San Diego Tech News Weekly – January 21, 2022

Cool. Here we go.

Hello. Hello. Happy Friday, everyone.

Hey, Happy Friday. Here we go.

Happy to be joining you on your lunch break or if you're listening to this later, whenever it is that you're eating your tacos. But I'm Neil Bloom, I'm a community organizer, entrepreneur, investor with Interlock Capital. And this is my friend and partner, Jonah Peaked.

Hey, what's going on? I am an ops guy getting sucked headfirst into crypto, but also investor in Interlock Capital. So it's been fun to kind of cross paths a lot over the last year as we all spent time at home.

Yeah, this is our. Yeah, we are. We put this out on the Tacos and tech podcast network every week as well. So if you're not listening to this live, you can hopefully you're listening to this later. Obviously you're listening to some way or another. And we do this. Weekly Fridays is kind of our. Let's check in on what's going on in the week. Tech news in San Diego, because we are doing this, this will be a test for us because in the past we've recorded this both on Zoom, because Clubhouse doesn't have a recording option, but on Twitter Spaces, it is also recording. So theoretically we could invite you guys up on stage, but we caution that we may not be able to get the recording of it, but what file we use. So we're still learning, but in either case, in 30 minutes or less, we try to go over what's. What are we watching, what are we checking out here? Tech wise in San Diego, not just startups. We want to talk big tech, we want to talk infrastructure, want to talk changes to the community that will affect the tech community, whether that's talent or other topics. If you have topics you want to send us to talk about, hit us up on Twitter. It's kind of where we're most active. Send us ideas, send us things you're seeing. But in either case, let's jump right into it.

Yeah, actually real quick, you know, we love the tech scene here. We love San Diego as a community. I'm looking at Neil with a really beautiful San Diego skyline background. So help us grow the tech community, help us grow the show. Share with a friend, bring someone into the tech community if they're not already here. And yeah, let's grow it together. So, yeah, give us a share if you can. We love reviews, if you got one and most importantly, share what you're reading in the news because we're always just consuming tech news as we go through the week. And we find things that we think is interesting. Maybe there's something we miss, maybe it's something you think is more interesting or we can highlight. It'd be fun for us too.

Yeah. And if we didn't mention yet, Fresh Brewed Tech is kind of the parent group here where we put out a newsletter and a podcast weekly. So, you know, subscribe to the podcast, tacos and tech podcast and subscribe to the newsletter and you'll kind of be up to date on everything that's been happening on the weekly basis.

Yeah.

But in either case, let's jump into news about ClickUp, one of our fastest growing. We needed. I did have the fox queued up and I missed it. So this is super bowl news. ClickUp is a fast growing tech company in San Diego and they are launching an ad campaign during the super bowl, which is. Yeah, it's pretty cool to see them at the super bowl, especially since super bowl is in la, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Did you see, did you see that they're doing some sort of precautionary airport traffic changes during the Super Bowl? Because we're literally that close.

Yeah. It's going to affect air travel in San Diego. I did see that for sure. But click up. If you haven't been downtown, they're, they're, they're blasted all over town on trolleys, on billboards, and now they're going to be on our screens as well, talking about their suite of software tools that they build. We use them at our company. It's kind of like a sauna on steroids. It's like everything for project management and company management and they're going to be blasting themselves in front of what, 96 million viewers for 30 seconds. Yeah.

So, you know what's crazy is they've just taken kind of a brand new strategy. Now that we're all spending time at home, they're actually targeting people who are in their homes. And so, you know, on its face, you're kind of like, damn, like 30 seconds for what, six and a half million dollars? You're. My goodness. But that fits right in with their strategy because they're like, let's get people at home. Let's get people using it. Let's get people on there doing their managing their daily lives. Like, you know, my wife and I are looking for project management to like just organize our tasks. I'm like, that sounds cool. Anyway.

Yes. Yeah, it's better than like a couple slack. A couple's slack group, which I've also heard been used. This is definitely A better family organization. I mean, they're going to go over the top. It sounds like they're talking bring in some celebrities for this, but also feature their employees as well, too, which, which. So I'm excited to see this. I wonder if they'll give us a sneak peek ahead of time for us San Diegans.

