This Week in San Diego Tech – Aug 22, 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 foreign.

Welcome back to this week in San Diego tech news with Neil and Fred. Fred, what's up, how are you?

Hey Neil. It's doing pretty good, man. Coming out from a high this morning we were in both in Downtown with INK 2025. Deep Tech, Defense tech founders, investors as well as end users was co hosted with you and Harpoon Ventures and our friends at Firestorm.

And I'm still here. You can see I'm sitting, I'm working for the day from Harpoon's office. Thanks to Jake, Jeremy Riley and Larson for letting me hang. But yeah, it's been a few months in work to do this kind of curated autonomous matchmaking event that we did today. So we make sure we, we gathered the right autonomous tech, local companies like the firestorms, CSATs and the like and the actual military end users who are looking for this, seeing the problem out there and are in charge of going, finding solutions for it. So it was a very high curated group but man, the energy was so strong. Everyone was like we need more of this. We, we need this, you know, and we need a bunch of other stuff. I want to go see a demo of the, of the Firestorm or I want to drive the Seasat, you know, boat. So it was really cool energy and we got a lot more to come. We'll talk about that in the events. We got stuff coming next week and in September. Just because this community specifically in defense tech is just eager to learn from each other, they're seeing it in other communities. They pop into, you know, re industrialize in Detroit or this week is Fed Supernova, I think in Austin. And they're like, man, I gotta fly halfway across the country to meet my peers, but I could be meeting them daily here. So anyway, we got we here. You mean Fred are, you know, community kings. We love to just put people together that need to be meeting. So expect more of that. But thanks to the Harpoon team for letting me hang and for hosting us here. And Mike Sims also big shout out to Mike Sims at Emporium who brought all really the end user military in from Marines, NSW Kind of all over. So anyway more to come. I am also hot off of 24 hours in Seattle. I was there mostly just for Wednesday for a family office investor forum and summit. The Koretsu forum of Northwest invited me up there and a few actually other San Diegos were there as well too. Adam Jacobs of Exome was there talking about kind of next gen, like what is the future of family office from the next gen generations doing, which was cool to hear him. I spoke on kind of where family office and investing lies right now, like what our family offices investing in which was good to share notes alongside that we're kind of at an interesting point in VC venture capital and we'll talk more about how some other family offices locally are dealing with that. I think we got a feature story coming up on buyback ventures and then ran into of course in another San Diego tech OG Steve Morley who's like early first few employees of Qualcomm and Linkabit was randomly caught me at the happy hour at the end of the day and the three of us just heard some early Linkabit and Qualcomm stories.

Which was really cool.

So good to be back here but also good to share notes with others in other communities. And yeah thanks to Nathan McDonald and team for having me up there. We actually met because they did a family office summit at UCSD that they asked me to speak on in June and then invited me up to Seattle to do it here as well too. So all good things. Let's dive into some stories. We got some some good stuff to talk about including a bunch of our organizations. The startup orgs have got a bunch of new leaders in town. You know if you've been listening on the weekly like like some of you do I know you. I know who you are. You always reply and send the comments. Michael Robertson I hear you. The you know Connect had a leadership changeover and they've officially hired a new CEO. It was a big process in town. I know a lot of people were involved in both the application interest and the hiring and reviewing. So great to see that they have made a decision. Mike Kren posted about it. Connect Post about so this is public news that James Zenowitz is coming to town from New Orleans, one of my favorite towns. So congrats James. We cannot wait to welcome you here. I think you're already here but excited to have you on the pod. Get the community to know you. You got some backstory here Fred on this hire.

Yeah. So connect. Yeah they actually released a official press release you know, they said they considered various candidates to lead Connect's next chapter and kind of James kind of stood out as a forward thinking leader, you know, with a proven ability to bring them together and solve complex challenges. That was quoted by James McKay, who is a Connect board member. And he also acknowledged the work of Mike Crin, who was Connect CEO from 2019 to 2025, where Mike led them through a credit credible period of change and evolution, including their merger with the San Diego Venture Group. And you know, James will kind of assume the position of Rick Valencia who served as the interim CEO of Connect since February of this year. So yeah, exciting new Change Innovation Day. We love to see that come back at some point and a bunch of other events that Connect is known for. So I'm excited for this new appointment in the CEO world.

Yeah. And I'm excited to share notes on what worked in other communities. Right. You know, I'm now one of these, like I've been here, I'm a gray beard now. I feel like I've been building community 12, 15 years or so.

You're an OG.

