San Diego Tech News - August 27, 2021

Welcome, everyone, to San Diego Tech News Weekly with Neil Bloom and Jonah Peake. Hey, Jonah, everybody.

Hey, how you doing?

We are so glad to have you here. This is our weekly new podcast that we do that also coincides with the clubhouse that we do every Friday, 12:30 Pacific, not Western time, as I may have said this week out of just sheer crackness. Long week, but we, you know, we didn't make a clubhouse this week, but we definitely want to record the news for you. So thanks for listening in. Jonah, how you doing?

I'm good. No, this is, this has been a really fun week, actually. Real quick update. Just got back from Wisconsin. We highlight of the week, paddle boarding underneath an eagle flying overhead. Just a fun fact. If you are looking at a bird in the sky and it looks like a plank of wood, solid across the sky as it's sort of soaring, that's an eagle. And then obviously head is. It was white there. But anyways, yeah, so we're back up, back early yesterday and we missed the clubhouse, but we're looking forward to tracking some news and jumping back in court in the show with you.

Yeah. Welcome back on the West Coast. Let's just jump right into our stories. We got some good ones this week, including our biggest company powerhouse, Qualcomm. Yeah, everyone knows Qualcomm for, you know, the smartphones that it's built, but man, it's diversifying, that's for sure. It's launching its first 5G and AI artificial intelligence platform targeting commercial drones. So they're taking the tech and they're putting in other things. You want to dive into this one?

Yeah, this one was fun. And actually we kind of talked about this a little bit ago, a few pods ago, but Qualcomm started on Mars with the Ingenuity helicopter. We're talking about how they had their chips on the helicopter, which is super cool, and that thing's floating around doing some test flights at the time. But it's kind of funny. Why not start with a challenge and go all the way to Mars with your AI and 5G platform with commercial drones? But anyways, I'm not really a drone. But they're unveiling some tech now to power flight on Earth. This platform is pretty cool. RB5, 5G platform. I have maybe some beef with the name. Maybe I don't understand it yet. I don't know what you think, Neil, but maybe Operation Digital Eagle could be cool. May on brand for what I was doing, Operation Swarm. I don't know if that's fun. Maybe scary but what do you think?

Yeah, definitely better than RB5. You know, like, I mean we could also think of what RB5, we could make up what we think that's, that means as well too. But real boring is what I think it is. And so I like your name better.

Digital. We'll go with the operation Digital Eagle. I'm sure they had an internal name. It was pretty cool. But what's really neat about this platform is it's actually enabling some, some pretty neat applications. Think like crop inspection May we don't we think about some of that in central California with a lot of, with these large fields. But maybe you're able to send some drones out and cruise over your field and just sort of observe what's going on. Wind turbine monitoring, I can imagine climbing every time to take a peek can be a bit of a challenge. Why not package delivery? I know that was something that has been talked about with Amazon, with Uber, with some other industries and I don't think it's far away. And then I think one that really makes a ton of sense is just mapping. We do see a lot of the cars come driving around Google Earth and so on. And maybe you're doing some with satellites, but there is some, some pretty cool applications with, with mapping as well. And they're actually doing a pretty cool thing with, with modal AI. You know, I don't know if you want to dive into that but you know they're adding some hardware components to this which is pretty neat.

Yeah. So modal AI is a Qualcomm spin out. So they were Qualcomm engineers, product managers working on, you know, taking Qualcomm chips and hardware and they decided to make a drone package out of it that could be plugged into pretty much all the things you talked about. And actually one of their first, I don't know if it was a pure client or customer or just more of a demo, but Uber, they together did, I believe Uber delivery of a McDonald's using drone. Um, you know, got some, a lot of press out of it and they realized, you know, we can make a bit of a white label product out of this where any company that needs delivery as a service or yeah, I guess deliver whatever a drone could do for you. They've pretty much built this, this platform for and so they're using modal AI as kind of the distribution channel for getting this whole new RB5, 5G platform out there. So kind of cool to see San Diego company Chad Sweet CEO, we've had him on the podcast and you know, it's pretty smart for them to diversify. We've seen Qualcomm do a lot of this in the past. In fact, you've seen Qualcomm Health was a spin out that actually was sold within the last few years. Also have seen Omnitrax was kind of the big one where they were putting their tech into trucks and it spun out into Omnitrax, which the founder of that is now the founder of platform science, which is also doing tech and trucks. So, yeah, I think it's great to see Qualcomm testing the water. Not testing the water, just putting their tech into other things besides just the smartphone. There's just so many More tech enabled, IoT enabled devices out there. And if they could talk to each other and now start coordinating through AI without even needing humans in the loop, like that's the next level. That's what we need. So powerful.

