Mike Krenn- President of Connect w/ SDVG

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos? Tacos in tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador Quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos El gordo, the taco stand in 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 to 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.

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Startups get the party. Startups get the.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, San Diego's tech ambassador, and together you're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle. Thanks to our friends at Cox Business for being an instrumental resource to our startup and tech community here in San Diego. As a partner in San Diego Startup Week, quick pitch and top tech Awards, Cox Business has helped our ecosystem grow into the community it is today. And welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neal Bloom. I'm here at Nest coworking podcast studio with our friend Mike Kren from Connect and Cinema Venture Group. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having us. That's a great song.

I know, right? Ashok and Miguel school of rap. They just killed it.

It's awesome.

Well, Mike, we're super excited to get to know you a bit more. I feel like you often talk about everyone else. You talk about what's going on in San Diego. You talk about lots of companies that are exciting, but we may not know the Mike Krend story. So that's what we're going to do today.

Yeah, I'm much more comfortable talking about other people.

Of course, the spotlight is on you.

What do you want to know?

We want to know where'd you grow up? Where are you from?

Yeah, So I grew up in Mountain View, California, right in the heart of Silicon Valley. Used to ride my bicycle as a kid through the fields where Google now exists and got here in 84.

Oh, wow. Where'd you go to school?

I went to a Catholic school called St. Francis right there in Mountain View, where that's the high school that invested in snap, of all things.

Really? Oh, wow.

They made a little bit of money on that.

Yeah. So are you part of the alumni network that they call on now?

No, we won't go into that experience at Catholic school.

Got it. Well, what brought you to San Diego?

Yeah, that's actually a pretty funny story too. So, interestingly enough, after graduating, I wanted to come to San Diego. My parents, the wiser ones, wanted me to go to Humboldt State. And so we took a road trip up to Humboldt, and after just being there for a day, I just knew that if I went to Humboldt, I'd end up, you know, smoking away too much weed and not really accomplishing much. So I came back from that trip, and in the middle of the night, I actually packed up my car, drove to San Diego, enrolled myself in school, and didn't talk to my parents for over a year. Wow.

San Diego State.

San Diego State. Yeah.

That's awesome. Go Aztecs.

Yeah.

How did you even know? Why was San Diego on your radar at that time?

You know, growing up in no Cal, you just heard about SoCal a lot, and it seemed like a good place to go. I mean, it wasn't any really thoughtful brain yak decision, but it seemed like a good place to go. And it ended up working out pretty well.

Totally. I mean, San Diego was its own party school as well. Different than Humboldt.

Yes. It's gotten. It's gotten a better reputation.

Yeah. All right, so coming out of school, was there a startup or tech community whatsoever that you could tell?

Yeah. When I graduated, I joined the San Diego Business Journal. I was there for, like, five years, and that sort of threw me into the middle of the community. While I was there, I put myself through grad school at night, and when I got out of grad school, grad school, I got quickly gobbled up by my friends that I had built at a place called Connect. I was working with Bill Otterson and Barbara Bree, and they sucked me into the tech community. I went out on my own. I started my own little marketing shop. At 1. I had a big law firm, big accounting firm, bunch of little tech companies as clients, and that sort of threw me into the ecosystem way back in 1993.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, I'm old.

No, you're not. You're wise and experienced.

Experienced, perhaps.

So what was the startup scene like in 93?

Yeah, I mean, it was actually, it was interesting. There was a lot of venture capital here, or it was growing. There was a big tech community, There's a big life sciences community mainly built around, you know, Qualcomm and some of the other big mobile companies at the time. But yeah, there was Enterprise Partners was a $600 million fund. Mission Ventures had 300 million, Forward had 200 million. I mean, it was a really different. See, it's hard to, you know, imagine back then that there was, you know, over a billion dollars of capital just waiting around for startups.

That was all in the early 90s, or that was kind of late 90s.

Like.Com boom grew through the 90s and the early 2000s. Yeah.

Was there something that, like start. Was there a common thread where most of those homegrown funds started from or they were kind of spin outs of success like Qualcomm?

