This Week in San Diego Tech - March 27, 2025

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 border green guacamole keeper countins counting beans Contador cuentan frijoles found us 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 coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eatin 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 the Tijuana estee be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the be 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. Come on.

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 in tacos, tacos in 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. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

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

Well, hello. Hello everyone. Hello Fred, how you doing? Hey Neil.

Doing pretty good, how are you doing?

I'm doing all right, thanks. We are testing out trying to do this pod live so it'll still be pushed out and published and it also you can tune in and join the chat if you like which we've already got Ryan Cooter live chatting with us asking about Fred's background. So it's real. We know, we know the office it was taken that Fred took the photo at and tweeted about event coming soon. Maybe you'll be there too, Ryan. Well, well, welcome everyone to this week in San Diego Tech. Your co hosts with the most, Neil and Fred. I'm Neil, I run everything startup ecosystem related events, pods, champion of all founders and investor through Interlock capital. And this is my co host Fred Greer.

And I'm Fred Greer, journalist here in San Diego covering the tech and startup scene. Also help advise some companies in San Diego and awesome. Just be back here with Neil to talk about the biggest headlines. Startup Funding scoops in San Diego.

Yes. And if you followed along from our pod from last week, we were hyping and so stoked for the new March Madness NCAA bracket, which had four different San Diego teams in it. We had SDSU and UCSD's men's and women teams poised to go into the bracket. And one week later, no one's left, unfortunately. But it was a pretty, pretty fun week watching them. SDSU kicked it in the first four and then men's and then UCSD men's had a big first game against Michigan where they started slow, man, I think they were down like 10 right off the bat. But then all the way down to the buzzer were down three and looked like they, they were maybe gonna get it out. Should you tune into some of the game there?

Yeah, I've been following it like a lot on Twitter and and you know, X people call it, you know, national press on UCSD men's basketball that I've ever seen. And it seems like the whole city of San Diego is rooting for UCSD to win. Sucks that they didn't make it to the next round, but you know, the fact that they made it this far, first year eligibility, I think it's just great for the city and just what a year for collegiate basketball. But we had both men's and women's make it to the March Madness tournament and I thought it was just a win for San Diego sports. Obviously with Senegal Wave and the now Senegal Football Club, there's just a lot of momentum building in San Diego sports and exciting to see for sure.

Yeah. So we love it. Fred and I are obviously Triton alum. It's fun to have a sport to root from your alma mater. I know Ryan Cooter's got a lot that he has been celebrating over the years with his Hoyas, but it's nice to feel the D1 love here from UCSD. But we got plenty of else to talk about. Other news in that kind of hit our desk is local CPG company Pura Vida was which was acquired by Vera Wang I think five years ago. You might have the deeper details there. For nearly $100 million, I was resold for a million dollars. Oh, this one hurt even in my own gut. I felt it just feeling for the founders who two local founders. I believe they started this pretty much on a graduation trip from sdsu. They went out to I think Costa Rica fell in love with the locals bracelets and the local craft scene on the beach of taking ocean trash and turning it into A product and, and they decided let's make a business out of this. And so they connected local artisans in different countries to make crafts largely started in bracelets and built a, you know, nearly 100 million dollar business out of it, I believe. All bootstrapped all the way to an exit to you know, a luxury good Vera Bradley. So you know, I know they had a good exit off of that. And then to see your baby, you know, get pretty much operated into the ground, it's gotta hurt. So I reached out to one of the co founders, just be like how you feeling today? What's your take? And yeah, it was, it was pretty much that feeling. He was bummed to see how it had been operated over the recent years and it didn't surprise him to see that, which is still a bummer. But shout out to, to the two entrepreneurs everywhere who build something beautiful, have an exit and still, you know, still your baby. So what was your take here when you saw it, Fred?

