Live coverage of Quick Pitch San Diego 2018, a sold-out startup competition with 280+ applications and $75,000 in prizes. Includes pitches from five startups, updates from prior winner Trust & Will, and backstage interviews with founders and judges at the Qualcomm Hall event.
Questions this episode answers
Over 280 applications.
$75,000 total (First place $50,000 non-dilutive; Second $10,000; Third $5,000; plus a $10,000 audience award).
10 finalists pitched to five judges and an audience of over 700 community members.
Welcome to a special edition of the Tacos and Tech podcast. Today we take you through how the recent epic Quick pitch San Diego 2018 night went. We will follow along the show traveling from front of stage to back of stage to hear how it all went down. You should be able to feel the excitement as 10 finalists pitched to five judges and over 700 community members. Send us comments online to who you think pitched best. And with that, we're going to start you in the audience packed into Qualcomm hall when all of a sudden, Eminem's Lose Yourself blasts on and the musical act School of Rap kicks things off. School of Rap is in the house. Welcome to the Quick Pitch competition. We got a special guest in the balcony, Mr. Galileo Dragon Black Merhart. Hey yo, DJ, drop that beat. Yeah. Ye. Welcome to Sold Out Quick Pitch 2018. My name is Ashokamal. I'm the executive director of Techcoast Angels San Diego. We're the biggest angel investing group in the country. We invest $15 million a year in technology startups. I'm also the co founder of the School of Rap. We're teaching you through hip hop. Yeah, yeah. And I know a lot of you are saying, what does rap have to do with startups? But if you think about it a little more, the rap game and the startup game are a lot alike. Cutthroat competition, millions of dollars on the line, going after their dreams. And to be successful in both, you might only have one opportunity, one shot, one moment to do or die. So now we're going to take you through the journey of a struggling entrepreneur. They're living in their sister's basement eating ramen noodles and they're getting ready to pitch for the company's life. Yo, his stomach is sick. He's working on his elevator pitch. It's going to make him rich. First, he's got an idea to fix for the problem he's solving. Chances like this, they don't come often. He doesn't care how much it costs him. Got his unit economics and his product roadmap. Burn rate is full speed. There's no way he can go back. He's gotta roll back the cost of customer acquisition, go to market and crush the competition with a value proposition and a mission statement cooked up in his sister's basement. Want it so bad, he tastes it. Market's growing, so the VCs are throwing cash convertible notes with hopes that it translates into surgical growth. Whether sas, clean tech or a surgical scope. He's got IPO hopes with future visions of Mergers and acquisitions first he's gotta crush this PowerPoint that he's pitchin in your stom start up the moment you own it you gotta never let it go you only get one shot do not move your chance to float cause opportunity knocks was in a lifetime you gotta lose yourself in your startup the moment you own it never let it go One shot do not miss your time to blow make some noise. So we gonna have some fun tonight. As you can see, SDVG is in the building. Cox in the building. Sergio the big calzone Guerri is in the Dean the dawn is in the building. This is my man, Miguel B. Hart. We're childhood friends. We are the school of rap. You can learn more about us at the school of rap dot com. We have our tech hop and we make motivational music. That's right. Tonight we're joined by my other man on the strings, Jonathan Spangler. Woo. Make some noise. IP attorney extraordinaire and quick pitch semifinalist for the Ascender. It's the world's fourth folding guitar that fits in a bag. This thing is amazing. Check it out. That's pretty cool. Crazy. So you can learn more about Jonathan and sierra guitars@sierryguitars.com yeah. Thank you, Jonathan. And to introduce our companies and the rest of the show, I'm gonna bring out our MCs. And I don't mean rap emcees. I mean our host for the night. Masters of ceremony. Masters of ceremony. So first up is Victoria Lakers. She's one of the leaders within TCA today. Give it up for Victoria. Make some. No. And next up is a man many of you know. If you know him, then it means you love him. Mr. Mike Kren, the president of San Diego Venture Group. Dear Mike, he wants us on this side. Woo. Woo. All right. That is an unfair act to follow. There's no way. Thank God we're not rapping. I aspire to be that cool one day. And as you probably heard, this year, tedcoast Angels, San Diego Venture Group and Cox Business all came together to create one better and larger than ever event. Which is, I think, part of the reason we are massively oversold. And so it's part of what makes our region so special is that everyone comes together for a common goal. So besides record breaking attendance, we had a record breaking number of applications this year. We had over 280 applications. As Ashok mentioned, our committee of 35 judges had an extremely tough decision to make and there were a lot of heated arguments. We could have had 40 plus companies up here. However, we have our final 10 that we're really excited to present to you today. And our focus was on picking companies that were fundable, scalable, and capable of creating a truly tremendous company going forward. I want to thank all of our sponsors. We couldn't have done this without our sponsors. And I particularly want to thank one of our new partners this year, the folks from Cox Business. Yeah, super good folks. Jared, Todd, Macy, Cam, who's here tonight, they were a great partner. They did their own event last year and we're all jumped in. Were ready to do it with us so we could do one event for the community, one big prize package for all the companies and just making it easier on the companies for one application. They've been great to work with, so huge props to them. You'll notice the professionalism that they brought by cutting both Victoria and me especially out of the video. So that was a good move. They figured there's an F of us. And so I like to thank our other sponsors too. The John G. Watson foundation has been with TCA and Quick Bits from the beginning. PwC, Procopio, they've been with the venture groups program for many, many years. And they're great sponsors. And it's more than just the money that they donate. I mean, they're an integral part of the community and the fabric and the infrastructure that makes it all work. But it's also about the money too, right? So we got a lot of money to give away and we couldn't do it without these sponsors, too. And Perkins Coie, our gold sponsor. And Qualcomm Ventures, they don't donate the venue our gold sponsors came in or I'm sorry, our silver sponsors are up on here. We got 75 grand to give away to the companies. The most we've ever given away. Yeah, super stoked about it. We're super proud. It's all going to the companies, which is where it should go. So we're super stoked on that. All right, so we're going to kick this thing off. We want to start with last year's winner, actually, to give us an update, the CEO of Trust and Will Cody Barbo to tell us a little bit about, you know, last year's event, what the impact it made for him, and then get caught up on where they are today and what they're doing so we can follow the success of that company as well, too. So, Cody, it is all yours, my man. Thank you. You got one. What's up? What's up, San Diego, how's everyone doing tonight? Good. You can hear me? I'll yell. All right, so Cody Barbo, founder and CEO of Trust and Mole. I got my team here in the audience too. Where are you guys at? I just want to give a shout out. Woo. We became a company because of quick