What's Happening in SD Tech in May with Alexa-Rae Navarro of Startup San Diego

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You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keep accountants 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 crappy and coffee my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing Coronado eating tacos El gordo the taco stand in puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to coast angels by the ocean watch the sunset La Hoya shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside to Tijuana Estee be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders who who believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom. Come on.

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Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host Neil Bloom, San Diego's Tech ambassador and together you're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle.

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Welcome back. I'm your host Neil Bloom and we are doing Corona style podcast with special co host Amy Chang, entrepreneur and angel investor. Thanks for being here Amy.

Thanks for having me, Neil. This is so much fun.

Yeah, it is a lot of fun. We're making the most of it in quarantine times. And we are joined with Alexa Ray Navarro, executive director of Startup San Diego. Alexa Ray, thanks for being back on the podcast.

Hey. Hey, thanks for having me.

So we want to chat about a lot of things that are going on in San Diego these days. Obviously we've moved to a mostly virtual environment, but our companies, they don't stop working. Right. And so Lexray, you've been at the job what, five months now? What you. Five months, huh?

Crazy. Yeah, three. Three months on the job. La Corona has graced us with her presence and you know, has. Has thrown the ecosystem for a loop. The whole community, the region, I mean, the world, really.

Yeah, well, we're making the most of it. So what, what's been going on during the, during Corona times that's changed up your world?

Yeah, I mean, Startup San Diego, we serve the community primarily through Startup Week, Our first Monday's events, our third Monday's events, and those are all live in person events that are really geared towards cultivating community, bringing everybody together. And of course right now we physically cannot bring large groups of people together. So I think it's just we're forced to really figure out what's next, how are we serving the community.

Yeah, something we've always gotten for what, five, six years now is that what people want the most out of is to make new connections with everything going to virtual. For now. What have you been seeing in terms of programming? Like what are entrepreneurs yearning for and how is Startup San Diego meeting the need kind of right now?

It's funny. So we just actually did a community wide survey to help understand what our community's challenges are during this time. And the data kind of brought a couple of things to the surface. And the first, the biggest challenge that people were facing were around customers and securing customers, networking and scaling and securing partnerships. And so a lot of those challenges, thinking through those, we actually just launched a workshop series in partnership with the Downtown San Diego partnership program called the Startup Series Covid Edition. So through the Partnerships Collaboratory for Downtown Innovation, which is a city grant funded initiative designed to really support entrepreneurs through workshops, training and skills to help really launch sustainable companies. And so we launched this series on the 24th of April. Five part workshop series. So we really weren't sure what to expect. But out of the first workshop we had over 100 participants join in live, which was absolutely incredible. And we launched the 24th. So we've had two workshops so far, so extremely high attendance on the second one as well. So we started with the Entrepreneurial leader, mindset focused, focusing on ecosystem, navigation and sort of going back to the basics and really helping folks think through what does it mean to be an intentional leader and a founder during COVID And all the content really that is part of this series is really designed and specifically tuned to Covid. And so last week we were focused on embracing resiliency and really finding opportunities. So leveraging tools like the business model canvas to think through, how can folks find opportunity now? This week we're focusing on customer empathy and the remaining two workshops will be focusing on unique value proposition and storytelling. And we'll round everything out with distilling chaos, taking action, and a little bit of virtual networking for the community. Because as we mentioned and talked through before, people are really yearning for connection. So really providing the opportunity for folks to connect with each other. The speakers that were part of the series, ecosystem support orgs, other folks, I think going virtual has been great. But the one thing that you miss with the webinar style format, people can tune in and see you, obviously, but you cannot see them. And they can engage each other through chat or through Q and A, but there's still sort of that yearning for connecting with each other. So we actually have been taking feedback from our participants throughout the series to really ensure that every single week that we tune in, where we're pivoting or adjusting the experience to ensure that participants are getting the most value out of the content and the programming. And so we're really excited for the lab for the last workshop of the series is sort of going to be like a grand finale event where we're actually partnering with Meta by Acai. So local startup here in the region, also Startup San Diego organizers, to test out some virtual networking for all the participants that are part of the series.

