What's Happening in SD Tech in February with Al Bsharah of Seismic

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 tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains 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 tacos standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to coast angels by the ocean watch the sunset La Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside to Tijuana 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 SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom. Come on. Startups get the party. Startups get the.

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, Neal 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.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

Thanks to our friends at Cox Business for being an instrumental resource to our startup and tech community here in San Diego. As a partner in San Diego Startup Week, Quick pitch and top tech awards, Cox Business has helped our ecosystem grow into the community it is today. And welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Neal Bloom. We are here live at Nest coworking podcast studio. And I'm joined with my friend, mentor everything of the startup world, Al Bechera, VP of Product operations from Seismic, but entrepreneur and angel investor as well too.

Wow, thanks, man.

Thanks for being here.

It's awesome to be here. I've been longtime listener, first time sitter, inner honor.

Well, you're here now. We also have Amy Chang, angel investor and entrepreneur as well, sitting in too. Hello. We got three Tech Coast Angels members sitting around the table.

Nice.

This is pretty fun.

That's awesome.

Three entrepreneurs who are writing checks.

Nice. New blood. You've been in TCA for a while.

I joined at the end of September.

Okay.

I probably should have joined earlier.

Hey, it's okay. You're Here now?

Yeah, I mean, I've been in just a couple of years, both the past couple of ACE funds. Really?

Yeah, I joined right around the same time. Right around ace one was starting or ace 2019. Right. So fall 2018, I guess.

Yep, exactly.

And we got our first exit already out of that phone.

Oh, it's awesome.

One year in, feels pretty good.

Yep.

Al, you've been fundamental in not just as a tech leader, but ecosystem growing the San Diego community. And that is not something that anyone asked of you. You could have stayed focused on building your own company, but you also helped build a community. So thank you. But I want to get to know why. Right. You came here from the auto industry. Believe as an engineer. I don't actually know. Why did you come to San Diego?

It's easier to say why I didn't stay in Detroit or. Well, no, I guess it is easier to go the other way. It was friends and family that kept me in Detroit. I grew up there, went to college there, got my degree there, was in the auto industry there, because that's what you do. But it was finally time I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I came from a relatively entrepreneurial family and I just knew that was something I was going to do and I didn't want wanted to do it in Detroit. And I had one buddy in San Diego and picked up all my stuff, threw it in a Jeep, took five weeks to get to San Diego, goofing around along the way, and then spent nine months in Ocean beach doing the same thing a block from the beach, figuring out what I wanted to build.

How long ago was that?

So I left in 98. Late 98.

Oh, so you've seen San Diego grow up?

Yes.

What was going on in San Diego in 98?

Well, it's a funny thing, I wasn't a real big part of the ecosystem back then. I've been doing startups since 1999, early stage stuff. And one of my first company that I built, I was a solo founder, I did everything and I was miserable. And it's because I just didn't know any better. It took me a while to open my eyes to the community and see what was going on. And all that probably started happening around 2010.

Okay, so what happened in 2010? Why the change?

Well, I'd been through one company early that I started with, I was a second employee, we grew, that sold it left the company we sold to. And in between all that, I ran my own business, which I'm a big four wheeler Jeep guy. Used to be and ran a site called jeepaholics.com as a passion project. As I left the company that I'd been at, I dove in and this was 2002 timeframe. And so the path to money there was, I put it on a forum and six months later I had a million page views a month and this big thriving community and eventually realized that I needed to make some money. So I went down an e commerce path and I built this crazy e commerce platform that all these Jeep companies could start up a store and cross sell products with each other. I had a Jeep ally store that was reselling everybody else's products and all this great stuff. But being a solo founder is too much. And I crashed and burned a lot of missed opportunities on that one. The next time around I thought to myself, okay, I've got to find help. I made a lot of mistakes. What do I do? Ironically, around 2010, Jason Calacanis, I'm sure you're familiar with his show, he's been doing it forever. I was actually on that show as a guest asking about how do I find a technical co founder because I'm technical background, but mostly business kind of guy over the years. So I needed somebody that would do that and he recommended the Founder Institute. I got into that program in 2011, I guess it was, met my co founder Brian hall for my next business at that program. Ironically, it's not something that always happens, but that's what we did. And from there my next company was born. That's where I really opened my eyes to the community. Because you have in this program, it's a 16 week program and every week you have three mentors coming in, educating you on a topic and they're just giving, giving, giving and giving and not getting much in return from these early stage folks that are ideating and trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up. That was just an amazing experience for me. That's the reason I. That is the beginning of my hey, I'm going to give as much as I can, wherever I can.