pitch. So last year I was on this stage, I was terrified. I'm still terrified. But it was honestly one of the most incredible events because we took third place and the community got 100% behind us. We had investors from TCA come and approach us. We had Ryan Cooter from Techstars come and approach us. And it was the catalyst of an amazing last year. And it's actually to the week that we incorporated. So it's been an incredible ride. We've raised two rounds of capital. We have a team of eight in Downtown at Downtown Works. We've lined up partnerships with Fortune 100 companies. We have 7,000 users, which we'll get to in just a second. But I just wanted to show this amazing photo collage. We went through techstars. It's been an incredible year. So we launched in April with the last will and testament, which many of you probably still don't have. So if you need one, please talk to us after. But we're just getting started. We have gotten these seven through direct to consumer paid acquisition through Fortune 100 channel partners, big life insurance companies, some banks, and also through affiliate marketing. And we're not just doing wills, we have other products. We have a product called Guardian specifically for parents. It's the quickest and easiest way to point guardians for your kids. And as our name suggests, trust to Mole. We have a revocable trust. So if you need a trust, please reach out to us too. But what we've learned in the last year is that the industry isn't just about document generation. There is a massive transformation that's going to happen in estate planning. And we are positioning trustimal to be the modern category leader. So when you think of Wealthfront, when you think of betterment, you think of SoFi. Think of Trustimal as being the true modern trust banking platform in the next three to five years. And we're building that company here in San Diego. So I wanted to give the update today as a thank you to tca, as a thank you to San Diego Venture Group, and a thank you to the community. Because if you're an entrepreneur or if you're one of the terrified entrepreneurs about to pitch backstage, this is what this event can do for you. And the prize money does go a long way, so please show your support for the companies tonight. Continue to show your support for us, and we'll show the support back to you. Thank you. All right, we're getting closer. So what's happening tonight? So we're giving away 75 grand. First place winner gets 50,000 non dilutive capital. Second, ten grand, third five. And then we're going to do something with all of you where we give away ten grand to whoever you, the audience decide should be the winner. Think of it as you've got 25 to 50 grand, and if you were going to invest that money in one company, who would you put it in? And everybody's got different risk tolerance levels and that's fine. But at the end, we'll do something a little funky and hopefully we can get to a decision and we'll give somebody 10 grand. It could be one of the three companies that's winning. It could be somebody else. That's up to you all. So we'll get there. Neal here. And we're backstage where the energy is buzzing. There was a lot going on in the green rooms. We have one filled with the 10 finalists and another with the judges. And everyone is electric over that intro. So let's hear from part of School Rap now. And then I get to sit down with Cody Barbo, one of last year's winners. We are here with School of Rap. That's right. Half of it, half of it. Miguel Beehart in the house. My man Ashok Kamal is on stage right now introducing somebody. That's so awesome. You guys did phenomenal out there. Thank you. So fun. We're in stitches back here. Awesome, awesome. It was a great time. Great crowd. Incredible turnout this year. Yeah, totally packed. And you had some live music this year alongside you. Yeah, that was really cool. We had our buddy, Jonathan Ciarri, who's got this incredible folding guitar, and he was a finalist in, I think, one of you guys competitions prior. So, yeah, we decided to include him in the set. It was really awesome. He's another handsome guy with a bald chrome dome. So that was a nice look. Part of the crew. Yeah. Got to showcase his product. I believe in his product. It's cool. I love guitars myself, so it's pretty cool stuff. Yeah, so that was fun, you know, add a little dynamic element to it. Yep. Well, you guys have been hitting the pitch night scene, the pitch night circuit this year. It's true. What do you get amped up about? You know, I mean, obviously your own performance, but the whole night, like what are you excited about? It's a lot of fun for me to see all these companies. I mean, I've seen some of these companies a couple times now, you know, new ones. Doo wop, of course. Yeah. She's very cool, and I love that she's still here. She's got a lot of spunk, and I like that she's rapping. She's part of the red jacket mafia, too. She jacked you. If you're a red Jacket tonight. Yep, she will be. Neil's a real team player, you know, Went well with her shoes, and he said, you can rock it. You can rock it. So, yeah, definitely a few of these companies and I don't know, it's always really cool to see what people are trying to do. I mean, they're all. Everyone is out here trying to solve so many problems, and you see time and time again. Yeah, I have that problem. And, you know, it's this. It's incredible effort by everyone to. We're in an amazing time, you know, and just. You guys are so lucky, and I'm lucky to be here too, to watch these ideas go by, be a part of it, you know, absorb where the current of humanity is going. Yeah, right. I mean, the entrepreneurship. Put yourself out there. Exactly. You guys are doing that in your own performance just the same. Absolutely. And so are the entrepreneurs. I mean, it's. It's really inspiring. For sure. Yeah, exactly. And as you can probably guess, I'm an entrepreneur many times over myself, aside from just music. So I'm attracted to this kind of stuff, and I come to these events because it's me. We'll get you out there pitching on the other side. There you go. Sometime soon. Yeah. Well, funny enough, I'm gonna mention this. Plug my business while I'm here. I stumbled into a business that's actually taken off so much that I do it as my main thing now. It is a kids family health service. We take head lice off of people. Interesting. Okay. Comb head lice out of hair, Organic lice guru. It's actually big. It's like a $5 billion industry, the lice removal business. And yeah, there's some companies doing quite a few millions out there. In fact, I think there's a company that TCA may have been involved with. There's like a national company. It's really a burgeoning industry. So, yeah, my wife is a trained acupuncturist. I was marketing in software, and we put this thing together, and it's really just exploded. So it's called Organic Lice Guru. It's really cool. Check it out. Never thought I would be there. I'm a bald guy. I've never had lice in my life. And now it's just totally taken. It's one of those things where you see these things and you imagine, how would everyone, anyone ever get into this business? And then you find this need, someone starts handing you money and you say, I guess I'm in this business now. Yeah. Well, congratulations. It's great. Thank you. It's nice to be taking care of people. Yeah, for sure. Well, Neil, thanks so much for being part of this whole night. Absolutely. It's a huge pleasure. Yeah. Everybody, check out theschoolofrap.com. don't forget the the. And yeah, we got that floativation, that tech hop for you. An amazing night. It's great to be here, Neil. Thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. Take care. Cody Barbo. Hey, what's going on, Neil? Thanks for stopping in. Thanks for having me, man. Coming in hot from Oakland, NonStop traveling. Oakland Techstars FounderCon straight to quick