Yeah, there were spin outs from Linkabit and there was. Gosh, I have to think back to what those companies were. Linkabit was there. Qualcomm was there. There was. There was a number of companies that spun. So I should get to this for your mafia stuff too. One day. I'm drawing a blank. I'm sorry, but Martha Dennis was there and a few others, and they all were investing. Yeah, they all spun off lots of different companies. I mean, there's an analogy I like too, with. You could have had Allergan up in la, which was one of the biggest life science companies on the planet. And instead we had those companies that, that got acquired, people went off, started new companies. And what happened in San Diego is instead of having one big allergan, we grew a whole life sciences community.

Yeah, super mature. Which is interesting to see that even at least now. I've only been here six years, but to see the life science so mature and seeing the tech trying to kind of catch up alongside it. For someone like you, who've seen when we had local capital like VC and to not have it now, is that weird for you to say? Almost like we're in rebuilding mode per se.

It's funny. I don't worry about it. That's part of the reason why I took that gig at San Diego Venture Group at the time is everybody was whining about the lack of capital and the lack of firms here and people running around saying if we could just get a firm to open up here. I was always of the opinion if three people magically opened a fund tomorrow, there's still 400 funds in the Valley. And let's stop waiting around and hoping. Let's just go get the money. It's been fine. Would it be nice if firms opened up here? Sure. Do we, you know it's going to happen just because we wish it? No. So let's stop worrying about it and do what we can.

Sure.

I think our proximity to the Valley is a huge advantage that we have over other regions and we just need to leverage it.

Yeah. Take us through a bit more of the 90s in terms of what other resources were in town. So I know that like Connect existed. What else was around to help startups from a, you know, get them ready and fundable. But everything before then, it's funny, man.

It was a much smaller, tighter community. I mean it's still pretty darn tight in this town. But you know, Connect was the big organization in town. They were really started as sort of the hub, which was kind of nice because everybody knew you could go to that one spot and get access to the resources you need. They used to have a program called Financial Forum where they'd bring VCs down and companies would get up and pitch in front of them. Sort of old school, pre Internet days and that was successful. That eventually faded away. But then Biocom got going on the life sciences side and then there was the key infrastructure players. Whether it was the law firms, the accounting firms, the banks, they were always here in support of and it all just kind of worked.

Interesting.

It's always been collaborative here, which is part of what makes San Diego so great.

Yeah, but it sounds like a lot of things we have today. Yet you look at, and I'm not saying we need these things, but a lot of incubators, accelerators, like say many cities have a techstars and stuff like that. We don't actually. Or some of these other incubators we have kind of had the one. Do you think we've. We don't need it because we've got this tight knit community of service providers, other capital providers that just know how to help an entrepreneur get ready for the next step.

You can always use the resources. Right. One of the things I like about San Diego is I think back to four or five years ago when it was so hard to raise money and San Diego wasn't really on the radar, especially on the tech scene is the entrepreneurs were scrappy. I think the entrepreneurs learned a lot. They Sort of came to understand that you couldn't just have an idea and go out and raise money. And they got super scrappy. They go out and find 100 grand here, 200 grand there. They'd be getting their money from Kansas City or Tacoma, wherever it was. They'd go find the money and they'd get the company off the ground, get some customers. When we first started pitching a lot of the tech companies to the VCs, they were really surprised at the quality of the people, the traction that these companies had, and just the sensibility and common sense of the entrepreneurs. And when you're investing money in that. They were capital efficient companies and they made good investments. It was great. I love shopping them.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, San Diego, we've always had been scrappy in that regard. Right. Get to revenue before anyone. What else would ever think of that? And raise more money. Right. Which speaks to a company that you started or I think were a part of Grip. Right. Was that a startup from the late 90s? Do you want to talk through that experience? Yeah.

Geez. Okay. So. Yeah, yeah. After. So. Well, actually before I started a group called the San Diego Band of Angels. After the Band of Angels in the Valley and that, we got the cease and deceased letter and that eventually turned into Tech Coast Angels.

Okay.

So we got Tech Coast Angels off the ground. And then one of the investors asked me to join one of his companies, which was Select Teatimes at the time. I joined that literally two weeks before the market crashed in 2000. So I got to ride that out. I was one of the last three people standing at that company as we closed the doors after about a year and a half. But super cool experience. I mean, my three best friends in life today are three guys that I spent time with at that startup.

