San Diego Tech News Weekly – May 19, 2023

Foreign Hello. Welcome everyone to this week in San Diego tech news. I am your host, Neil Bloom from Fresh Fruit Tech, a San Diego tech news platform and Interlock Capital, a pre seed and seed investment fund. And I'm joined again with my favorite co host, Fred Greer. Hey Fred, thanks for joining.

Hey Neil, thanks for having me. You know, I'm a tech journalist covering the startup ecosystem in San Diego. Happy to be here. And I think we have a lot of news to jump into.

We do, we do. Last week or when we put the last episode out, we were talking about the upcoming cool companies private event that happened by Connect. This was the newest 30 cool companies. It's a yearly list that Connect announces. These are the 30 companies who are most primed for Series A. So they just have met milestones, have met funding requirements and are ready to be put in front of VCs for, you know, that big VC check, that first VC check potentially. And so this past Tuesday, Connect brought 100 of U.S. vC investors together. All funds was the focus. And the 30 cool companies at Petco Park. It was awesome. We had about two hours to as investors to mingle with the 30 cool companies which was a mix of life science and software and hardware tech companies. Two hours of mingling and then we watched the game as two groups which was fun too. So the founders of the co companies went off and watched the game and the VCS went off and, and intermingled there. So lots of good networking. Connect us as well of just, you know, curating the right groups and I met some good new companies. I had some portfolio companies there that I caught up with and made some real time connections for companies that I was like, oh, uh, it's good to see you again. Let me make sure I point over this company or this investor. So I was kind of running around making connections, chatting with people as I do normally. So yeah, really a really good event. Also there I mentioned all the VCs that came down, a lot of VCs from SF and LA that came down for this event. So I met a bunch of new and caught up with a few LA vcs that we have been starting to collaborate, do some deal flow sharing and have started to coordinate on doing some CO events together. So I'm pretty pumped about that. Everyone in LA and SF wants to come to San Diego more. They want the reason to and you know, they want to make the most of their trip too. Right. So they'll come for two, three days. Hey, make sure I fill my schedule right. And so a few different of those VCs, we've said let's do curated dinners where we curate, you know, whatever it is. Like say one of the VC firms has an interest in industrial software. So companies who are building stuff, vertical SaaS, but maybe in kind of an industrial focused area. Let's get a bunch of those companies together. Right? There's like say a few companies that are doing software in the trash truck industry or you know, farming equipment, like stuff like that. Great, let's pull all that together. Another one said let's do a fintech lunch or dinner together. Let's pull a bunch of the pre seed founders and any local investors on fintech. So love hearing that kind of interest, excitement. So yeah, it was a good time.

Yeah, I would love to see more of that. I think Mike Koran and Connect do a great job behind the scenes of bringing together venture capital investors from LA and San Francisco. And I put a tweet not too long ago about San Diego and LA needs to collaborate more because I think it's not San Diego versus la, it's San Diego plus la. And I think, you know, with that combination it's unstoppable. We have great companies in both cities and the capital available for both cities just is going to continue to elevate us to be an emerging powerhouse tech hub.

Yeah, yeah. And I remember engaging with you on that tweet a little bit, kind of thinking, you know, all right Fred, like what are you thinking here? Because in my head the capital community of San Diego is so young, we don't have a lot of capital. So really, and this is me saying this as a, is a local investor. Like there's not a lot of funds who will do precede and seed in San Diego, especially with, you know, domain expertise in a lot of the industries of San Diego. So I look at OC and LA funds as a great place to, to bring funds in and lead the deals that you know, maybe I can't, but maybe I can put a little bit of money into. So I rely on them almost as like more of a capital source. Come, come do our deal, even do the bigger rounds. Definitely come do the next rounds of my portfolio companies, that's for sure. And so yeah, I look to kind of the mature, the more mature capital community of LA as a great place to tap into and say get to know all the great companies happening, building up in San Diego. So that's, that's a great way that we are able to collaborate there. Awesome. Well, we will report, we'll continue to report More and more on that collaboration. Uh, let's dive into some other stories here. You also put out a tweet that you're officially joining the board of San Diego Tech Hub. Congrats, Fred. I'm so stoked to see that. Can you tell us more of what's involved there and, and give us a little overview of what SD Tech Hub is?