Pitch San Diego. Amazing. And tell us what you're doing here at Quick Pitch this year. Yeah. So we were one of the top 10 finalists at Quick Pitch last year. Ended up taking third place. And we were here one year later to give a quick company update, but also to show a shout out to the community. I mean, like, we wouldn't be where we're at today if it wasn't for tca, stvg, all the amazing people, yourself included, in San Diego and to continue to have that support, but to know that that support's available and out there for every other founder. That's why we're here. Oh, for sure. We love you here. We love trust and. Well, thanks, man. Teams at eight people now, just like a few guys working out of a coworking space last year. And we're really proud of the people that we have on our team and the investors that we brought on. That's awesome. Well, I'm a proud investor myself, so I'm so stoked to see you guys Keep going. Yeah. Thanks for stopping by. My pleasure. So we set up our backstage studio in the judges green room. But our finalists can't help but pop their head in and say hello. So let's meet one now. Here we are live backstage at Quick Pitch San Diego. And we are here with Shiv of Norlace. Excited to be here. Thanks for being here, man. We're excited to have you. Can't wait to see your pitch. So we're doing a little pre pitch chat here. I know what's going through your mind right now. Pretty anxious, but also super excited. So we'll see how this goes. Fingers are crossed. What did you do to prep? Did you have a coach? Do you practice by yourself in a mirror? Take us through it. Had a coach, had multiple coaches and went through a bunch of practice and iterations. But the pitch has changed a lot. So do some rewriting. Yeah, just talk to myself in the mirror a lot. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, we're going to hear the pitch obviously, but give us a little bit what's going on at the company lately. Yeah, so we have a medical device that treats chronic nerve pain non invasively. So what's exciting about that is it gets people off of opioids. And we're 12 months away from our FDA approval. We're weeks away from our letter of allowance for our patent. And so that's been something I've been waiting for for seven years. So super excited. And I'm raising a two million dollar series A right now to get us to FDA approval. Okay. So a pitch tonight, not a big deal. Waiting for that letter. Now that, now that's, that's something to wait for. Yeah, that's a huge deal. Really call with the patent examiner and she like let go of all of the prior art she was using to like undermine our claims and our claims got broader, which is ridiculous. Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. And you have a great team behind you as well. And you also have some people in the community like Shane Scaff. Shout out to Shane. Big supporter. My investors and my team, I call them business savvy missionaries. Yeah, they're so committed to our cause of disrupting chronic nerve pain. And all of them are personally affected or have a family member, you know, that is affected. And so because of that, we are where we are today. Just like blind faith and believe in our costs. That's awesome. We're so excited for you. Good luck tonight and thanks for luck. Thank you. So while the intros are kicking off on stage, I've been backstage chatting with the judges right before they get called up. Listen in to my quick convos with this esteemed panel of investors. We are backstage with the judges. We're so happy to be here. Steve, thanks for joining us. Oh, so excited. Steve Beck from Sara Ventures, give us a little bit of your intro. Yeah, well, I am unlike most of the people you'll meet tonight in this event, I'm not a serial entrepreneur. I'm A serial lucky guy. So I've just had a lot of good fortune in life and have been able to parlay it into wonderful experiences like this. That's awesome. Well, thanks for being involved here tonight. Tell us, what are you excited about for the quick pitch? You know, I am first of all excited about writing checks. I have a fundamental. And we actually invest money and we're looking for great deals and we've been finding some excellent value in the San Diego area. Our theory is kind of different than the Silicon Valley, which I was in for 20 years as a VC. We're kind of an early and early out type of philosophy. So we like really smart ip great entrepreneurs, obviously a decent addressable market, but people that give us fair pricing and are realistic about an exit value. That's awesome. And that is. We find a lot of people that understand that down here. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, it's a. It's a little bit different world. It doesn't. It's not just the SaaS world and big hits, you know, we like to build businesses here. No. Some guy in the Bay Area might have an ice cream app. You know, 10 million pre money. They haven't coded anything yet, but they have a deck. It's a great idea. Totally, totally. Well, you're going to see ten great companies tonight. Yeah. We're excited to hear from you afterwards as well. Thank you very much. Yeah, I look forward to seeing what the night has to offer. Great. Thanks so much. Thanks, Steve. So I'm Carlos Cochrane. I'm with Qualcomm Ventures. So happy to host you guys here at Qualcomm for the event. Yeah, thanks for having us. And you know, we've been investing in entrepreneurs around the globe for almost, what is it, almost 20 years now, since 2000. And we have presence a bunch of regions. China, India, Brazil, Europe, and of course us. That's great. This year we funded two companies here in the San Diego area. So super excited about backing those entrepreneurs. Give them a shout out. Who'd you back? We backed a company called Airspace Technologies out of Carlsbad. Cool. Right during the logistics space. Yep. And I am actually trying to remember what's the second company? Attack iq. Yeah, there you go. Attack IQ in the security space. But this was actually a little earlier. We also actually backed. Now I remember Guru. Guru. Oh yeah. Yes. Which is developing technologies for basically museums and venues. Super exciting. Yeah, that's great. And you're recently back from somewhere else. Yes, exactly. That's right. So I've been back and forth A number of times. I'm originally from Brazil, but it's my third time in the US So moved up here early this year. That's great. And super excited to be here. Welcome back. What's the San Diego scene like? Does it feel different coming back after being elsewhere? Yeah, it's certainly developing. I wasn't in San Diego prior. Right. But, you know, we definitely see, like I said, you know, backing companies here and would love to see more and be able to back more. So certainly exciting to see backing. We see this movement towards, you know, Silicon Valley, maybe A, getting expensive, B, you know, maybe other countries and other regions really develop. So it's super exciting. Yeah. Well, we're gonna have 10 companies to check out tonight. Oh, let's see it. What are you excited about the most? First of all, the variety. Quite a bit of variety. Right. You have biotech companies. You have, you know, B2B companies. Just some marketplaces. Right. So. So, so that's one. Some of them are pretty deep technologies and some of them basically trying to leverage an opportunity just using, you know, software and marketplace. So let's hear the pitches. Let's see who does the best. That's great. Thanks, Carlos. Thank you, guys. And we're really lucky to have Kim in from Cox Enterprises. