What’s Happening in San Diego Tech with Alex Waters of CONNECT ALL @ The Jacobs Center

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Cox Business and welcome back to the Tacos and Tech podcast Virtual Style. I'm your host Neil Bloom and I have with me Alex Waters, Director of Connect all at the Jacob Center. Alex, thanks for joining us on the podcast.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

I'm excited to get to know another EdTech kin, we both have cut our teeth selling universities. So I'm excited to talk through a little bit about that. But tell us what Connect all is.

So Connect All. The Jacobs center is the region's first low to moderate income and diversity focused business accelerator. So we were funded through the city of San Diego through some money that came from the federal government, really focused on creating jobs and low to moderate income jobs in San Diego.

Wow. So this, was this a city of San Diego idea that kind of came to fruition with a partner? Because this is like revolutionary. This is a big deal.

Yeah. So it's an innovative way to think about using some funds that typically come from housing and urban development. So normally what wind up happening is sometimes these monies would go into a lot of different areas, but one specifically around job training. So the idea was, could you take the money and help businesses and entrepreneurs become job creators versus spending the money possibly on sort of workforce development and other things like that? So the city came up with the idea, they had some funds and so they said, hey, why don't we try to see what it would look like to have a business accelerator in San Diego?

Wow. So you're on Cohort 3, I believe. Right. So obviously they see success to keep funding it. Like what, what are some metrics? What are they looking at? They're like, yeah, this is working.

So long term, it's jobs. And they know that we're at the very early phases of working with businesses as they continue to grow and scale. So the long term piece will be tied to how many jobs we're actually able to create sort of long term. So we have some tricks that come in and we report out how many jobs they were actually creating or retaining. So a big piece of it. When we do some of the trainings and connect people with mentors and resources are to one, help those businesses that already exist, that have employees continue and then hopefully scale and then for those that are startups and they're just getting kind of into building a business that they're able to one pay themselves a salary, as every founder should, as they're scaling, but then also create jobs.

Wow. What a beautiful sign of economic development. Pretty innovative. It's great.

Yeah, that's the hope.

But you have a background in education technology as a founder as well too, so I gotta imagine seeing doing this in another vein is pretty fulfilling for a community.

Yeah, I mean, I love and like a lot of folks that are sort of around startups, it's just something really great around Being around not only innovation, but also starting of things. And so you see people coming with these ideas and they're working on things and they're putting in insane amounts of hours and time into really building their vision of what they want sort of the future to be. And so it's really cool to be able to be a part of that journey because it is a long, long journey. So we're one small step in a very long journey. But it's really great to be a part of it.

So you had your own founder journey, like what was your first startup that you did?

So I kind of cut my teeth in a startup and in sort of the edtech space, so kind of got involved in that. But me personally sort of in working at AS under a startup, we had a company called Learning Threads where myself and one other person tried to create what we would kind of categorizes a better and more efficient way to group together information that you find on the Internet. So one of the things is, as people are doing sort of self paced learning, one of the things that we realize is a lot of folks just have tabs or bookmarks. But as you start to think about how does that work, especially in sort of an open source learning environment, a lot of teachers were tasked with with, okay, now you just have an open curriculum. How can you actually sort of deliver that or cluster it together where it makes sense and have people sort of sharing those things around. So the idea was you create sort of these learning threads that you can attach to and whether it's a video or a blog or podcast that really sort of form the strings of learning. Because many people are doing it in a lot of different phases. It's not just I go to watch a video about this, it's this combination of information that kind of clusters together.

Okay, so what was it like to start it up and how far did it get?

So we didn't get too far, but it was fun. Sort of along the way of sort of starting it up, coming sort of the technology piece. And then my part was really trying to build it out about what it would actually look like from an operational standpoint in schools and in education. So we kind of targeted schools that were going to or would be going to sort of this open curriculum model. And you know, we kind of had a few things with Ales, built the products, got a little bit further, but then it kind of imploded, had a few sort of founder challenges and issues which I'm sure were not uncommon to a lot of folks that are out there. But yeah, so it kind of got a little bit off the ground. I always say we tried to sprint before we could walk. And so we were looking at a lot of different kinds of things, but didn't really have the kind of focus that we needed to really get the lift and get it off the ground.