You know what I really like about this too is they kind of just don't release this platform that says, hey, we're out here to sort of power, power your drones. I hope you use it. It's kind of, they're sort of plugging in this hardware component to allow people to sort of tinker and play. And so maybe those applications that we listed earlier were just what they thought a great application for this would be. But I know real estate might be an interesting one if you're going to get some sort of full view of a building you're selling. That's maybe a bit larger is something that comes to mind. But I don't know, maybe there's some other things that we can actually do with these applications and maybe they'll let the entrepreneur community kind of take over and say, here's a drone, here's a platform, go make something cool. It's true.

Well, to that regard, we also need an update on Ingenuity on Mars. How's it doing? It's been there. How long has it been there? A few months now. I think it landed in May. What's it been up to?

Yeah, yeah, they've been up there, I think around, around then. They've actually done 12 flights, which is pretty cool. One mile in total flight. So over kind of over Mars. And one of the coolest things I think is they have graduated from a demonstration of, to an aerial scout. And that's a kind of a big deal because, you know, no longer are you saying, hey, look, we can fly up there now. It's actually scouting over. It looks like perseverance the rover. So they're, they're kind of a team, which is kind of sweet. So you've got a rover and a drone or a helicopter kind of working together on Mars. Pretty, pretty awesome stuff. So why not start with the hard, hard stuff? Send a drone to Mars and, and then work on Earth later.

So this leads us perfectly into our next story, because what's going on in Mars is going on in war zones here as well too, where your war fighter needs a scout as well, when there's zero communication links to satellite, wi fi, phone or anything like that. So SHIELD AI is building this tech here on Earth and They just raised $210 million for their drone AI technology purely used by the military right now. And you don't see a lot of unique unicorns that are defense related, but this is one of them, which kind of makes sense that San Diego would have one of those, those rare unicorns. So they're. They're now worth over a billion units. Unicorn status completed. Check mark. We need a sound for that. We need a little unicorn. Like.

Submit a sound on Twitter if you have one in mind. It's got to be maybe a little more magical, but I like that. We'll take that one. There's a little horse winning.

And so, so these guys have built a technology. They're not building hardware. To date, they had built software that is a. Enables drones to do some hardcore surveillance. We're talking like a drone inside a building that cannot communicate with anything else. So it is able to understand its surroundings. Scout up ahead for, you know, special warfare soldiers. Um, and this has been out there for like three years and they just been building and they're like under 200 people building this tech in mostly downtown San Diego, which is kind of cool. Um, this is, we're talking like load. They call this black environment. So low gps, there's nothing to. It needs to figure out its environment around it. Um, so founded by two brothers actually, Navy SEAL Brandon Tseng and his brother Ryan, previously at Qualcomm, who sold. He actually worked at a company, WE Power, who sold to Qualcomm. And Andrew Writer, who joined in from Draper Labs Robotics, built guidance systems there. So kind of a cool, cool teaming up of three different. Three very different environments coming together to build this out. And their whole goal is to help US Forces scout for threats, enter buildings, send back surveillance maps and photos. And they obviously are doing it because they are, they're booming. Johnny, you want to take us through some more of this, the details here?