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. Give us a quick little intro. Yeah. So I work on Cox's corporate strategy and development team in Atlanta. Our team actually focuses on Cox's overall diversification strategy. We're mostly focused on clean tech and healthcare initially, but open to other white spaces. And then I also lead the Atlanta venture ecosystem partners who are actually involved with for accelerators in Atlanta. Oh, wow, that's great. Yeah. Well, excited to have you out here. Compare the ecosystems a little bit. Really excited about it. Share the word about San Diego. What have you heard about San Diego from afar? I'm curious. Yeah. So I've actually been talking to Jared from Cox Business, and he's been telling me all about the San Diego area, and there's a lot of innovation going on here. I think that I'm really excited to be here and see these companies to swap notes on what's going on in the different venture ecosystems. That's great. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming out. Appreciate it, Kim. Thanks, Andy. Thanks so much for being here with us. Give us a quick little intro. Sure. So I'm Andy Wilson. I've been an entrepreneur and tech investor for 20 years, ran some companies, invested a bunch, and actually now run something called the alliance for Southern California Innovation. Which is a not for profit focused on really turning research out of universities and institutes into great startups. So really very closely collaborating with our academic centers in Southern California. That's great. And it's all from la, Orange County, San Diego. It's a big footprint. Yeah, it's a lot of driving. Yeah, definitely. San Diego is my favorite, by the way. I should say that. Like to hear that. Yeah. How often are you down here and curious what your view is of San Diego being from la? Yeah. So I fallen in love with San Diego. First of all, the ecosystem here is so friendly. There's a lot of collaboration. Certainly the life sciences stuff is epic. As a tech guy, I'm learning a lot about that part of the ecosystem. But there is a lot of great organizations. You know, think about techos, Angels, San Diego Venture Group. There's the Innovation Council event tomorrow. Yeah, big one. Lots of great opportunities for people to work together. Highly collaborative. It's fun to come down here. I feel the energy and obviously great research universities here as well. And so it's a highlight of my trip. That's great. Well, we're excited to be able to collaborate between all the other ecosystems here in town. I think from a San Diego perspective, we see ourselves as a separate hub, but we work just as well with la, the LA ecosystem. So thanks for helping us unify that all. Yeah, it's fun to do it and look forward to more visits. Awesome. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much, Jen, for being here. Want to give us a quick little intro? Yep. My name is Jennifer Kircher. I'm president and General Counsel of Section 32, which is a tech life science venture fund based in San Diego. We also have an office up in the east or in the South Bay up near San Francisco. And we're excited to be here, see what opportunities these companies are going to bring to the market. Awesome. Well, we're excited to have you here. We love having your presence here in town too. Section 32, I think, recently made a San Diego investment as well. I think since you've been here. You were here in June, I think. Was it since then? Yes, that is correct. That's great. So we loved seeing that. What else are you seeing about San Diego as you come through here? Yeah, I'm really excited about how the market's growing. We're seeing a lot of entrepreneurs who have great ideas, a really good community to be part of so far. And I'm being from Northern California, I'm getting my feet wet still in San Diego, but We're excited to continue to engage in this ecosystem. Awesome. We got plenty of beaches for you to get your feet wet, that's for sure too. Yes, definitely. And what about tonight? What are you excited about with 10 companies? A big night. Yeah. I'm interested to hear about a lot of the folks that are in the healthcare space. In particular, we've seen some potential competitors of theirs so are interested in seeing what their alternative ideas and approaches are. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for being here. Thank you. Thanks, Jen. And here we are backstage at Quick Pitch 2018 with Susie, one of the judges. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. How was the whole night for you? Oh, it's awesome. It's really inspiring to be among entrepreneurs among the community. And just to have the sold out showing with San Diego Venture Group and TCA and Cox all together is really the spirit of San Diego. It is, right? Collaboration, that's what we do. It's pretty cool to see. I mean you probably spend most your day in the biotech world, but pretty cool to see biotech and tech and ag tech and all these others pitching right up alongside each other. Pretty fun, right? Yes, it's a ton of fun and it's nice to get out of your typical industry day to day and see all the innovation that's happening in the periphery for us. Yeah. I'm curious to see specifically in the biotech, are you seeing more the software come into that kind of world? Oh, definitely. There's definitely a convergence between tech and biotech and on the investor side too, as you see Google going into healthcare and lots of tech investors going into the biotech space. So I think there is a significant convergence happening. That's really cool. Give us a little bit piece of what you do by day. I know you great judge by night but you know you're super involved in the biotech scene here. Yeah, no, thanks very much. So I run an incubator locally called Biolab San Diego which is a co working space for early stage life science companies. We have about 35 companies. We just announced this week that we expanded to have another 27,000 square feet of office space to enable digital health and those kind of companies that are converging. Thank you. So it's exciting. What part of town are you guys in? We're in utc. Okay. So near the cool new mall and great food options. So definitely check us out on the web. It's Biolabs IO. Really cool. Well, thanks Susie. Appreciate it. Thanks for having us. Thanks. Bye. Bye. So now the judges are heading on stage. I'll take you back to the front of the house with Victoria, Mike to bring out the finalists. The audio you're going to hear is going to be the founder's pitch, then the judges asking questions, and then my interview with the finalists immediately after they come off stage for some reactions. Mike, Victoria, take it away. It's time to hear from the company. So first up is beck Bamberger with one pitch, which is a SaaS for PR professionals. Beck. Hi, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. This is Beck, I'm Jared, and we're the team that created One Pitch. I want you to think of your inboxes for a second. You guys are busy people. I'm sure you get dozens of unsolicited pitches every week. Now, imagine if you were a journalist times your inbox of unsolicited story pitches by at least 10. Journalists receive hundreds of story pitches a day, and roughly 1 to 2% of them are actually relevant to what they write about. Yet 90% of journalists want to receive story pitches via email from publicists who are the same group that feed them nearly all of their story ideas. And what about those publicists? Well, they don't actually know what journalists are looking to write about, so they'll spend up to 50% of their time emailing journalists, hoping that one or two of them get back to them with an interest to write about one of their clients. This is completely inefficient and frustrating. I would know. I've owned a PR agency for the last 10 years, and this is a problem that every PR agency deals with. Up until now, there has not been a solution that solves the pain of pitching for journalists and publicists, despite the PR industry software alone exceeding $3 billion annually every year. This is why we built One Pitch. One Pitch is a SaaS platform which uses algorithms and machine learning to connect journalists