Got it. Okay, well, super common founder issues NLS for that. So is that when you joined 2U or is that. Did that coincide at all?

No, so that was actually after I was a 2U. So I cut my teeth in two um, right around 2009. The company started in 2008. So I got there was working and they scale master's and doctoral programs. And so I had a lot of different positions inside of the company working and doing different kinds of things. Customer support services, to building out some of the things around when they were going for accreditation, to trying to create partnerships with TFA and all these other kind of orgs as well.

Oh, got it. Okay. So you were. I didn't realize that that came first. Oh, so you were like ground floor with 2U. That's pretty exciting to watch this huge edtech behemoth. Well, grow into that. It wasn't when you started, I imagine.

Yeah, it's. It was, it's pretty interesting because one of the things I remember about the first time when I went into an interview as I walked into the space and it was just, you know, IKEA tables and a couple of people with some desk and I was like, I gotta be in the wrong spot. Like this cannot be the company that I think that it is. And then over the years, I think I got there probably around 40 ish, 50 ish people. So I wasn't completely sort of at the very beginning. And by the time I left, I think There were about 1200. They had gone through the IPO process. They'd done all these things that you hear about as a company sort of grows and scales. And so seeing the inner workings of that, like we used to have our offices literally in the CEO's office. And working and seeing that kind of day to day thing and getting to know the people behind the scenes was pretty cool.

That's awesome. Were you on the east coast at that time or where were you based?

Yeah, so I was in Maryland. And so the company is based right outside Washington D.C. in a suburban area called New Carrollton, Maryland. And I had gone back home. I'd been out in San Diego for a little bit of time. So I originally grew up in a suburb, like not too far from Washington, D.C. about 10 or 15 minutes where the TU headquarters are. Came out to San Diego for grad school, then went back home. Thought I was gonna sort of travel the world and everything. And I wound up as sort of this ed tech company, just working. I thought I was gonna be there for, I don't know, six months, seven months to kind of just be around. And wound up being there for seven years.

Oh, wow. Were you familiar with. I'm sure you're familiar with the Maryland town of Silver Spring.

Yep.

Yeah, that's where my mom's from. Yeah.

So there's one county up. So I'm in PG County. That's right up in Montgomery County. So.

Okay, cool. Very cool. I've been to Silver Spring. I've seen the spring. So wait, so what brought you to San Diego and what kept you here?

So initially I came to San Diego. I had no thoughts of actually getting in entrepreneurship or anything. Actually got a master's degree in philosophy. And so I thought I was going to wind up taking that and potentially going, getting a PhD and becoming a professor. And I was done with grad school, decided to go home for a little bit of time. And I was actually planning to after that, go, I don't know, travel around, teach English in Korea, try to get a job at Yosemite, which is a whole host of things. It was just kind of up in the air. And then I wound up sort of working at 2U.

Okay, got it. Interesting. So what I know you from is more like ecosystem builder, like community partner, to just looking at what does the community need? Where did that itch come from? Where did you start scratching that?

Yeah, so it really started once I got. So I came back to San Diego, I was working at 2U, decided I wanted to get out of Washington, D.C. i was living there at the time, had been there for about five years. Said, look, I want to move back to San Diego. I was doing some internal kind of consulting work with 2U and just really kind of was interested in. I think I went to Startup Week and started finding different kinds of things. One million cups. I was doing some work with the folks on a fab lab downtown. Startup weekend was a big thing, and I volunteered there to run some events and attended one. And it just kind of started the ball rolling, really learning kind of what's happening, what's going on, who's doing what. And I always have said one of my biggest things is I really just want to do cool projects with cool people. And so when I found stuff that Seemed interesting and cool. I said, hey, yeah, I'm willing to help and volunteer or I'm willing to, you know, participate in this way. And little by little I kind of just started floating around sort of the ecosystem and helping out in sort of different ways and ways that I could.

