Techstars San Diego Powered by San Diego State University first startup cohort announced with Misti Cain

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Hello. Welcome to this Week in San Diego tech news. I'm your host, Neil Bloom with Interlock Capital and the Tacos and Tech podcast. I'm an investor, seal entrepreneur, community builder, and thrilled to be sharing some great news today with Misty Kane of techstars San Diego Powered by San Diego State. Hey, Misty, thanks for being here.

Hey Neil, thank you so much for having me. Super stoked to be here.

Oh, yeah, it's, it's, well, it's a big day. It's a big week for San Diego and for startups. Oh, I'm very excited for this week. Yeah, it's, I'm excited to get the, that I'm gonna tease, I'm gonna tease our audience a little bit because I want to make sure that everyone knows all the amazingness about you. Can you give us a quick little background about yourself?

Absolutely, yeah. Happy to do so. So I am a founder as well as the investor for techstar San Diego powered by San Diego State University. My background is in marketing, specifically strategy, and I went from being a strategist to being a founder of my own company and I started mentoring with techstars and if you're not familiar with techstars, it is the largest pre seed investor in the world. So we have 55 different accelerator programs around the globe and I happen to be the investor for two of them. Techstar San Diego powered by sdsu, which I mentioned earlier, as well as techstars Anywhere Remote, which is our remote first accelerator. So I started mentoring with them probably about five years ago. And in between that time I really got an opportunity to get to know Ryan Cooter, the managing director for both programs as well. Ryan and I have become good friends and he invited me to not only be a mentor, but also to be an EIR for the last techstars Anywhere program. So I went from mentor to all star mentor to give first recipient. They gave me an award at the last founder con, which was very flattering and humbling. And then I was an eir and Ryan's like, you've made it this far, might as well invest with us. So now I'm an investor with techstars as well. Super excited.

That's amazing. Techstars, as you mentioned, largest global accelerator. It actually has a little history in San Diego. It had a one year run with the Qualcomm Robotics accelerator many years ago where we got to get to know 10 robotics based companies. And many San Diego companies have gone through the anywhere program, which at times was kind of, you know, loosely headquartered. In Carlsbad at a co working space, wherever Ryan Cooter was at the time.

Shout out to North County San Diego. Yes.

Yeah, but this is the first year where we have a full, in person, live, full time, dedicated accelerator. Like, what does that mean? And tell us a little bit like why SDSU decided to go all in on that.

Absolutely. So we are super grateful to Holla Modenat as well as Kathy Poucher, who both are San Diego State University innovation team members. And what they were considering and thinking up is an innovation district. So. So they worked with several of the leaders in the innovative space here in San Diego to create this Mission Valley Innovation district concept. And one of the goals of this particular endeavor is to not only make San Diego synonymous with sun and beaches and tacos, which of course we all know and love. Also we're very strong in the life and biosciences and pharmaceutical. But they wanted to really make, make this an innovation and tech hub along with economic development improvements and being able to consider San Diego one of the places that people could go to find investment and to build and scale their startups. So they thought what would be a great way to attract super, incredible, gritty, innovative founders to this area? We know we want to partner with an organization that has a reputation for doing just that. And because of their relationship with Ryan Cooter, they thought bringing techstars to San Diego would be a good play. And it has already worked out with a lot of positive outcomes. And so we joined forces to create the techstars San Diego Powered by SDSU accelerator program, which launched on September 11, 2023. So we welcomed 12 incredible founders into the Zip Launchpad space at SDSU this Monday.

Man, so cool. Feels like a long time coming, but also it feels like it like came fast. Like it was just like last October at Santa Startup Week when on I remember like in the SDSU theater or auditorium and here we are, the companies are already here. What does it take to go through to wean weave down to 12 companies? What was that process like from a year ago to now?

It's a lot of love and tears. I'll. I'll be honest, when you get startups to apply, number one, we accept probably about 1 to 2% percent of the startups who apply. So if you're great at math, go ahead and do some Pythagorean theorem calculations to, to see what that means. But we get incredible entrepreneurs who submit their applications to join the techstars accelerator. To be able to take such a large swath of Great builders and innovative thinkers. Down to only 12 companies is not as easy as one might think. Number one, our team goes through every single application. So if you take the time to submit your deck, talk about your team and tell us what it is that you're building, please know that we have read that application. Not only that, we also have interviews with the founders. We talk with each of them, we understand what it is that they're building. So we do whittle down the the list of founders who are applying until we get to what's called our screening committee. We have ment and advisors, some investors. Neil, you were part of this process, so thank you very much for that. Who take a look at some of the top candidates that both Ryan and myself feel have the six key heuristics that we look for at techstars. I'll give you just a quick rundown of those heuristics and then I'll finish up with our selection process. So the first key heuristic is team. The second key heuristic is team. The third, Neil, do you want to take a guess what the third is?