with the most relevant industry sources, brands, and stories. And here's how it works. Publicists upload their pitch and they categorize it based on the same writing interests that journalists subscribe to. Next, our team and our technology match each pitch with the most ideal journalists. Finally, they receive one daily email with pitches that match all of the writing interests they've subscribed to, and they respond directly to pursue the source or story. We have over 1200 users since our launch a year ago, and media outlets are using One Pitch like the New York Times, Forbes, and Wall Street Journal. And the best part is, our users are obsessed. We have the right team in place and one Pitch is on its way to helping publicists and journalists end bad pitches and start great stories. Thank you, Susie. Andy. Susie. Go, Susie. Go ahead, Andy. How do you know that it's working? And do you measure the conversion of content into published articles? What do the metrics look like? Oh, yes. So the real play of this entire platform is it's a data company. We are tracking every single thing that is happening on this platform. So when we get a story inquiry or we get someone uploading a pitch, we track and see who responds to that pitch. We then track, did that pitch get actually placed somewhere? Did it actually get published? And so forth. So eventually we'll be able to tell the publicist, hey, publicist, this is what journalists are looking for. This is what they're responding to. This is what's actually getting out in the media. So really, it's a robust data play. All right, my question is, what does this money would do to help you take your company to the next level? Oh, yeah, Some of our team's out here, so they're like, yeah, we can tell you all about this. You want to take that chair? Sure. We're actually going to be using the money to hire more team members. We're a small team of four right now. And the other remainder of the money would go to advertising for our full launch, which will be happening hopefully mid year next year. Can you talk a little bit about how you're actually pushing your product out to the publicist? Yes, they are. And I would know, being in the space, it is desperate for something like this. There are so many tools and widgets and reporting and things that are out there on the marketplace. But when we just send somebody a tweet or we send them an email, that's just a cold pitch. Pretty much. The conversion is quick, it's almost immediate. So there's just this desperate want and desire to this. Eventually we're gonna be at the point where we could say, hey, publicist, you can pay for this monthly service. And we guarantee in a month that you will get journalists to respond to you. If that is to the point where we get this, that is like, game over for this industry. There's nothing like that. How are you using AI to improve your platform? So what we actually do is we've built out an algorithm which reads through a relevance score of keywords. And essentially what that does is it matches it up with the folks who have those subscriptions in place. And based on a certain relevant score, we recommend those pitches to them. And in terms of business Models nobody has in terms of business models. So SaaS platform, basically, who's paying for you and what other sources of revenues do you see? Yes. So the publicists are the ones that pay for this. So that $3 billion that we mentioned in terms of the PR software industry is all paid by publicists. Journalists are barely making what they can make, so they are never paying for anything. Journalists are already well conditioned or, excuse me, publicists are already well conditioned to be paying for these type of softwares and opportunities. So that is when we would be pitching it to or pitching it to for them to use. And then eventually they'd be having an option just kind of like your Netflix or any other service. Here's a basic. Here's more of a premium and here's like an enterprise level. Play. Play. All right, next up. Thank you guys very much. Thank you, everybody. Hey. And we are back backstage at Quick PITCH San Diego, October 24th. So pumped. And we had our first pitch called one pitch. Just finish. Thanks, guys. How did it go? How are you feeling? Feeling pumped. I feel like we. We did real well, set the bar and we're very confident with our pitch and very confident with the product that we built. That's awesome. I don't know if we can get any more meta or. We're pitching about pitching on top of pitching. It's a beautiful thing. Yeah, it's kind of funny, isn't it? And it's definitely something that we're pretty good at, needless to say. Yeah, for sure. Could you feel the energy while you're out on stage? Yeah, you know, and I was. It's funny. I was a little bit nervous going into it, and as soon as I got up there, I like, all my nerves went away and I like, just got like this like surge of energy and excitement and I was just so excited to tell everybody about who we are and what we're doing. That's awesome. Well, we're so stoked to have you guys here. Yeah. Hey, Neil Beck from One Pitch. Neil, what's up? Thanks so much for being here. How are you feeling immediately after being on stage? So good. It's just fun. This is our town. This is such a great community. And you can feel the support of that. Even just hearing the other competition, the other people pitching, I mean, we're all just here to make San Diego proud and want to showcase the great ideas and concepts and the variety of them coming out of San Diego. It's such a great place to be. How did it feel being first one up what was that like? Yeah, we didn't really like that, to tell you the truth. But that's okay. You know, you gotta set the bar. Exactly. Yeah. Love it. Really? Cool. Well, you've been a part of the quick pitch competition for a bit. I have been. And now you're on the other side. I am. It's pretty fun. It is fun. How was it going into it? How about preparing and everything? Any different than what you do? Yes. Pitching us wise, because when you do panels or you're doing judging, you don't prepare anything. You just get up there and hopefully say some smart things. This is because of the tightness of the time. Two minutes. It's excruciatingly compact. And with doing it with someone else, you really need to make sure you are solid. So we've probably done this a hundred times now. Jer's, like, shaking his head and, okay, maybe 200. And that's what you have to do if you want to stick the landing. And I think we made it in one second, and it was solid. Yeah. You guys nailed it. Well, congratulations again. Your pitch is complete. Thank you, Neil. Enjoy the rest of the night. Thanks. Appreciate it. Now we can relax. Yeah. There you go. