This Week in San Diego Tech News - October 18, 2024

Hello, everybody. How you doing? Hey, Fred. Good to see you.

Good to see you.

It is in the middle of La Tech Week. It's about to be San Diego Tech Week. We are in the thick of the fun that we love. How are you doing?

I'm doing great, Neil. Yeah, to your point, La Tech Week is full effect. Got San Diego Startup Week happening next week. I don't know about you, but it's been pretty busy. It's a busy Q4.

Yeah, it's fun. I love it. We love. I love being out and about, that's for sure.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech, you know we got tacos and tech is on smash for the green guacamole keeper. Counting's counting beans Contador Cuentan frijoles founders trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping Fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times of craft beer and coffee My coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing Coronado eating tacos el gordo the tacos standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset La Jolla shows entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana SD beef full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach. Tech leaders who believe stars are within reach. We interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech, you know we got it.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos. Tacos in tech, you know we got it. Hey.

First some intros. I'm Neil Bloom, run Fresh Brew Tech, the Tacos and Tech podcast and Interlock Capital, a local early stage investment fund.

And I'm Fred Greer, local journalist, previously worked at the Santa Business Journal, covering ins and outs of the startup world, breaking news on IPOs and funding rounds, and excited to be back talking about the biggest news in San Diego tech.

And my first intern. As we as we just had a retelling which we will tell that story In a Future In a Future podcast. It's always great to do this with you, Fred. So thank you for joining. Another great week here of this week in Santa Tech News. We got a lot to talk about, news wise, a lot of funding news, which I'm stoked a lot. Especially on the tech side. We are going to talk a lot, a lot. But let's do a little retrospective of some things been going on. I just got back into town from Tech Week. I put on an event with the city of Burbank who really wanted to talk about the diversity of the local tech ecosystems in their area of the world, which is kind of the eastern LA area. Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, kind of side. All of Tech Week really was happening on the west side. And so most of the people, you know, having to go every day over the west side and they're like, hey, let's look for the people who are local. Let's throw something on our end. This is actually like week two of Tech Week. SF Tech Week was last week. LA Tech Week was this week. This is a Tech Tech Week platform in a sense that Andreessen Horowitz actually built out. They've built out Tech Week. I think they got techweek.com maybe and they had a New York Tech Week earlier in the summer, then sf, then la. And it's a platform where people can post their events. You kind of apply and post your events that hey, you're hosting an event during the weekend. They publish a global ecosystem calendar of events. But been some big events happening for sure from an Andreessen Horowitz side. They put on an event every night with some big name speakers. Do you hear about any of these? Make it up to anything?

Yeah, a few people pinged me. Founders asked if I was at Tech Week. I'm kind of full heads down trying to write about what's happening locally in San Diego. So I'm not making it down there. But you know, I think it's great to see the city's back, people are back and raising capital, speaking on panels. If you're a founder, I, I highly recommend checking it out either next year. And they also have a Tech Week in New York and sf, which I think wrapped up a few weeks before this. So yeah, definitely a great time. And you know, we also have our own Startup Tech Week happening on Monday, which we highlighted in the newsletter, so we definitely will highlight as well.

Yeah, the and I ran to a bunch of standing people who are up in LA as well saying hey, are you here? Came out to my event which was great to see kind of the shared love. And then actually on my way home I stopped in at a El Segundo office of a tech company that used to be based in San Diego. Had an exit and their next company they're doing kind of in the heart of I would say deep tech land these days. El Segundo is like space tech HQ and really autonomous. Everything is happening in El Segundo. So it's cool to pop in and and meet a brand new company coming out of a former San Diego company and that is Wave AI building a mobile vehicle for really built for the airport market. I think that's all I can share right now. So. But you mentioned Santa Startup Week which actually a little anecdote the very first year 2013 and you published a great article about it in your newsletter and the Business of of San Diego newsletter. We'll link to Fred's substack here. But first year of San Diego Startup Week was actually known as San Diego Tech Week. It was in 2013. It actually was 10 different meetups that happened throughout the month, monthly meetups that the organizers said hey, can you all make them happen over two days? And they did and in one same location. So I think it was a few hundred people went to everyone's meetups that were already happening. So actually a very LA Tech Week thing that happening now that actually is how LA San Diego's Tech Week started. From Year one were a bunch of organizers like like Brant Cooper, Austin Newcker, Eric Otterson, Fon Reason and Tim Ryan, Albashera, Mel Gordon. That crew put on Year one they got super excited and jazzed and on the way TO building Year 2 built startup San Diego as well the entity the Org and it turned into San Diego Startup Week. So kind of some cool routes to the event which used to be summertime always was like June and during COVID that changed everything obviously. So 2019, I think Santa Star peaked at about 3,000 attendees. That was the year we felt almost too big. I remember we were in the convention center and it just swallowed us up. Like you looked around at a place that could hold 150,000 people and here is little San Diego Startup Week in this MA in these massive halls and it felt like oh, we came to be like it was awesome. Like I remember the big keynote was the Unicorn panel that year. It was seismic Telium and one more I'm forgetting and Eric Otterson hosted that. That keynote Midday Covet changed everything. They went to a full month of Santa Startup Week. Virtually, which was crazy. And now it's back to one week in October and every day is a different part of town, which is pretty cool, I will say. This is the first year it's back. There's a piece that's back in downtown San Diego which we haven't had in four years. So I'm really excited to see that part. We should probably break down a few of the pieces of the days of the week. But Fred, any insights from your article that you're writing that you want to share?