And then you turn it into a job a few times. Yeah, yeah.

It's interesting. I was telling you that's like it's odd to, to have jobs that you would be doing anyway. And so in my free time when I was actually working at 2U, I was still volunteering. We started weekend or downtown at the space of Fab Lab or just doing stuff with 1 million cups because it was fun. And like I said, I really liked being around that startup environment. It's really hard to shake, at least for me. Once you kind of are around it or around the newness, the building, somebody's always doing something, trying something. Some things work, some things fail, that's fine. But there's a constant kind of push to just create. And I'm really excited when I'm in those kinds of environments.

Yeah. I got to imagine especially being so heads down with so many companies now too, day in, day out, being able to compare businesses and compare founders is pretty great to get a front door seat to that. Right. And say, wow, this person's going to tackle a problem differently than the other person. Neither are wrong. Right. But it's so fascinating to see how they problem solve. That's pretty cool to be front door to that and then help them if they need it.

Yeah. I mean, like I said, I really like it because I also learn a lot as well. Right. There's a lot of things that I bring into it where there might be some assumptions about specific kinds of things that founders are thinking about or doing. And you know, I bring my own kind of, I think, unique background into it. But then also everybody else has a sort of unique position and way and where they see themselves going and what they actually really want to accomplish.

Can you tell us a little bit specific to Jacob center or Connect all at Jacob Center? Like those are the kind of businesses a little broader than say your average tech startup, your software startup that most people would think of. When you say startup, like what are some differences that you see and opportunities with the kind of businesses that are going through the incubator or the accelerator. Sorry.

Yeah, so it's, it's an interesting thing primarily because we cover kind of everything. So we have everything from tech to restaurants to physical products to people with services that they're providing. And so the idea behind it and the model that we kind of got off the ground is can we take a lot of the learnings that people find in tech incubators and accelerators and just apply that directly to any kind of business? And so the idea is we don't get into some of the nuances that you would find if you went into an accelerator, just did stuff with SaaS companies. Right. There's a specific vertical that they're focusing on. Our thing is can we build the foundation for sustainable business knowing that there are going to be a lot of different kinds of things that people are going to need to get along the way? And so how do we connect them to those resources? I've talked about it a little bit with folks, but really especially from when you put the lens of economic development on, it's really trying to do that one to four, two to five kind of thing where a single founder can they create a business that's sustainable, that can hire four other people and stay around for 10 years? Right. That's how you actually sort of shift and change economic development, specifically when it relates to low to moderate income areas and underserved communities. Right now if we have a company that turns into a behemoth, that's amazing and that's fantastic. But the much more likelihood is that we would have a company that is a two person company that turns into a ten person company is anchored in the community and then that sort of spawns other things where there are other businesses and other opportunities. That happened sort of in Southeast San Diego.

Anything you've learned specific to being in the location you are about entrepreneurs, founders and the kinds of businesses that they want to start.

Yeah, I mean, I think one, it reinforces something that I've known all along. But like, you know, entrepreneurship is really evenly distributed across all areas. Right. And so there's no differentiation in what people want to build or do. I think the differentiation sometimes are access and then really knowing and seeing models of people who have gone and done it before who have sort of similar backgrounds or experiences. And I think that's really, really important. And you see it in the tech space a lot. Where now the story of somebody who is a sophomore at Stanford that drops out and starts a business, that's not a weird thing anymore because people have seen that that person can go and do it because it's been replicated so far. But the first person that has to do it, that's where it gets dicey and a little scary. And so what are the models that we can sort of have to show to say, hey, anybody can build anything wherever they need to be. We just want to give you that sort of infrastructure to be able to do it and connect you to some of those resources that might not be as readily available where we're located.

Got it. Very cool. Well, we will. We know we have demo day coming up soon, so we will make sure that we share some notes. And I think there'll be, what, videos of pitches?