Yeah, well, it's really cool because like, you know, if you think about it, I'm not, you know, a veteran, but you know, if you can send some technology in to scout the environment and bring back, you know, imaging, maps, kind of a layout and understanding of what's there, or hopefully you clear the environment then, you know, a lot of our troops are, our special forces can come, you know, kind of be a lot safer now. I'm sure there's plenty more people can speak to that with a little bit more, you know, detail. But you know, so what's really interesting is so they've, like you said, they've built this tech platform but they're now they're starting to expand and they're expanding through acquisition. So Heron Systems, they make software designed to power autonomous jets. So maybe a bit of a different type of vehicle or something that's maybe a little bit more powerful. They've acquired Martin UAV, makers of actually a pretty hardcore 125 pound drones launched from a vehicle. So you can imagine driving a large heavy vehicle or a truck into an environment and then launching a drone. And so now, you know, these, these sort of technologies are going to be getting smarter. And what's kind of cool is with the acquisitions of these two teams, they effectively doubled their, their staff. They went from nearly 200 to about 400. And again Neil, you said this, it was awesome. Based pretty much out of downtown San Diego. So super cool. I love seeing, you know, sort of downtown get the love and you know what they're doing is incredible. Welcome to the Unicorn Club.

Shield AI Yeah. And you love to see like defense happening in downtown. You don't typically think of that. You know, you think of it in other areas of San Diego. You think you need a lot of space and everything for the hardware, but they're making it happen just like biotech's coming to downtown. So you know, a lot of cool things happen in downtown. Cool to see the SHIELD team do really well there too. So congrats team. Um, we got some, some big, a whole bunch of updates coming in from San Diego incubators. So we want to make sure that if you've got an idea, don't know where to go to either find a co founder or take the idea and turn into a reality or you're maybe already working on it, but you can kind of take it to the next level with some expertise from people who've done it before. Whole bunch of incubators in San Diego, new and legacy that have got a bunch of application dates. So we want, we thought we'd be helpful to talk through some of them and just give you a resource to find them because we've got man over five or six here that all have application due dates within the next month or so. You want to actually I'll kick off the first one here. Founders Institute. Founders Institute is a global community really where they bring in mentors for a whole year worth of helping people think about what's it like to found something. So it's really early in your entrepreneurial journey is where Founders Institute wants to step in and help you. They've been in San Diego actually for a long time but lost a little bit of their local leadership I think two years ago maybe right before the pandemic. But a new team has stepped up, Ben Cote and Mike Sherbakov and they've relaunched it and so they are gearing up for a fall launch of the 2021 virtual or 2021 into 2022, the virtual founders Institute program which a number of people have gone. They've partner. My partner at Interlock Al met his eventual co founder Brian hall in the Founders Institute program. And that's actually a pretty typical story. People go in alone with an idea and meet their potential co founders. So the final admission deadline is September 19th and this is really like a pre seed startup accelerator. So the whole point is like early in your process, let's get you your idea, your idea validated and go from there.

Yes, it's cool. It kind of fills in one of the possibly missing gaps in San Diego. I'm sure there's others working in this space but kind of the most, most others kind of want a little bit of traction, maybe some revenue or an idea be possibly a co founder with you. But you know, not a lot of, not a lot of groups focus on sort of that like hey cool idea and then let's go from there. So I like that they're filling in that gap and, and that kind of leads into some of the others that, that we're coming up with here. But Connect all is coming up. They have a fall cohort 2021 and this is their fifth applications are open. They actually close in three days. So please get your application in if that meets your needs and a little bit more about them. They focus on low to moderate income, diverse founders from broad backgrounds. So you know they, they're going to hit kind of different types of founders. Founders that may not feel like they've gotten access to the resources that they maybe don't feel like they sort of fit the typical mold as it was previously produced. But Connect all is a great program for that and I highly recommend it. Met some pretty awesome founders through that program.

What's cool about this is that city of San Diego funded. So the city has stepped forward and said, hey, for a specific geographic area, the Promise Zone as they call it, we want to make a place to help business owners get a leg up and just have a chance at success. So super cool. I've been a mentor at the program before and I'm really thrilled that this continues moving forward. And I hear maybe that they're going to launch some others in some other geographic areas too, so fingers crossed. Christina Bibler, shout out to you to help make this happen. Alongside Connect. Applications are due August 30, so that's coming up. That's like Monday. So if you're listening to this today, get it in tomorrow or today. Next one EVO Nexus. We both have have some history with EVO Nexus. I was a. I was in the EVO nexus program from 2013 to 2015. My company portfolio went through it. That actually brought me to San Diego when we got in. I quit my rocket science job the next day and lived at Evo pretty much. And then Joni, you've got a background of being a managing program manager there, I believe, right?