Thank you, man, I really appreciate that. Yeah. So San Diego Tech Hub is a nonprofit organization. The guy who founded it, his name is Cloud Jones, who has been in the tech ecosystem for, you know, a decade plus. He worked at Yahoo and then worked at Walmart Labs and helped grew that organization from an engineering standpoint, I think over 100 employees. He's also worked at a company called Strava. And he has, on top of that, while working in tech, he's launched this nonprofit to gather tech professionals in San Diego and help them find jobs and network. And, you know, he does this through events, among other initiatives. And so he tapped me to join the board and as I will be kind of coming in as the head of community, providing my expertise from working with early stage founders and helping community help build community here for the San Diego Tech Hub. And couldn't be more thrilled.

I love seeing that, Fred. I'm a big Claude Jones fan. I was with him, we were whiteboarding out what SD Tech Hub would look like back in the day, and he just dove in and did it and it grew quick. This was all pre Covid and it continued and stayed. So, yeah, big fan. It's got a bit of a North county lean to it, or so it had. So I'm curious to see what that's like once you dive into it as well, Fred. And what I know of it legacy wise, is it's a bit more of the tech employee who are working at Big Tech just because that's where Claude was as well, working at, you know, at the time, Walmart Labs. And so I'm very excited to see the startup community and that those worlds combine as well. So really pumped for that. And Cloud is just, you know, really, you can tell it's authentic from him. He really wants to make this community more connected and better for so many people interested in the technology space. So it's a natural that you are going to be spending their time as well.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm super excited. And we should, you know, continue to figure out how we can continue to connect the community here. There's a lot of pockets from north county to Chula Vista. And so our job is to, you know, bring it, bring people together and it's just, it's an exciting time.

Yeah, they do pretty regular events. When is the next event? Do you know, do you have that handy?

The next one's actually this Tuesday. So if you go to San Diego Tech Hub on our LinkedIn or the website, you find the information. We're also doing a meetup.com if you want to look it up. But San Diego Tech Hub, we do this monthly events. I think it's like free beer. We meet at a brewery. It's great to wait. Great, great way to build connections and meet some, some folks in person.

Awesome. All right, so May 23, 5pm and we'll put the link in the show notes the address. I have the address and the link here. So we will do that. Awesome. We got our next event coming up. Some other tech news coming up. Some big tech Too Simple. Our most recent public, our IP tech IPO that happened a little over a year ago. I think this is the autonomous trucking company. They've been, they've had some, some leadership issues, some scandals if you will and going through some layoffs. I know you've been tracking this as has our, our fearless UT writer Mike Freeman. What do you, what do you know about what's going on at TuSimple?

Yeah, so there's a little controversy there. I mean I followed them early days when they went ipo so they had raised a bunch of funding. They were kind of the leader in the self driving space. And yeah, they had a successful IPO and they hired aggressively. I think they hired hundreds of employees not only in San Diego but internationally. The founders have a background I think from China and so there has been some leadership changes where the founder of the company had stepped down and brought a new CEO and they just continue to have challenges and I think now with, with the recession looming, you know, they're having to do some layoffs and cut and cut some, make some cuts. But yeah. What else do you know about this, Neil?