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Neil. So next up, we have Cheyenne Wright with left, which is a to be SaaS platform for group travel organizations. Hi, everyone. My name is Cheyenne Wright, and I'm the CEO and founder of Left, and we are a B2B software for group travel organizations. Now, we chose Group Travel because growing up, my family couldn't afford to. So I went on six volunteer trips with my church, school, and nonprofits. And what I learned was that travel was powerful, that it transforms our worldviews, and that it makes us better people. But as I went on to get my international business degree and work at a software company in San Francisco, I realized that I was walking around developing countries with nothing more than paper packets. This was confusing to me because in the last five years, group travel has grown 12%, totaling to over 72 million people every year, with one $1.6 trillion in spending. Yet these organizations still don't have software made just for them. So they still use printed packets, email, and Excel to manage complex logistics and keep their travelers safe. So we created the solution, and we just completed our beta with six paying clients. Since then, we've not only tripled our revenue, but we're on track for $400k in revenue this year. And our clients love us because we've built the only software and database that can help them manage their entire life cycle in one place. So group travel coordinators can manage several trips, travelers, analytics locations, and design all in one place. So in our beta, we not only saved our clients time, but also money. And we have a mobile app which essentially bridges the gap between coordinator and travelers. And as a traveler, you can even use all six of our tools anytime, any place with offline capabilities. So the vision, though, is that we've already built more than 30 integrations, we're working on machine learning, and most importantly, we are going to reach that $1.5 billion total addressable market. But we believe in the power of travel, and we invite you all to build a safer and smarter future as we unleash the power of international education. Thank you. Thank you. Great judges. What questions do we have? What are the potential barriers to entry for other competitors? Potential barriers to entry. So actually we have a few. So the first is that we do have an automated onboarding process. So we do have a document reader that can upload any documents in 24 hours, which is the fastest out of any competitors. And the second is those 30 integrations. One. So I'm trying to think. So not only do we just replace one thing, we are replacing the entire travel lifecycle. And when they use our database, there's a really low incentive to just pick up all your data and move to something new. And unlike other competitors, we aren't just focusing on a web app, a database, or a mobile app. We've built all three. Yeah. On that note, I noticed that there's a few people have tried to solve this problem previously. Travel Tech raised 8 million recently in a pivot. Why are you going to be able to beat incumbents like that? So we are actually unique compared to other travel tech companies because one, we're not just focusing on one market segment. So our largest client, potential client is the Zynga headquarters, a huge business client, but we also are serving small churches and high schools. And that's because we're not isolating ourselves as a travel app, but actually a workflow software. And that is one, a defining thing. And the other, like I said, is that we're not just focusing on alleviating one step in the life cycle, but the entire life cycle. So there's really low incentive to move to something else when it's actually fixing everything step for you and when it's also keeping the traveler and the coordinator in mind. Once again, unlike our competitors, how are you marketing to your target audience or to your target customers? Yeah. So fun fact, up until now, we've actually put $0 into sales and marketing, and it's all been cold email and cold calls or through my personal circle. Moving forward, we're focusing on extremely strategic content based off of our coordinators within our customer segments. And we're using LinkedIn as a really pivotal platform for us because they self identify themselves as our potential clients based off of their job title. What's the revenue model? We have a monthly subscription of $200 a month and a user fee based off of your group size. All right, thank you. Great. Thank you. My name is Cheyenne Wright. I'm the CEO and founder of Left, and we're a B2B software for group travel organizations based out of Costa Mesa, California. All right, it's Costa Mesa South OC Representin'. Yep. Thanks for making the trip. Definitely. It's really fun, like, environment here in San Diego. Love it. Well, come down anytime. Yeah. You just came off stage. You just pitched. Give us some hot takes. How you feeling? Oh, I mean, I think people are always more nervous than they actually. They always look less nervous than they actually are. For example, like, I always memorize my entire pitch, so sometimes I'll come off stage and, like, not even remember the entire thing. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just for the moment. So I was very nervous. Got it. I was very nervous coming off. I had to go into the other room for a sec, take a few moments. Took a bit of time to get in, but it went well. Our scores were good. Awesome. So people are watching the scores already. Yeah. So there's, like, been three companies, and we're leading in the push. Oh, this is awesome. Actually, I shouldn't say them. It's fine. This is gonna go right in. Right into the podcast. Right in there. Tell us a little about the prep work. What went into? Obviously memorizing the pitch, but did it change up a lot? Did you use some coaching? Like, what'd you do? Well, so Quick Pitch assigns you two coaches, which was awesome. One of them is one of our investors, so it was great because she already knew a lot about our company. And the kind of terrible thing about Quick Pitch is you have to is, like, putting it down to two minutes, especially when you're like a tech company or a biotech company having to explain how you even do what you do, you know? But for us, we just kind of told our story and then woven all of our milestones in there as well, and some cool product shots. But yeah. Yeah. And so how did it feel actually being out there on stage? In front of everyone. Good. It's the biggest audience I've ever pitched in front of, actually. Awesome. So. And it's a little. Well, yeah, it's a little hard because you don't know where to focus your attention on. Judges. Audience. Yeah. And you don't have to look at the judges too, right? Yeah. Well, it's weird that they're all lined up like that because they're kind of leaning forward trying to look at you. But. But yeah. So the prep work was. I mean, I. Like I said, I always try to memorize my pitches, and that really helps. And then during. Just trying to get through it. Yeah. Well, you did it. You made it. Congratulations. I did. Thank you. And thanks so much for coming down from Orange County. I will listen to this podcast now. Great. The tacos and tech podcast sounds good. Find it. Cool. Thanks so much. Thank you. Nice to meet you. You too. Thanks. All right, please welcome next to the stage, the CEO of CB Therapeutics, Shirali Bhatt, which is a biosynthetic cannabinoid company. Hi, everyone. My name is Cher, and I'm the co founder and CEO of CB Therapeutics. At CB Therapeutics, we're unlocking the true potential of cannabinoids. Raise your hands if you've ever taken an opioid painkiller before in the audience. All right. You need to be careful with those because unintentionally, 38,000 people died last year in the United States alone because they unintentionally overdosed on opioid painkillers. It's interesting that we have other alternatives available, such as cbd, which is non psychoactive found in cannabis that has killed zero people that we're still not using. So, you know, there is a very interesting paradigm. Why isn't CBD widely available today? Well, the fact is, CBD is very expensive to grow and extract out of cannabis. And what we're doing is we're making cannabinoids outside of cannabis. So similar to what Genentech did 30 years ago for insulin, which is producing insulin without using any kind of pig or blood to extract it from, we're doing the same thing, but for cannabinoids. In essence, we have made yeast that eats sugar, just table sugar, and produces pure cannabinoids. And once this technology is scaled up, it's going to be 10 times cheaper and 24 times faster than anything plants can produce. The biggest problem for any biosynthesis company is getting a facility that costs tens of millions of dollars to scale up this Technology? Well, we just got one four months ago. A yeast biosynthesis company that has the exact equipment that we needed went into bankruptcy and we bought their facility. Our facility now on pennies