Yeah, I did. I kind of got to see a little bit of the behind the scenes and then help make the connections kind of with founders and some of the mentors and some of the sort of teams that might benefit them. They sort of have kind of a bit of a rolling application process, but really they're focusing pretty heavily on this AI partnership with Qualcomm and then a little bit more heavily on MedTech too. But think of them as deep tech. So these are, in their words, really hard problems. Problems that you don't necessarily get worked through in sort of three months or six months like you'd see in other programs. And you know, you can kind of go through those, build those up over one to two years and really just get that foundation going again. Hard problems hardware IoT some fintech in some sense, if you're going through some pretty aggressive regulations, it's not always easy to solve these problems. And so that's what they focus on. Pretty cool. If your company fits that sort of description, they might be a good home for you.

They have gone all virtual, right? I believe it's an entirely virtual program now. Uh, and, and so before it used to be that they wanted to see a full team Working on it for kind of you to be qualified. They wanted you to come in and work every day alongside others, kind of take up space in a sense. They wanted to like see you working. Is that still the case now that it's virtual? Does it need, do you need to be a whole team working on this already or can you come in earlier?

They really wanted two full time people working on it. They didn't necessarily want kind of that early Founders Institute kind of idea phase. They wanted a little bit more sort of, let's just say baked. But they do actually still have some physical. So if you want to come network a little bit. I know Rory always loved to bring in investors to just kind of wander the space, give you a little practice on how to pitch. And so they've got some space, same location, out of utc. I think when you were there, it's a little bit more in the center of downtown.

They had both two campuses back then.

Two campuses, all right. I mean, man, we're shifting to this virtual world and in some cases it's a little tricky to kind of do some of these sort of in the lab. They did have lab space kind of working on some, some very, you know, specific IoT applications. But yeah, they're trying to, trying to move in and adjust with times. Pretty cool. So why don't you jump into the next one, Neil, we got Logic.

Yeah, Logic Boost Labs love these guys. They came, I think they started the program about a year, year and a half ago in San Diego. Jonathan Cogley, who was a successful SaaS founder of his own regards, sold a SaaS company and then moved to San Diego and said, I'm going to build kind of studio slash incubator to help SaaS founders, specifically people building, you know, software as a service companies. And they every quarter do a new cohort. So they are in a sense rolling as well. Every quarter they put together a new cohort of between two to four companies that they're going to sit with and help. I don't know how long it is for. It's more than that quarter that they give you help services with a very experienced team of mentors. But their application is due September 30th. I believe this is probably for the fall quarter. And they've been big supporters of Startup San Diego, which is super cool. So thank you guys for that. And Logic Boost Labs is the name of that incubator.

Check them out. One thing to add is they kind of have a couple different segments. They'll help you with sales, they'll Help with a vertical of tech, some investment, some mentoring so you can kind of in some ways piece together what your business needs and kind of use, kind of use their resources and their expertise to kind of plug that into kind of your business. But typically SaaS and like you said, pretty intimate cohort. Pretty awesome.

Cool. Well, I want to. I love this next one. Start Blue is a brand new blue tech incubator accelerator at ucsd, UC San Diego, Scripps Institute of Geography and the Radius School of Management. So while I believe they're still just kind of starting up where they're going to focus on helping, you know, bluetech startups get started, right now I know they're looking for mentors. So if you have any related experience, I don't think you have to have blue tech experience as in like ocean tech. I think just startup experience. They're looking for people from the community to come in, come on campus and help us create a whole new blue tech community here, which is awesome to see. And so that is they're looking for people to fill out this application by September 10th. So we'll have it in the show notes, the form to sign up if you're interested in being a mentor for this. So that's a great one. Next one. Oh, go ahead.