Got it. And that's exactly how I met you. Because Portfolium got into Evo Nexus, you were a mentor there, so you're giving back now. And then I think we signed up for mentor hours in the original vine and it wasn't called the vine then, it was something else. Right?

It was a bunch of people in.

A room in One America Plaza, I think.

Right? Yeah, it was a shell. It was just, it was cement floors and whatever random furniture Irvine Co. Had laying around, they gave us.

Yeah, that was fantastic. And that was pretty much the start also of, like, Startup San Diego and San Diego Startup Week. Really? Right in that room. Yeah. 2013. 2012. 2013.

Yep. Yeah. We had just got back from Techstars, which we got into, and I think we were the first San Diego techstars company, if I remember correct.

Are you serious?

I think so.

That's incredible.

Yeah. And we got back in that experience is 10 companies in a room that's wide open, just grinding it out. And we wanted that when we came back to San Diego. So we talked with a few others and got some companies together and made it happen.

Amy, you've been to Startup Week a few times.

I have, and I'm glad to hear I didn't miss out on that many years of this whole scene, so. No, but it's great to hear about the origination.

Yeah.

Well, yeah. I mean, back then it was the same dudes in the same room for every meetup. Now it's. I can't even keep up. I have to. I have to pay attention to your podcast just to see what. What's going on in the community.

I mean, even same like First Mondays for startup. We had 170 people at it last week.

Like, that's awesome.

Not a chance. We know most of those people.

Right.

Which is fantastic.

Yeah.

Which brings us a little bit further ahead. One, you're building an email marketing business, right?

Yep.

Email copilot or embark. As we originally knew, at some point, you. You knew a transition was needed for the company. Yeah. And you look to sell it, right?

Yes.

What time frame was that?

So we sold. What year is this? 2020. So around 2016, 2017, we sold.

Okay.

So we've been running the company for six years. You know, we raised a fair amount of money, VCs and angels back in 2013. And we had a lot of pivots both before and after the fundraise. And the last one, we finally focused on the right thing. I think founders have a tendency to think way into the future and want to build this crazy, amazing thing when the problem that the customer actually has is right in front of them. And we did this in a big way where as an email company, we had this great technology that was analyzing user behavior and giving somebody who's a legitimate brand sending a million emails out to deliver each email at the right time for each person. Right. We were seeing amazing uplift in opens and clicks and conversions and all this stuff. It was working. It was great. But what we realized was nobody cared when you delivered the email. If Gmail is blocking you in the first place, if Yahoo is delaying your email, like it doesn't matter. And so we ignored this pain up front. In the beginning, we were focused on this thing that was behind it. And so when we pivoted to fixing that problem, our business changed fundamentally because it was the problem that they were fighting with every single day. Yeah.

I have a question. What's the biggest piece of advice you have about selling a company?

Oh, man, there are so many. I got a boatload of advice from a lot of really smart people on how to.

There's got to be a lesson learned there, right?