Yeah, I mean the scandal a little bit was that they found there's always been this Chinese connection to the company. So while headquartered in San Diego in UTC area, they're you know, the original leadership were you know, also Chinese nationals. And I think it was, yeah, like found that there was connections all the way back to the Chinese government which kind of oust got, you know, as an American public company and the technology there, that, that, that was, you know, scandalous I guess if that was found out and not disclosed in the original S1 kind of thing. So yeah, it's, I feel like it's still hot and heavy right now of news of where it's settling. I think there's a lawsuit out there from shareholders. So it's getting a little messy which is super unfortunate because they're building great tech. They've got live autonomous trucks running between. I think it's Tucson to Phoenix and other places at level three or level four, you know, autonomous, which is huge. It's a really big deal that they're at that. So. And you know there's a lot of employees locally that could be affected or are affected obviously right by this. And then there's, you know, any of the investors as well too. The stock has taken a big tumble. You know, it was at one point an 8 or 9 billion dollars market cap company and it's you know, sub 400 million now because of stock tumbles. That's partly market. Right. The market for tech has just dropped significantly and their own issues as well now too. So you hate to see it but you know, we've got to be able to look inward and say what can we do better to make sure that we improve our companies as well too because this is not going to be the last time that you see layoffs happening at a tech company locally. All right, some other news. So maybe non tech related news. San Diego Major League Soccer officially is coming to San Diego. It was announced on Thursday, May 18. Huge news because it's really our only second, you know, top tier sports team in San Diego now between besides the Padres. So pretty pumped that came out. It's, you know, it was announced yesterday they don't have an official team name yet. I think it's going to be SDFC San Diego Football Club or Football Club San Diego. That's kind of what they said. It's between those names there I've, you know, big news for the community that the mayor was involved. It's the local Sequan band of Indian tribe that you know also owns a casino here. Our co owners as well as the Mansoor Group, a Egyptian billionaire out of London. Together the two of them putting up majority of the money. And then some other locals we got Manny Machado from the Padres has come in as an owner there as well as some other real estate investors locally and abroad as well too. So they're gonna be playing at Snapdragon Stadium over in Mission Valley which is also where the Aztecs play the San Diego Wave and Santa Legion. So that's all sudden a very busy stadium which is pretty cool. They're starting in fall 2025. So coming up or. I don't know if it's fall actually, it's just 2025. So, you know, it's exciting to have another pro sport here. I'll let you have some commentary there. And then I've got some bittersweet side of what I feel personally about this too.

Yeah. So with the takeaway here, this is the biggest news since probably the Chargers announced they were going to la. The news came out yesterday, today's Friday and I haven't seen, you know, San Diego get this much national press from a sports standpoint in a long time. But yeah, you know, after you call it out, you know, a billionaire is helping fund this. This is one of the highest expansions in MLS history. 500 million. So that's, that's a big number. And it is a little controversial because, you know, we recently just got SD loyalty, SD wave. I mean, San Diego is now a soccer town. Neil, you are an early investor in the soccer, soccer clubs. So I would love to get your perspective on what this means, but I, I do think it's a huge win for San Diego sports, the soccer fans, the local economy, and I think there's enough room for everyone to win. But also is controversial because there's already two teams here, you know, running soccer.