Yeah. So we're doing a little bit differently and I know some folks have done like the live videos and things, but we're going to sort of have tape videos and then people can go sort of online and review all of them for the folks that have been in the cohort for this cycle, which I think will be a little bit different than we've had in the past, but also a cool way for people to share what they've been doing while they've been in the program.

One of the other areas that you focus on by being an ecosystem builder is I know you've helped with one million cups, but you also help curate the Startup Digest. San Diego Startup Digest. So you're usually up and seeing what's going on in the community, much like we do on Fresh Brew Tech. Let's chat through what's been going on over the last few months. What do you say?

Sure.

So obviously a lot's been going on differently because of COVID right? Not as many events, more virtual events, a lot of zoom blank kind of thing. But fundings haven't stopped. Like we've seen significant amount of fundings still happening though they're pretty related to the biotech space or if the tech and software business can gain from whatever's happening right now from COVID So think you can tell from some of these fundings where those are leaning in. But some of them that I've seen significant ones in biotech, Q Health and Autobahn Therapeutics, both of these companies actually got local funding from section 32. This is a VC that was started by the former Google Ventures founder. So pretty cool to have a local VC doing that though. They are very biotech focused, but they're doing digital health, digital Digital concepts in Biotech too. So $100 million funding for Q and Autobahn I think was right up there in like 75 million or something as well. Pretty significant funding from that space.

Yeah, it's great to really see. I remember a couple of years when they had launched it and the question was how much of the money and the funds being in San Diego was actually going to be dedicated specifically to companies that were going to be here or was it just sort of a space to be. But then money would funnel to sort of other cities and areas. So it is really cool to see that the funds are coming in in the large amounts as well.

And I think this, I think Autobahn makes their sixth local investment, if I remember right, which is pretty great to see.

Nice.

A company, another company in the biotech space. More on the diabetes side. Glenn Sense Glycends raised about a $15 million round. Now this. I actually have a very interesting interest. That's the wrong way to say it. I have a big interest in diabetes tech. I really think we've got some. Some domain expertise here and some density that's been happening. We've got Dexcom as kind of our big enterprise player in doing glucose reading. So they have a pretty popular blood sugar meter and around that you've seen so much talent go to start and build either auxiliary or adjacent businesses like. Like Tandem Diabetes insulin pump or this company specifically, which is another way of measuring blood sugar. And I think it's actually an embeddable a product that. So you get it surgically installed that can now send you blood sugar readings to your phone, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, there's a whole host of things and I've actually just kept up with sort of diabetes technology for years. Years ago I was actually a camp counselor for six years at a camp for kids with diabetes, juvenile diabetes. And so to see how the monitors have sort of changed over time and some of the promises that have come up and with this specifically sort of the continuous glucose monitoring, it's been interesting to see one the price coming down and then also it's sort of integrating with technology and then you're right, like just having a stronghold here. I think there was a company a few years ago, I believe it was my sugar. It was here that I believe Roche Diabetes sort of incorporated and brought up. So it's been interesting to see kind of what happens here in that space given that the numbers of individuals with diabetes all over the United States is growing, but actually in a lot of other spaces around the world, it's also. And we're starting to like pick up. And so a lot of this technology is not just. I think sort of a lot of folks focus on U. S kind of consumption, but it is moving into Europe and Latin America and some places in Africa as well.

So yeah, a few other companies that come to mind in this space Too Companion Medical, another delivery of insulin and Bio Link, an Evo Nexus, previous Evo Nexus company that is doing another monitor for glucose. So yeah, I totally agree. It's some pretty cool to see that density build up. I actually another experience in the diabetes world for me is my dad is a juvenile diabetic, so I grew up around it. Just seeing him prick his finger seven to ten times a day, you know, and have to give himself shots like it had an impact on me. And so seeing technology help, that is pretty cool. So we'll have to hold another conversation about diabetes because I actually do a good amount of public stock investing in the diabetes space.

Interesting. Okay, cool.