Well, I kind of did it in a weird way. I sold my company twice, which is a story maybe for another podcast, I don't know. But it's kind of like fundraising in a number of different ways, where you have to line everything up perfectly. Even more so when you're doing this because if somebody gives you a term sheet, you can't hang onto that for three weeks and delay things. They know you're shopping them out and that's not cool. So you have to get incredibly organized, incredibly ready, know who you're going to target, go get them all at the same time, build that excitement, get an offer as fast as you can, because the minute you do that, the conversation changes. Now you can go to them and say, we have interest, we have an offer. This is happening. You should move fast. Right. And then everybody lines up around the same time. And, you know, that was, I think, run a good process and talk to people and understand how to run that process before you get started.

Did you have a banker representing you? How did you go about finding that person?

Yeah, so I interviewed three and just chose to do it myself. It was, you know, for sale by owner. Yes, exactly. And I think, you know, there are a couple of reasons. One, it wasn't as big of an acquisition where it made a lot of sense for them to put the time in. And frankly, I knew everybody in our industry. It's not like they were going to bring email companies to the table for us. And ironically, we sold part of the company to the 800 pound gorilla in the space and another part of the company to Seismic, which was not in our space at all. So, yeah, it didn't make sense for us, so we chose to do it ourselves.

So what's it like been joining Seismic? I mean, even when you joined, they already were like a later stage company.

Yeah.

Even more so now.

Yeah. When we, when I joined, when we joined we were about 200 people.

Okay.

Triple digit growth every single year. They'd been alive for like five or six years, like just growing like crazy in an in between office space because the next one was being built out which we have since moved out of already. And so 200 people when we joined three years later, we're pushing 900. Wow. Yeah, it's.

I thought you were going to say 500. I can't believe it's at 900.

Yeah, 900. It's been crazy, right? We're still experiencing ridiculous growth. We just acquired another company about a year ago. We reached that billion dollar unicorn valuation kind of mark first San Diego company and who knows how long tech company to do that.

Yeah. Besides Val's point I guess.

Right. So it's been for me amazing to see the other side of growth, like insane growth. This is product market fit to a T. This is a sales and marketing machine that is well oiled and humming and a product team that is just churning out amazing product. And it's been a very eye opening and amazing experience for me.

And it's happening here in San Diego, which means you're learning a ton. Which means many other San Diego are going to learn from that too.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

And I think you're split between here in Boston. Right.

So we have equal sized offices here in Boston. Headquarters is in San Diego. Company we acquired, Percolate is in New York, so there's a decent office there. The previous company we acquired, Savo, was in Chicago, so there's good office there. We now have international offices, I forget the number, but we're expanding very quickly, especially internationally.

That's exciting.

Yeah.

Can we ask what's in the future for seismic?

Yeah, I mean a lot of the same. Continuing to push and grow at ridiculous paces and push ourselves to do more and be better. We're always changing how we do business internally, which is good. You grow to a point and whatever you were doing before breaks, it just doesn't work anymore and we're very self aware of that. So we're evolving a lot internally so that we can continue to grow at the pace we have been and some point in the next, I don't know when, couple of years, trying to line up probably to go public, which I think will be awesome for the community, it'll be awesome for San Diego and the ecosystem. Hopefully at some point down the road that'll spin out a few new entrepreneurs or additional entrepreneurs or investors or who knows what it's that kind of life cycle that helps feed the ecosystem, that it'll be exciting.

I mean, it's already doing that. Right. You became an angel while you were at seismic. It gave you some freedom there to do that. How did you make that decision to when you were ready to start writing checks?

Yeah, I've always wanted to do it, but just you only have, as an entrepreneur, you only have so much disposable income and it's hard to get diversification if you can't write a lot of big checks. And unfortunately, you have to write big checks a lot of times. Things like Angellist Syndicates and the TCA funds have been perfect for me where they've allowed me to do smaller check sizes and still get good diversity or diversification. So that's what got me excited and got me started to do it. Plus, I just had a little time to think about it and spend more time focused on what do I want to invest in, what do I care about, what's the right model for me. Whereas when you're running your own company, your hair's on fire 24 7. It's kind of tough to think about that stuff.