on the dollar. We have a great team with expertise in bioengineering, cannabis and pharmaceuticals working on this. And in summary, CB Therapeutics is making pure cannabinoids that's 10 times cheaper using yeast. And we have LOIS for over $250 million. Thank you. Could you talk a little bit about your IP and any potential competitors you have besides plants? Absolutely. I believe San Diego is the leader in biosynthetic cannabinoids. We have three different companies that operate out of San Diego. Aside from ourselves, we have three patents pending on the current tech that we're working on and we're filing a few more in the upcoming future. So the current three that we have, we expect the patent approved in the next month. And have, have you completed any clinical trials in order to prove concept? We are not doing the pharmaceutical model yet. We're actually almost about to sign some paperwork with a company that will allow us to do clinical trials. Currently, the model is that we make these cannabinoids with the Lois that we have with these different companies. Some of them are multinational companies on two different stock exchanges with 40 million in revenue. So the idea is we would sell them our products and they would infuse it into whatever they make and sell it directly to the consumer. I'm curious about the regulatory challenges and how that affects distribution. So it sounds like you're basically allowing others to private label your product. Is that the model? Yes. So from the regulatory standpoint, anybody that's going to sell cannabinoids has to get a cannabinoid manufacturing and cultivation license from, from bmcr, Bureau of Medical Cannabis of California. So we're in process of doing that. It's going to take about another four and a half months to obtain that license. Secondly, we need to show them that the product that we make, we need to test every batch for quality and consistency purposes. As long as we do those two things, we're able to sell the product to another company that has a license and then we can sell them as well. So to make this clear, you do not have a state license right now? Not at the moment. We do not have one. And that's taking longer than you expect. So you cannot have a state license until you have your own facility. So for example, the other three competitors that are doing biosynthesis for them to be able to Sell their product. They can't outsource manufacturing. So first they need to get a facility and then you can apply for a license. So I think we're like two to three years ahead of anybody else because we've acquired the facility and now we're on track to get the license. Do you have any proof that you can produce this product and it meets? I mean, it's nice to have equipment, but what output and what testing have you done? Absolutely, yes. We've third party tested with many different labs, including the Scripps Institute. We regularly send the Scripps Institute samples that test and validate specifically because they have mass spec testing that we actually don't have in our lab. So it's very good data. You're giving out samples tonight? I'm having an after party. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, guys. And we are back and backstage at Quick pitch San Diego 2018. And we're here with Cherry. Thanks so much for being here. Well, thank you for having me here. Give us a quick little intro. So my name is Cher. I'm the co founder and CEO of CB Therapeutics. We make cannabinoids in yeast without using any plants. And our process is only five days. It's about 10 times cheaper than anything that would take with growing cannabis or hemp. That's awesome. Growing space. Pun intended. Thank you. So you just came off the stage. Tell us. Give us a hot take. How are you feeling? I'm feeling great. I think I had a great time doing the pitch. I think it's different for every competition and it's different for every audience and judges, but I love what I and I love going out and telling people what I do. So I had a great time. I'm still having a great time. Yeah, that comes across immediately. Tell us a little about the pre work that you did. You met with some coaches. Did you rewrite the pitch a lot? Did you memorize it? You know, I memorized the pitch. I met a couple coaches. They had really good feedback. Santosh Vadakin is one of the coaches I met and more so than I think anything is. You know, you know your business more than anybody else. So I believe that. And you know, somebody that meets you for 10, 15 minutes can only give you so much feedback. So you take what you can, but at the end of the day, it's your company, so you have to put it out as what you think is right. Yeah, that's a great, great feeling to have for sure. And so you're out there on the stage, you're looking at, you know, pretty good cross section of San Diego and the judges kind of to your side. What was going through your mind at all? What was going through my mind is, gee, I hope, I hope they don't think that cannabinoids are kind of crazy. I mean, you know, San Diego is somewhat of a conservative town compared to where I'm from, which is Oakland. So, you know, you do get, you know, people snickering and thinking that it's a joke or something like that. Anything that has to do with cannabinoids or people being like, hey, can I buy an eighth off you in the back alley or something? So we always get those kinds of jokes and things, but it's just part of the business. Yeah, I get that. From an industry perspective, I mean, what are you, what's your, what's your take on San Diego's kind of uptake to the whole cannabis business in general? I think San Diego is doing great. I think it's a little slower than what the Bay Area is in terms of accepting it and realizing that this is the future. I mean, you can from a consumer perspective or I mean, from the businesses. From a business and a consumer perspective, I mean, you look at painkillers, right? 40,000 people die in America every year because they unintentionally overdose on painkillers. I mean, that should not be happening in a civilized. The world's number one country with the best at technology and medicine. Why is there a policy by the government to outlaw stuff like this, which is completely harmless, but yet it helps with pain? So we have to look at ourselves and be like, you know, what are we really biased towards? Why are we biased towards cannabis? Something that won't kill you, but it'll help you with pain. So those are the kinds of things that I guess I think about. That's awesome. Well, we're excited to see where this industry kind of takes off. Excuse me, in San Diego, what's next for the company from here? So we've raised a lot of money recently. We were also in the latest batch of Y Combinator, and through Y Combinator, we were able to raise a lot more money than we expected. Secondly, being in the Bay Area and being in Silicon Valley, I think people are a lot more open and they realize the potential of cannabinoids more so than most other places. So we just acquired a 7,000 square foot facility near San Diego that's already pre built with all the equipment that we need. And in the next six months, we're commercializing and we should be on the shelf in six to nine months, so look out for us. That's awesome. Well, let's get together again and get you on the podcast in a few months. Thank you guys so much for having me on the show. Absolutely. Thanks for being here. My pleasure. Take care. Take care. Bye. So next we have Trom Pak with Lynx Bio. Hi, everyone, my name is Trom Pak. I'm the founder and CEO of Lynx Bio and we are personalizing drug treatment for individual cancer patients. This is Peter. Peter has a type of blood cancer called multiple myeloma. He's currently sitting in his physician's office discussing his treatment options. There's a lot. His doctor is explaining to him that many of these have similar efficacy rates. So