This Week in San Diego Tech - July 7, 2025

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

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

Oh hey Fred, how you doing?

Hey Neil. Doing pretty good man. How you doing?

I'm doing all right. It's. We had a nice long 4th of July weekend on this fine Monday after the weekend and we're excited to be talking through some news, some, some events, community stuff. We've had a busy week. We saw. I got to actually see each other.

I saw a slack message from you I believe Friday morning when that news dropped, CarlsMed and evil nexus did a press release announcing that MedTech firm CarlsMed had filed to go public for 100 million IPO. I did some digging. They were founded in 2018. I believe they joined Equinexis a year or two after that and since then they've gone on to raise over 110 million in funding. New fund was an investor co fund which is LA based, Irvine based. They were an early investor. So a lot of local money. So hopefully this is a, a good successful ipo. This will be the second IPO in San Diego this year. The first one was Aardvark therapeutics which had 100 million dollar plus IPO and I believe in January. So yeah, certainly macro, you know, late stage companies are starting to see some activity which is a positive sign after a lot of months of uncertainty and not knowing how the year is going to shape up. But I think the second half of 2025 will be hopefully a banner year for M and A and ipo.

Yeah, it actually all stems from Brant Cooper who started the SD Tech founders group, I think back in 2011 or 12 where he would fly in big name speakers at the time founder of YC Paul Graham, the writer of a lean startup or in lean entrepreneur Eric Reese that Brandt followed up with his own book about and did a lot of demo nights where a lot of people got their starts. Like I did one of the first demo nights for Portfolium in 2013 and Andy Ballister talked about his participating in Demo night I think in 2012 or 2011 for GoFundMe which is pretty cool that some of these products got their start there at these event series. It kind of died off even before COVID and Brandt and I were talking about getting it up and running again about a year and a half ago and then he tragically passed away from cancer. So one we set up a fund called the Brant Cooper Leadership Fund Fund to pretty much take donations and fund up and coming community builders, people who are doing stuff like Brandt is doing, what I've been doing you've been doing and mentor the people around how to efficiently build good community. And so yeah, it was great to bring the event back to talk about the Brandt Cooper Leadership Foundation Fund and then highlight someone who has benefited from that greatly and so is the whole world with GoFundMe. So really cool night. Hopefully the start of something new quarterly. We have a plan to do demo night I'm planning for September timeframe and we'll do it at actually the Mission Valley Downtown Works which I just visited their fourth location. I didn't even know they had four locations now, which is super cool. Got to catch up with my friend the founder of Downtown Works, Wolf Bialis, and hear how he's doing, which is awesome. So look for more of that. Tell good stories of serial founders that you wouldn't even have a clue that were San Diego based. You might hear coming up in the stories about the founding of Google Analytics maybe might be a good one around that as well too. So anyway, thanks for supporting that and appreciate it. We got a lot of other stories to talk about but I think to set the scene a little bit we should talk a little bit some macro which we've been doing on the last few pods, especially the last one we talked about a bit how, you know, macro Markets, the IPOs that had happened already have, have made for a lot of enthusiasm. Well the markets have kept ripping. Those IPOs are doing great and new IPOs are filing like Figma just filed which was, you know, a VC darling was supposed to have a huge acquisition by Adobe that didn't end up happening in the past administration. Well new m and as are happening big ones and IPOs are getting filed so that all makes for a really good scene. Finally because we have been on this liquidity drought for a long time. I mean yes, 2020, 2021 there was some pop there but there's so many 10 plus year old startups that haven't exited that are kind of on a lot of VCs books still and LPs are saying show me the money. And so it's struggling to make VCs go raise new funds which means it's Harder for founders to go get more money. Right. For their new startups. And so just getting top of funnel or top of liquidity funnel to flow down is just getting a lot more VCs to already write new checks now. And so it's just good to see the gears rolling around that. And we have a local company to highlight there. But anything you want to say on Macro, Fred, that you're seeing on the macro?

The only thing I will add is I love seeing you hanging out with the local gp Howard Lindsay and I saw him post on Twitter two days ago. First Howie's Coronado Porch meeting of the summer. My friend of local SD investor and entrepreneur Neil Bloom. Please tell me, how was that? You know, obviously Howard's having a hell of a year. He had Etoro, which early company, go public earlier this year. He also was a seed investor in Robinhood. I don't know if you saw their stock, Neil, but their stock has gone up. I was trying to check really quick. I think it was like a couple hundred percent, 300% plus over the last year. It's now at $94 and it was trading at $22 when it went public in 2004. So yeah, great portfolio company for them that they got into and a very prolific investor and who splits his time between San Diego and Arizona.