Yeah. So we were sharing previously, Amy and I, about what deals we're in together. I think the three of us are in backstage studio together. Right. And we're obviously an ace 20 together, the three of us, so that's always fun. And other companies you've seen and brought through TCA yet?

You mean direct through tca? I haven't done any direct investment, but.

I mean, just even bringing companies in for TCA to meet.

There's, you know, I'm mentoring at techstars and there are some pretty interesting companies. I did, I think, introduce a company called Stacked here in town. They're kind of like ESPN for regular sized events. They were a quick pitch.

They were a finalist. Quick pitch.

Yep. Yep. So that's one company I think I've spent a little time with trying to introduce them around too, and get them involved. But yeah, I mean, I think this year's techstars class has some interesting companies. Last year's had some interesting companies. And I think when they get to a certain point, then it'll make sense to get them. Get them in the queue. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you've seen some pretty crazy growth in San Diego. Let's talk through some of what's going on in the last few weeks together. Because some of this stuff probably we weren't seeing at all in 2012, 2013, that's for sure. Some of them Things like some companies that are raising money, specifically Sochi, which were in Evo Nexus with us with Portfolium at the same exact time. A thief playing ping pong with the. With former Sochi guys. Mike, it's pretty cool to see them raising $15 million on a series B, I think.

Yeah, it's awesome. We sat next to those guys at the vine as well. And Feef's a great guy. The team is great. It's also cool to see Ancona Capital, Brian Messick's new fund here in town.

First investment, I think.

Yeah, they don't have many investments. It might be the first one, but Brian was in my round with my company through Anthem Venture Partners, and he was the best investor that I had. I had a lot of great investors, but he was above and beyond. So I'm really excited to see him.

What makes an awesome investor?

Somebody who dives in when you need them to and just gives everything they've got. And it's not. They don't have to do it all the time, but they sense the pain, they sense the frustration, they sense the urgency. They offer their time and resources. And when we were going through our, our final pivot, he was there side by side with us. And a lot of our investors were, I don't want to discount any of them, but he just was above the bar. And coming from a guy who I felt like was always really busy and a lot going on, for him to just carve out time for us, like, that was amazing. And he's a super smart guy, just able to see things in a different lens.

Have you ever had a investor that you wish wasn't on your cap table?

Not really. I think I got pretty lucky with most of my investors. There's always rough patches. It's going to happen. You're going to have challenging conversations and you're going to have challenging times and disagreements and stuff. But we're entrepreneurs. You have those conversations with your founders. You have those conversations with everybody and those kinds of challenges. So it was just, you work through them and you figure them out. And I was really lucky with the investors I had. A lot of them were local. I think 75% of our round was Southern California and half of it was San Diego. It was a great group of people. A lot of them I had already had relationships with. I haven't had that what was I thinking? Moment with an investor, thankfully, or like.

Let me write that check back for you.

Right. Yeah.

A company newer to me, but seeing a company like neuron raise $40 million. Pretty exciting. Two years in, two years in, they're split. They're kind of a San Diego and Taiwanese company and I think some of their money has come from there, but they've also raised from Sequoia, which is pretty incredible.

I can't think of the name of the venture fund, but I remember reading they raised from the company that invested in Siri and DeepMind before they got acquired by Apple and Google respectively. So yeah, they're Ex Qualcomm and that's an example of a company who's spinning off another great company that's given back to the community. So yeah, it's really cool. Interesting to see. I wasn't overly familiar with them either, but ironically they're doing kind of AI at the edge, so putting intelligent systems on smaller devices like cameras and things like that. There's another company, always AI here in town. I got to meet the founder, Marty Beard a while back, Oracle guy, BlackBerry guy. He's done a lot of big things and has a lot of experience here. And so pretty exciting what they're doing. And then Helazo I think is doing something similar. It's a TCA company as well.

Yeah, I think we funded them about a year ago.