That's pretty cool. Where were you guys headquartered?

We were in a crappy little place on Miramar Road.

Awesome.

Yep. Running lean.

Was that where. Where was the. The physical epicenter of startup world in the late 90s, early 2000s? Was it like Sorrento UTC Miramar?

Yeah, it was kind of UTC area probably more than anything. Okay.

Not downtown.

No, it was definitely downtown. Was a scary place in the 90s.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Was there anything in North County, Carlsbad.

Del Mar, as I think about it? No, not. Not really. I mean, it was kind of surf town more than anything else.

Interesting.

Great place to be. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah.

That's cool.

It's really grown up. It's cool.

Yeah. We've got like, you know, our Own little micro ecosystems throughout the along the five.

I think it's a huge advantage for San Diego versus other regions that we've got. You know, whatever it is, 40 miles of coastline, you know, it's, it's spread out enough that you can, you know, put up an office in Carlsbad and pull workforce from Vista to Escondido. I think South Bay is a huge opportunity for growth. I'd love to see a farmer come and park up, you know, take down that there's enough land and it's the way it's built out, it's ripe for a whole community to grow there.

Yeah, absolutely. Take us through the dot com bust. Like, what'd that look like? Not just for your own company, but did you just see a bunch of San Diego companies die?

Yeah, the San Diego companies died and so did the funds too. So that was a little bit of a brutal time. Plus everybody, I mean, it was ridiculous. Everybody was, it was fun, don't get me wrong, in the late 90s were fun. You know, Padres even were in the World Series. You know, you can think about that.

Hard to believe.

So, yeah, it was a fun time. But then when it crashed, yeah, it all came crashing down for a number of years and it was tough and the VCs all dried up and even the, you know, the VCs from the Valley were stopping to invest. But, you know, it's a cycle you got to go through and I think, you know, do I wish it happened? No, but I mean, I think we did a good job of coming out of it.

So what did you do coming out?

So me. So, yeah, I had another law firm recruit me and asked me if I wanted to work for the law firm and I said, no, thank you. And then I came back with an idea and wrote a business plan and we actually, I built a little business unit inside the law firm that Paul Venture Pipeline. And basically we screened and scrubbed all the deals that came into the firm, whether they were in Boston or Seattle or wherever. And we would work with the quality ones and help connect them to vc. So almost sort of like what I'm doing now, but it was just for one firm. It was a ton of fun. It was hugely successful. Really loved it. The law firm got acquired by another law firm and we went from 400 lawyers to 4,000 overnight. And I sadly got pushed up the food chain. I ran Global BD there and was doing Asia and Europe and everything else. When I got the call back to startups, it was a good day. I love working with startups. And it's been fun.

Interesting. So you built. I mean, you're doing due diligence. Did the law firm ever invest into these companies too? Like almost like services for equity?

Yeah, we had a fund and everything.

Really? Oh, so you're actually writing checks too?

Yeah, I was a part of that committee that did that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool. Was that pretty unique for a law firm?

No, not. I mean, the tech firms were doing. I was with Greg Carey at the time and Wilson was doing it, Cooley was doing it. So yeah.

Has it come back? I mean, I don't know of that happening in San Diego right now.

A lot of the firms still invest. It's a little bit of a personal decision amongst the. The lawyers that are on the deal.

Okay, that's cool. And they will do both kind of cash and services, kind of for equity.

They usually aren't doing the services for equity. They'll invest cash alongside. It's usually alongside an investment. So it's along the side. The VCs come in and they are sort of a sidecar investment alongside.

Gotcha. Cool. So what point Sounds like you were delay for quite a while.

10 years.

Okay. So at some point though, what brought the itch to come back and do.

I was always here and I had been. I always loved the startup stuff and as you might imagine, it's pretty political at the food with the food chain there and dealing with folks in Europe and New York and everywhere else. And so the folks at the Venture Group asked me to come in and run the Venture Group and I said, sure, I'll do it for two years. And it's now five years later and I'm fully sucked in. And it's been fun, but I just love it. I feel like I'm making a difference and helping people feels good.

