San Diego Tech News Weekly – October 8, 2021

All right, welcome. Welcome back to the this Week in San Diego Tech News. Hope Calcanis doesn't kill us for taking his name. It works for him. It works for us. I'm Neil Bloom. I am a tech entrepreneur, investor, community builder, run a tech blog called Fresh Brew Tech about San Diego and this will be on the Tacos and Tech podcast and also part of Interlock Capital, an investment group that invests in early stage companies. This is Jonah.

What's up, everybody? Hey, Neil. If we get big enough that Calcanis gets mad, that's a good thing. But ops guy, mostly building marketplaces like Lime Handy, Postmates loving San Diego startups and currently working on a D2C investment model that we're hatching soon. So keep an eye on my Twitter and LinkedIn. We'll talk more there. But we're actually joined by guests this week too. Pretty excited about it. So, Fred, why don't you toss an intro in here?

Yes, Neil and Jonah, thanks for having me today. I am Fred Greer. I am a tech reporter in San Diego. I cover startups, venture capital, some of San Diego's biggest companies and unicorns. I'm happy to be here and be joining the San Diego Tech Podcast.

Awesome. Great to have you here, Fred. We are going to be talking about one of your stories, so let's dive into our first story which is that the city of San Diego is developing a regional cyber innovation center to prevent attacks. If you've been a longtime listener, first time caller, or wait, strike that reverse, longtime caller, first time listener, you know that we love to talk cyber on this because San Diego is a cyber hub. We do a lot here from the Navy, the military, and even just companies who have been born out of the necessity here. Well, the city stepping up and out of federal funding, got some funding to develop this new center to support local agencies like other cities to defend against attacks. And we've talked recently about like the Scripps health attack being one which I think is still reeling from the health system. They plan to provide the region with coordinated awareness through access to tools, intelligence and helping with training for this capable workforce. And you know, this is simulated. Well, this is interesting. So it's a simulated environment to, to kind of simulate and defend against attacks. Oh, I hope they get an attack iq. One of our later stage companies involved in this. Yeah, Todd, Gloria, the mayor of San Diego said that with cybersecurity threats becoming more frequent and sophisticated, we must make sure we're doing everything we can to stop these attacks in their tracks. Love the rhyme. But it's true. Like, we really do need to, like we're seeing attacks on infrastructure, right? So like the city actually has a reason to step in and be involved here. Because if our water supply or electricity or others disrupted because of attacks, like it's on them. So why not have the whole city trained up and be ready for it. You want to take us through some more, Jonah?

Yeah, Yeah, I do. 1:1. There's some metrics coming up, but one thing I just really want to flag. I mean, I think defending against cyber attacks is huge, but I think, you know, phishing is a really big one and, you know, training your teams and just being aware of, you know, kind of what you're seeing in the environment is super important in some cases. You know, I've heard a story where sort of the fake boss, the VP called and said, hey, I forgot my password, I forgot my password. And called enough of his lower level folks that someone actually did give him give him the password. So, you know, even though we're getting more sophisticated, just be very cautious of kind of who, who's reaching out and for what information, but just to really, you know, share the scale of this. Here's a few data points. So cybercrime has caused an estimated $6 trillion worth of damage in 2021 alone, according to cybersecurity ven. That's massive. And that's really, you know, I assume in some cases, you know, paying off to get your data unlocked. In some cases it's, you know, it's fixing your infrastructure, it's doing, you know, it's really causing some significant damage or loss of business and so on. In the first nine months of 2020 and this is when we were all really getting set up at home. Maybe risk was a little bit higher because we weren't inside of our secure ecosystems. 36 billion records were exposed and that's reported by risk based IBM Security found that the average cost of a data breach was about $3.86 million as of 2020. And so if you do the math, that's a large number of breaches. That's a significant cost for everybody. But there's also your health data, other sort of data factors out there that are, that are being breached or taken. And that's just, it's something that we all really need to defend, like you said, from a highly technical level inside of simulated environments, but it's also something that we ought to defend against from a phishing attack. And is my really asking me to wire this money or did they use email? And I didn't notice it. So be heads up there. And a couple of things you noticed. You pointed out one of the attacks. I think health systems are incredibly at risk here. And UC San Diego got hit with one, but the Port Authority as well, and Scripps Health. So those are the ones we know about. But I'm sure that there's more. The more we know, the better we can defend.