Yeah. So we got three companies doing kind of AI at the edge sort of stuff. Yeah.

Bringing in a chip involved there too, which is obviously deep roots in that.

Right.

Which is pretty cool.

Yeah, it's awesome.

A company that Amy and I both invest in, Concert Health, raised some money just recently, which is pretty exciting to see. This capital is from actually from a healthcare foundation.

Is that the Alliance Foundation?

The California Health Alliance Foundation. So I've invested in the last two rounds. This one was kind of a sole deal just with the foundation, which is pretty cool to see.

I think I invested in the first two rounds.

Yeah.

And Spencer Hutchins, a digital health entrepreneur through and through. I think he's on at least company two, maybe more.

Definitely at least he had one before Concert Health.

That's great to see. There's a bunch of other stuff going on in San Diego besides fundings. Right. Fundings are one great news source, but you know, other things that are happening are around events but also just like interesting industries. And Blue Nalu is kind of a cool one here. Where we're seeing Blue Nalu, first of all is cell grown fish. And they are kind of this convergence of worlds of biotech and like food tech. It's pretty cool. Do you know much about them?

It's amazing. Like I, I was blown away When I read this, the fact that they're one of the only companies on the planet to be able to, from nothing, create a flesh, a fish flesh that is very close to the real thing. I don't know if I should be excited or afraid about this.

Have you had a chance to taste it?

No, neither.

I don't think it's. It's not on the market yet.

Right. But they had a huge breakthrough though. Right. I think that's the thing. And yeah, I. If I put on my investor hat, I want in on this. This is one of those things that you look at companies and you think about what can they do to the world. Something like this. Holy cow. If we can just create sustainable food sources, imagine what this does to underserved nations and sustainability, maybe our fish will start to repopulate in the oceans. It's crazy to think about.

One thing is it would be contaminant free.

Right.

Because like there's a huge concern that the food that we eat is contaminated. So if you can.

Microplastics.

Yeah. Do it through biosynthesis.

Right.

That would, It'd be like pure. Maybe the footprint wouldn't be so bad.

They've already raised a good amount. Blue Nile has raised millions. So it's pretty exciting to see it being done here in San Diego. Something else that's newer to town is the venture studio model. We've seen a few, you know, there's some prolific ones elsewhere, but San Diego is starting to have entrepreneurs who start their own venture studios, which is pretty cool. Brad Chisholm, who sold previous company to Google to Google. The team's still here, which is also great. But he started Launch Factory to kind of crowdsource new founders. Have you guys met Brad and seen Launch Factory yet?

Briefly.

Okay.

I don't know him real well, but I just, I love what they're trying to do and I love the people behind it. I think they've got a really good chance of being successful at this. I love trying to find new ways of doing old things. Clearly you and I have talked a lot about different funding models and creative ways to set up angel funds and things like that. This is another angle of how to build companies in a unique way. And I think it's awesome. Yeah.

What's cool is that one refer a founder, get some equity for doing that, which is a great carrot. Right. I was a little mad I didn't get it last time. So Company One last year went through Omni Sync and now they're putting out the call for companies 2 and 3. So last chance for that, I think is end of February, early March.

Did you refer a founder to the first one?

Yeah.

And they accepted them?

No, I didn't. I didn't get the referral there. I was hoping to.

I got it.

I think it came between Mike Kren and Brittany Mailing. They referred the founding team.

Nice. Which is pretty cool.

Other things going on. So what's also been pretty cool, Al? We've been pretty dedicated on the downtown startup scene for a while, but there's obviously a lot going on in other pockets. We've always talked about our geo problem just from downtown to UCC Sorrento, let alone elsewhere. And in North County, a whole new kind of tech hub has come out called San Diego Tech Hub. Really it's kind of the North County Carlsbad scene where they're getting people who are interested not just in startups, but just the tech world in general. Claude Jones really started this up out of Walmart Labs, which has a beautiful space up in Carlsbad and they're meeting monthly and they've got hundreds of people coming out to just get involved in the tech ecosystem. Have you been to a meeting yet?