Absolutely. Huge difference. What do you think is different from when you took over at the Venture Group five years ago or so to now?

Yeah, so we sort of took this perspective that the life sciences community was pretty healthy. Tech needed a boost. And so we sort of were 70, 30 tech to life Sciences and really just tried to work to get to raise the reputation of San Diego. San Diego was always, you got nice friendly people here. We did a crummy job of selling ourselves outside of San Diego. Everybody was whining about the lack of capital. And so it was pretty easy for me to just extrapolate the business model we did with that venture Pipeline group and go up, rebuild those contacts with the VCs in the Valley, just one by one by one, talking to them, why they should invest in San Diego, what kind of deals here. And then we came up with the cool companies existed, but they never brought VCs down for that. And so we thought, we're going to try and pick better companies and then just recruit the hell of VCs, get them to San Diego so they can see what's going on here. I remember the first one, it was pretty comical. We begged and pleaded and got 30 VCs to come down and we took over an empty floor of a building downtown. It was a joke. I had my bullhorn and arranging things, but it was funny. But the quality of the companies we had, you know, Cloudbeds, 5th Sochi was there. I think Medcrypt was there. I mean, there was a bunch of good companies. We were there.

I think Portfolium.

I think we were there. Yeah, Portfolium was there. I mean, it was a great list of companies. And that's what made all the difference, right? The VCs come, they see good companies and they think maybe there's something going on here. But it was funny. We came back the second year and tried to get these same VCs to come back. And the feedback I got was, weren't we just there? Were we just going to see the same companies? I'm like, no, you're going to see great, there's more, there's good. Come back, come back. I think we got 40 the second year. And again, good companies. And I think that's the way it works, right? You come the first year, you're sort of impressed, the second year you think something's going on. The third year, you start having relationships, right? So, I mean, people like yourself, you meet the lawyer, the banker, start building a network, and then all of a sudden you start writing checks and then it feeds itself and it's been cool, it's gone. We had 100 VCs in town last year for it. We'll get 100 VCs again in May. And it's sort of grown too, from micro funds to Series A, and now the B funds are just rolling. The growth funds are rolling into town and it's great.

Yeah, you get a peak span. Who's done five checks now, right? Is that right?

Or more? Yeah, they're in five. Warburg Pincus was in town the other day and they don't get interested unless they can write an $80 million check. I'm like, who the hell are you guys meeting with? They wouldn't Tell me. But I got my ideas, but it's just great to see them proactively snooping here. It's wonderful. It's a good sign.

Absolutely. Just speaking on portfolio's experience with Santa Venture Group, I think we were a pitch fest winner your first year. I think that you were in there and then cool companies at least twice. And that obviously gets us.

Look at you guys.

Yeah, we'll take advantage of it for sure.

Awesome.

Are there metrics that you're looking at? Besides how many VCs are coming down? Are you really tracking? Did we help make that check happen?

Yeah, you know, I would love to tell you that we're tracking it. We run around so crazy. I mean, it's, it's.

You're a lean machine.

It's totally pandemonium. So, I mean, we're. You can track or you can do. And I think we, we would like to have a nice blend there. We tend to do more than we're tracking. But, you know, certainly we do know of a lot of companies where we made the introduction and, you know, that resulted in the cash and sometimes it's just putting the vehicle together right to where people bump into each other. We had Taylor from Pettest bump into the guys from Peak Span at one of our private events and a month later he's got a $12 million check. And so it's just connecting the dots sometimes and putting the form together and getting them down here so that they see what's going on and then the competition heats up, creates a little FOMO deal, sizes get bigger, the valuations get better and everybody wins.

Yeah, it's a beautiful thing.

It is a beautiful thing.

Talk us through the merger of Connect and sdvg. How did that all come to be and what are we looking at now, a year later?