Yeah. So a million dollars worth of grants to help focus on this new cyber innovation center. And you know, there's actually already a nonprofit group here called the Cyber Security center of Excellence that is spearheaded by Lisa Easterly. We've worked with them on Cyber Night, our event, quarterly event for the cyber community, in the past. And it's great to see that they're involved here as well, too. So excited about this. And we will report more as we hear how it's doing and its effects. Or really, I guess the best is we don't hear about it. And tax go down. That would be number one. The word on the street is we've all heard the Nigerian prince scam. I saw on Twitter, people getting scammed by a Scottish prince now. So keep on the lookout. Scottish prince is out to give you $12 million. But luckily, we have a crypto ecosystem here who can also help us in that. And that takes us into our second story, which I'd love to turn over to Fred, who did a deep dive into the cryptocurrency ecosystem here in San Diego. Fred, take us away.

Yes. Thanks so much. So I was thinking about San Diego and its ecosystem of biotech and tech. And there's an emerging sector coming out which is cryptocurrency. In the last year alone, it's 6 billion has been investing in startups. And one of the areas in startups that's going to be booming next is the cryptocurrency industry. With this deep dive, we really looked at who are the players in the space, who are, who are some of the early investors who has moved to San Diego that are involved in this, in the crypto ecosystem and where is it headed. So that was kind of like the overall angle of the story. And through that we learned a ton of information that I don't want to just steal all the light. I would love for Jonah or Danielle to kind of dive in there.

Sure. I think first of all, we'll make sure everyone sees your blog about it. Do you have a quick, easy URL we can shout out that people can find your blog at?

Yes, it's just Fred Greerubstack.com you can see on my Twitter link it's top top posted. Also fredgrier.com you can see my newsletter there.

Okay.

Yes, perfect.

And the post is titled the San Diego Crypto Ecosystem. So pretty straightforward. So look for that.

Yeah. And you call out some great recent leaders in the crypto community who have moved here who are really waving the banner on the crypto community, one being Chris Cantino. Shout out to Chris at Color Capital who moved here from Portland just this year. Him and his wife are successful entrepreneurs from the consumer packaged goods space. Schmidt's Natural is kind of there where they cut their teeth and now have really gotten into other areas of consumer products and they believe crypto and specifically NFTs is an area of focus that it's kind of a great way for people to get learn early exposure to crypto. So Chris has been doing some amazing content on Twitter lately about how to easily buy NFTs and how to make your first crypto investment. So hriskentino is a great follow. So that's a good highlight there. Another is a bit of a longtime friend of mine, Vinny Lingam. Vinnie moved here about two years ago, maybe it's sooner. Actually it's about a year. And he also successful entrepreneur in the fintech space. He did a gift card company that you could buy and sell gift cards with bitcoin that he sold way back in 2013 or 14. So he was early in on this and then started a company called Civic, which is an identity management cryptocurrency so you can actually buy Civic Coin. That's where he originally started building companies around this. But now he's been a major investor in the scene as well, investing in crypto funds, one being Multicoin Cap that did a really early big bet in Solana, which has some roots in San Diego, which we're going to talk about in a second. So yeah, those are the two, I would say two big faces, newer faces in San Diego on top of Paul Pui from Edge Wallet who has been a longtime San Diego bitcoin meetup hoster. And yeah, I'd say those are the three very prominent people that you've seen. But you want to take us through a little bit deeper, dive into some other tech here. Jonah?

Yeah, I actually was kind of hoping, you know, I think many of us know about Bitcoin and Ethereum is, you know, that number two. But Fred actually had some pretty cool info on Solana and then the founding story. I don't know, Fred, if you want to give us a little bit of that, you had a fun fact in there. I won't even spoil it.

But yeah.

Do you want to tell us a little bit about Solana and kind of the origin there?

Yes, yes, definitely. So everyone has heard of Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are, you know, these are basically cryptocurrency coins that you can invest in, and they've grown exponentially over the last couple years, where Celona is one of those next coming up and coming coins, you know. And so who started this was actually former Qualcomm founder and we talk about that in the newsletter. He was him and his colleagues, they basically were surfing at Salona beach and they had this idea for a cryptocurrency token. And so they have set out to build this out and they move to SF and raise money from the top investors. And they have. Earlier this year they were around $10. The token was. Now it's surged to over $200 or nearly $200. And so it's a really cool success story that started in San Diego but has really made headlines globally.