Yeah, it's funny, we're just talking about, you know, how do we come across this news? I believe another local San Diego founder was the one who tweeted it out on X yesterday. Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Kim from Sim Lane was another kind of tech consumer founder in San Diego who's now, now in Austin. I believe there's some companies leaving San Diego with some coming in and he tweeted about it, the company being sold. Yeah, we profiled Pura Vita in San Diego a while ago and you know Neil, your members pretty well. Yeah, they were completely bootstrapped before they were acquired by a bigger firm, the Pure Bracelets, which is a private, a publicly traded company. And yeah, they're found in 2020, 2010 and SDSU alums. I had a meeting today with a venture capital investor who is a UCSD alum, he works with another guy at sdsu and we're talking about how SDSU probably has created more successful consumer companies than majority of the universities in the US if you. It's fascinating. I was thinking about it. Pure Vita blender, sunglasses, cuts like there's a lot of SDSU consumer founders and you know, just, there's a way, it's just I think we need to maybe do a piece on that one day. Look at how many consumer founders have come through SDSU because there's been some mega exits and Pure Vita is definitely one of them. They were sold for over 100 million. And yeah, it sucks to see the them being sold off but you know this is, this is the name of the Game we kind of talk about both sides. Companies that are growing and scaling but also some of them that you know, no longer around. So yeah, sucks, sucks. But you know, hopefully the founders are, they're still here in San Diego and investing in the community.

They are, they're investing, they're building, buying other businesses like they're not done. So expect to see more from them soon for sure. Pour one out for Pura Vita. Pouring out. And also for 23andMe other headline news of a company going bankrupt. This is I think relevant to San Diego because of the consumer side of genomics which has always been a promise for San Diego to have this deep life sciences meet the consumer piece and 23andMe which is one of the bigs it's them in Ancestry.com doing, you know, consumer genomics where you can learn more about your DNA and your family past and your predispositions health wise. It's always been known that you submit your. I think it's a cheek swap. I actually did this during COVID and you get back data but then they sell that data and they can use that data and whether that's for good or for bad. And so one too bad to see another business go out some a promising life science consumer. But now there's this big cry of hey, go delete your account to make sure that whoever ends up picking up this company out of bankruptcy doesn't get your data. And all I have to say is it's, it's out there already. I, I'm gonna do that but I also feel like it's already out there and whoever needed my DNA, you've got it one way or another. But sad to see for sure. I know that the original founder Anne was Jikki was trying to actually buy it back in a sense. It's a public company that I believe she was trying to regain control of. What was your take here around this?

Yeah, the Watcher Journal had a nice piece piece on it so we don't have to go too much in detail but I think yeah, the 23andMe definitely was on top of headlines of this week. And you know, San Diego does have ties to similar companies. It's unfortunate to see this outcome but you know, there's a lot of lessons that can be learned from this and hopefully you know, the next generation of these types of companies will take I don't know, protecting customers data more seriously because this is a pretty big issue and I'm interested to see how it plays out.

Yeah, you know we highlighted a big win last week macro wise like Wiz get acquired by Google, which by the way there's some ties to obviously Silicon Valley wise even to this week's 23andMe. Like we said, we like to cover the good and the bad and be able to share those connections locally as well too. By the way, I have seen talent go through illuminating through to 23andMe and Ancestry. So this is San Diego talent that has then gone on to kind of help take the genomics learnings and take it to the kind of consumer. And I hope there's more pathways for that as well too because we've got some of the smartest technologists and tech, especially in life sciences here in San Diego. And it was cool to see people move their way into the consumer side globally in that regard too. Let's move into some other stories here. We been following Events.com for a while. Mitch Thrower is the CEO of Edge.com we profile them back in the day on FreshProotek on the active mafia, if you will. We did a 10 part series on who are the original founders of Active. Where are they now? Well, Events.com is a spin off I would say from that and it filed a SPAC to go public within the last year and is now on a buying spree where it is actually buying events. And this was Mitch said this to me when I saw him at Tech on SoCal. He spoke there and we caught up for a few seconds there and he's like check out the festivals we're buying, including you know, a few in San Diego, Southern California and globally. And I believe it's kind of part of their path towards, you know, a public offering, if you will, to really beef up their assets, their revenue and overall just like owning not just the software side but owning the entire concert and event space. Super interesting from this. What are your takeaways, Fred?