All right. But some other things going on in town. We've got a few startup studios. These are places that kind of incubate their own ideas for startups and then once they've matured them to a certain point, release them into the wild. And one of them being Launch Factory. Do you know much? Have you seen Launch Factory around?

Yeah, with folks over there, such a couple of founder, the first company that came, Omniscient Block and then Alessandro and then a couple other folks.

Yeah. So Launch Factory, what's cool about them is their recruitment process for recruiting the founders of their ideas that turn into startups. And so they've just kind of released the names of the next two companies worth of founders. So that just came out of who those companies are. And so they're on company two and three. So that is product productified and simply independent. Which is pretty cool to see them go from one company in 2019 to incubating two in 2020. So we'll have to check in with them again. We had Brad Chisholmon about a year ago. We'll have to see what are they ramping up to. I wonder how many companies they plan to release per year. But pretty cool to see that next cohort come out.

Yeah, I love the model where it's doing a lot of the heavy lifting, at least in terms of the market and potential viability of the businesses, and then saying, hey, is somebody really interested in coming in and running this from sort of the CEO perspective versus having to do all of the heavy lifting in addition to running and operating the company, I'd be interested to see how potentially this can expand into other spaces where if you can have models where someone says, you know what, there should be a coffee shop over there, because all the marketing says that there should be one there. I'm not going to wait for someone to determine whether there should Be one there. I'm going to buy a coffee shop and then find the right price and run it. And I think from a business, just a general standpoint, that could be really, really interesting to do those kinds of things in areas that are sort of not in the tech space and not sort of traditional.

Ooh, maybe that's our next Connect all version, is the Connect all studio.

Yeah, that'd be interesting. We've been kind of kicking around some ideas potentially, and we'll see if we're able to kind of do anything like that. But I do think that it's really interesting to just determine what already works and then for somebody who wants to run a business and grow a business and build a business versus just the funding of the idea, because we all know the idea is going to shift and change and pivot and everything else. But if you can de risk that by knowing that something should possibly work, I think it has a potentially really big impact for economic development.

Yeah, that's a cool idea for sure. Speaking of some companies that are gaining from the opportunity that's going on from COVID specifically in the logistics space. So platform science. These guys are building a logistics software platform for the trucking industry, and they have grown up pretty quick, I would say, relatively. They've raised a significant amount of money and just raised a $42 million round with an investment from Daimler and a big partnership with them as like a launch partner, I believe. Pretty cool play to see. Do you know much about platform science?

I don't.

So they have some routes from, I believe, Qualcomm and a spin out of Qualcomm called Omnitrax, which was an IoT application in the logistics and trucking space, I believe, and then are on the next company similarly building a software platform for kind of fleet management and autonomous trucking, I believe, or autonomous driving for trucks. So they're building. They have the platform science platform that they're not building the whole truck. It's allowing to be plugged into trucks. So pretty cool to see that come to fruition here in San Diego.

One of the things with a lot of these different markets, and I recently learned a bit about this space because one of the companies in our program is focusing on sort of trucking is how manual it all is and how, you know, it is not connected very well. And there are brokers and people. How do you get them? You pick up the phone and you cold call individuals to get loads moved around. So the idea that you could actually sort of automate these Kinds of things and other companies moving sort of into the space in a really big way. I don't think as many people think about how all this stuff gets moved.

Right.

You see a truck on the highway, but you don't really realize how big the market is of goods and services that have to be moved in and out of town sort of all over the country.

Yeah, yeah, it's huge.

I'll have to check them out.

And San Diego is becoming a bit of a cluster. There's a good sized cluster for logistics tech as you would call it, from some pretty big enterprise companies like Lytics on down to platform science being almost like a late, late stage company now. And Flock Freight, another company that raised like 50 million just in the last few months also in the autonomous trucking or at least the connected data for logistics side. So it's kind of interesting to see that another cluster grow up here in San Diego. Another company that is riding the tailwinds of COVID is Ecwid. They are an e commerce software company raised 42 million based up in Encinitas that I know about. And obviously E commerce is just booming right now, specifically with retail being pretty much all but shut down from a brick and mortar space. What do you see from your companies that I know you've got a few brick and mortar retail side like have they jumped into E commerce as an alternative?