It's actually a really interesting story. So it's come down a little bit since then, but you've heard a lot of people complaining about gas fees on Ethereum or how much it costs to actually do transactions. Solana's got a different infrastructure that's bringing the cost down significantly. And so it's starting to see kind of a whole NFT rise in its own ecosystem as people maybe drift away a little bit from Ethereum As Ethereum stabilizes and are starting to move their way to Solana, they're able to actually do a bit more transactions, handle some more volume, and actually have a bit of a better price point. But I think you did point out something really interesting. I mean, they started it here. They were surfing on our awesome beaches, and then they ended up headed north. But the converse of that is, like Neil said, Vinny's moving here, Chris is moving here. How do we get to that point where people are saying, hey, I can build a crypto ecosystem anywhere. I want to go to San Diego and kind of head our way down here. And I think Paul's starting to really get that rolling. And I've been going to the Bitcoin and crypto meetups for a short amount of time, but if there, you start to really see a lot of other tech founders in our ecosystem. So it's been here, it's here. It's just starting to get A little bit more firepower behind it.

Yeah. But thanks, Fred, for highlighting that group. I think I went to my first bitcoin meetup in early 2017, and all the rage was Ethereum. That's what kind of got me onto mining Ethereum. And it's cool to see that every month. It keeps happening. So that's great. Jump into our next story. This is a big one. We need our own. We need a whole unique sound for when someone wins a Nobel Prize, because holy crap, San Diego just won a Nobel Prize. Congratulations. Professor Artem Pada Patchuan artem won the 2021 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. Insane.

Well, half of it. Half of one.

Half of one. It's true. Yeah. They shared it together. He is a professor at Scripps Research. His partner is at Hughes Medical Institute. Is that right?

I forgot. I forget. That sounds right.

Yeah. He shared it with David Julius and they actually discovered their discoveries were independent, which is kind of interesting of the same discovery, which is why they're splitting it. So that's pretty cool. To where both of them. They discovered the receptors for temperature and touch. Pretty big deal. Understanding that pressure sensitive cells to discover a novel class of sensors to respond to medical stimuli in the skin and internal organs.

Wow.

That's pretty interesting. That's for sure. You want to take us through a little bit more, Jonah? Yeah.

I thought this was really fascinating. David Julius is out of Northern California. At least they're both in California. David was using capsaicin, something that's found in spicy peppers, to try to discover and find these stimuli. Artem's using a little bit of a different mechanism. Pressure sensitive cells. What's really interesting is it was massively misunderstood how temperature or mechanical stimuli converted into electrical impulses in the nervous system. Obviously we send electrical pulses to sense damage or pain or temperatures and things of that nature. They didn't know how that really worked. It was misunderstood. What Artem had done is identified in the cell line that gave off measurable electrical signal to a poke. So they're actually using nano pipettes and poking different cells. But there's 72 candidate genes that could have been the cause of this. And so they literally went through the process of isolating them one by one and. And poking each one and ultimately finding the one that was responsible for the electrical impulses. And basically this, you know, this discovery is really showing, you know, how, you know, on that level, heat, cold and sort of force sends pulses through our nervous system, but also kind of how we perceive the world around us. And Adapt to that world. So it's super interesting. I think I really, you know, I need a PhD to go much deeper than that. But it's clearly something that's been, you know, a mysterious thing and people have been trying to really find answers for, for a really long time. And just got to say, you know, congrats, Artem. Glad you brought one to San Diego, or at least half of one. We're proud of you.

He gets the whole one. That's huge. Fred, have you covered any Nobel Prize winners? Did you get to have. We won one during the time that you've been covering San Diego?

Not that I have covered, but, you know, there's quite a few here at San Diego living in San Diego. And I think it's, it just, it's just come from the universities that we have here. Ucsd, you know, they become professors or they've, you know, studied here. So I think there's just a lot of ties to San Diego and general technology.

Totally agree. I. There's a thread on Twitter with Luke Safinos who posted, you know, here was the parade we gave people when certain discoveries happen. And I think we need our own parade for Nobel Prize winners. So let's make that happen.

Well, I think one thing to point out too, and I think you started to mention this is, you know, we often maybe just meet, but we often forget that professors aren't just teaching, they're doing a lot of work behind the scenes. And so, you know, he's doing a combo of teaching and research. And so it's pretty incredible that you can kind of balance those two things in a lot of ways. So I think that's pretty awesome.