They said yes at some point. I don't know exactly the strategy, but they said they're going to do some votes because they have two very different ad concepts that they're coming from different directions. They didn't say what they were, but they're saying we're going to have to sort of figure out which one actually airs, which is a crazy concept in and of itself. I'd love to, you know, obviously chat with them and be like, how do you even go about put together super bowl ads, like the biggest production ever, but.

And then to go ab test it. Right. And be like, all right, which. Which one's worth six and a half million dollars?

Fair point. Tech company of them, Right?

Yeah. That's pretty cool. Well, cool. Well, we're excited to see that ad from one of our tech companies and, you know, let's wait for San Diego to represent on the large stage.

Yeah, I'm hoping they shout us out. Let's go. Shout out San Diego if you can. And let's get some eyes on us.

Yeah, for sure. We'll make sure we'll hit up Zeb and get him on the pot. Maybe we can get him on here to talk about it before or after as well, too.

That'd be cool. Well, hey, let's talk about one of our biggest, our biggest, baddest, oldest tech companies here moving into the auto sector, Qualcomm.

We love to talk about Qualcomm because they're just a behemoth and they always make news whenever they do stuff worldwide, which is good for San Diego. And for years now, the trend has been how they need to diversify, Right. They can't just be a handset hardware maker. They need to find because a few reasons. One, the other hardware makers are coming after them saying we can do it ourselves. So they need to avoid the competition in that regard. And they're just finding that everything is a connected device now. And specifically cars are literally moving connected machines now. From the telematics piece, from the in car connectivity infotainment, which is really, you know, is a multitude of things. It's the back seat screens, it's the front screen and even the screen for the driver kind of the pilot Heads up. Display. All those areas now are using more and more chips. And Qualcomm just signed some new partnerships coming out of CES a few weeks ago with Volvo, Honda and Renault. So I think they claimed just, oh, in their total auto division. They've got a pipeline of $13 billion worth of business that they're trying to capt. They already have agreements with BMW, General Motors, Hyundai, and some Chinese automakers, Jidu and Jeepen. But the overall automotive chip market apparently is worth like $41 billion just this year alone and growing at 13% per year. So this is a huge area for Qualcomm, who's a $100 billion company. This could be a huge area for them to tap into and diversify.

Okay, so future like we did. We talked about a couple of predictions last year. Okay, throwing this one at you. We didn't talk about this in advance. Does Qualcomm have come out with a vehicle or do they buy a vehicle company or are they okay just being a supplier? I did see a van testing recently. It was, it was Toyota, but it had like Qualcomm signal testing all over.

Definitely. Yeah. You see the Qualcomm vans all over. Testing, testing, tech for sure.

I mean, they're halfway done to building a car with all this tech anyways. But what do you think? Okay, give us a prediction.

I don't know. They're always going to be the hardware inside. I don't think they're ever going to do their own consumer. I think they actually did do a handset in the 90s. But no, I don't think there is going to be the Qualcomm car. They will somehow make amends with Apple and be inside the Apple car. That's what I think.

So you think Apple will have a car? Because that's the example I was going to bring up is Apple's always teasing that, you know.

Yeah, totally. No, now that Apple's got hiring 8,000 people down the street from Qualcomm, theoretically, besides the talent that they're stealing, hopefully they're doing some partnerships together too. So, no, I think just Qualcomm's gonna put chips into everything. Like, what's next?

Fruit.

It will have connected fruit and understand, you know, when it's ripe or not.

Clothing. Have you seen some of those startups coming up with a yes? I mean, you know, every garment you have now tells you how you're doing. I don't know. It's, it's. Yeah, this category alone is going to expand, but you're right. There's a lot of opportunities outside of that. Maybe even golf clubs.

Maybe even golf clubs. Great segue into our next story. I like what you did there. Topgolf is finally, finally coming to San Diego. It's been talked about for so long to be on Harbor Island. It took local callaway in Carlsbad buying them to maybe push this over. I'd like to claim that Topgolf was acquired by Carlsbad just last year. I didn't realize it was this big $2.66 billion acquisition.

It's like half of half of their company is now.