it's tough to pick which one is going to work best for Peter at this stage in his disease. So he says, well, let's try one, see how it goes, and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, this is a dilemma that faces many cancer patients and their physicians today. It's unfortunately very hard to pick which treatment is going to work best for individual patients. So often, standard of care is still a trial and error process, particularly for breast cancer patients. On top of this, these drugs can be upwards of $600,000 per year for potentially ineffective treatments. That's why we developed our technology called Microcube. We use this to create little living mini models of patients cancer using their biopsy. So we can then test that with different drugs to assess how the patient's own cancer responds to those drugs and figure out which ones are going to be most effective for that individual patient before they go on treatment. We have about a three to four day turnaround time from receipt of biopsy, which is incredibly fast for us to enable the results giving the results back to the physician as as quickly as possible. We differentiate ourselves from our competitors by incorporating the environment around the cancer as well as the cancer itself. So in blood cancers, we finished our first clinical study in multiple myeloma patients where we actually had 100% correlation between our device test results and the same patient's clinical results. This was extremely exciting to us. So we are now in four clinical studies in multiple myeloma as well as acute myeloid leukemia. This was an incredibly multidisciplinary effort where this technology spun out of my PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. We're excited to be on this journey and we invite you to be with us to individualize treatment for cancer patients. Thank you very much. What discussions have you Had. And what's the reception been with physicians? That's a really good question. So we have collaborators at over 20 clinical sites across the country because physicians are ultimate end users and we absolutely need their buy in to make sure that this is adopted. So we're continuously growing that network. And this includes key opinion leaders as well as physicians at regional and community hospitals as well. So major institutions like MD Anderson. Sarah, do you perceive kind of a big data driven AI approach to analyzing DNA sequencing as competitive? It sounds like you're doing actually growing biology and running live tests. Yes, it seems like that would be very competitive and it seems like a very hot area. Can you comment on that? So we view them as very complementary. So they're looking at different pieces of the puzzle. You're correct that we look at the living cells and therefore their behavior response to different drugs. This is a different piece of the puzzle than looking at a patient's cancer genetics, which feeds downstream to how the cancer behaves in response to drugs. So we're actually collaborating with the genomics industry partner for one of our studies where they're paying us to run the study and expand into a new cancer type. So very complimentary. Can you talk about your regulatory pathway? Is this medical device or is it a test that you would do in your own CLIA lab? So this would be a test that we would do in our own CLIA lab, so regulated by CLIA laboratory standards. We are therefore coming out as a laboratory developed test, so not regulated by the fda. What would you use the money for from this competition if you won? Grow our team, make sure we can hit our milestones and keep going. Always use additional money to do that. How close are you to having a product that would be commercialized? So we will commercialize in 2020 after a couple of our clinical studies have been completed. So it'll be our first product in multiple myeloma and we'll quickly follow that up with a secondary product in acute myeloid leukemia. So just to drill in a little further on this partnership with the DNA analysis is that just so they can confirm their predictive results, is that what the partnership's for? So it's an interesting partnership because what I didn't touch upon is that these cancers, many of them are very genetically diverse. So it's difficult to actually interpret the results from genomics analysis. So these huge panels they run and some of these are characterized by certain mutations. So we're actually collaborating with them to get to a better prediction of clinical response. But it's really, to better understand the cancer and how it evolves in the future. So it's a very interesting type of collaboration. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. And we are back and backstage at Quick Pitch with Jerome from Link Biosciences. Yes. And you just got off stage. How are you feeling? Good. I'd like my beer now. You're seconds away. No, it's quite exhilarating. They kind of sprung this scoring system on us. Everyone was very surprised about that. So I think that made everybody feel a little bit different. But it's always great to get out there and just start talking about your company and then you get this unusual energy and high afterwards. So you're grabbing people at the right time. That's awesome. So take us through a little bit of the pre work that you did. You had some coaches, right? Did you rewrite the pitch a lot or were you pretty dead set on where you're headed? I don't think I reworked it that much. They had good feedback, but they. There's only so much that you can fit into two minutes and there's no way you can go into the technology very deeply and things like that. So I think they just tried to get me to focus on what we're doing and why we're doing it as opposed to how we're doing it. But, yeah, sometimes you just go out there and you have to let the words flow and see what you feel comfortable with. Yeah. Well, you did it. Here you are. Obviously you're done with your pitch, but even bigger, I think, for the community. You're a recent San Diego resident, right? You guys moved here from Wisconsin? Yes. Yes. What's that been like? What's it been like getting introduced to the San Diego ecosystem? It's been wonderful. People are very collaborative here and it's exactly what we. It's actually one of the reasons why we decided to move here instead of some of the other biotech hubs. We realized not only did we have a lot of connections out here, but we realized that the community is very welcoming and very collaborative. They want to help you. And that's exactly what we've experienced so far. And we've been able to significantly grow our team and actually get funding. So we're getting close to closing that out. And so we're on a roll. No one is complaining about the weather either. I mean, it seems like the one thing that people bring up all the time is the weather, because Madison gets kind of tough in the wintertime. But I think we miss a little bit of the cold because it's a little bit of a change of pace, but it's nice to go outside whenever and just be able to enjoy yourself. Well, you haven't had it yet. A few years, 3 degrees difference, you will feel cold here in San Diego. So don't worry. I've already started to complain that it's cold at night. I think we've already acclimated. I know we're already acclimating, just not the jackets. Yeah. Well, we love seeing your takeover Tuesday on the SD Life changing channel this week. We worked hard on that. We're actually kind of Instagram newbies, so we spent a good chunk of the morning just trying to figure out how to make sure we can upload everything. Oh, no, you did great. You told a great story. It was perfect. Good, good. Excited to have you guys here in town and excited to be here. Congratulations again on finishing Quick Pitch. Thank you. Thanks so much. And that wraps up part one of Quick Pitch 2018. Join us for part two. Coming short, it.