Yeah, there's some facts to add on to what you, what you said. You know Cal, there's a great conference this happens once a year bringing together kind of the CEO, community and tech together in one roof. But yeah, this Events.com, you know they were founded in 2010 and they are based in La Jolla Cove and they have a small team, I think about 30 employees. And you know, they're one of the leaders in this, you know, this event management space. So yeah, it's great to see that they're buying up some companies. There's been a lot of, you know, M and A activity in the last like two weeks or so, I think There was a pause, you know, about last month and we're starting to see resurgence and I'm seeing headlines that deal making is back. You know, I would say for, for life sciences, we're not seeing that, but we're seeing a lot more activity on these, on the tech side, M and A. So I expect to see that more, more frequent. And I, I wonder how that's going to impact other sectors like consumer. We saw Poppy get acquired by Pepsi which we talked about in the last pod. But life signings haven't seen too many M and A headlines so we'll, we'll keep following that closely.

Yeah. And I think it's interesting here for a software company to what they detail as is really understand, they're buying festivals to kind of understand the customer life cycle. So for them they bought Wonderfront Festival, they bought the Temecula Hot Air Balloon Festival and for them that's, it's really more to understand all the different ways that the software can service the customer, which is the concert goer and the festival organizer in that regard. So I find that interesting from an M and A perspective for them to kind of go verticalize and own the entire stack and you know, especially in today's day and age where everyone's claiming AI is going to eat everything, you know, for them to actually go and buy physical assets, a con, a festival where people go to and they're a software, I see some similarities there. Right. It's like maybe their, their software is going to, you know, they're going to need to buff up the assets in that regard. So anyway, just kind of interesting to watch. I agree on the M and A side. Last year this time we were already talking about the billion dollar local life science deals. Haven't seen them yet. So we'll keep an eye on that and we'll keep an eye on what that means for the rest of the ecosystem in that regard. Some news that both hit us also to our gut a little bit is Natalie Rocha, the UT small business startup life science reporter is leaving the Union Tribune for a New York Times fellowship. Now this has been a peer of yours for a while, Fred. I'll let you kind of take us through what this means for the community.

Yeah. So Natalie Rocha is a reporter at the business at the San Diego Union Tribune and she announced yesterday that she's actually transitioning. She's joining the New York Times on a fellowship and it was great to see some folks in the comments. I think you commented Neil and Mike Crin and other Folks who read and participated in Natalie's work. I think the takeaway for me is there's been a lot of people who've been covering San Diego startup scene. Britney Myling comes to mind. Mike Freeman from, from ut, we have Jared Whitlock who's now at Stat News and Jonathan Wilson from S News as well are at the end points. And you know, I think San Diego has a lot of talented journalists that cover the startup scene, tech, life, science and they all go on to do bigger and better things. But it does leave a hole in the San Diego coverage and it's really important. I think that's why we're doing this podcast. We want to showcase kind of the good companies that are happening here. But you know, just shout out to Natalie for her promotion and her next gig. We're all excited for, for her next chapter and it was great to work alongside her. Business journal seemed like a couple years ago, I think it was about five years ago. And time flies.

Time does fly. And it is, you know, it's a bummer to have great talent who has this industry expertise and Rolodex, you know. Yes, she's not going far but seemingly she is. And you just kind of worry about a little bit of the atrophy of the coverage and the connections and really the context, the context piece to tell a story of like what. Not just what, what happened today and last week and last year, but over time, you know. And so yeah, I'm glad we're doing this as well too. I'm glad Fred, you've established you kind of your own independent voice as a reporting mechanism with your sub stack. And you know, even with Fresh Brew Tech, when we did tech mafia pieces, we brought back a. Andreas Eisma, a reporter from the 90s and early 2000s, so that she could give us the context to write those stories. So I hope we can. Natalie and Brittany and Mike and all of them aren't too far for when we need, you know, the full story in the full picture, that's for sure. But Natalie, congrats, we're rooting for you and go go do their thing with New Times and then come right back and run the union tribute. I'd say come do that. Let's talk about your story you put out this week on your sub stack about Entos Pharmaceuticals, a Carlsbad based company. I believe who's who's doing some expansion globally. Take us through that.

Yeah. So we'll link all these in the show notes and but for people don't Know we, we did a piece last week onto pharmaceuticals. They're doing a hundred thirty seven million facility in Canada. This is a company that was started in San Diego. They partnered with Eli Lilly and yeah, basically they are partnering with Canada and Alberta to create a broader facility investment. And this is a brand new facility. I think it's going to be about 103,000 square feet and they're focused on genetic, genetic medicine. And I think this story really resonated with the audience. I interviewed the CEO, he is former Scripps and it's great to you know, see some kind of bios, biotech momentum coming up in San Diego and they're going to be hiring in that facility in Canada about 90 staffers. And he said maybe an IPO might be in the works if you know, the timeline opens up for them. So yeah, definitely a company to watch in the life science space in San Diego.