I have not, but I really appreciate what these guys are doing. They've got coding events and education and exploration and all this stuff. And they've got a mentor program as well and I'm a huge fan of that. We talked about the mentor program that we had years ago and I think we need more of that stuff. I'd love to see Startup San Diego rekindle the mentor program that we ran. I love what these guys are doing. I love that it's up north that's now home for me as well. So yeah, I think it's great. Yeah.

And they have a fantastic Slack group, a really well managed community. So check out SD Tech Hub. They've got a meet. Their monthly meeting is end of February, so check that out. Another application that's coming up soon is the Cool Companies By Now Connect and San Diego Venture Group. Al, you've been to cool companies a few times.

Three.

Three times.

Nice.

I think Portfolium was twice. Okay, so you beat us.

Yeah, we were back in the day of Titus days and it was a great program. I mean you get introduced to all kinds of new people and out of town venture folks and things like that. And I know Mike Kren has done amazing stuff at SDVG and taken that program even to the next level. So yeah, it's awesome. Yeah.

The specialty is being able to Kind of help find weed through 30 VC fundable companies who really are ready for those kinds of introductions and help them. And I think that we've seen a lot of results out of that. People doing really well just by getting that personal time, that private time saying hey, you've been through some filter, other people are going to pay attention to that, specifically investors. So that's been really good for the community. One last thing to mention here, seeing the growth that you've seen for 20 years as well as you, Amy is just. And we've even talked about this with Qualcomm, with Neuron, this kind of tech mafia and what we've been writing on in Fresh Brew Tech is uncovering some of these pretty unknown ones. Like our first one was Google Analytics was a San Diego company called Urchin. Right. I'm sure you knew about them, but a lot of people had no idea that the UA in your Google Analytics number is Urchin Analytics. And then a series of numbers, San Diego company that was in Little Italy actually was in the now desktop space that was their office in the late 90s, early 2000s. So something we uncovered, not uncovered, but we wanted to cover is hnc, which is a data analytics company, really the kind of the preeminent one of the early, early 90s, started in like 91, 92, applied these algorithms to the fintech fraud detection space and now, I mean your FICO score is the beginnings of this. And so FICO acquired them after they went public and there are remnants of companies who have come out of this all. I think Bruce Bigelow, the late great, did an article in 2008 and he tracked 90 plus companies that can trace their roots to HNC.

That's amazing.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Had you heard of them before?

Yeah, I heard of them. Not. You know, I know that they were doing some pretty crazy stuff really early on, like you said in the 90s, but. And I've heard that a lot of their work has sort of paved the road for future work from other companies and things like that, like how to go about doing some of these things. But yeah, it's amazing that this stuff was done here in San Diego 20 plus years ago.

It'd be interesting to see if somebody did a mapping analysis where you took the big companies traditionally from San Diego and then mapped out all the people that spun out from those companies and then the success stories and then the further spin outs after that. I mean it'd be awesome to see that kind of map.

Yeah, you're kind of you're collecting that data. Right. I mean the more of these companies you interview and go through and at some point hopefully there'll be a seismic mafia that can be a part of that. But like it seems like you guys are gathering that data and at some point you might be able to build the map you're talking about. I think that'd be super cool.

Yeah, we've been focused on kind of other entrepreneurs that may have worked for a previous company or kind of founding team and what did they start next? But man, if you could look at where people worked even and brought that that'd be. I'm sure there's a LinkedIn API piece that you could tie into. Former VP of Data could help us with or HNC. Maybe the HNC mafia could write a little analytics program for that. But no, we're really trying to track down with Fresh Fruit Tech, kind of these unknown gems that have contributed a lot to the community. And so part one that came out just a week or two ago just focuses on kind of one person who really came up with the algorithm and his grad student intern and has gone on to invest in a few companies. I think he's on the board and is an investor in Lead Crunch and now he's got his own new company as well too, Applied Data Finance. So pretty cool story. And we have I think a 10 part series that we're planning to put out about this. So a lot more HNC little nuggets.