The ones that have been able to or already had a little bit of the infrastructure? I think with a lot of the businesses there is a really clear division where some folks had already had an infrastructure. They may not have been maximizing it, but the real businesses that got almost crushed and estimated are the ones that didn't have anything set up. And so they were trying to build from scratch while Covid is also happening. And I think that's a. It's been a real telltale sign where a lot of businesses and sort of mom and pop shops have realized you have to have some sort of online presence, you have to have some other way to get goods versus just somebody kind of walking in even restaurants, right. Signing up with different kind of delivery services and things like that. I actually know a couple of restaurants here where they had always thought about doing takeout menus and it was a dine in place or high end and they had always thought to go we could do something down in Little Italy and had never done it. And then Covid hits and then all of a sudden it's like okay, we need to figure out like how can we provide this to the People who are nearby and they've actually been able to sustain themselves and do much better than they ever imagined that they could. So it's a big deal.

Yeah, I think digitizing either it's inventory or online kind of order management, even delivery if it's food. That's obviously it's been such a huge uptick and that's what ECWID is is involved. Excuse me, in terms of being able the opportunity to get your storefront online and digitally. So I not surprised to see them be able to raise a good size round here. So congrats to them on their growth. Another biotech company, Chroma Code. This is a big bio meets big data play. So they raised 10 million and they're taking pretty much a lot of the data science that we use for SaaS software and more the traditional software thesis, but applying it to how you do precision medicine and bioinformatics. So Carlsbad company got some local funding. I know an Orange county venture capital fund called Okapi that has been involved for a little bit. So it's great to see local capital funding local companies. Another one last company to talk through upcycle and I will give a disclaimer that I'm an investor in this company. Recently I joined in on their recent fundraise. They raised just under a million dollars for recycling different formats of waste and turning it into fertilizer. So their big goal is to keep waste in a hyper local area. This is a few different areas of waste. This is human waste that's been cooked pretty heavily. This is algae waste. So there's things like when you're growing spirulina and other food products that you can turn back into a usable product like fertilizer and then spent beer grains. So they're kind of blending up those three products and putting it back both on the shelf for the consumer. So gardening has been huge during COVID So luckily they launched in Target in January. Perfect timing and doing really well. But they're also putting it on some commercial applications like golf courses and corporate campuses for lawn. So right now it's pretty much being used for kind of ornamental and lawn. But not too far down the road. They're in some tests to be used on tomatoes and actual plants. Sorry, not plants, Food, food crop, agriculture. So pretty excited about them. A different kind of deal. Not necessarily a software or tech deal, probably more of an agricultural tech kind of process. And it's been really cool to see them grow recently on Covid's tailwinds too.

So in that Sort of space. I mean, obviously sort of investor and kind of watching. Do you notice that there's more of that sort of in the San Diego area or in the local area? I mean, I've heard of a couple companies that have done things with food and so like taking, you know, unused grains and then turning it into other food or sort of recycling and turning into some other products. But are you finding there's like an uptick in this sort of like, well, upcycle or recycled kind of material type thing in San Diego?

Yeah, definitely. There's this, this, you know, aspect of trying to cut down waste in any sort of way. So I've seen it both in the food space. We're seeing like a company like Blue Nalu who is going to do gonna grow like lab grown fish and they're only gonna grow the usable parts, the protein, you know, they don't want to grow the bones or any other parts that get wasted and stuff like that, as well as all the waste that goes into farming fish, you know, and trucking the fish also. So yes, there's that kind of utilization that's really interesting to watch as well as kind of the industrial waste space, like either how do you clean up waste so that we're not polluting. So coming like Aqua Cycle comes to mind where they're building kind of mini processing plants to process commercial waste and then further utilize that too. So yeah, it does seem like a cluster here in terms of waste utilization or upcycle of waste itself too.