Awesome. Love to see it, love to see companies doing well and expanding. Speaking of companies doing well, expanding, there's another news article out there on an aerospace startup doing some expansion as well too around Natilus. You want to take us through their latest press release?

Yeah, so it's good to get some, some tech news as well. So Natless is a defense tech company that has become a kind of a leader in this space. I talked to one of the co founders yesterday. We have a story in the works but basically they're in the market for a I think quarter million facility for their aircrafts. And yeah, we'll have more details on that but they're pretty much have a national wide search. They were looking to do a facility or some kind of expansion in San Diego. But talking to one of the co founders they decided that there was a, I think better opportunity for them elsewhere. Neil, we were talking kind of offline on, you know, there's always things behind the scenes on why things work out, why things don't. I would be curious on if you have some, some perspective on why they're deciding to do a facility outside of San Diego versus here.

Yeah, I can share a little bit. I'll make sure I walk the fine line because I'm an investor in all capital invested in Natalis. A year ago they started really as a brand new plane company, cargo focused and their whole big brand entirely is going to rebuild the cargo fleet of the world through building cargo planes that are regional, domestic and international. So meaning they could go 1 to 2 hours, 5 to 7 hours and 12 to 15 hours based on distance and really capacity, volumetric capacity. Of cargo. And so that was where they've been working on built. And really their big audacious goal is replace Boeing as the commercial plane company of the world, which has kind of come to fruition over the last year. Now they've had airlines approach them not just from a cargo angle, but saying we need some passenger planes as well too. We all have seen the news about Boeing having some hard times and people are trying to diversify their fleet. And they approached Natilus about a passenger plane as well too, which, you know, is demanding for Natlus, which is great, but they need to grow. And so right now they're based in south county at. Oh man, the air, the, the airports escape me all of a sudden, but it's down there in like kind of the Otay Mesa area. It's really not much in use. It's actually used more by military where F16s, F18s are actually landing for refills. When I was there one day, a C130 cruise through. They use it for sealed seal team kind of jumping I think as well. And if Natilus, you know, builds what it says is going to build, it is going to need some huge manufacturing capacity. And they need therefore, you know, kind of their own Everett Field, which is where Boeing's headquarters. They need their own airport manufacturing line and facilities to work on that. And so, you know, they've been reaching out to the city of San Diego, I know, to say, hey, what's your appetite for expanding this airport? Because city of San Diego owns it, where they are currently a tenant at. And you know, I hope we can find a way to keep them here because they moved to San Diego for the assets, both physical and talent in San Diego. And I know they would love to be forever a San Diego company that builds the next great generation of hardware for the world.

So yeah, just, just add to that too. We're seeing, you know, companies becoming more distributed. He did say they're going to have a growing presence in San Diego. They have a downtown office, I believe. But we're seeing companies get started in San Diego and they're expanding and you know, sometimes they have, they have opportunity to, you know, better opportunity to do a facility elsewhere. And maybe it's tax reasons or etc, but we're seeing the founders and some of these engineering teams are based in San Diego. But you know, they tend to expand or we saw it too simple. CEO started a new company, he's now in Austin. I think San Diego is a great launching pad for businesses. But as they reach and scale. You know, the challenge is trying to get them to stay and grow. And so it's definitely going to be a growing trend that I think over time.