So I'm just curious, I have a question, maybe both of you have a view on this. Curious. Did the participants in the programs that you're putting on, do the founders, are they at any kind of heightened anxiety level? Are you sensing that? And I'm just wondering because on the one hand, founders always have anxiety, we're always living kind of close to the edge and we always have lots to worry about. But that being said, we're very accustomed to being in survival mode. So in some ways we may be handling it better than the general public just because we're accustomed to it. So just either of you, I'm curious if you're seeing any kind of heightened anxiety on the part of the founders.

You know, in short, the answer is yes. Right. Like we're living in this sort of unprecedented time where, yes, entrepreneurs are used to dealing with chaos, but you add on a pandemic, you add on, you know, people working from home along with their significant others or partners or children, and, you know, it sort of creates this chaos. Right. And so it was really actually important for us and putting together this content to kick off the very first workshop focusing on helping entrepreneurs sort of like recenter and sort of re anchor themselves, going back to the basics a little bit. Right. To help, you know, become a little bit self aware and provide sort of skills, tools to bring mindfulness into the conversation of entrepreneurship. So we had Michelle Antoine from Curios come out to lead a segment around emotional intelligence and mindfulness. And so, you know, I think overall it's super important is to founders right now to really encourage, like this is a difficult time and it's okay to feel all of the pressure and the anxiety, but it's important to sort of anchor yourself before diving in headfirst, before, you know, deciding to take the plunge because you need to sort of be centered as a founder, you know, before embarking on all of things entrepreneurship. So, you know, I think taking away, if I could take away something or share with the audience something from that first workshop is sort of go back to the basics, find your balance, figure out what is your routine in this new crazy. Right. And it could be something as little as maybe it's meditation, maybe it's going on a walk or sitting out on the porch and listening to nature. Whatever it is, find your balance.

Yeah, I think that's super important that we've, well, not important, but the idea that how simple certain things have gotten right now, right. We are home, we're not driving. Certain things have been cut out. Certain things are way, way more heightened. Not trying to discount that, but I think it's really, really great that you guys highlighted that those, those basic fundamentals for entrepreneurs.

You know, it's interesting because I sort of, on the one hand, you know, a lot of our networking now is done over zoom calls or conference calls. And it's great because not driving around all over town, going to meetings. And so in a way, it's a time saver. But then that being said, I do sort of miss networking in person. There is something really nice about that. And so it's efficient. But I am looking forward to when it kind of goes back to networking in person too, which is a good.

Kind of segue into Startup Week. Right? Startup Week really is built around this in person random bumping intos of thousands of people that we are that Startup San Diego is going to have to go virtual on. So, Alexa Ray, take us through a little bit of the thought process of what one, how to make the decision to postpone. Obviously, not much of a choice there, but what's it like going through right now and what do you foresee Startup Week looking like to make sure it still happens this year?