Yeah, OG trying new things. But also I always worry that I am just saying, well, this is how it was, you know, and you should do this. I'm always interested in new fresh perspectives without me biasing them. Right. So, you know, interested in that then to hear what else is working in other communities and how can we take some playbooks and put them to work. So excited for that. Another org here in town, Naturally San Diego, which is a membership based community for entrepreneurs building natural products. This is food but also natural goods and sustainable reusable. It's a pretty cool organization that's really, I think only 5 years old. Started by a group of founders here in town like Ari Raz, the founder of or the CEO of Coconut Cult. At the time, I think he was in a different role. I think he was at Once Upon a Farm and there was a. But if you look at the board of Naturally San Diego, it is an OG list of CBG and natural product leaders. And Kirsten Riley did a phenomenal job being kind of the founding executive director. I think she was. She's been there since almost the start, pretty much. And before that she was Innovate 78 manager, where we got to do a lot of work together. So it's been awesome getting work with Kirsten. But she got an amazing offer to work at an org called Women on Boards, Getting more women on Boards, which is awesome. And she really leaves the org in a really great Spot, I mean, grew this organization to over 500 members. And I would say a beacon really of if you are a natural product founder in San Diego, you gotta be a part of Naturally San Diego. I send SDSU students who are starting products there. We, we actually pay for their membership just because it's so valuable to meet with other peers there. And so they put out a search earlier in the summer and landed a great hire here and already have the person in place. So I think you got some details on that too, Fred.

I was really impressed with how quickly they filled the role. And, you know, the best center visitor did a piece that highlights further of Naturally San Diego's work in the community. The headline was Naturally San Diego Helps Launch Natural Food Product Companies Incubator Provides networking and accelerator Programs. And they also highlighted some of the local support companies they work with, including Perfect snacks, chosen foods, Dr. Bronner's, Sudra juice, All Mushrooms. The list goes on. There also are 501 business nonprofit. So yeah, we'll link that in the show notes for you to check out. And we had one other leadership change was actually tech star San Diego. Misty Kane took on the role of managing director of techstars San Diego. And, you know, I think they're actually kicking off the next cohort in the coming weeks. Chief assumes a role of Ryan Cooter, who was a longtime managing director of Textars. And it's great to see some new blood in San Diego's entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Yeah, love to see, you know, rising stars like this coming up from the ecosystem, taking the lead, taking leadership roles here. You know, this is year three of techstars San Diego powered by San Diego State. And so, you know, there's some big shoes to fill with Ryan Cooter, who've been, who was at Techstars for 10 years. He started his career Techstars actually bringing the Qualcomm Robotics accelerator to town and went on to lead a number of other programs, including the first virtual accelerator for techstars which pretty much became the mold and the model for all techstars during COVID So he was ahead of things there and really got an institution like San Diego State into the community of startups where they have just been leading from the front there. And so excited for Misty, who started, I think as entrepreneur turned then mentor with techstars and now, you know, leading. So I think they're about to announce the new class, so we should hear that in the next few weeks here. And excited to meet the new, you know, Cohort 3 of, of this program and with Misty leading the charge. So congrats Misty, friend of the pod was just on the pod maybe actually when she, when she just took over the role maybe I think or in the beginning of summer. So awesome to see love new leadership here in town. Speaking of leadership, there's a few we kind of alluded to earlier about some local family offices changing up the way that they're funding companies. And these are from two family offices that really led the way over the last 15 years in funding our earliest stage startups. I'm talking about Keshe Ventures, which when it started was really just Tenere Hallisiolu himself funding a ton of startups in the 2013, 1415 timeframe and continues on, which turned into a bit of a focus on AI and data science. And so Keshe Ventures now with Andy White managing the portfolio and leading forward, as well as Allison Long Pateen with her family office alongside the team there from Maria Gonzalez Blanche with Crescent Ridge Ventures. So two family offices who have been funding, really funding a ton of startups in town coming out with a whole new funding model called Buyback Ventures, which is really cool to see. You want to fill us in on some of the details here, Fred?

Yeah. So the Senate Business Journal also did a piece on Buyback Ventures. This is a very untraditional model and their investment process offers founders the ability to reclaim equity. The article also highlighted that they plan to invest between 50,000 and half a million into a company. And you know, this is a structured residual equity over a certain period of time in five or more years. But yeah, the article kind of goes into their motto. It's great to see some local faces who are well known in the community leading the way. Andy White, he formerly came from Las Vegas where he helped run Zappos co founder Tony Hesh and helped build up the ecosystem in Las Vegas in Nevada. He also then went to San Diego and he's been very active among local early stage companies and he started this Buyback Ventures with Maria Gonzalez Blanc, who is also, you know, a strong woman investor in town. They do a lot of investments in consumer health and wellness technologies. So it's great to see them team up and you know, it's great to see more, more investors activity locally. I, I hear from founders, other folks in the community that they would love to see more local involvement from investors. And this is the latest example of that.