I hope it's team because we can never have enough deep dive on the team.

Neil, you win. The third is team. The fourth is actually market. And then fifth is progress. The very last is idea. And not because ideas aren't important, but because if you were to ask any techstars founder whether they just graduated or if they have been a techstars alum for years, if they have the same idea that they came into techstars with, none of them would raise their hand. So the team Team team stands for. Do you have grit? Do you, are you aligned as a team? If you're, if you have multiple co founders, do you have the determination, do you have the subject matter expertise in order to build this particular solution? When we look at the market, is it a scalable venture, backable market? When we talk about progress, have you shown demonstrable traction? Are you able to get a wait list together? Do you have any revenue? Are there any letters of intent, things like that? And then lastly is the idea. Ideas are great, but they can change and they should change in order to be as valuable to the people that you are building them for. And we also look for 10x versus 2x ideas. So a 10x idea, these are things that are truly changing policies, they're changing laws, they're changing the way people live, the way they think, the way they go about their status quo. And then a 2x idea is, oh, that's a nice improvement on something that already exists. So if you look at, I'm going to take us way back. If you look at something like the iPhone, right. The iPhone was fundamentally different in absolutely almost every single way, including the way that they interacted with the telecommunications companies. IPhone came along and said, no, if you want this phone, you will do what we say versus the other way around. So we're looking for ideas that do that that are super powerful. After screening committee and having a really great team, mentors and advisors who take a look at the top companies that techstars has selected, then we whittle it down to the final 12 and make those offers.

Okay, well, should we do, Are we ready to talk through those 12 companies?

Oh, I have been ready for so long. The fact that I had to wait and not share with people who we have coming to San Diego has been very, very hard for me. I'm great with secrets, but when people are asking like, who is it? What type of companies? And I'm like, I can't tell you. I'm so sorry. So now I just want to tell.

Everybody, we're so excited. I mean, I mean it's a big deal. These are people that are going to, you're going to live with for the next three months, literally. Right. Our mentors are going to really get to know a lot. Right. And both sides, I got to pick, date and then pick who we want to spend more time with. And some are in San Diego already, some have moved here for it. So there's also the bigger chance of people that win them over to get them here permanently, so.

Exactly.

As well.

Yeah. We've got founders coming from as far away as Norway, so committed to be.

Here through December, which is amazing. So without further ado, let's meet the 202023 inaugural class of Techstars San Diego powered by SDSU.