Totally agree. Well, congrats, Artem. And hopefully next time we'll be prepared with a special sound effect for Nobel Prize winning. Let's jump into our next story. Then. We got. We're heavily biotech focused here on the scene today, but that's okay because there's some big breakthroughs. So we all know the RNA technology going into the COVID vaccine. Well, San Diego researchers are working with Moderna to take the same technology and now apply it to hiv, which is really, really fascinating to see. So Scripps Research working with Moderna, taking that same tech, which is obviously working. But HIV is a much trickier virus. They're seeing if they can train the body to develop antibodies to attack it on its own. First clone trial is actually already starting in November. It's really, it's great. Seneca researchers have had a really big part in understanding hiv. Effect on the body, which I didn't know. I didn't know we had a density here and that. But, you know, there's some antivirals that exist for hiv, but they're really expensive. There's actually a really funny south park episode where they talk about, here, here's how to solve HIV. Take $250,000, blend it up and inject it into your body. You know, that doesn't work for most of the world, especially where HIV is hitting people the hardest. So more work is being done to find a cheaper vaccine for this. 700,000 people died in HIV last year alone, which is crazy. I didn't know it was that large. Still, that's what we've lost in Covid in 18 months. But 38 million are living with HIV, which means they're taking drugs like PREP and others to keep it at bay so it doesn't turn into actual aids. The problem with this industry is that we've got 40 years of failed drug trials, so people are really burnt out and another trial coming around. It's. It's hard to get excited about it. But I think the RNA piece is what's special here. You know, we've obviously taken a new technology, it's worked, and the FDA is receptive to it, obviously. So we're hoping that this, this has some legs to hiv, which I guess it's. It's a trigger virus because it mutates at extraordinarily faster rates than Covid. And it's got these hidden spikes, like, you've all seen that red Covid ball, which. All those spikes on it, I guess they're hidden more on hiv, covered by, like, sugar clusters. So, you know, it's elusive. And maybe rna, maybe Moderna has the secret trick here. So we're open. We see some of them from us. It'll be a while, obviously, till we hear results, but just want to let people know that San Diego's got a hand in something like this, which is pretty cool.

Well, you know, it's interesting too, is there's one last piece that I picked up in the article is they're. They're looking at people who have sort of, I guess, have. Have fought off HIV a little bit better than others might have and seeing if they can take that approach to say, hey, what do you have? What could, could be going on in that, in your body that is. Can be helpful to this, you know, to fighting HIV in this level. But, yeah, you're right, this is a very complicated one. And maybe, maybe, maybe this is another Nobel Prize. Let's hope they nail it.

Yeah, definitely. We'll have our sound effect ready. Yes. For our last main story, this is a general business story that we're excited to see. San Diego foundation has awarded $500,000 grant to the Central San Diego Black Chamber of Commerce to distribute funds to businesses hurt during COVID And with this they're also spinning up an entity called the Urban Business Resource center to be a place for business owners to come and ask for help. The article that was put out I think by the Times of San Diego, no Channel 7 talks also a lot that you know, even pre Covid, black business owners have harder access to financial tools, to mentorship and other things as well too. So let alone pandemic, we should be helping business owners get a leg up. But now even more so it's good to at least see an effort is going forward here. So great to see and if you are someone who could benefit from this, I would look up the San Diego, the Central San Diego Black Chamber of Commerce. I believe you can be applying for grants for your business.

Yeah, shout out to the Black Chamber. I will just give a tidbit there. A lady who runs that name is Donna DeBerry. She's actually also the chief diversity officer at Cisco, which is one of San Diego's unicorns. She's, she's a great lady who's been spearheading that program. And you know, they've already been giving out some grants to black owned businesses. One to point out is Promodrone, which was in the Connect all incubator a few years back. So it's, it's a great way to make impact to the community and I assume that they're going to, you know, put this money to good use.

That's great to hear. Yep, we love to hear it. Well, thanks for that tidbit. That's great. A few fundings that happened just in the last week that are worth mentioning. And Fred, I think you've probably covered some of these Gretel AI. Do you know the Gretel team? You talked to them?

The Gretel team? Yeah. They're making a developer focus solution and they raised money for some big investors.

Yeah. And they've had a track record of success. They previously did harvest AI and which sold to Amazon and now Alex at Gretel is back again. So great to see. With today being startup month in North County Day, we've got a series of north county funded companies that I want to highlight. Amionics is just raised 6 million it's Carlsbad based and they're focused on safe lithium ion batteries. Yep. Do we need batteries more than ever to advance. And some metrics. Vista based company raised 11 million for a digital platform for tracking sleep health. So this is some good fundings in north county happening in San Diego.

Nice, Fred. Did we miss any?

Only thing I would say is that we have a Q3 report. Me, Neil and Jonah, we're writing a Q3 funding rapid report that should be out in the next couple weeks. Stay tuned for that.

Yes. Keep us honest. We are working on it. Lots of data that we now need to turn into words. So keep an eye on that on both Fresh Brew Tech and on Fred Substack. And you know, tune in every Friday and you'll get these kinds of news and tidbits. 12:30 clubhouse and also found on the Tacos and Tech podcast. So that's it. Is that everyone?

Always a pleasure.

Always. Yeah. Hopefully we'll see you throughout the month at Startup Month and if not, we'll catch you next week. Thanks, everyone.

All right.