Oh, I was going to say Ben in the ocean. Not super helpful with Ocean Tech, but I do remember and I'm forgetting the name, we did lose an Ocean focus tech to the other coast. So we do need a little bit more resources for this type of technology, these types of startups to keep them in San Diego and keep them building here.

Yeah, absolutely. A global accelerator. Techstars is got applications open through October 6th. Ryan Cooter and now Caitlin Weggie, president of Techcos Angels. And both of those two are actually chair and vice chair of Startup San Diego, which is cool to see them together. They are the techstars Anywhere program leads. I think one's managing director and maybe one other one's program director. It was the first and only virtual accelerator for techstars, but now they wrote the book on that during COVID and they pretty much run an amazing program. I've invested in a number of companies who've come through that program like trust and will, like crafters. Missing one other one as well too, but they always, they're rooted in San Diego. North county is kind of like where they've worked from, but it's entirely virtual. So if you want to get in with a global accelerator that's probably funded billions of dollars worth of companies and have had tens of billions worth of exits for them. Like they have done this. They know how to run a three month accelerator really well and you get that network that comes with it for life as well too. So pretty, pretty powerful group to be.

Part of techstars and I love that they're sitting in San Diego because again, it's anywhere. Literally could be anywhere. Right. It doesn't have to be here. But Ryan's building the team. We've got Caitlin on the ground too. And so I love how it's built out of San Diego. I will tell you, one of my good friends is out of techstars Atlanta and then there's another going through the program now and they put these startups and these founders to work. They come out of these programs kind of really a bit more focused, dialed in and ready to go. Which is kind of why you're seeing some of these good opportunities with the sort of post techstars companies. Just one thing to think about, it's kind of, you know, after Founders Institute say once you're kind of ready for that next phase, I think that's when you kind of get your techstars anywhere coming into play. So you know, a bit more formed, a bit more ready to go and perhaps some revenue. But I think it just depends on the business.

Yeah. And they invest. Right. So they put in money and they can be, you know, they can follow on in future fund rounds too as well too. So think of them in that regard as well. But yeah, it is a rigorous program also Interlock Capital partner Al is a mentor there and he's been there for a number of years and he went through the techstars Microsoft program up in Seattle. So there's a lot of alum around here in San Diego. If you have interest in techstars you can reach out and ask to talk about what the program is. Another we got two more. Man, I love this. How many incubators accelerators that are here? We the plug is launching we the Incubator so so shout out Luis and Christina. This is awesome for you guys to do. Oh there's actually cohort two so they've already been up at this and they are an incubator accelerator that focuses on underserved community that's we the plug's all about and they're looking for their focus is have you applied to an accelerated incubator but you didn't get accepted or working on an idea but can't figure out next steps or even maybe you launched and you're still not getting traction that you need to scale that this is the place for you. So their application is due September 24th, and I believe this is virtual as well too. So I don't think it'll be rooted in any one specific place.

This is pretty rigorous too. So, you know, check that out. We the plug they are doing. We the accelerator looks like a great program and I love what they're doing, kind of filling in some of these gaps too, with folks that maybe thought they were heading the right direction. Tried to get into an accelerator incubator, but maybe incubator, but didn't quite get, you know, the results they're looking for. I love how they're filling in the gaps here and supporting, you know, all founders because, you know, maybe that's a tough environment. You know, there's a very specific type of founder that's that the traditional accelerators and incubators are looking for. And that doesn't mean that they're not solid businesses. It's just a sort of framework or what they've seen work well in the past. And so these guys are doing. Doing some awesome stuff to sort of, you know, fill the gaps in a little bit.

Bit, yeah. And lastly, we've got the Tory Projects New Inc. Boot camp that they're launching. It's a little bit different. Boot Camp focused on stakeholder capitalism. And this is for, you know, kind of another niche, I would say, which is great to see to help entrepreneurs and use their business as a force for good. So kind of an impact focus with this. I don't think it's not necessarily like about being a triple bottom line or a B corp, but that intention of building capitalism for good. So they've got an early discount rate that is holding through August 31st, so this Tuesday, I believe. But look up toryproject.org bootcamp. We didn't give any of the websites out loud, but look in the show notes for this episode. Look on the blog on Fresh Brew Tech for this episode, and you'll find the links to all of these. Did you want to say something more about Toy Project, sir?