Yeah, Howard and I go back a long time, probably 2013. He was one of the first people I met when I moved here. I reached out, I said, I'm already a big fan of stock twits. What can I do to get connected? And he sent me a free ticket to Stocktoberfest that that fall and boom got immediately plugged into not just the local startup scene, but the global fintech community. I physically bumped into David Cohen, the founder of techstars like spilled coffee on him, I think, you know, like that kind of event. It was great. And Howard has always liked that he's got a global presence, but a local and accessible feel to him always. And he writes really well, really breaks down things really simply. And so whenever he's in town, I always look to spend some time on his porch, which is nice to do. And so, you know, he's just finished raising fund five, so looking just hearing the learnings over five funds now, from fundraise to deploying to actually getting your money out, you know, as a journey. And he has some stories, man, so many about it and just, you know, it's just good to hear and share notes to a really experienced VC and entrepreneur. He's also back CEO of Stocktwits as well too. So Fred, you and I are going to be doing a fintech gathering while he's here in town over the next month or so. I'm just telling you that now. We hadn't planned it yet, but it'll happen. Matt and Ober and I are meeting next week to organize the details. And you'll get pulled in, Fred. But yes, it's great to have Howard back in town for the summer. Also caught up with Steve Beck, also a prolific venture investor. And just having some really good conversations right now. And people are feeling good, good. But also really introspective, which is good timing for me to hear and share and learn. So yeah, just appreciate the one that people are around this summer. I mean, San Diego is a vacation hub. So if vacations are happening, they're happening here. And so that's been great to just have some time with good people and learn and share and invest. And speaking of kind of macro and into local, we had some big news last week with a local med device company, Carlsbad, filing for an ipo. I don't know if I could have heard it loud. I think I heard it directly from Rory Moore's yelling enthusiastically from La Jolla. I heard it all the way up here in north county, how excited he was about it, as he should be because he proudly incubated the CarlsMed team and they have gone on to take a lot of local funding. I think we at new fund I've invested in multiple rounds and multiple other funds throughout Southern California are really excited about this CarlsMed IPO. But take us through what you know about here too.

Yeah, I mean shout out to you for giving me the scoop.

Yeah, let's get, let's get some tech companies filing in San Diego. Come on. Seismic. I hear you. Let's go. Click up. That's you too. Meanwhile, I got a bet still on with Luke Sofinos from Corski on the number of IPOs that are going to happen this year. And we'll still see we're six months through the year. I should go check on what that number is and if I'm over or under right now. We bet one share of service Titan, I think is what the bet is for. So we'll see where we end up. But other good news in town, some acquisitions also multi billion dollar acquisition. You want to share this news because I think I saw it in your newsletter here as well too.

Yeah. So Capstan Therapeutics was acquired by a global big pharma company for 20 point point one billion. This was huge. Capstan was on my short list of companies in biotech to watch. I'd say it's like Element Biosciences, Capstan. There's a few other ones that are on that list, like Mirador Therapeutics, Candid Therapeutics. But yeah, Capstan, they have raised, you know, they have raised a lot of funding and have a woman, a woman CEO running that company, which is significant. There's not too many woman CEOs running biotechs. I think Halozyme comes to mind. But Capstan had a pretty large exit, 2.1 billion. I actually heard the CEO speak at a Life Science Cares event two weeks ago and they're talking about how they're adapting, using AI to, you know, kind of use AI to help with like clinical trials and therapy, discovery, drug discovery, et cetera. And yeah, I'm looking to hopefully get an interview with them to understand what this acquisition means. But I think this is a great signal. When there's M and A deals in the billion dollar plus headlines, you know, we start to see more investments happen locally, whether money's coming in from Boston or from New York and sf, you know, San Diego, when the market is hot, yes, we're number three in terms of funding, but when it looks at IPO and M&A activity, we're actually number one. And that was told by a few, few friends from Alexandria who was a big real estate, you know, developer and lab lab user in town. So yeah, it's fascinating to see big Pharma continue to acquire companies in San Diego. I was told usually they acquire them and move them to their headquarters in the Midwest, but now they're starting to acquire companies and remain present in town. So I'll be curious how that affects our talent locally.