You know, of course, it's sort of the biggest challenge I think, that we face this year as an organization. You know, it's a really big decision to grapple with and very difficult for a lot of reasons. You know, I mean, if you look at Startup Week 2019, you know, that was the first time that we held the event at the convention center. So, you know, and that happened within what, like a few months of the event actually, you know, being produced, you know, due to the civic center turning into a temporary homeless shelter. And so, you know, we had a lot of learnings from that 2019 event and a lot of takeaways from an experience standpoint. And we're really so excited and geared up and charged for 2020. Right. Like, we knew what to expect and we kicked off production and planning, you know, in the fall of 2019, super ahead of the game than we've ever been before. We launched speaker applications in October, November, had over 450 applicants that submitted applications to speak. In February, we went live with session voting, which was, you know, the first time we ever really have provided the community a voice to. To share what content they want to see at Startup Week. And we had over 18,000 votes cast in that live voting, which was amazing, you know, which sort of helped. There was a lot of traction that was building up for Startup Week, and we were thrilled. We were excited. We saw it, you know, at our. It sort of weaned into our third Monday's and first Monday's events. And, you know, right as we closed speaker session voting, that's when, you know, La Corona graced us with their presence and we had to switch into contingency planning mode and really thinking about, okay, what are we going to do with Startup Week? And really having to evaluate postponements. And so Startup San Diego, we're so deeply rooted in our community and our mentality is community overall. So overall, making the decision to postpone Startup Week was super anchored in the health and safety of our community, 100%. And, you know, are we bummed? Oh, my gosh, yes. But ultimately, you know, really it was and is the best decision for our community, you know, and right now we're really outlining because we made the official announcement last week. So everybody the community knows and, you know, internally, we created a task force to really help us to outline what going virtual really, truly means. A lot of folks have been asking me the question, so why postpone and go virtual? And I think really the answer to that is La Corona is simply too unpredictable. What's that phrase? You have your knowns, your unknowns, and then you have your unknown unknowns. And she just comes with too many unknown unknowns. Too many. This is scale of Startup Week. It's not a 100 to 500 person event. It's more like a three to five thousand person event. And so with that scale, you can't plan for both. The experiences are just way too different. And for us, event design and participant experience is everything and is going to be. It's really at the forefront of us as we embark on, you know, what a virtual Startup Week looks like. And, you know, I'll say that we're really focused on creating a really intentional and valuable experience for participants because if you've attended and experienced Startup Week, you've experienced the magic and all the serendipity that comes with it. And so we're committed to bringing that magic to life in a virtual world. And I think it's important to not try to replicate Startup Week per se, but really re envision and reimagine the overall experience that will still yield that magic.

Hey, Alexa, I'm just wondering, since it's probably going to be virtual, is there the potential of a lot more people outside of San Diego participating in San Diego Startup Week and even bringing in speakers who are not necessarily local to San Diego? It just seems like this great opportunity to expand our pool of both speakers and also participants. Do we even have the technological capability of supporting that much scale? I'm just curious what you think.

Yeah, 100%. I think when you think about a live event, there are certain barriers to attending, whether that's you're in a different geographical location, you have to drive, parking, all those things. And so going virtual sort of eliminates a lot of those barriers. And you know, with the. We chatted already about the Startup series that we just launched. So, you know, we've dove into the data a little bit in terms of who's participating. And we had folks from Mexico, Canada, India, Indonesia, the uk, Turkey, all turning into this early stage workshop series. So, you know, that was a 100 person digital workshop. So I can only Imagine what hosting a Virtual Startup Week will look like and what the potential reach would be for, you know, for folks that are outside of San Diego, thinking about coming to San Diego or, you know, across the globe. Really?

That's great to know that it's already happening.

Yeah, we were thrilled and I think it's exciting, right, because it really highlights. Yes, this is such a challenge, right, to re envision and reimagine. But like, with that challenge comes opportunity.

Yeah, really excited for all this positive momentum and focus refocusing too. But meanwhile, you know, a lot of companies like Startup San Diego, the organization, a lot of companies got to keep moving forward. And we've had a lot of things happening just in the last few weeks especially. We actually have one of our few venture, local venture capital firms. Section 32 is a more biotech focused venture fund, which actually has five San Diego investments, Q Health, Aspen Neurosciences, Exokind Cradle Genomics and Medcrypt. They're raising their third fund and they actually raised it so $350 million third fund with kind of semi celebrity lead from this fund, Bill Maris, who was the founder of Google Ventures. Amy, have you come in contact with them at all with some of your portfolio companies?