Yeah. So I interviewed the executive director Lisa Barnhart's house. She's done a great job of leading the way. There's a few different things going on, I think. Monday is at Carlsbad. They have Fashionphile CEO and co founder speaking. Sarah. They also have a day in Tijuana, I believe that's on Tuesday. They're doing a downtown crawl where they're doing exclusive tours at Downtown Works. Click up Edge Wallet, which is a crypto company and a few other locations and they have a few different other initiatives like one on one mentoring and a whole. They have a little bit, a little bit of everything for everyone. So I would look into the schedule, get your ticket if you haven't got it yet. It should be something for everybody. And the way they explain it to me is, you know, yeah, they used to have it in one place and the convention center and the reason why for that was because there's a hotbed. Everyone was headquartered there but then after Covid, everyone started moving to like Toronto Valley and North county and you know, obviously Mexico has has a scene too. And so they adopted this five day approach to kind of meet people where they are. So yeah, they're expecting about 1500 folks across all five days. And yeah, it should be a great showcase of what's happening and the startup scene locally.

Yeah, I'm pretty excited throughout the week. I'll be there most of the days. The first day you mentioned Sarah Davis from Fashionphile kind of keynoting the day which will be awesome. We just got off a call this afternoon kind of talking through what a story. She's been working at it for 25 years. When she started there was no E Commerce world at all, not even PayPal and she had to figure out how to get people to pay for things online. It's gonna be a cool story to hear where they are doing hundreds of million revenue now. But actually right before her talk is going to be a really cool I call reverse Fireside chat with Mike Glanz. The the current CEO of Talitha Coffee, which is a coffee roll up company. He's going to be interviewing and being they're going to interview each other. The founder of Bird Rock Coffee going to have a kind of a, I mean it'll be a very coffee conversation but it really will be like an entrepreneur to entrepreneur talking about how do you start to a certain level and then how do you grow because the Bird Rock Coffee guy actually sold once he got the three coffee spots and there's a whole new team building it and growing it to what you see now. So it'll be a really cool conversation to see two people kind of interviewing each other on their journey. And you mentioned that throughout the week it's me all different days. SDSU day I think is Wednesday, the crawl is Thursday and I think downtown Friday is at ucsd. And the keynote kind of anchoring the end of the week is Qualcomm founder an original CEO, Irwin Jacobs, which I think will be quite, quite, quite a highlight. The guy's in his 90s and still I would say running at full pace. Like just, you know, just is re getting active with a cancer diagnostics company that he'll talk about. I think he originally funded 10 years ago. And yeah, it'll be a great way to end the week. And I'll be I think moderating a panel on that Friday at UCSD at 11am around a few different aspects of AI. So I'm looking forward to seeing everyone out there. Should be really fun week. I know I'll see you out there too as well.

Absolutely.

Why don't we dive into some other news? You had quite a viral scoop, I would say on an L A tech company placing some new digs in San Diego. You want to break the, break the news here on the pod as well?

Yes, let's do it. I believe, I think 29,000 people saw that post. Snapchat Inc. Or Snap Inc. Is reportedly planning to open a San Diego office in 2025. This follows on, you know, following Apple, Google and Amazon as the latest tech giant to expand into San Diego. In the piece it talked about how San Diego is known for having strong engineering talent, specifically in data and trust and privacy and security. And if you look at Snapchat's employees, they have about 50 in San Diego. A lot of them actually were in those categories. So I actually have an updated note that you know, podcast listeners will get scoop on. They actually signed a lease, I think earlier this week. There's a, I think four year lease in Carmel Valley Slash Del Mar. However, however you split it and yeah, they have at least about three floors and Cushman Wakefield helped them with that deal. So yeah, that's a scoop. Big, big tech companies are continuing to expand in San Diego. I think it's just, it's great news overall and seems like a community is pretty excited about it.