Yeah, I mean, this was by AbbVie, which is a big biotech company. It's like a $300 billion market cap company, which I don't think had a presence in San Diego yet. So this is, you know, a way to both get a foothold in a top three bio as well as tap into the talent here and now have an office where you can pro. I'm sure there was already some talent that lived here working virtually remotely. Right. That now can kind of call home as well too. So great to see in that regard. And something we've talked about often is that you see the recycling of talent in a good way here and capital. An acquisition like this, you know, a year or two in, founders are onto something New and usually pulling in the talent with them as well too, and getting a fresh new, new start of funding. So keep your eyes open on that and congrats to the Capstone team. Something that an event that just happened by the World Trade Center San Diego, which is part of the EDC. They announced their new MetroConnect grant program. I think it was, man, it's been like year 12, 13, 14. I think they've been doing this a lot, which is great. Which is helping companies launch internationally. And if you have a plan of where and how to do that, they will actually give you some grant funding. Somewhere between 5 and 25k worth of grant funding to specifically help launch into another new international market. One that got Featured prominently is AquaCycle. This is a hardware clean tech company based in Escondido that I think actually won ESTAC Year one. I'm pretty sure they've raised maybe a Series B by now. This is a company where they do industrial waste treatment. So think of companies like Pepsi, Coca Cola. You know, they have a lot of liquids that go through the manufacturing of their products and a lot of waste around that. And this helps downstream of that, cleaning the liquids so that it's not just dumped into the sewers in that regard. And in fact there's pretty much, you know, they have to do some post production, post manufacturing processing. And so they have delivered a really efficient and mobile way for doing this waste manufacturing. I think I've seen their plant out in Escondido which continues to grow and they've got these really cool delivery and shipping units that they pretty much can drop in and just plug into pipes and get cleaning right away. What do you know here about the aquacycle background?

Yeah, I think aquacycle, they've got some local investors who supported them early on. Keep Shift Ventures. Andy White is kind of behind that seed folio Joe Gatto, who now has started a new medtech company. He's the CEO of that now, but he's also prolific angel investor at New Fund and has his own seatfolio arm as well. Yeah, Aqua Cycle, they're in Escondido and continue to grow. They have about 30 employees and I think Santa Buzjorda did a nice piece on them highlighting the recent news and yeah, it's great to see them continue to grow and get local support and, you know, off to the races now.

Yeah, exactly. And being able to launch into other markets, which makes sense when you've got some tier one customers like Pepsi and Coca Cola. They're global in that regard. And so, you know, being able to get some grant money to expand is pretty nice. And, and you get the World Trade center, who has global connections to connect you into their peers and other markets as well too. So that's always helpful as well. Speaking of expansion, I think you got some news on a biotech expanding new headquarters here in San Diego.

Yeah. So one thing we're trying to do is really just highlight who's growing in town. And Blossom Hill had some, some news. They had raised 100 million Series B, I believe in Q1, Q2 last year and now they're continuing to grow their team. They actually just moved to a new headquarters right in the heart of Torrey Pines. If you've ever been to Coulee, they have a nice office in Torrey Pines. They're actually in the same parking lot. There's Joya, there's Cooley, and now there's Blossom Hill. Blossom Hill Therapeutics, they are kind of a mid stage therapeutic company if you're in biotech. Definitely look at them. They're probably going to be hiring for some roles soon. And yeah, you know, I think with San Diego we have a healthy ecosystem of early stage and late stage companies. That's great to see that they're expanding and platinum flags, locally related that.

And we don't have it here in our docket but just I know it's public because it's on his Twitter, but Jeremy Yamaguchi from Cabana Pools, who I just released a podcast interview with and invested in about a year and a half ago, which is a national pool care brand, kind of a roll up. He's buying brands, buying pool care businesses and expanding and making, you know, kind of efficient tech enabled service in that regard. I think they just moved into some new space as well too. Correct?

That is correct. If you look at his Twitter the first day in the office, next we engage on the most sacred of rights, naming conference rooms. So yeah, stay tuned for that, that episode. I think you just released it today. I'm going to definitely go check it out. Jeremy is a serial entrepreneur. Previously you ran Long Love, which was acquired by another broader lawn care service company. And so he's an exited founder, YC Combinator alum. And yeah, I'm excited for what he's building right here in San Diego's backyard.

Yeah, three home services companies too. So like serial home services building company. So excited for that. And now, hey Jeremy, I need to come over and say hi and pop some champagne over at the new office there some other fundings all the ones we've been seeing lately are in biotech. I promise you behind the scenes I'm seeing a ton of tech deals. So deals are getting done but the ones that have been announced at least have been in bio. Gallant Therapeutics raised an $18 million round. They're in the veterinary care space. So love to see another pet tech related biotech company here. Specifically on the regenerative medicine space for reducing inflammation, restoring tissue function, supporting long term recovery for pets, which we know are, are our favorite, our favorites in our lives, that's for sure. They raised an $18 million round. You want to take us to the other one?

Yeah, it's pronounced Aurelius Therapeutics. They raise a $14 million financing. I was looking at the board and I saw Jay Licher is actually involved. Jay Licher is a longtime biotech executive. He's been involved and a handful of some of the most successful biotech companies locally, specifically at Avalon Bio Ventures and yeah, they raised 14 million. I would keep an eye on this company. I think they're going to have probably a big acquisition in the next few years. They have their magic hand. Anything they touch seems to, you know, cause some, some big players to come in and swoop in their assets. They tend to grow these companies in house and build out a stack management team to, you know, attack the market. And yeah, I'm excited to see more, more money get funded into life sciences. There was kind of a halt in life science deals. But you know, as you, as you mentioned Dale, there's a lot of deals still in pipeline and a lot of the people talk to are either active raising capital or having some event discussions with some big pharma and strategic investors.