Wow. Something like that. So they're working with the port of San Diego. So they're in negotiations now. But they've got their location, Harbor Island. So it can be shooting golf balls over across at the aircraft carriers which would be great. Nice over on North Island. But I love this little tech play. I didn't know topgolf was such a had some high tech stuff in it. But did you know that the golf balls are microchipped and that there's like this top tracer technology so that that's what's tracking every shot and giving you a whole heads up display on how you did. So that's kind of cool. I didn't know that. I didn't know the tech angle from top, from topgolf there.

That's kind of got to move out of topgolf a little bit. Because I mean, I gotta be honest, like, you know, I don't golf as much as I used to, but I've definitely lost a couple. But be nice to pull your phone out and be like, oh no, it's right here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The next is that you need an auto retrieval. You know, you need the, the summit mode for the golf ball to come back. Or just move it onto the. Move it onto the fairway for yourself, you know.

A little closer.

Yeah, a little five inches to the left. Be nice.

Qualcomm, are you listening?

Yeah, exactly. Well, this is cool. So I'm excited to, to actually hit some balls with you into the water maybe this year.

Let's do it. I'm in. I'm in. That sounds awesome.

Well, speaking of companies near the water that jumped over the water, called the Atlantic into San Diego, that was a bad transition. Ooni is a Microsoft company, microscope company started in the uk moving their headquarters to San Diego. And while they're doing that, they raised a cool $75 million in a new funding ground. This is pretty cool. They're a very specialized Microscope on the size of a toaster, but it can see things wildly smaller than the human hair, like on the molecular level. So their human hair is about 80,000 to 100,000 nanometers wide. They can see things down to 10 nanometers.

My God. I was just thinking width is not something I use typically to describe human hair.

Right, yeah, no, exactly. So they're focused on helping researchers, pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies really zoom in on complex cell structures. They only have actually 120 devices out in the wild today. But typically because of the size, like, they're usually a whole room's worth of microscope to see that level, clarity, being able to zoom in, and steadiness. But this is something that was spun out of the University of Oxford and actually the CEO Bo Jing, this was his PhD project that he worked on, spun it out into a company and they've now raised some pretty sizable capital. So 75 million is their second round. I think they previously raised 30 million. University of Oxford actually has a VC fund that participated in it, but also some pretty big typical names in the venture world. Arch Ventures, Kasten Capital, and then local San Diego Section 32 participated in this round as well, as well as a few others. We know Vertical Venture Partners who actually has a fund alongside UCSD and Axon Ventures and artists. So the big thing I think is that they're moving to San Diego, which is kind of cool. And this is really because they were doing recruitment of just executive talent while they're in the UK and found some of the best talent in San Diego. So they hired them and then they said, we've got a, we've got, you know, a pool of density of talent in San Diego. Should we have them move to uk? No, let's move to San Diego. So the CEO is moving here and he's relocating as much of the company that wants to move here too. So welcome to town.

Welcome uni.

It's funny you say that.

I kind of wonder how the conversations went. I wonder if it was like, hey, like San Diego, you're hired. Come on out to England. And everyone's like, is it cool if I can be remote? And they're like, all right, all right, all right, we'll just move on, move on over to sd. But actually that's really interesting because, you know, this segues right into the next one, which is essentially in our red hot life science market.

Wait real quick before I do that, because I do like your segues because they are hot, but also hot. That happened in 2020. One was we had another microscope company acquired. Echo Labs got acquired for over 100 million in 2021. And me and a bunch of other Techos Angels members were lucky enough to participate in that. And so we have a little bit of a microscope tech density going on in San Diego, which is kind of cool to see as well. So let's go build more microscope companies.

Yeah. And maybe we zoom out a little and look at this next story.

How's that do it?