Yeah, totally, I agree. But you know, we, we should fight for as much as we can here. You know, manufacturing is especially advanced. Manufacturing is tough from a salary perspective when they're, you know, cheaper labor elsewhere. But they happen to be, I looked it up Brownfield, they, they couldn't be closer to Mexico. Literally. You can see Tijuana and the Tijuana airport from their hangar. You know, let's make, let's make something happen here, San Diego. Let's keep the company growing here in San Diego. So that's the call out, I would say to, to San Diego to help help our companies build, continue to build great companies here. That's our stories that hit our desk this week. We love that you guys are sharing stuff with us. I mean honestly, we get all of our stories from you, from either you're building good companies or you reach out to, to me or Fred on any platform you can think of. Email x LinkedIn. It all happens in the DMS, that's for sure. As always, we're out in the community at events including tonight we will be at March Mingle, mingling it up. I think it's year 20 by the way of March Mingle. Falon and June have been running it for I think 15 or 16 of those years. So and every year they find a really cool venue to do it at which is the Natural History Museum in Balbo Park. They're taking over a whole floor. Come party with dinosaurs and sharks and the tech ecosystem. It should be really fun. Before that though, I will actually be presenting or I think giving a public opinion at the Escondido City Council in support of the Ag X hub which is up for vote I believe soon to build out a 110,000 square foot agriculture technology physical campus that will bring in the farming community and the science and the CPG community all under one roof. Whether it's co packing, co cooking and a full time dedicated farmers market and then other facilities for farmers to make sure that they keep their farms locally as well too. So I'm throwing my hat behind that. Obviously you all have been seeing the Ag X events we've been doing for a while. So to see the city have momentum on that is pretty awesome. And I'm gonna go show up and speak at a city council event which I don't do very regularly as always, the events you can find, I mean you know where to find them. The social coyote. That's where we find all of our events that are going on. Unless it's an event that Fred and I are putting on, then it's invite only. But March mingle. Coming up. Startup San Diego has got a co working day this Friday, March 28th at the Downtown Works in Little Italy which is super cool to see happen to have run into Wolf, owner of Downtown Works this morning. A little breakfast event that I had and I love to see in person co working days coming together which is things that we've been testing as well. We did founder build day last week in two different parts of the community. Next month we'll have three different parts of the community doing founder build day all on the same day, third Thursday of the month. So I just love seeing people who want to build in person together. Which is another event happening next week, the Bootstrappers event by Jonah, especially Coyote and Ross at. Oh man, all of a sudden Ross, don't hate me forgetting the name of your company for a second here but The Bootstrappers event April 1, bringing together people who are building tech but bootstrapping it for right now all at a private house, which should be cool. Any other events on your radar, Fred you got coming up?

Yeah, I always give a shout out to Hussein who runs North County Mixer and he also runs a website called I think my startupbeach.com or startupbeach.com which is, you know, a platform that allows anyone to host events in San Diego or in different cities. And I think we saw an event being held earlier this week is at Harlan Brewing in Mission Valley area. And so we're seeing, you know, happy hours and different events spring up across San Diego from North county to downtown Chula Vista to La Jolla Del Mar. Yeah, I recommend connecting to super connectors like Neil, myself, others. There's big great organizations have been serving the community for a long time. Connect, Evo, Nexus, Biocom. There is always something to do every single month for tech life science consumer and we'll continue to share those those events as they come up.

Let me just give a shout out to Brian Lamb for starting that San Diego mixer. It really is a spinoff from Hussein's north county mixer. Brian and many others have been very dedicated in driving north month over month to the the mixer in Leucadia at the Leucadian and Brian's. Yeah through his first and what I love is that it's the start of a consistency. So right there on the spot we were like all right, when's the next one? Next date set and recurring. Here we go. And I've seen just more and more event leaders step forward saying, I want to do this and I don't want. And they'll do it once as a test and get the feedback and learn and tweak and continue doing it, which is awesome, right? As the founder way. So shout out to Brian Lamb for stepping up and doing that. Also last night was the hardware meetup that I stopped in at. It was C Comp and a group, a bunch of other hardware leaders in the community put an event on in Vista, which was cool to see. Shout out to Miles as well, who has a machine shop down in Baro. Logan, who went all up to Vista to co host that event. So lots going on for every flavor, every founder, every stage and get out there and show up in the community because we, we see you all. So thank you, Fred, as always. Thank you. And thank you all for tuning in for our first live. Shoot us a note if you like this and we'll keep doing it if you like it, and if not, we'll tweak it. We'll keep moving forward as well. So thanks, guys.

Always a pleasure, Neil.

Thanks, Brad. Hi, everyone.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos, tacos, tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keep accountants counting beans Contador Quentan frijoles founders trying to raise some cases La vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times of crab 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 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. Come on.

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 in tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got.

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.

Sat.