Yeah, I know, I'm, I'm really excited to see how many deal, how much deal making is happening right now. People always talk about summer people are VCs are off. Well, no, not, not what I'm seeing. They may be out, you know, for a week or two, but they're still working, which feels good because there's enthusiasm here. Let's talk another consumer news story here. Kelly Slater is like the face, has been the face of surfing. Explain him to Fred as the Tony Hawk of surfing off camera here. Like, I mean I literally played Kelly Slater pro surfing on the Xbox One just like Tony Hawk pro skating. Kelly Slater has moved his, all of his consumer brands to Carlsbad. Not surprising considering how many sports and active lifestyle brands are in Carlsbad. He already actually had one brand there and decided to move the rest his clothing line design line and surfing shaping line as well too, which is cool to see. And we've been doing a bunch of events actually sports and active lifestyle with the city of Carlsbad. So looking forward to having them involved in the loop. In the article that is linked here by the UN Tribune, they actually highlight Hanson Surfboards which which is in downtown Encinitas is like one of their biggest places that they list and they list that their products are sold like in the highest of quantity. So also being closer to the customer is another good thing as well too. Moving from Culver City. Not a big surfing town, Culver City, but moving to Carlsbad, North County. Yes. Surf 101 for sure. So I'm sure you're excited to see this as well too Fred.

Yeah, I think north county is becoming the hub for consumer startups. Viewer clothing, racing ticket space, former Go GoPro office. They are now expanding and continue to grow and plant a flag here we have Municipal, which is Mark Wahlberg's brand, which is I think Golf Focus. They have a new retail slash coffee shop in Oceanside. If you haven't checked that out Neil, it's a really good, cool spot. And just yeah, the surf, surf scene, lifestyle brands, it really is, you know, a healthy ecosystem in San Diego and sadly you can see others kind of just continue to expand locally.

Yeah. Speaking of the golf piece, the Full swing golf is one of the top simulators also based in Carlsbad and down the road from them is the a new co working space called the. Oh, just forgot the name all of a sudden. The Bermuda Club. Sorry guys, sorry guys who just hosted. So they're a golf themed private club if you will. Got a ton of simulators, places, quiet rooms and then a whole gym sauna, cold plunge room. And they say their members, I just went and was there a few weeks ago. Their members have been asking for investment opportunities and founder opportunities and so they hosted their own first pitch night just a few weeks ago. And I think Andy Waite from Keshef was actually a judge at the event. So look for more things around that which is great to see all that come together under one roof. Golf, founding, investing and people organizing under purpose. So related events. Make sure you're always checking out Jonah Peaks, the social coyote. He also has the Career Coyote. So if you're looking for a job, make sure you're looking on that where he's highlighting what jobs are, what companies are hiring. And on his list coming up are a few events we've got going next week. Is or this week when you're listening to this is the second month of the Founders Hike afternoon edition which will be Gliderport 5pm Tuesday, July 8. We've also got the return of the Ag X events in Escondido July 3rd 10th in Escondido at the future site of the Ag X hub, which is really pretty cool to see. So come on out and see the future home of the ag tech community of San Diego on July 10th. It's a coffee meetup. So be super casual, come and grab a coffee and just meet fellow farmers, scientists, founders, tech builders. It'll be great and up and coming at the end of the month we finally have everything under one roof. Now the Dev and Data Night CTO talks Health Tech night at Google HQ in Sorrento, which will be a great night. Have some amazing speakers at it and the link is in the show notes by the time you listen to this. So Fred, do you got other events on your radar?

I'm looking forward to the afternoon Founders Hike as well as Devin day to night. And yeah, shout out to Jonah Peak for doing a great job curating the right events. And also Hussein who runs Event Shift which also highlights a lot of the events happening in the community. I'm just excited, really bullish on San Diego. You know, we don't get enough credit but there's a lot of momentum building here whether it's tech, life, science or consumer. I'm hearing more investors moving to town. Yeah, just optimistic of what's to come and always a pleasure to kind of talk to you Neil, about what's going on, who's getting funded and who's growing and yeah, let's continue to grow the ecosystem together.

Let's do it. Hell yeah Fred. There's we're only going up from here for sure. And to all of you as well, thank you for building great companies, amplifying the founders news that of what they're building and continue to pay it forward. So thanks everyone. Thanks for tuning in and we'll talk to you all soon. Cheers.

See you next time.

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 counting beans Contador Quentan 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 folder body origami we be surfing Coronado eating tacos el gordo the tacos standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero got a shout out to coast 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 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 hashtag SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom. Come on.

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You want tech in tacos, tacos and tacos Tech, you know we got it hey.

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Sam.