I don't think so, but that's fantastic to hear because that just means that there's going to continue to be capital to be deployed to these quality companies that we have here. That's really great to hear, especially during this kind of time. I think everybody is presuming that it's going to be really hard to raise money. But we do still see companies who are focused on achieving their goals and trying to stick to their timeline and are positioning themselves to go Series A even pretty soon. So people have not necessarily put those plans on hold. And I think for some funds they've raised the money and they're under time pressure to deploy the capital and so the wheels have to keep moving.

Yeah, I think I said biotech, but I would actually edit that and say they're a bit of on the cusp. And look, Amy, you and I know from our own portfolios, like biotech today easily means tech as well too. Right. A company like medcrypt, medcrypt in their portfolio is a medical device cybersecurity company. So they're helping, you know, an insulin pump make sure it doesn't get hacked from the app perspective. And so these are some of the investments from Section 32, which is great to see that blending in though. That being said, a very recent funding from A pure Biotech Arasca raised 200 million in funding just a few days ago. Now San Diego in general did a little over 2 billion in venture funding last year. So for Alaska to do 10% of that in one raise is pretty significant and it's kind of what we see on the biotech side. But that means that they're obviously finding capital and saying that companies are venture firms are saying, yes, keep working on the great cutting edge work you're doing.

One comment I saw after just in a forum of investors I saw after that that happened was, you know, the question came up, gee, I wonder how many other, you know, hidden unicorns might there be in, in San Diego that are sort of these like undiscovered gems that, you know, people aren't really, you know, speaking of.

Yeah, I can, let's call out. Who said that? That was Joe Gatto in I think our Techos Angels forum.

Yeah, our little Flock channel.

Yeah, I jumped on the phone with him right after and said yeah, like let's talk about it. So yes, I completely agree. Alexa Ray, I'm curious from your perspective, from the people tuning in at least to like real recently to the series, the startup series, are you seeing a trend of the kind of industries that people are joining from? Are you capturing that data? Tech, biotech, manufacturing, anything like that?

So we actually haven't, it's a really good question. We haven't been able to capture data around what industries per se that you know, the entrepreneurs are thinking about entering. So just in terms of the split of founders, it's roughly like a 60, 40 split between folks who are curious and folks who are actually committed. But definitely something for us to think about because those are 60% of folks are about to launch companies. So where are they coming from? What are they thinking about?

So a few other companies that recently raised funding, especially on the cusp or at least highlighting some of San Diego's kind of top industries, Brain Corp. So this is a company that is pretty much making dumb machines, smart robots. So take your floor scrubber that may have actually been driven before by someone around, let's say a Walmart now is put a, put a brain on it and now it can do it on its own. And this is I believe a softbank vision fund funded company that has raised an additional 36 million in funding since, since their last round. And what I, from what I understand they're, they're getting significant traction right now during Corona times where industries are saying hey, we need more machines to clean our places more often and we need to do it in a way that we don't have humans as much in the loop. So it's kind of interesting to see brancorp jump out and raise some money to continue their growth.

They're also hiring.

They are. That is true. And we can actually give. Why don't you give a shout out to that right now, Alexa Ray on where you can find more info about that?

Yeah, absolutely. So Startup San Diego partnered with EDC's life changing and Connect to create a essentially like a localized job board for our region for tech companies, life sciences and lifestyle companies to really provide a centralized place for companies to share what they're hiring for. So if you go to. We can drop the link, but EDC's website, they have an airtable with a list of all the companies that are currently hiring. And so Braincorp, I believe they're looking for software engineers.

Awesome. Yeah, we'll make sure for sure to drop the link on that. A few of the companies that are raising money, which also means they're hiring plantable foods. So this is a plant based protein company up in north county believe San Marcos, which is not just popular throughout the world right now with impossible foods and stuff like that. But also even in San Diego we've got an interesting little biotech trend around that including Boonaloo who recently raised they're doing cell based proteins, plantable foods, doing plant based. So very cool to see the growth of that as well. And a software company, Truvada, they raised their Series A and it's great to see companies finding their not just traction but to continue getting funded. In my own conversations with VCs right now, the things I am hearing around these kind of Corona current economy as I've been hearing it talked about is that VCs may be saving more of the cash for their existing portfolio than and less new checks. So you know if you've already been funded then lean in on your funders right now. And obviously if your industry is impacted positively by Corona economy right now, then another great time to lean into that and raise some capital which we're seeing a lot of.