I'll just. I'll just add. Search for their names and most of these are pretty prominent. I think the last thing to add for Tory Project is, you know, they're just saying, hey, you can start a business, but you don't have to just start a business. You can do. You can add some other value to what you're building and kind of add some positive back into the world in some sense. It doesn't always have to be just purely about the business. So cool to see kind of those types of focuses coming up. Just like the adventure.

Yeah. All right, we got one last story, one last big story and then we've got a bunch of little funding acquisition news. This is a good episode. This is deep. I love this. This last story here is we love to talk like civic tech. I've noticed that between the two of us, we love to see kind of citywide focus or county wide focused tech applications. And this one's about San Diego, the city of San Diego and county. I think launching Pure Water. So Pure Water is the largest infrastructure project in San Diego city history. Is all about recycling sewage to turn it into municipal water. This is a really big deal and it was actually launched three years ago. So it's been been around. But they've gotten some more funding for it. They've passed through some lawsuits which man, you can imagine there's so many related infrastructure obviously slowed it down. But another piece around, you know, NIMBY versus yimby, if you've heard of those phrases before, not in my backyard. And yes, in my backyard. And then it really got a bad rap because of this terrible branding. They didn't do this. But the opposition opposed it by calling it toilets. A tap, which has really haunted the reusable water industry for like 20, 30 years. That's, you know, they try to re. Try to call it showers. Showers to flowers, you know, is one thing. But toilet to tap is. It's tough to think about the drinking water kind of out of your house being something you flushed. But. Well, that's where water, all waters come from. That.

Yeah. I mean, and I think we forget that animals are also in nature. And let's not forget the fish there. But I mean, we're not just sending the water out of our house and right back into the tap. There's a couple major steps before getting there. But before we get to those steps, do you want to give us a couple more details on kind of the next two pieces of where we are with the project?

Yeah. So the completion of the project plan is in 2025. And so by then we producing 34 million gallons of potable water per day. Um, by 2035, we'll be producing another 53 million gallons per day. Yeah, huge. I gotta imagine. I wish we had the stats on him for how much like you and me, you know, use per day to scale it up. But anyway, I think, I think a.

Typical toilet flush is around a gallon. Like believe it or not, it's kind of a lot of water, if you really think about it. And look at kind of the regular flow showerheads, a lot of times, times if you look at them, it's, you know, it could be like a gallon a minute, could be more. So it's a lot more water than you might realize.

Yeah. And I mean, most of California right now is in, like, severe drought. We've been lucky enough to San Diego specifically. We're not entirely beholden to purely the Sierras, which is really what the problem is. That wasn't a lot of snowfall this year. We do get a good amount from the Colorado river, But still, like 85% of our water is imported here in San Diego, which makes us super dependent. And so this project's going to bring us down to under 50%, which, to be honest, I thought this would have dropped us to zero. Like, this is what, almost 90 million gallons a day. That's still only going to be 50% of the water. We're still going to be importing more, which is crazy.

Let's not forget too that we're not the only city that's looking for water. I mean, LA is not far. So, I mean, in some senses, we're not the only ones that are looking to grab some water from Colorado River. So it is a bit competitive and technology and kind of upgrades like this seem pretty important.

Yeah, yeah. And look, sewage is only. To date, only 8% of the sewage has been recycled into irrigation water. I think because of some of the things we've talked about, there's been lawsuits, there's been this terrible branding, but it seems like more people are open to it. We talk about, you know, Orange county produces $70 million million gallons a day of purified water and they're expanding to get to 100 million. So we're not the first here. But there's some cool tech that goes along with this. And I would like to turn it over for this week in Science with Jonah Peake to take us through some of the science here.