Yeah, what I love is along that. So along the 56th quarter right there is becoming a whole new software tech world. I would say from you got big public like Intuit and Fico and right in between now you got Snap, another public company. And then down the road a little bit on El Camino is Seismic's office right there. Company that we saw in the business journals quote doing nearly 400 million revenue. So quite a low quarter right there along the 56 as well as all the biotech that's wrapped around it as well too. So cool to see a whole new little cluster coming to be and big tech surrounded right there as well.

It's a great call out.

Another scoop, another week, another big billion dollar biotech buyout. I feel like we should go back and look at how many of these have happened this year. I'm sure you will at the end of your year wrap up which we'll do. But man, another, another multi billion dollar buyout here. You want to break the news here on this Danish pharma giant buying a local company.

Yeah. Shout out to Natalie Rocha from the Union Tribune for breaking this news. Basically the headline is Danish farmer giant by senior company for 2.6 billion. And the company was Longboard Pharmaceuticals. They had about 50 employees. Super impressive exit. And it's funny, I think you mentioned on LinkedIn some companies or some employees. So hey, how is this good for San Diego? I would just comment on this that you know San Diego exits is great because it encourages companies employees that are at these companies to go start their next company. They get to have some little bit of wealth and you know, it really just helps push our ecosystem and innovation scene forward and it encourages more investors to, you know, bet on San Diego. I think it's great that our life science ecosystem continues to see healthy acquisitions and it really inspires the next generation of builders.

And by the way, you don't see this more often than in biotech. Like there are so many examples of selling and starting their next like asap. I think the Prometheus bio is the quickest one I've seen where they got acquired like April 2023 for 10 billion and then, and then the founders came out of Stealth exactly a year later with a 400 million dollar raise on their next company. Right.

I have another story too like Candid Candidate therapeutics, they raised 400, almost 400 million as well. They sold their company in January for 4.1 billion to Bristol Myers and then now the same, same team or similar team went out and closed a 370 million round less than six months later. So yeah, San Diego might have a unique angle where they're starting companies months, less than a year after selling their company.

Yeah. So that's the recyclability we want. Right. They're going to go bring the team back together for it as well too. So the jobs are still there, still net new jobs in that regard as well too. And the other part we saw in biotech is it's actually bringing big bio to San Diego. Right. Like we're seeing these big platforms like Merck and Eli Lilly acquiring and then saying oh now this is a foothold, let's build and expand their office here and put more of our, our presence here and build into a campus. So I think there's a lot to unravel on the positives here and we'll keep reporting that, that's for sure. Let's go to our next story on the tech side. We saw I caught, you probably both caught this on Twitter. Send Lane CEO, co founder and CEO Jimmy Kim, who recently moved personally from San Diego to Austin announced that by the end of the year moving out of the CEO role to start some other e commerce businesses. What was your take here on the news, Fred?

Yeah, I mean I would say Synlane is, is one of those E commerce tech platforms. They're one of the leaders in the email sending space. So you would use them for your, all your email management. And I remember writing about them in 2021 when they raised a 20 million Series A. And Jimmy, Jimmy Kim, although he moved to Texas two years ago, he still does his annual E commerce roundtable conference each year locally in San Diego where he invites the leading operators growing consumer brands and they do it all in San Diego. And so yeah, the news is he's stepping away from the company and it was a success I would say. And it's one of the leaders in their space. And it sounds like there's some send. Lane is not going anywhere but he's kind of stepping away and maybe new leadership is coming in. It's great to see that, you know, someone's able to scale up a company from zero to one and now they can do their next thing and I believe Jimmy actually used to be in the retail space. I think he had a store in Las Vegas selling shoes. And so it's cool to see him pivot that and parlay that into a tech company and, you know, kind of be able to step away from it. So it's a win in my eyes.

Oh, I think so, too. So here's my Jimmy Kim story. I met him 2015. He was just starting send lane. I was expanding hired.com into the San Diego market. He's one of the first people I met from a, like, hired.com part. So he had in the same room, it was a Scripps ranch was where the office was. He had his agency, like an email marketing agency, which at the same time he was building and everything from the agency side he was building into his tech. So he kind of had both logos on the door camera, what the agency was called. I definitely remember his Lambo right out front. I walked, I walked in like, whoa, someone's got a Lambo here. Oh, it's Jimmy's. Whoa. The guy I'm meeting. That's cool. He had his agency. He was hiring his first engineer, like, besides just, I think co founder, CTO for Send Lane. They use hired. They hired the person. And he just told me there's still. That person from 2015 is still working at sending that engineer he hired, which is super cool. Jimmy along the way, you know, is obviously raised all the way through a series C on Send Lane. And yeah, like you said, back to his roots. Wants to build from the beginning, which he loves doing. He's got a cool podcast. We talked a lot about this as well, too. And I think that's also what he's going to focus on is the content, the events and all that. So I'm excited to see more of his time go out into, you know, putting out his learnings out into the community as well, too. So congrats, Jimmy. You know, you deserve everything you've built and excited to see what you do next year for sure.