Yeah, it's been great, if I'm being honest. I think there was a little redundancy in the market. So putting the two groups together was good. I mentioned Venture Group was 7030 tech to LifeSci. I think Connect was sort of the opposite of that. 7030 LifeSci heavy. And so that's a really good fit. The Venture Group's really strong on connecting companies to capital and working with the VCs. Connect is historically strong with coaching companies and mentors and programming. If you think of it from a funnel approach, it really fits together nicely in that you've got the funnel flow with companies coming in and then the Venture Group side sucking them out and helping them raise money and then working with the post venture backed CEOs, hopefully as more in the mentoring role and then also help them with the growth capital and just feeding that cycle of life and keeping the community going through both tech and life sciences. One of the things I love about San Diego is while we don't really have a brand like LA as being a consumer place, we do it all. We got on everything from, from SAS to defense to mobile and life sciences to therapeutics, genomics, device diagnostics. It's really healthy from a macroeconomic perspective. It really stretches us thin on what we do, but it keeps it super interesting and it's really fun and you meet really smart people and just the intellectual intrigue of it all. It's fun.

Yeah. So where do you think we're headed? Your organization? And then I'll ask you about the community.

Yeah, I mean, I think Connect's headed in a really good spot. The other thing I like about Connect right now where we are is I think we're getting along really well with everybody. Whether it's you guys, Startup San Diego and EDC and Evo, Nexus and JLabs. The community's coming together really nicely. I worry sometimes that we're resting on our. Not us per se, but the community. I don't want us to get lazy and rest on our laurels a little bit while this money's coming in. And it feels really good. You can never stop hustling. And I worry about the first time entrepreneurs, especially on the life sciences side, and getting access to the right people and being able to build companies and keeping that cycle with the exited founders so they come back and reinvest and engage with the community. So as you have success, I think it creates a different set of challenges. And right now I think this is something that Connect is working on is I think the fundraising is pretty healthy right now. You're able to access capital, but that's created an issue where we have recruiting issues and we got to get mid level talent to San Diego and we compete against markets like Seattle and Austin and Boulder and we got to win that.

Yeah. Are you ready to talk about the talent plan?

Not quite.

We'll tease it. So tune in and we'll talk about it later. Maybe we'll have you back and we'll talk about that in the future.

We hope to announce it at the end of the month, but yeah, we're doing something that I think will be pretty unique and really be a help to these startup companies.

All right, well, what we can talk about is historically what you did, which is the Genesis of this podcast name. So four years ago, we did the tacos and tech event SD sandigoisbetter.com up in the bay. And we brought what, 30, 40 companies up to the bay.

40 companies to the computer museum in Mountain View, a mile away from Google's campus. 40 companies right there, right alongside the 101. We ran the. Those billboards. That was just for fun. I mean, that was good. I think we had stuff like, have you checked the surf report today? Of course you haven't. And it was all targeted towards engineers. And we had, I think over 900 engineers showed up, all selling San Diego companies. It was cool. We did a good job. And then, yeah, we were fortunate to have you take the tacos and tech brand and keep it going.

Yeah, I love that event. I mean, hired was where I was at the time, tech company helping connect talent. So it was perfect. Exactly. It was like hired in person, hired irl, and we needed it to continue on. I mean, we should do that event again.

Well, you know, actually, I'm happy to say we connected with our friends at the EDC and they sort of took it and ran with it and created sandiegolifechanging.org, and they've done a great job with that. And this recruiting thing I'm talking about, we're going to partner up again with those folks. So it's another good example of collaborating where people want to, and we're all going for the greater good, which is really cool.

Yeah, awesome. Well, speaking of so much going on locally, why don't we talk a little bit about some news that's been going on here in San Diego? Our friends over at Eco ATM that we know and love and have created so much for the community, has got some new capital.

200 million or something.

200 million. So they, I think, are Apollo Global is who actually did kind of a buyout of them and sold a little bit of minority ownership to another PE fund company still based here, which is great.

It's a great story. Mark's such a good guy, and he was actually incubating inside one of the law firms way back when. I can't remember how many doors he said he knocked on. It was close to 100, I think. He was mortgaging his house for his second mortgage when he got his first check.

Wow.

I remember meeting. I mean, this is typical, right? But I mean, I met with him and I thought, man, that's a crazy idea. Really. You're going to drop phones into a box and get money back There he is. You know, he made it work. That was largely about Mark. He is just a great entrepreneur.

Well then speaking of Mark specifically Mark Bowles, the mafia that is Mark Bowles is Truvian. Who Another kiosk that has kind of spun out. We talked about them at a previous podcast and we're going to hopefully have Dina on a future one.