So, yeah, I'd love to dive into that. There's three essential pieces that are being built and these are kind of a little bit delayed. So we're going to have a sewage purification plant in Miramar. We need a pipeline from Claremont to supply the plant and then a pump station in Marina. So there's these three components that were kind of delayed where, like Neil had said, we had started the project a little bit earlier, but those three projects are coming online soon. But let's look at kind of like what they're thinking for the Miramar station. So when you actually take this water or the sewage from the exit of our homes or wherever it's coming from, you got to do a couple of things to make it drinkable. So first step, ozone ization. So ozone gas basically is integrated with the water, is destroying microorganisms and then consumes them and converts them into O2 oxygen. So pretty cool first step. But there's a lot more to that. Then there's biological active filters. So we're sending the water through another step. This is basically using helpful bacteria that thrive in an O2 environment. Remember, we've just converted all these sort of microorganisms or a number of them to O2 to oxygen. So now they're able to consume about 30 to 50% of anything that was or is living. So some of this is no longer living matter. Some of this, maybe it was. And these, these helpful bacteria, our friends, let's say, are destroying what, so 30 to 50% of what's left. Then what we're doing is we're going to force it through membrane filtration particles, viruses, bacteria. Kind of terrifying that that's in there, but that's what this membrane does. It pulls all of that out. And really the only things that make it through are a bit of salt water and then a few small molecules that can pass through. So probably things that, you know, might give it a little bit of flavor or whatever. You know, if you drink water from, from a mountain, some, some, you know, minerals in there, it actually gives it maybe a positive taste. I don't know.

Membrane, though, is tiny. Like talk, talk about how small we're talking about that this, this water's going to get through.

Okay, so if you really want a good context, pull, pluck a hair from your head here and then take a look at that and then, and then go 300 times smaller than that. So that is a seriously small hair. We probably need a full episode on the manufacturing project for our process for how you even get a filter. This small, but pretty impressive stuff. It is absolutely tiny. And so, you know, you think you'd be, you'd be done there, but instead, why don't we just send the water through reverse osmosis, pull out any additional minerals that are left behind and this, this process pulls out anything that's say, 50,000 times smaller than the smallest bacteria. So really there's no way it even fits through at that point. There's not going to be any bacteria left in this Water, it is absolutely minuscule. And then obviously, you know, we're not done yet. There should be nothing left in this water. Now we just have water. But why not hit it with ultraviolet disinfection? You basically just blast the hell out of this water with some light that's basically like extremely concentrated sunlight. You know, they say sunlight kills all this, destroys the DNAs of any microbes left. If anything has made it through that's of that size. And anything left is just kind of annihilated at that point. So this five step process is pretty impressive and actually allows us to recycle our water completely. I don't think they used a process this sophisticated in Water World when they were drinking their urine on the boats there. So we are, we are leagues ahead of that.

But Kevin Costner approves.

Kevin Costner approved. Thumbs up. Two thumbs up. Thanks, Kevin. We are, we are drinking our water. We're keeping it in the city. And if you think about it, if, you know, if we didn't do this, essentially what we do is we irrigate plants, which does take a process, but what you'd ultimately do is purify the water and just send it back into the ocean and then it's just mixed with salt again. And now you have to think about, you know, desalinization, which is pretty energy intensive and, and so in a sense you really should be doing a lot more to sort of salvage and hold onto this water. I can't remember the last time it rained. So we really just can't shoot that.

Out in the ocean. And just to have the, you know, the independence for our own destiny here in San Diego. Right. Like, who knows what's changing, coming to the changing environment, to other places where we import water from, you know, we don't want to leave paradise here. Why not be able to do everything ourselves? We've got sunlight now. We should be able to create our own water too. So pretty cool to see. So congrats to city and county of San Diego. Thanks. County water Authority big player in this as well too.

Well, let's let me ask one fun fact actually. So apparently the Great Lakes passed regulation. You can't export the water from the Great Lakes. So other communities with significant sources of water are worried about this too and saying, hey, you can't take this out of our environments. So it's great that we have the Colorado river, but we probably need to think far into the future if we're going to, you know, be a sustainable top 10 city and continue to be, you know the major city that we are.