No, this is cool. So Costa Verde center near UTC is being purchased by Alexandria Real Estate and they're actually building kind of like a, how are they calling it? A mega campus, Like a super campus, but essentially it's a strip mall. You might not really have noticed. Maybe you did across from Westfield utc. I think it was, you know, it was like Bristol Farms maybe there or like a gas station. And, and this was built, you know, long ago. I think it was like 89. And so basically they're revamping the entire property which is actually adjacent to another one of their biotech life science campuses. So they're going to actually have like a mega campus in the area, which is super cool, kind of bringing in, you know, from that same story before. You know, we have a lot of biotech talent. They're going to need places to set up shop, which is super cool. But what they're actually, what they're doing here, it's just pretty crazy is they're adding, you know, 400,000 square feet of office and lab space and a 200 room hotel. So, you know, it sounds like people are probably going to be coming in to check to either work out of the labs or to, you know, maybe for, for sales, recruiting, whatever it might be. And it's, hey, stay right on this super campus. And, and they can actually, you know, be, be present while, while they're there and then obviously go to Dim Typhoon across the street, you know, get some dumplings, which is great. But they have, that's going to be 1.7 million square lab space of new labs. Insane. I mean, I thought, I kind of thought, remember we were talking about this a couple of weeks ago, you know, how the density was getting so intense that people were moving across the find lab space. But it sounds like, you know, companies are still really looking to do this. And this company Alexandria, they bought from a previous owner who is really more of the, you know, sort of.

How.

Do you say, kind of like a, like a retail, retail anchor client, like a big Macy's or whatever. And then they just get A couple small ones around there. And so this is really in many ways kind of an upgrade. And it's really interesting because it shows you the transition that we might be taking one as a city, but maybe as a society. And what we could possibly. Possibly do with, you know, these old strip malls or these old, you know, malls. I mean, look, downtown might turn into another biotech campus, which is kind of insane. Next.

Yeah, that's a mall. They're turning in. Oh, both. They're turning in what? The Horton Plaza is poised to be that. And you're right, the old Navy building area right at the waterfront too. That's 2 million a lot. 2 million square feet of space downtown as well. But Costa Verde, what's kind of fun for anyone who is a UCSD aluminum like me, like you. Oh, you had tons of friends that lives in Costa Verde. So. So there a lot. It was kind of a little bit like the. The upgrade. It was like a little bit more expensive. They had two towers, which not many of us like lived in towers. We were all usually in like, you know, one or two story condos or apartments living just off campus. And you definitely were going to. To some of the things you mentioned there was a Coco's. I remember there's. And there's some steakhouse that was like, oh, you go for the $6 burger at Happy hour only.

Nice.

So it's kind of fun to see this being transformed to kind of match the UTC mall, which has been largely upgraded in that regard. So. And you've got the trolley stop there too now, right? That's the. I think the end of the blue line now stops right there. And now you've got dedicated public transport right to lab space as well too.

That's super cool.

Yeah, that is pretty cool to see.

It's funny you say that. I think that anecdote about the happy hour burgers is really cool. I remember when I moved to San Diego maybe 10 or 11 years ago, we moved to UTC and we had three people in like a two bedroom and we didn't know any better. So people were like, where you live, say La Jolla. And people would kind of be like, oh, look at you. It's like, no, no, we got a couch guy.

We're in.

You know, we had a loft. It's just kind of funny because that whole area has. It's really leveled up since then. It was like, you know, anyways, now it's about.

It was like just. Yeah, it was just like student housing. What it's felt like before and yes, it is definitely leveling up. We got another story here. We got six for you today and maybe even a bonus. We'll see. There was a good story in the UT this week about how business brokers are doing really well during the pandemic. And specifically focusing on San Diego business brokers. You know, this, the M and A world has just rapidly increased for a number of reasons. People just saying, you know, aging out, saying, I've got to, well, I think we're going to dive a little bit more into this later. But saying, you know, maybe my business is just, it's just time to hang up the hat, or my business isn't relevant anymore in this Covid world. And so it was interesting to see them do a deep dive on the analog side of selling your business, which is interesting because we've, you and I have invested in a marketplace that is doing this digitally called Microacquire, which is helping SaaS businesses get bought and sold. So we just thought it'd be an interesting article to compare. Just like what's happening for small businesses in the San Diego community you want to dive into a little bit.