She's fantastic.

Yep. Who just joined the board of Connect. Right.

She's just. She's on our executive board yet we love her.

Yeah. But her and Mark kind of co founded with a few others. Co founded Truvian which is trying to be Theranos for good.

Yeah. I mean just an idea. Mark and who. Peter was in on that too. Kim Kamdar. Just an idea. And Randy.

Do you know Randy? Randy. He was also at Eco atm. Okay, so like a little mafia there.

Yeah. And Dina, her second company that she's founded to her credit, she brought in a CEO above her and they're a great tag team and they're just crushing it.

Yeah.

And it's a cool story. Cool company. It's kind of one of the things the San Diego life changing. Right. It's a company that's actually making an impact on the world too. Which is one of the things San Diego's good at.

Yep, absolutely. Find that life changing banner. Another company locally that we know previously Optics, now Flock Freight, raised a significant chunk of money.

Or another great CEO. A guy ran underground for a long time, bootstrapped his company. I remember meeting him in his really crappy little office in Vista. The guy was spending nothing on office space and just grinding away. Raised a bunch of money quietly. I think Google was in the first round and moved to Solana Beach. And he's a guy who just stays to the grind and just didn't come out a whole lot, didn't network a whole lot. He really picked his spot super thoughtfully. But he was always there if he needed them. I mean he was in the scene and he went out and just raised another huge round and they're off and running and came out of the. And it's a really competitive hot space that he raised that he's. That he's killing it in too. So yeah, we look for more big things from Oren.

I mean that space like the logistical tech in San Diego is like. It is a thing. I mean we've got like maybe like a dozen companies.

Simple platform sciences. Yeah. Big.

But even like you could potentially consider like Lytics. Right. And Snowdrive as all part of these too. And which are like $3 billion companies all the way on down to these guys.

Yeah, they're probably all came out of Omnitracks if you wanted to back it up.

Like Qualcomm, which they're doing, which is platform science. Right. The same CEO doing it all over again to a certain extent.

Right?

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

And there's Tourmaline Labs I think does something similar.

Fleet management. Yeah, yeah. And speaking of offices for Orin, have you seen their Solana beach one?

That's very nice.

Yeah, but still, I mean, isn't it inside the store? Isn't it inside Lotus?

It is, but it's a pretty cool spot.

It's cool, but it's another funky place.

It's funky, but it's not as funky as this old visitor place.

Another interesting company in San Diego that I think we've talked about on this podcast before is Blue Nalu Lab Grown or Science Grown Fish.

I need a tour. I need to meet those guys. I don't know them.

Yeah, Lou is a CEO and we've known him for probably about a year and got him in front of TCA just about a month ago. And we were lucky enough to get involved in their $20 million fundraise, which is great. So I think they've raised 24 million to date. And it's a really cool play in San Diego where it's food tech meets biotech. It's going to be a very consumer facing product and so it's going to actually be a consumer facing biotech.

Yeah, it's funny, that was the one thing San Diego didn't do well was consumer tech or even consumer. And now we're doing pretty well at consumer even. It's so cool to just see the breadth of the deals that are getting done here.

Yeah, it is very cool. And now we got to make sure that they all do super well with the talent, that's for sure. Because that's where the capital goes to, is hiring the best people. And so speaking of that is a company that was originally Israel based Wiliot, but opened a pretty major San Diego engineering front over in Rancho Bernardo. Do you know these guys at all?

A little bit? I know a little bit of what they're doing. I think it's pretty cool with the. Doing something in the fashion tech too and with the. It's not rfid but the tracking sensors. Yeah, it's very cool.

It's kind of in. I mean it's down at the chip level of trying to create new chips for this retail Space, Yeah.

Speaks again to the innovation quality that comes out of San Diego. There's a lot of really smart engineers here doing very hard things and getting them to market.

Definitely even thinking geographically where they're at Rancho Bernardo, there's a whole little density there that we actually don't talk about. The Sony Electronics Group and then there's actually Fitbit there has a whole R and D unit that's kind of interesting. These are all kind of consumer chip kind of companies.