Totally agree.

Yep.

Well, cheers to that and let's go have a clean glass of water.

I'm down.

We got a few more pieces to talk through. We got some IPOs, we got some fundings, we got some acquisitions. It's been busy on the business side here. IPO alert. Carlsbad company Tyra Bio filed for an IPO just in the last week. They did their placeholder $100 million IPO. We know it'll be different. That's kind of seems to be what you write down on the form when you submit it to the sec. But that will change. So excited to see that one we mentioned on funding side. Well really an IPO is a funding, but on the private funding side, Shield raised 210 million, Series D A Derrick's Pharma raised 75 million and Contact World raised 1.35 million. This Contact World is an interesting one. There's. It's contact tracing solution. So kind of what we've talked about for COVID testing, where does it all come from? They're building software for that. I got to imagine now we're going to be with the vaccines and people who are not vaccinated. There's going to be a whole kind of another variable around tracing. And where does, where is Covid coming from? So good to see investments still coming into that because we aren't out of the woods yet here on Covid, that's for sure. Some acquisitions. So when we talked about already SHIELD acquiring two companies. So first of all love seeing local companies acquiring other companies. So another one that did that, Sochi, who recently raised the series D90 million, I believe they just acquired Anaheim based Brandify, kind of bolting on a similar kind of company but in different markets. So that's one is great to see. Another local to local acquisition, High Metric, which is a newer company that was formed out of private equity specifically to tackle the ServiceNow service provider space. They acquired New Rocket, which is a company out of Vista, and New Rocket actually I believe were a bunch of the founders. There were early ServiceNow employees who started a software company to kind of bolt onto the ServiceNow platform. And now here comes a major ServiceNow service provider acquiring them. So kind of comes full circle, which is pretty cool. Another company in Carlsbad, RA Medical was acquired by Strata Skincare and Copia Sciences is merging with Bio Surplus, which is the San Diego company. So some some bio activity as always. And the last one to round it up is Car Wave, which is a escondido based dealer to dealer or wholesale car marketplace. They were acquired by Car Wave for 450 million. No, sorry, Car Wave was acquired by car for 450 million. And that is pretty cool to see, especially up in Escondido.

Love the names Car Wave and Car.

Car Wave and Car.

Yeah, this is impressive.

I mean.

The used car market is red hot. I got to imagine, you know, Car Wave is well positioned for this and Car coming in and you know, bolting onto to what they've already got. Pretty impressive stuff. Yeah.

CAR with K A R is one of the dominant players. Them and Cox Auto are the two, two big players in the space. Cox Auto, owning Mannheim auto and owning AutoTrader and one other one, Kelly Blue Book. So yeah, red hot space. And like you mentioned, it's so hard to get a car right now. So I gotta imagine consolidation is, is the name of the game there.

I love that and I love the quick used car and car lesson that we got there. I got the run through offline before we started. I didn't even know Cox was in the car space. It's wild. Pretty impressive.

We'll do a deep dive on Cox on another episode because they touch a lot of things. But the short answer is they're 120 year old family run business. So already blowing your mind of what you think they are as compared to the cable guy in your house.

Fair point.

But they've been a big but. That's it, that's our show. Thanks everyone for tuning in here and we miss you on Clubhouse. You probably hopefully you miss us on Clubhouse. We'll be back soon, but in the meantime, hope you're enjoying these recorded episodes and obviously it's going to, it's San Diego, so don't even have to say hopefully. The weather's great. We know it is. It's going to be a great weekend just because of that. So with that, Jonah, take us home.

Yeah, please. Thank you, Neil. This is awesome. We love, love sending these out here. Find us on Twitter, find us on LinkedIn. I'm Jonah Peake, this is Neil Blum. We'd love to stay in contact, get some feedback from you and we can't wait to talk to you next Friday.

And you can find the every other week newsletter in your email inbox@freshbroodtech.com where a lot of this content comes from as well as the social media feeds of freshbroodtech Tech. And this is the tacos and tech podcast that you can hear this on as well too. Thank you everyone. See you soon. Bye.