It's always cool to find, you know, folks that are innovative ways to take things that are either being discarded or not needed and then finding great uses for them.

Absolutely. So there's also some new organizations that have started up that be worthwhile for people to know about, especially focused on helping diversity in our entrepreneurial community. So a new organization called Village up just came together. Do you know much about Village Up, Alex?

Yeah, I talked to Elise the day and now they're kind of getting off the ground and really trying to reach out to everyone in the community to really make it get feedback and input and insight as to what are the best things to do sort of moving forward to really take what I know him and what he's worked on with Rise and then obviously Startup St Egg on the community team and build out an opportunity to really bring some of the promises of diversity inclusion to fruition, to actually sort of have a stable. This is what the way sort of forward looks like in the tech space.

Yeah, I think we've always looked at at least from Startup San Diego's perspective. Like, we've always want to say, how do we open up access to more who are not getting the access they could? Right. So it's great to have more and more efforts focus on that. Definitely. Diversity is always thought about from a employee and kind of recruitment perspective. But to also help get more entrepreneurs thinking about, you know, who didn't think they had access before to now think they do. And obviously you're on the front lines of that with Connect All. So it's just great to see another organization stand up and say, yeah, let's, let's get more entrepreneurs have more opportunities to build great companies. That's what. And just on that, we started a blog on freshbrood Tech where we're just documenting resources for underserved communities. So for any listener who has resources to share, please send it our way, reply to any of our newsletters and make sure you look for that blog. We update it weekly and we're just listing more and more resources that might be available for people who may not have the access to it. Another resource that's popped up is at Miramar College Community College. Here they've started a new entrepreneurship center called the REC Regional Entrepreneurship Center, I think. And so if you go to sdmiramar. Edu programs entrepreneurship, you will find a lot of resources around entrepreneurship for community college students, which is another whole path for entrepreneurs who may be not going to complete a degree program, or they are, but think that they want to start something sooner than finishing that degree. So a lot of cool resources that they're putting out a lot of events too. Have you gone over and seen the center or at least been to one of their events yet? Alex?

I haven't been able to. I didn't go over to see the center, but actually talked to Anya Hertz, the couple, the other day. We're part of the community college district sort of consortium and, you know, met and have talked a lot about us sharing resources and how programs that are also sort of helping founders can connect together to build out additional programming, to, you know, provide additional resources to provide guidance if there's some, you know, group that she's working with that makes more sense to sort of move to our space or if we're working with someone and it makes sense to sort of pattern them over. So just, you know, really knowing what's kind of going on and, and trying to find better ways to connect everyone together. She's doing a great job over there. She continues to sort of build it out And I know that they had opened like right before COVID hit. So they had had a couple, I think they had a couple events and then literally it kind of stopped everything in its tracks that they're doing the online thing now. And I'm excited about when everything kind of opens back up to be able to go check it out.

Yeah, yeah. Tanya Hertz has been blazing a trail through there and sdsu, which has been awesome to have more resources in the community. So look for their events. They're putting on a lot of virtual events right now with some great speakers and kind of last but not least, to make sure our community knows that San Diego Startup Week is happening virtually and we've gone to an entire month. We figured you can't sit and listen to a whole conference online all day. Let's space it out a few hours per day over the whole month of October. So this is going to be pretty cool to have a whole month's worth of content to put out. It also opens up because it's virtual. We can have speakers from all over the world and attendees, but obviously a focus on helping our San Diego entrepreneurship community get connected. So san diegostartupweek.com has some initial info at least. Just telling you it's in October now, but I believe they'll be releasing the content, dripping it out over the next month or so. So excited about that. I know you've been super involved in Startup Week before, so seeing it go to a month has got to be pretty exciting for you too.