Awesome. I want to, I want like drums and confetti just to like Hallmark this moment. This is. Thank you, Neil. That's awesome. All right, here we go. So just as a precursor, Techstar San Diego powered by SDSU. We are industry and vertical agnostic. So we accept B2B, B2C, B2G as you're about to hear. Any industry, any vertical, we do shy away from bio and life sciences that are not tech first only because the life cycle to put them through a 13 week accelerator program is a bit long. But other than that, we welcome builders of all shapes and sizes and types, business models to come and apply. So you're going to see Quite a diverse array from hardware to B2C to B2G. As I mentioned before, first I'm just going to go in alphabetical order. First up, the very first company that I want to introduce is Air Build. So Air Build, they are building algae panel green roofs for commercial buildings. And what this allows commercial buildings to do is carbon. It's like a carbon sequestration and energy production type of manufacturing process where these commercial buildings can literally put it on their roofs, grow the algae as well as do the do well for the planet. What they're trying to do is replace the Amazon forest. So we are cutting down trees and we're cutting down life giving, oxygen producing parts of our environment and they are looking to reverse that. So Air Build is up first. The second company hardware company is Baba. They're actually based here in San Diego. And what Baba is it enables parents to feed their baby on the go. So it's the first bottle cooler and warmer. Now I have a fur baby, so just a dog. But I do have a lot of friends with kids and one of the things they tell me is like I have to lug around everything. I gotta lug around this cooler and if I want to go anywhere for longer than four hours, I gotta find a way to warm up my bottle and then I gotta find a way to cool it down. Baba takes care of all of that. So really cool hardware company there. And Baba, the founder Dan, he actually had a previous business that he exited. So this is his second time around the sun. Excited to have him with us. Next company we're talking about Government Cargo Shot. So Cargo Shot actually works with three PL providers. They are a proof of condition platform that enables shippers and logistics providers to deliver global supply chain accountability and performance. So what Cargo Shot does is all those fees and all of the hey, did it get there? Did it get there the way it was supposed to get there? Did it have the proper paperwork? Cargo Shot helps those suppliers to be able to provide that proof of condition information. CO Broker AI is company number four CO Broker out of El Paso, Texas. They are an AI powered assistant that allows brokers via text and WhatsApp to completely automate the research and the marketing operations. So essentially you put in the information about the property that you are going to be selling and you tell Co Broker AI what the specs are. Co Broker AI can build marketing collateral for you, it can build a website for you all from your mobile phone, which is pretty incredible. The next company that's up is Crater. Craitr is a portable 3D printer that can manufacture military grade parts wherever and whenever. So if you are out in the field and you need to manufacture something, they have a 3D printer that can make that possible, which is really cool. And they're looking to also get into the commercial space. But right now they are having success working with the Department of Defense. Company number. What are we at right now? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Am I at 6? I'm halfway through. All right, next up is General Folders. So General Folders is a, it's a cloud agnostic data collaboration software company. So what it allows companies to do is to transfer their data securely to monitor that transmission in real time. So if you've ever tried to send something to another organization and then three days later they're like yeah, I didn't get that. That didn't actually arrive. You can see the of transferring that data in real time and then you can also easily validate that what data you're sending is correct. So if someone requests for example some customer data and you on your end trying to send that data sends a little bit too much information. So maybe they just need customer name and account numbers. But it has all the customer details in there and you don't want that. You can also validate to make sure before that sends that hey, we actually don't need this piece of data and that piece of data which is really, really nice. General Folders. The CEO of General Folders is Pardis and she also worked with Twitter as well. So we are really, really excited for her domain expertise and to be building in this space. Next up is Mosquito. Mosquito is a software driven non toxic outdoor mosquito control solution that helps to protect people from mosquitoes and all the diseases they transfer. So right now they are able to license their product. They also have the Mosquito grand which is a large mosquito device that hotels and restaurants and things like that can use outdoors. And then they're also working on a smaller device that may go into the B2C space as well. So super excited to have another hardware company in the mix. Nev Mind is coming from the farthest away I believe so the CEO of Never mind and most of the team is in, in Sweden and some of the other co founders are in I think Portugal and Norway. So they do some traveling in between there. But they're coming to the San Diego area to stay with us for at least three months. We're going to try and get them to stay a little bit longer than that, AKA forever. But we'll, we'll, we'll take what we can get. And they are a desktop application that automatically replies to your emails and messages. Right now what you can do is you can see sync up certain, certain like your, your Google Calendar notion, drive things like that and ask hey, where is this particular file? Or what time is this meeting? And it will deliver that information back to you. But the goal is to be able to have basically this AI powered assistant that answers the question when someone either sends you an email or message automatically. Oblio is next. They are out of Boston, Massachusetts and they're an email based a for college admissions counselors to be able to craft personalized messages for the students and leverage all the existing data that the students or their families normally have to go through and sift through and to easily prioritize those communications and then communicate back out to the students and their families easily. So if you think about the size of college campuses, if you think about the entire process, from a student enrolling all the way through to graduation, being an alum, things of that nature, being able to take all of those questions, all of those FAQs and from one inbox answer them and have automated replies to some of these common questions. It is magic. Speaking of magic, this is one of the companies Ryan and I joked we weren't sure if we were getting punked on this one. The next company. Oh, did I cut out? Oh, I'm good. Okay, sorry. The next company, Ryan and I joked we weren't sure if we were getting punked on this one. The next company is called Remix and Remix is developing a virtual teleporter. And what this allows users to do is freely interact and share their complete physical environment from anywhere in the world. And when I talk to you about freely interacting and sharing the environment, it is not avatars or half of your torso and up. It is the full person in the full environment in real time without the need for a lot of technology stuck to you in order to make this happen through a VR device, it is you put the teleporter in the room, it scans the room, it creates a replica of that particular space and then allows someone to to port into that space via a VR technology and interact with you in real time. So definitely excited to see that in real life. When Remix gets to the San Diego State University zip launchpad space almost to the end. Here we have Site Bionics. Site Bionics is in the computer vision world. They are creating digital twin technology that allows retailers to gain operational insights about their physical space. So you can think of it kind of like Google Analytics, but for a physical space. So if you are a retailer and you want to know, did the customer come in through this door and go straight to this aisle? What route did they take? What products did they pick up and then all the way to the register, what did they look at? What did they touch? And then what did they eventually buy so that they can optimize that entire process from beginning to end? And last but not least, we have Steno. So Steno is a personalized and AI powered market research copilot. What it does, it takes transcribed information from like videos and podcasts. It could even take the transcription from this podcast, Neil, and it extracts helpful insights from that digital content to help brand owners and content creators research their market and their competition. So seeing the SEO keywords, what brand mentions are occurring within that particular transcription, or even if you're just an aficionado of a particular podcast, you can get a summary or an analysis of what happened for some of your, your favorite podcasts as well and other digital content. So that is the official 2023 class for Techstars San Diego, powered by San Diego State University. Our very first one.