That's amazing.

We did a 12 part last year with the active.com mafia. So yeah, there's a lot of great stories out there. Wish we could cover every single thing. But it's been fun to re engage these people. Right. We're interviewing them and we're saying, wow, look at your history, your past, look what you did and what are you up to now? And they're like, what else is going on? They've had a little bit of blinders on too. And so they're getting re engaged in the community as well, which has been great.

That's amazing. Yeah. And hopefully what you're doing is bringing awareness to them. Right. They're like, oh wow, you guys want to write an article about this? There's people that actually want to read about this stuff. Does that mean there's a community? Yeah. So that's awesome.

Yeah, it's been great. Thanks, appreciate that. We can't really be on the Tacos in Tech podcast without talking about tacos Al, do you have a favorite or a bunch?

So you're gonna laugh at this answer. Two nights ago, I think it was maybe three nights ago, my wife made tacos at home, shrimp tacos that were arguably probably the best tacos I've ever had in San Diego. We were all just. I think I had, like, seven of them. Of them, they were unbelievable. I could not stop eating them. So at this point, my wife is at the top of the leaderboard.

Hey, Valentine's Day. That's the right answer.

Yeah, true. Nice. It was amazing. And so the only other answer I have is because it's near and dear to my heart from when I first moved here and I landed in ob and there's this place called the Tilted Stick. And everybody at the time was all about south beach and their tacos. And in my opinion, they couldn't hold a candle to the Tilted Stick. They had these mahi tacos with this amazing sauce. And this was a dive bar. Loud music. They give you raffle tickets when you buy beer and then raffle off surfboards and stuff. I actually won my first surfboard there at this bar years ago, and the tacos were amazing. It was run by some Philly guy, so it was a Philly bar. And I think he's since moved on. And I haven't been there in forever, but I need to go back and see if they still have amazing mahi tacos, because those were top notch. And that was my introduction to real fish tacos. I don't even think I knew a fish taco was a thing until I moved to San Diego. And, yeah, I was blown away by that place. So Tilted Stick.

Neil, when you ask the taco question, most people say it's fish tacos. Or do people pick other tacos, too?

No, people pick. I don't specifically say no. I let it free run. I'm not a fish taco guy, actually.

Really?

Because it does seem like fish tacos is quintessential San Diego, right?

Yeah, it does. Yeah, I think so.

Because when you asked me, I looked at you like, wait, what do you mean? It wouldn't be fish tacos?

No. When you hear. Certain people would say, like, if they're further south, they'll say, you know, tacos, El gordo. And, you know, it's the carne asada. It's the el pastor, so.

So you don't like fish tacos?

I'm just not a fish guy.

Oh, really?

Yeah. All right. And I can really.

Would you eat a blue nalu piece of fish?

I think I'd try it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, totally. If I really want to out myself right now, I opt for California burritos over tacos any day. To be honest, it's hard to pass that up. But you know, tacos are tacos. They're not. We all have favorites, but you know, you don't usually meet that many bad ones, right? Al, you are on Twitter that I know. I follow you there. What's your handle so we can find you?

Good luck spelling it. It's Al Bashira. I think if you go to Google in the autocomplete, if you type in Al space bs, just think of bs. We all know what that stands for. Easy to remember. I think it'll fill in my name and then you'll know how to spell my name. Okay.

All right, we'll find you on there. Al, thanks so much for being on but also talking us through what's going on in San Diego that I appreciate it.

This is a lot of fun.

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 Co Working in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Blum on Twitter neilblue as well as Fresh brewed Tech and Tacos in Tech Pod on Twitter too.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos, Tacos in tech. You know we got it. Hey, it.