So. Yeah, no, I mean there's a lot. There's the Cholos down in, in Tijuana, just over the border. You have the indoor soccer league and the soccers which have. Are the most winningest soccer team in indoor soccer league. And you have. Now you mentioned the Wave, the Loyal and Albion, another soccer team that a few others have invested in as well too. So there's a lot of soccer, if you call it pro soccer, all of it is pro soccer. It's just at what level? There's, you know, MLS is. This is the US's top tier, if you will, and then below it you've got these other tiers, at least for men's. So USL is as a league right below mls. And that's where the loyal play. They came here four years ago and me and a group of entrepreneurs pulled our money together within Interlock Capital and we invested in a little over two years ago in the club, the pro. You know, the co founders are Landon Donovan, one of the biggest names in men's pro soccer. In fact, the MLS MVP of the year trophy is called the Landon Donovan MVP trophy. So, you know, there's, I think there's a little bit interesting there that now the minor league team of San Diego is owned by Landon and the new MLS team, Landon is not currently involved. Uh, I don't think I can actually say too much behind the scenes what's going on there or what has gone on. But, you know, there's an existing men's soccer pro fan base here for the loyal. And now there's a brand new team. And so that'll be interesting to see what happens there. I would imagine it's for the whole game of soccer. It's great that we're lifting the whole community up saying people are interested in soccer. Uh, and in fact, when, when we were pitched to invest in soccer, we were told that San Diego has the highest participation in soccer from youth through adult, and the highest per capita of watching soccer both at MLS and World cup of any city in the U.S. there's more people watching soccer on TV than any other U.S. city. So why shouldn't we have pro soccer here? So, you know, from that standpoint, it makes sense that there's a lot of soccer in town. A lot of people are saying, why has it taken so long? MLS has been around since the mid-90s. So I'm pumped either way that we've got another pro sport here. And I, I hope we find a way for the loyal and MLS to collaborate selfishly, obviously, for, for our interest in the loyal. So, you know, excited to see what happens. We got two years to, for the, for the team to kind of start playing. But through that, you're going to see a team name and colors and crest and schedule and training facilities come out. So, you know, we'll keep you up to date in the news around that. So either way, go sdfc. Okay. I think that's most of the news topics. There's some events coming up. You mentioned the ST Tech Hub event next week, the week after that. I have my Founders Hike first Wednesday of each month. I think it's June 7th is the 6:30am Torrey Pines. We'll be doing the Hike Connect. Summer Social is June 13th and that is in Encinitas. Probably will be hundreds of, not close to a thousand people joining in to just meet from startups, investors and the community that supports them. And then I hope I'm not bursting the bubble yet because it's live on their site. But Innovation Week and Innovation Day at Petco park is coming up in mid September. So September 14th at Petco park, the startup community takes over the whole park. This happened Last year in 2022, in April this year they were able to settle in September and I think they're making a week out of it. So there'll be a lot going on that week. I don't know if you can, I don't think you can buy tickets yet, but the site is live and we've got it linked in the show notes. So I know Fred and I will be excited to be out there for those upcoming events. You're on mute, Fred.

Yeah, I was just going to say that I'm looking forward to that event. That's one of my most favorite events out of the year. A lot of startup folks, some of the most notable companies come together and I just want to mention the Pitch the Pitch Show. They're having friends of the Pitch come during a little meetup in San Diego June 7th. Neil, do you want to give a kind of high level overview of what the Pitch show is? Yeah.

The Pitch is an awesome podcast by Josh Mukio. It's actually has some roots in San Diego. Years ago, pre Covid Josh and the Pitch teamed up with the show at New Fund and they actually had. They. They recorded a whole season out of New funds pitch competition and Shield Manote, a famous fintech investor, kind of gave his feedback live about each pitch, which was kind of cool. And then during Startup Week a few years ago, they did pitch on a lift. So they recorded Founders Invest pitching investors while on an elevator and they turned those into episodes as well too. So we have a little history here, which is cool. And now they're recording a whole season of startup pitches. We had Interlock just officially signed on that will be judging. We'll be judges for one of them. So thank you Fred for helping make that happen. They're coming in June 7th, 8th and 9th. They're going to do three days worth of pitches. So what that means is we're going to get six pitches for one day. And pretty much on this we won't know anything about the Pitch, uh, we won't know anything about the founder and we kind of have to make decisions on, on there to decide do we like the company, maybe even like soft commit to go into diligence. So it'll be pretty cool and I'm excited for them to come in town. They're bringing a bunch of investors from out of town to join each of the episodes. So on June 7th they will be there and we get to show, you know, show up and show the community another time to outside investors. So let's make sure we do that. Will show up on June 7th at Ballast Point. I believe is the spot. And we'll link it in the show notes here so that everyone can join in. And then the episodes will come out August through November, so should be a great time. So thanks.

Awesome. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.

And then tomorrow, Saturday, depending on when this episode goes out, me and Startup San Diego are running the La Jolla Half Marathon and 5K. So I'm excited to join a bunch of other startup folks and get our run on from Del Mar Fairgrounds to La Jolla Village. Yeah, we'll see you out there at the finish line, Fred.

Yes, I'll see you there.

Well, everyone, thanks so much for tuning in. We will hear from you again. Drop when we when we show this live on Social show, drop some comments and feedback and share this with others so that we can, you know, make sure we're telling the stories that you want to hear and we're getting the word out to as many people as we can. So thanks again and we'll see you next week. Thanks, Fred.

Thank you.

Cheers.