One interesting trend that I heard and I don't know if it's enough data points to be a trend, but one startup company told me that they have had some cancellations in their subscription base due to the economy but then that being said, they are still able to grow their revenues because the prices for marketing have gone down. So if you're trying to buy ad space across the different mediums, the prices have gone down a little bit, so they're definitely trying to capitalize on that. So there's been a few little bright spots too.

Yeah. One thing I want to bring up as well, around not just the. Well, I think the pivots, right? The way that companies are leaning in and saying we got to stay relevant, we got to stay. We got to jump in and help help our companies, our economy. And so what's really cool to see is how many companies that may have been completely irrelevant to their business model right now changing it and saying, hey, we maybe have been helping fill hospital or hotel beds before, but now we're filling those hotel beds with people who need hospitalization. So a local company like Cloudbeds doing that and finding ways to pivot and be scrappy around that is is really great. We have more on Fresh Brew Tech's website, we've got a blog post live, the top one right now, where you can kind of read through all the latest companies in San Diego that are kind of leaning into the fight against coronavirus. So be sure to check that out. Alexa Ray, you mentioned a lot about obviously the turn to virtual events. And so there's a number of events that are coming up right now, including Meta by Isai that you mentioned. They've been doing their own startup networking events recently. Did a woman in Tech one. And so the next one, I believe, is a startup event that's coming up in late May. You participate in a few of those, right? Where you jump into, you get kind of a random pairing with almost like a chat roulette kind of thing. Have you been on one recently?

Yeah, I have. I was just on one last week actually. So it was great. And I think we were talking about companies pivoting and they are a great example of a startup who has done just that. Their main product service was in the events marketing space and saw this challenge that the community was facing and really pivoted to provide a solution for that challenge. They've had quite a few test events. It's been really cool to see some of the new features that they've added on so you can hop into the event and you can select who you are in the ecosystem. Right. Whether you're an investor, you're a founder, you are someone from a support org, and essentially it pairs you with connections or individuals that you are looking to connect with. So a really engaging experience overall and super effective. Right. Because right now we can't necessarily meet up in person. So it's definitely feeling that and giving us a sense of community.

Yeah, really cool to see them pivot like that. We also mentioned part four of the Startup Series event will be happening this week, so we will make sure we drop links for that. 4 of 5. And last but not least, the Top Tech Awards are coming up later this year. They also had to move their event usually in May and so right now you can nominate your favorite and most loved technical leader, CIO, CTO, VP of engineering@toptechawards.com this is an event that's probably been going on 13, 14 years with Cox business pretty involved in making this happen. Pretty fun event. Have either of you been to it before?

I have not this year.

This is our year. It's pretty fun this year. Hopefully it'll be kind of a great, welcoming, in person thing that we can do before the end of the year. Big celebration of 6, 700 like technical leaders. So really there's not many opportunities where you celebrate your CTO who's leading technical teams, but this is a great one.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more because a lot of times they don't want to be in the public eye. So it's kind of nice to celebrate that community.

Absolutely. Well guys, thanks so much for joining in. Excited to see Startup Week go virtual in its, you know, in this year and we're not going to let Coronavirus take anything down from the startup community, so let's keep at it. And thanks everyone for your time. Have a good week.

Thanks Neil.

Thank you.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech podcast with Neil Bloom. 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 Coworking in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Bloom on Twitter eelbloom as well as Fresh Brewed Tech and Tacos and Tech Pod on Twitter too.

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