Love it.

Let's. Let's. Let's talk through some fundraisers. We got kind of a big, big fintech fundraise announcement that I'll let you break.

Yeah, I'm getting real excited because I, you know, we haven't seen too many fundraisers outside of Life Sciences in San Diego, and we're starting to see a little bit more and some larger rounds. The first group is a financial tech company called splitero. They raised 300 million, which is probably the largest around that. I've seen outside of life science in San Diego this year. You know, you can quote me if I'm wrong. And the guy's local, his name is Michael and I think he's attended some of our events. It's great to see him find success. There's some other fundings, but I don't want to pause here in case you have anything else you want to add to that.

Yeah, I mean one just to see such a big race, but also specifically in fintech where you and I have focused a little bit. We've done some subcluster focused events. We did a fintech lunch that Michael is at and I got to spend a little bit of time with him this summer when Marcus and DLA Piper did a CEO retreat down into the Valle de Guadalupe. It was cool to meet, spend some time with Michael there and apparently we'll be having him on the podcast pretty soon where he is going to do the tacos and tech rap himself. So I'm putting it out there live in the world that you'll be hearing the rap soon from Michael's lips here on the pod shortly. So congrats to Michael and the Splittero team and especially to highlighting local fintech and software, which is great to see. We've got some deep roots as we've talked on past episodes here. Take us through a few other fundraises here.

Yeah, so we have three more to share. Firestorm Labs, they just raised at 20 million. Two life science companies, Model Medicines raised a $14 million round and then 8, 5, 8 therapeutics raised a 50 million dollar round. I think, you know, summertime a lot of companies were trying to talk to VCs. Now we're starting to see some of those rounds closing and some announcements in Q4 and I think we're going to see a few more come through. So we definitely will keep bringing some more scoops on the funding side.

Yeah, I mean congrats to today Imagine team on Firestone. I just got a really cool tour of their spot over in Convoy area where they are printing drones. But really it's like a. Actually I've got one on my desk. Hold on, let me pull it up since we'll be publishing the video. Got the little mini. This is, this is their mini version of their drone that comes off in pieces that you know, you can change out what you got, what you want in your front cameras, radar, you can change out wing design, change out your propulsion and your weapon, your warhead, if you've got that on that as well too. So it was cool to see these giant HP printers that are just printing out drones. So super cool. Congrats Dan and team on the fundraise there. Model medicines. Daniel haters and team who really started. They actually started the company within Sway Ventures I believe and kind of spun it out. So it was a local venture fund that Daniel is a GP of, but this is I think his first CEO gig. He's got a doctor background, you know, MD background, investment background and now running this AI meets drug discovery platform which is pretty cool to see as well. So congrats on your guys raise and then the 858 therapeutics one I believe they've raised a number of times even this year. I think we've, we've mentioned them already this year. So great to see another good biotech fundraiser and progress. Well that's. We'll go through that stories for now. I think we'll have plenty of more stories next week after Startup Week for some of us. Catching up with so many of you, we're stoked to see you. As always, check the social coyote for events happening and even before Startup Week. Actually, Fred and I will be at Stocktoberfest kicking off Sunday night. I know a bunch of you will also be there. You've already shouted out that you'll be there, which we're excited to see you Sunday night kind of opening reception down in Coronado and then Monday and Tuesday. So some overlap there at Startup Week. I'm going to try to make it to everything if we can. Startup Week, obviously we just kind of talk through that and actually I'm helping organize the kind of the kickoff to the week of Startup Week. We're doing a Carlsbad Coffee Life in Action coffee hangout. So start the week together. 2pm Monday at Baba Coffee in downtown Carlsbad. We can plan out our weeks, see, compare who else is going to what things. But we look forward to seeing you all next week out in person. Come on out, we'll share. We've got a special discount code if you haven't grabbed your ticket yet. We'll share it in the show notes here as well too. Fred, I'm looking forward to seeing you Sunday in Coronado and throughout the week. Any last words on you from you.

Always a pleasure, Neil. I'll see you out there and stay tuned for next time.

All right, see everyone. Thank you and see you in person. Cheers.

Cheers.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos? Tacos in tech. You know, we got tacos in tech is on smash for the green guacamole keeper Captains counting beans Contador Quentan frijoles Founders trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping Fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times A craft beer and coffee My coating yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing Coronado eating tacos el gordo the tacos stand in puesto lucha libre and sombrero Gotta shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset La Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside to Tijuana Sd be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders who believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom.

Startups get the party Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech, you know we got it.

Hey.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want decking, tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it. Hey.

Sam.