It's interesting. We look at data, as I said, we compete against other markets. And when you look at the cost of living in San Diego versus Seattle, it's far cheaper to live here. And it's because we often forget about places along the 15 and La Mesa and South Bay. And even if you're there, you're 10 minutes from the ocean and it's so great. Right.

Totally true.

It's about our. We need to market ourselves better.

Yeah. Well, let's talk about some events that are coming up in March. There's a lot of people are kind of coming out of the winter scene. Maybe they've already gone to their CES and JP Morgan. So now we actually have some good local events that are coming back up to speed. One that Startup San Diego is excited to bring back is the CDI program which is really trying to help. Help I would call pre entrepreneurs. These are people who think they have an idea or maybe have an idea, but what's the roadmap to get there? There's a five part series coming up starting on March 17th that's in partnership with Startup San Diego, Mission Edge and the Downtown Partnership. The first one is called the Entrepreneurial Mindset. It's all about how to what's the frame of mind you need to be in to be a leader, to really have the confidence to move forward on your own idea that a lot of people are going to tell you is not going to work. We're excited about that.

I think those things are so important. You guys do a great job with that stuff. I was talking earlier about the entrepreneurs being scrappy. I think the entrepreneurs here are pretty well educated. There's a lot of venues for them to get that kind of information and to have conversations with smart people so that they understand what they're embarking on. Because it's not easy to raise money and it's not for everybody. And I tell entrepreneurs a lot of times you shouldn't even be thinking about venture capital. You got a great business, don't screw it up with venture money. Right. And so there's a lot of different paths, but providing that vehicle is great. And I totally, if you. If anybody's thinking about going on that path, absolutely encourage them to attend that.

Awesome. So it's a five part series. It's every two weeks and it's purposely leading up to Startup Week end of May. So if you attend at least two of those sessions, I think we're giving you a free ticket to Startup Week where we're going to kind of curate the next five sessions at Startup Week you should go to for kind of like part two. So we kind of planned that on purpose to hopefully lead all in together. Another thing we talked about is the geography and startup 78 is this EDC. And then the five city innovate 78 brand that have kind of sprung up and said, hey, the 78 corridor has got a lot of innovation. Let's band together and help entrepreneurs.

I love it. Carlsbad. And that whole corridor is cranking. It's a great place to be.

There's some unique businesses in the sports tech area, the apparel area. This one specifically is going to be on the D2C brands, which is kind of a hot thing. And to showcase some of our consumer side here in San Diego. That'll be a great event. An event that you've probably seen since the beginning. I think it's been going on for 15 years. March mingle, March 25th.

We love Falan.

Yeah, it's. And it's a really cool cross section, I would say. Each person who runs their own event always brings in a little bit different crew. And Falange brings in, I would say, the tech crew, not just pure startups. You'll get some interesting, even dev shops that'll come out of there. So that's always a fun one.

Yeah, that's a big one too. Five or six hundred people out there. Yeah, it's great. Love it.

I can't say I know where it is this year, but it's been some fun, unique places. It was at a paintball place a few years ago. It was at the Museum of Man last year. So they always pick fun venues for that.

It's somewhere in the downtown area. I'm trying to remember where it is too. I know it's on my calendar.

Okay, well, we'll see you there then. At the end of the month. March 31, TCA is doing their, I think it's their third annual Women in Angel Investing panel. It's not just TCA Women Angels. It's a good group of Cross section of angels in San Diego that are women that are just writing checks and leading the charge, including the new president of tca, Caitlin Wege.

She's fantastic. Yeah.

Just joined the Startup San Diego board as well. So did you, which is awesome to have.

It's an honor. Yes, thank you.

It's an honor for us to kind of. And it leans into the aspect of what you said. We're all collaborating more. Right. We're making sure we're all aligned and we have the same customer. The entrepreneur. Right. Which is great. And speaking of the entrepreneur, there's a few deadlines of applications coming up to help them with some more in depth kind of things like Connect All. Do you want to speak to what Connect all is? A little bit.

Yeah. It's a great cohort. We've got a great team with Alex and Danaa. They're fantastic. It's a cohort down in South Bay for the underrepresented entrepreneurs. They've been through two cohorts already. Really impressive teams. I mean, I've been really impressed. I've gone down there and heard all the pitches and I see the companies when they're coming in on the front end and when they're going on the back end, and it's amazing. And I think the experience has been great for all of them. So I fully encourage everybody who's interested in joining the cohort to check out Connect all and get into the next group.