Yeah, well, yeah, and I kind of wanted to add a couple of pieces because you mentioned, you know, some of the businesses are a little more brick and mortar or they're aging out. But one thing that's really interesting and kind of maybe relates back to tech or is something interesting to highlight at least people. You know, when you, when you invest, when you build a SaaS business, when you build a tech business, there's always in the back of your mind, especially if you're raising money, you're thinking, you know, I'm going to exit this someday, go public someday. I might sell this someday. So you're always thinking about the value of your business and kind of like what it's worth. But a lot of times, you know, if you have a bagel shop or you have a, you know, you're building a coffee shop, or maybe it's a little bit more brick and mortar. It really doesn't cross your mind. Oftentimes it's kind of more like, this is my, my child, my baby, I'm just going to grow my business. And then you're, you get to a point where you're like, you know, I think. I think I'm good. I'm gonna hang it up. Maybe your kids are like, no, this isn't tech enough for me. So you had to figure out how to sell it. And that's where, you know, maybe, maybe the challenges Start because what do you actually put, how do you value, you know, business like that? And so that's what's, what's kind of cool about the story. You know, we got a local, a local team who are kind of looking to help sell, help people sell their businesses partly because they, you know, feel like they got not necessarily the most ideal sale on their first business. You know, initially a bagel shop and looking back on it says, hey, let's help some new entrepreneurs sell their businesses. So one thing that's kind of cool even to add to this is, you know, a lot of these businesses are either struggling or battle tested, saying, hey, look, we made it through the pandemic and we're still operating at a high level. So maybe that increases the value a little bit. But yeah, kind of kind of a different angle on tech, a different sort of way to look at, you know, different businesses operating in San Diego. Obviously we need a mix to have a vibrant community and that's why we found this one to be particularly interesting.

Yeah, and actually I have a personal story of talking to someone this week. I was introduced to who's moving. He was literally called me while he was driving from moving from Colorado to San Diego, sold his 20 year furniture remodel business like furniture repair, moving to San Diego to get into the tech world. And once. And because of his terrible experiences of selling a business, he's kind of interested in building a marketplace to help small businesses, offline businesses like his, get sold as well. I was like, oh well, one, read this story and two, let's connect you to Andrew at Microacquire to share some notes there as well. So yeah, I think we're all in favor of helping people just get resources. And so good article in the UT this week about it. Natalie Rocca, I think wrote that, who is then she just moved from the Standard Business Journal over to the Union Tribune to focus on small business. So she's gonna be writing kind of all things that affect and attract small help small businesses, putting a spotlight on them as well too. But we've had a number of journalist shakeups in town. You know, some of the bigger ones we lost Brittany Mailing, who's been a longtime startup reporter, both at the Business Journal and the Union Tribune. In the last year, her startup role has really not been filled at the ut. So you know, if you have ideas for who could cover that, send them even our way, but really to the UT's way. But Mike Freeman obviously does great coverage, but there's only so much Mike can do when he's focusing on big tech and startups alike too. But they are at the UT hiring a new reporter to focus on all things money, which I thought's interesting to see, focusing on, you know, access to it, how it affects housing prices, what's going to happen with inflation, all the above. So that'll be an interesting beat to see get covered. From a San Diego perspective. We know it obviously affects how people hire talent. You know, can their people afford housing? Where should they put an office if they're going to have one? Even so that'll be interesting to see. There's an open hire for that. And then the Business Journal has hired new reporters. As Fred Greer left in the last year he was covering startups, but now Jeff Clementson is going to be covering the tech beat and I didn't have her name ready. Karen is focused on retail, manufacturing and some of those sites. So you'll see a lot of new faces. We love our reporters in town. They help us get educated and we are big on sharing their articles. So if you see an article about the tech community in San Diego, make sure you give it a share so that other people are reading as well. Because we need coverage, because coverage gives us accessibility and we need to be relevant in the larger conversation. So just a shout out to our local journalists. Thanks. Thank you all.

Yes, thank you for, for covering everything that needs to be covered. And if you have a story that needs to be covered, you know where to go.

Yeah. But also always feel free to send things our way as well too. We'll bring it up on a future story. And like we mentioned, we do this once a week. We also put out an interview based episode on Tuesdays on the Tacos and Tech podcast. And in general, subscribe to Fresh Brew Tech the newsletter and you'll see all this content at all times. But that's our show. Thanks everyone for joining in. Like we said, we do it live, but then we also record this, so look for it as well once it goes live. Probably sometime over the weekend.

Yeah, it's always fun. It's been a fun week and it's always fun to kind of cap it off by pulling together all the stuff that we're reading over the week. So always, always a pleasure, Neil.

Likewise, Jonah. Thank you all for tuning in and we'll see you next time. All right, see ya.