we mentioned. If you join the list to learn more, submit there, we'll get you on our list so you can join next year's fund as well too. And without that, Jen is going to close us out.

Thank you all for coming. The reception's open for another 30 minutes. We're so happy that you are all here and looking forward for you to spend some time mingling with the teams and each other. We'll see you next year. Thanks.