Yeah, what's great about seeing this and which makes sense is because between these two organizations they have been the most I Don't say creative and iterative in local early stage funding. I go back with them to the 2013 time frame when both of those families were members of Tech Ghost Angels and we're. And so we're writing individual checks through that and we're on the EVO Nexus advisory committee in terms of helping source and let in companies is actually how I got to meet them when I got into evo Nexus in 2013 for Portfolium. Allison was on the screening committee there and got to know us and see us before we were in Evo during EVO and then became our champion through Tech Ghost Angels and helped us get our first round of funding. This, this, there was this cluster of, I would say forward Thinking Angels, them two included and a few others within TechOS Angels that actually split out of TechOS Angels to create Seed San Diego kind of their own little angel group where they each were ran their own checks but were looking for deals together. You had Eric Gasser as part of this, you had Doug Hecht and you know, it's. They continue to look for the problems if you will in early stage funding, especially in a town like San Diego which has always lacked local funding for very specific tech companies. And this group also was behind AD Astra Ventures, the group that, that hyper focused on helping women founders of all, not just tech, get ahead as well too. Both from an education and then funding as well. So there's a history here of testing, trying new things to find new funding models for entrepreneurs locally. And I cannot say thank you enough to what they're doing for that. It's such a big deal. Something that specifically to Buyback Ventures is what they have noticed is that for a majority of companies that are on innovation focus, VC route may not be the right path. Right. And in fact I think it's majority of small businesses, which is what startups start as, you know, stay small and maybe grow to a medium size, but are not on the rocket ship path of big rounds and big exits. And so if the majority of small businesses are on a different path, what are their funding mechanisms and models for them to be successful too? And that's where Buyback Ventures comes in, which is this opportunity to actually buy back your equity as you hit specific revenue and other milestones as a company. And so it really aligns more with growth from a revenue standpoint as opposed to growth from a valuation standpoint, which is what a lot of VC angles is focused on. Because VC is all about, you know, return on investment at 100x kind of multiple well, there's a lot of people who can fund companies that don't have the same time frame and don't have the same return profile. And that's angels and family offices that we would, I would consider as patient capital. They can wait or they can and, or they can also, you know, find other vehicles for funding companies and because at the end of the day, funding is not your goal. The goal is build a business that solves a customer's problem now that may need outside funding. Great to do that and go get the right kind of funding. Not any funding. So anyway, just thanks to the team at Buyback Ventures for being so thoughtful and impactful in doing the things that our entrepreneurs need so that they can solve the problems that the customers need. It's great to see. So I hope that many go check it out, get in contact with them because first of all, they're both very active in the community. Sandy and Maria all over town and great people. So congrats to the team and thanks for, for finding new ways to fund our founders. Let's talk about some funding. There's been a few news here. You want to take us through some of these fundings here?

Yeah. So we actually have about three life science related investments that happened over the last few weeks. The first one was eludent. They raised a C round of 4 million. They're in the therapeutic space. We had a larger Series A round that was announced. SRT Therapeutics, they're in the drug discovery space. And then we also had a health tech investment which raised 11 million. Series A Crusci Health, I can't pronounce that correctly, but Connect does a good job of pooling what companies are getting funded locally. And I believe New Fund was involved in that last one. Cresty Health, it's a series A company based in San Diego. Yeah. So hopefully helping to get more scoop there. Elude eluding, which raised a 4 million seed round is actually ran by a local operator and investor from New Fund, Joe Gatto. And I'm actually speaking with them tomorrow to get some more insight on what they're working on. So yeah, we'll always continue to attract fundings happening San Diego. We also have some M and A stories to talk into as well. But yeah, there's still some local companies being able to raise capital among the seed and Series A, which is good to see.

Yeah, I was literally just talking to the Harpoon team how their summer has been, you know, a lot of VCs share. How's summer as a, you know, is Everyone gone on vacation or are people doing deals. And for me it's been busy. Harpoon team said, you know, quieter July, busy August for them in that regard. And people are back at it. Once school's back in session, everyone else is back at work as well too. With Eludin, what was cool to see there is that Joe G, serial tech founder by the way, who started his own fund and while being also a member of new fund, deployed, I think Fund one and Fund two and then decided to pause on a new fund and join the leadership team of Eludent and is taking and growing that. And this is the guy who's a, a software guy leading a biotech company jumping in. You know, he's, he invested in a ton of biotech by the way, because of the, the depth of talent around here. So yeah, it's great to see, great to see the companies growing and finding capital to continue solving big problems here. A few M and A pieces that you alluded to. Grow Guru, a agtech agriculture technology company that was doing sensors in the ground to determine, you know, how the soil is doing specifically around water. A longtime evo Nexus portfolio company just got acquired. So Patrick Henry, the CEO, longtime CEO just announced that I saw on LinkedIn. You got some extra news there as well too.