Amazing. So excited. There's such diversity and breadth in markets from and software to hardware. It's almost nearly 50, 50 in terms of like there's almost 50% hardware related companies, which is pretty cool.

Yeah.

Also very San Diego, by the way. We are such a hardware town from our IoT roots and other industries too that, you know, I think one, we're able to tap into a lot of good talent here for mentorship for all of these. So pretty excited about that. Yeah.

Yeah. I also love that even though it is hardware, they're utilizing tech in an innovative way to make that hardware. I mean we are tech stars after all. So we do have a heavy emphasis on the tech. But these companies are taking that hardware and utilizing tech to make it even more efficient and even more scalable. So very excited to have each of these, each of these companies in the class.

Totally. Yeah, I almost. We should be really not even ever saying hardware by itself. All of these are hardware plus software or software plus.

Exactly. We got to. We have to coin a new word for that.

Yeah, totally. Well, this is great. I'm so excited to get to know all these companies. I know you are as well too. What's it look like for them from this point on and how can the community who is hearing this interact and get to know them in that regard as well too?

Such a great question. So I do want to Shout out our mentors, Ryan, myself, Ben Greenlee, who's our program manager, and Maddie Light, our program coordinator. We are very smart people, but we do not know everything. So we rely very heavily on what we consider the lifeblood of our program, which is our mentors. And also we have an incredible partner with San Diego State University and their entire, you know, their alums and their staff and things like that. But the mentors are really drives the program and helps to make a customized solution for these founders. The rest of our time with the founders during these now 12 weeks is going to be getting an opportunity to meet a lot of these mentors. We have two weeks of what we like to call mentor Madness where the 12 companies are introduced to about 80 mentors and they get to select some lead mentors who will help them through the entire process, the entire accelerator program and help them with the challenges, the opportunities and navigating doing more faster which is one of the mantras that techstars really leans on heavily when we're advising our founders. We also have three EIRs, that stands for Entrepreneurs in Residence who are supporting our founders. That is Vidya Dinamani, Jeremy Yamaguchi and also Duncan street, who is a techstars alum by the way. So they will be assisting with helping our founders as well as being super mentors for our founders if the community would like to get involved. Number one, resources and introductions are always helpful. If you want to get to know any of the companies that you've heard about today or if you just need another rundown about those companies, you can always reach out to me. I am Misty M I s t I dot cain c a I n@techstars.com you can also find me on LinkedIn. Again my name is spelled with all eyes no wise so LinkedIn.com in Misty Kane that last name is C A I N I'm on Twitter at hey Misty Kane as well so feel free to reach out to me. I am the device agnostic so wherever you hit me up I'm going to respond. I'm happy to share more about the question companies. We also have opportunities to be friends of the program so if you would like updates and to understand what's going on with the companies, let me know. I can definitely get you on our update list. Follow the Techstar San Diego powered by SDSU LinkedIn and I almost said Twitter account but it is no longer Twitter the X account I guess on those two platforms to get updates and then also if you see that connect or if you see that tacos in tech or startup San Diego or any of these amazing startup focused organizations are doing something with founders or doing something with techstars San Diego powered by sdsu. Please come out to support. We really appreciate it. And just seeing the community out and about supporting these founders means a lot.

Awesome. I love it. Well, very much looking forward to getting to the companies for demo day. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but for December where, you know, we get to. To kind of cap off and. And celebrate what's what, all this great work that's going to go into this whole quarter. But now it's time to get to work. Time to help these companies on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. So let's dive in and here we go. So thank you.

Thank you so much, Neil. It's been a pleasure being on.

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I did not ask you your favorite taco spot. We got to end the episode with that.

Oh, my favorite taco spot. Oh, gosh, you really put me on the spot. Okay. I will say that Ryan has made me a Las Olas fan. So I have not had a bad taco, a bad burrito, a bad quesadilla, anything when I go to Las Olas. Yeah, it's great.

One and a view. I just discovered they also are in Carlsbad. I didn't realize that there are two.

Oh yeah, downtown. Yeah, they're also in downtown Carlsbad. Yeah, but they are delicious.

Little different kind of view.

Absolutely.

All right, well, it's a good one. Sounds like we need to bring our founders there too. Maybe a little off trip for a little taco Taco tour maybe is what we need to do here and there.

That would be incredible.

Thanks again, Misty and congrats on this new program. Cheers.

Absolutely. Thanks so much, Neil. Bye.