Applications are open right now. I just got recruited to be a mentor, so I just started last week.

See, they're doing a great job.

Yeah. No, I met Kate Rayford, who's the founder of Pre Nursing Smarter, Super Cool. And we're meeting every other week and I've just gotten involved and it's exciting.

Yeah. And they're not necessarily companies that are aiming for ventures. Certainly there's a couple in there, but that's not a requirement by any means. But there's some really great companies coming out of there doing really impressive things.

Yeah. I'm excited to see it. So Cohort 3 applications are open as well as cool companies. Right?

Cool companies. We love that one. That's our bread and butter. I mean, we will have 100 VCs rolling into town in mid May. Applications are open for another two weeks. I think even if you think you're going to be venture ready, it's great to apply even if you don't get in. It gives us a chance to sort of get to know you, learn about the company, start that relationship. Not everybody gets in on the first year. But there's a lot of companies that we see these companies that we've never heard of before. They come over the transom, you will follow up with a meeting. And it's just great to get to know the companies. And then too, because it lasts over the course of the year too. Right? We got all these VCs coming to town. I get two, three calls a week from VCs. And they're all different, Right. Some are doing early stage, some are late, some are life sciences, some are SAs. And so just having an awareness of who's all out there so that when we get those inquiries, we can direct people. So even if you don't get in, it's great. And if you do get in, you get to meet 100 VCs. It's a totally private event. It's just the VCs and the companies in the room together. And the companies do a great job of representing San Diego so that these VCs stay engaged well beyond the event. And that's really the important thing.

Yeah, absolutely. I'd say from twofold, there's some cool, valuable things just from the review process of just the review group that gets to see all these companies. We talk about them, we hear a quick update and maybe they're not ready. But a year from now, when we get to hear another update, which is great for us just to be like, hey, they're doing great. I want to check them out. Maybe they don't make cool companies, but it's cool to hear progress updates on them.

I read 280 business plans last year.

Luckily, I'm only given 10% that. Thank you.

It's fun.

Yeah, it is. And then what else is fun is to then have invested in. I think I've invested in five cool companies to then go out and see them all tabling. I get to check in with them all within an hour.

It's really cool. In the last three years, companies have raised over, I think it's $350 million from cool companies, all Series A, which is the hardest round to raise. And so it's just putting companies on the right path. It feels really good. We do it. We don't take fees, we don't take equity. It's a free. So we thank everybody who supports us. It's really for the good of San Diego and I think it's really made an impact.

Awesome. Well, thanks for corralling us all to do that. It's great for the community. All right, so you've been Here quite a while. This question is going to be either a hard or an easy one for you. Best taco spot in San Diego, any man.

That's the one thing I miss whenever I'm outside of San Diego. If I had to think you're an OB guy.

Do you have an OB spot?

Yeah. So everybody goes to south coast and if you go right across the street, there's a tiny little hole in the wall. I think it's called Mike's. And it's. I mean, it's, you know, it's the size of a bedroom, but really great fish tacos. And if you go over to the Point Loma side, there's a little crummy little bar called Mitch's that also has really great fish tacos.

Okay, good to know. And what about social media? Are you active? You're so busy running around.

Maybe it's just not as active as I should be. But yeah, you can get. I mean, I'm on Facebook and all the other vehicles. Twitter. All right, yeah, so I'm there, but. Or you can get me on the Connect website. I'm there.

Yeah. And we'll make sure that probably Twitter, I would say we see you out there. We see. Sometimes you take over the Connect or SDVG feed. We can tell it to you because.

I'm not flipping through the logo at the top of the.

We love it. We get the realness from Mike Kren.

Sorry.

That's what it's all about. Well, Mike, thanks for everything you're doing now, everything you've done to bring the community to here. Obviously it takes a village, but it takes a leader to lead that group too.

That's a good village. We had good villagers.

Yeah, we appreciate that. And we'll see you soon at the next event shortly.

Thank you for having me. This is great.

Thanks, Mike.

See ya.

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

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