Yeah, so they were acquired by a broader ag tech company. Some early investors in Goguru were co, fund and Impact Venture Capital. And yeah, Grow Guru have been around for some time, been around for at least five years and they started in evo Nexus and we're starting to see a lot more startups, you know, they either continue to grow and raise new funding or they're being acquired and Grow Guru is the next on the list. There also was another acquisition in the E commerce space. Gatsby was acquired by a huge company well known in the E commerce space, Klaviyo, which I think, you know, Neil, you know, the founder or even following the founder actually did a piece with him and they had raised little funding and they had, you know, pretty notable acquisition in the E commerce space as of last week.

Yeah, it's super cool. Congrats. Brett Bernstein. He's been building it. I remember when he started it he, I think the history is he grew up in San Diego, moved away to the Bay and and then for his first startup Gatsby moved back to San Diego pre Covid I think time frame and he's just been, you know, building, building a E commerce tech tool if you will, that helps convert through social or track and convert better through social and it's great to see them get pulled into the big Klaviyo engine. This is an E commerce stack that I think went public or is about to. It's been it's definitely talked about. As one of the bigger European tech companies, I think that unicorns out there so you know, think of it kind of as like another constellation like Shopify that doing work as from a tech perspective, helping the E commerce world better convert their brands in that regard. So congrats Brett. I hope you get to stay here. I hope you get to start working on your next one as well too. And looking forward to having you on the pod here shortly as well. Coming up we have got some events that we mentioned. As always, check the full list for what's happening in the community at the Social Coyote. We've got a defense tech build day coming up next week. You've probably seen our monthly build days. This is our first time testing and trying a industry specific one. So either come for the morning coffee to start and then stay for the day. Stay for the day and work out of the Mission Valley Downtown works. There's desks, there's conference rooms if you've got calls. But more importantly there's the community to connect with throughout the day and kind of check and chat what each other are working on. So excited for that. August 28 links in the show notes. The week after that we're actually doing a similar version in but in the gaming vertical up in Carlsbad. You've probably heard Fred and I talk about the gaming community that's been gathering up in in north county and so we're going to do a build day focus on that as well. September 2nd link in the show notes and then in a few weeks SoCal Deep Tech Week is happening up in El Segundo and they we've decided to bring our standard defense tech community up to the events and so many members will be there. We said, well let's, let's have a gathering of the San Diego Defense community in El Segundo so that we can all be together but also, you know, showcase to the greater SoCal community. Hey, this is San Diego Defense. So if you are coming to SoCal Deep Tech Week or if you didn't know about it, come, come meet, you know, whole bunch of people, players and connect that whole week. Our event September 16th, that Tuesday, but it's all week September 15th through the 19th. The link is in the show notes there as well too. Anything else Fred, on your radar events wise?

Yeah, it seems like Q3 has been a busy month for events. There was San Diego EDC had their summer bash with Alexandria last week. They highlighted the founder of Kate Therapeutics as well as Court Turner who is a long time toxic VC was a fireside chat look at a hundred plus people show up. And in September there's some other bigger events happening in both tech and startups. We have September Tech Awards in San Diego and September 18th. There's a woman's Venture Summit happening as well. I believe that's the 23rd. And then we also have Commerce Roundtable which is for CPG founders on the 22nd. I will also highlight in the show notes you know upcoming events you should know about but we tried to always talk about what events we're attending on this podcast but also sharing on LinkedIn and X Twitter. So give us a follow there to stay in the know what's happening in the community.

Yeah, if this was forwarded you make sure you subscribe to both Fred's Substack, the Business of San Diego and mine rebranding. By the way, from Fresh Brew to Rising Tide Partners is going to kind of go all in on that brand for me everywhere so you'll see more of the name Fresh Rising Tide Partners for me. So subscribe to our substacks mostly so that you just are kind of in the know and can very quickly share to others so that everyone else is in the know so we can, you know, scale and amplify this connection here. So thanks everyone. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you soon. Fred, thanks for being on.

Always a pleasure Neil.

Likewise. See you soon.

Tacos and tech is on Smash guacamole keeper counting counting beans call 3rd or 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 coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing Coronado eating tacos el Gordo the taco stain in pesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shot of Teo stainless 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 beach Tech leaders who believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the moon Hashtag SDT Tackles 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, get the party? Startups get the party started?

You want tech and tacos, tacos in tech? You know we got it, hey?