Yeah, it's really cool to hear, to see sort of like the kind of go big or go home kind of thing. So like the logistical kind of pieces of like, yeah, you know what, we'll not just do a week virtually, we're just going to morrow it out and sort of have a full month. But I do think that that's a really kind of good way to be able to have people get those bite sized nuggets and chunks of information over time and then hopefully that can also spawn some connectivity over that long duration of time where people are kind of tapping in and maybe they see individuals and other sessions during the entire month and sort of forge some new connections. So be really cool.

Yeah, it's gonna be cool. We're taking a really big approach around the technology piece, making sure that it's not just sitting in zooms for a whole month. Right. What is the experience? To make some unique connections because we know so many people come to Startup Week to make some networking connections or not some Like Hunt. So what is a home base? What does a digital home base look like? You know, and then you go from there virtually off to your sessions. So it's fun. If anyone has an interest in helping a little bit, we definitely will take some volunteers on the technology implementation side and then just the administration of it during the month of October. And we continue to hope to have really be a platform for all other organizations in town to showcase themselves too. So there'll be a few different resource days and a lot of mentor hours as well too. So I know we're going to have you and connect all involved there. So go too far away, Alex.

It won't be the one thing I have to say, and this is I apologize to the listeners ahead of time but what I thought of startup and then October and I thought of Oktoberfest. So I'm throwing it out there. Starttoberfest maybe, possibly, I don't know, maybe figuring out sort of the aim of it. So I'm trying to think in my head.

I'm writing it down right now and I'll give you a shout out to our team for sure. One last thing just to make sure we, we get connected. We share Connect all stuff. So demo day, when, when should we expect videos and how can people find more info once those videos are out?

Yeah, so we have the videos up on our Connect all the Jacob Center YouTube page. So if you just go on in Connect All Jacob center, you'll find the YouTube page and that'll be it. So we won't have. It's not, it won't be live. But once we post the videos up, folks can go and kind of check it out and see what folks have been doing. We'll have some announcements coming up in the next couple of days around things, but you can check us out on our social media handles. It's all Connect all SD.

Awesome. I've been a mentor to a company there pre nursing smarter for a few months and really I've really enjoyed watching Kate's progress over that timeframe. So it's been a great experience for me and I hope I can continue to be an asset to you guys too.

Yeah, much appreciated. And if I can throw out one more thing for anybody who may be interested in being a mentor, please don't hesitate. You can reach out, shoot me an email@awatersconnect.org we're always looking for folks who have been through the startup gauntlet, the small business gauntlet and just want to provide some assistance and help for folks that are looking, they're eager, they're hard working, they want to build their business. Businesses.

So awesome. We'll make sure we put that in the show notes too. One last question for you. What's your favorite taco place in San Diego?

So this one is going to throw people off a little bit, primarily because it is very local to where I am. I live in South Park. It is in the Target parking lot. It's a food truck. It's Maurice Goes 9C Seafood. And that is the best taco spot in San Diego. Where I like to go. I always eat fish tacos. And so if you're ever in south park and you see a gigantic truck in the Target parking lot, that is the best place, I think in San Diego to get a taco.

Well, that's, that's legit. Just knowing it, that it's just a truck in a parking lot. Like you already know, it's good. They've been able to sustain during COVID They're still out there.

Yeah, yeah, they've been out there. It's funny because they've been out there. They've actually now there's like three, four trucks that are out there and I guess it may be some of those that were in other places that aren't as sort of populated. And Target, it's a small target but the Target's been open and so I think the volume from that has been able to make it so that they can, they can stay open.

Well, Alex loves having you on the podcast. We'll make sure you come back again sometime. Be great and thanks so much. Keep up all the amazing work you're doing. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Yeah, much appreciated. Thank you very much.

Thanks for joining us on the tacos.

And tech podcast with Neil Blum.

Thanks again to Cox business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem.

Big shout out to School of Rap.

For our rad intro music. And thanks as well to Nest Podcast network where we are recording live inside their studio at Nest Co working in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Blum on Twitter.

Neil Blair as well as Fresh brewed.

Tech and tacos and Tech Pod on Twitter too.

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