THE LOCAL BUZZ
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This is the last newsletter of the year, and of the decade! There is a lot to cover. First off, we are thrilled to announce Startup San Diego has
hired
a new Executive Director.
Alexa-Rae Navarro
, a UCSD alum, has spent the last eight years immersed in the Los Angeles startup world and is coming home to help us grow our early stage ecosystem. Welcome Alexa-Rae and expect to see a lot of her in 2020.
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In 2019, Fresh Brewed Tech embarked on a new early tech founding story, covering the tech mafia of
Active.com
and a lot of local companies that have come from it. Get ready for new origin stories we call the
SD
Tech Mafia
in 2020, including HNC. We also have a new UCSD
TritonTech
spinout story with Shiv Shukla’s
Neuralace
. What other stories should we tell in 2020?
Fill out our survey
to let us know.
Meanwhile, it’s been a busy year in San Diego’s tech ecosystem. We just had some recent big acquisitions worth noting, many of them foreign-based acquirers. Pacific Beach sunglass maker, Blenders,
sold
a majority share of the company to an Italian brand, valuing the business at $90 million. Biotech PR firm Canale Communications
sold
to an Irish company, with the deal worth up to $31 million with earnouts. Continuing on the biotech megadeals of the year, La Jolla-based Synthorx, already public, was
acquired
by Paris-based Sanofi for $2.5 billion. Ballast Point was
acquired
again (!!!) by a Chicago craft brewery, bringing the company private again. A company I co-founded,
Portfolium’s
parent company, Instructure, got a
$2 billion offer
to be taken private by private equity firm Thoma Bravo. Congrats to all the companies, especially with keeping your teams local in these acquisitions. We look forward to further seeing the capital trickle down to the community. Do I hear new angel investors, and maybe even some more tech mafia pieces?
We will have a lot of continued great momentum going into 2020. A very happy and warm holidays to you and your family. Our team looks forward to continuing to spread the San Diego tech gospel in 2020. See you next decade!
Cheers,
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Our team of
local writers
gives a fresh look inside the San Diego tech ecosystem past and present
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Soon-Aik Chiew (SA), Chief Product Officer of Softinn Solutions
and Startup Melaka leader.
Thanks to our partners at Cox Business for their support of our tech ecosystem.
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Follow our Tacos & Tech
Twitter
for podcast episodes and taco content
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Netly, $40M
with
Ubiquity Partners
Accel Robotics, $30M
with
SoftBank Group Corp, New Ground Ventures, Toyo Kanetsu Corporate Venture Investment Partnership, and RevTech Ventures
SOCi, $12M
with
Vertical Venture Partners, Grayhawk Capital, and Ankona Capital
Aspen Neuroscience, $6.5M
with
Domain Associates, Section 32, OrbiMed, Axon Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments, and ARCH Venture Partners
XOKind, $1.67M
with
Section 32, Naveen Rao, and Ishan Mukherjee, among others
Diagnomics, undisclosed amount
with
Oncology Pharma
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Ballast Point
by
Kings & Convicts, amount undisclosed
Blenders Eyewear
by
Safilo, at a $90M valuation
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Project Manager, Public Sector,
Microsoft
(UTC)
Embedded Security Engineer,
Google
(Sorrento Valley)
Vice President, Talent Acquisition,
AppFolio
(Kearny Mesa)
Sr. Account Executive,
Slack
(San Diego)
Deep Learning Software Engineer,
Intel
(San Diego)
Marketing Operations Lead,
Classy
(Downtown)
Software Engineer,
Veyo
(UTC)
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Computer vision: from zero to done in under 30 minutes by Jason Koo
,
December 17
Startup San Diego 1st Mondays in Tijuana,
January 6
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HOW ARE WE DOING ON THESE NEWSLETTERS?
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We welcome any and all feedback
here
.
🌮
We value your opinion and will send you good taco energy if you take a minute to
tell us what you think
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Saying goodbye to a good year is like saying goodbye to a good taco - it’s never easy. Upward and onward!
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