Chad Sweet is the co-founder and CEO of ModalAI , a tech company that provides autonomy solutions for robots, and more recently, drones. Chad got into the drone industry as an engineer in Qualcomm ’s robotics department. The research and development he was involved in was focused primarily on autonomous robots when a few employees began discussing the possibility of a standalone company. In 2018, Chad and two others took that chance and left Qualcomm, officially creating ModalAI. The company foc...
May 19, 2020•22 min
Listen in as Startup San Diego Executive Director Alexa-Rae Navarro joins host Neal Bloom and guest co-host Amy Chang, entrepreneur and angel investor, to discuss the latest tech news in San Diego. The episode kicks off with Alexa-Rae providing updates on Startup San Diego events and then goes into a discussion about local tech news. 5:00 In collaboration with the Downtown San Diego Partnership and Mission Edge , Startup San Diego recently launched Startup Series: Covid Edition , which has two w...
May 12, 2020•32 min
Darin Anderson is co-founder & CEO of NXT Robotics, a company that provides service robots to support increased security monitoring and alerting requirements. Darin got into technology when he purchased a Gateway computer and realized how exciting tech could be. It wasn’t long before he was building computers out of his Los Angeles home as a recent USC master’s graduate. After selling his company, Darin moved his family down to Coronado, where he began building his network as he figured out ...
May 05, 2020•31 min
Teal & Tristan Cooper are the co-founders behind VendiBean, a barista at the touch of a button. The startup’s sleek coffee vending machines can be found in various locations, like college campuses, hospitals, and offices. The siblings grew up in Plano, Texas and went their separate ways once college started. Tristan, the younger Cooper, attended UT Austin and Teal moved out to San Diego to attend SDSU. One day, Teal was studying abroad in Florence when her younger brother called her. It was ...
Apr 28, 2020•22 min
Bobby Brannigan is co-founder & CEO of Mercato, an online marketplace for independent grocery stores, which enables local grocery delivery and helps them compete with larger chains in the industry. Bobby is no stranger to entrepreneurship. The serial entrepreneur started his first business in his college dorm in upstate New York. It was a college textbook marketplace that competed directly with Amazon, beginning in 2001. 18 months in, the startup had garnered $100M revenue with no external f...
Apr 21, 2020•36 min
Neal & Brittany comment on recent news, like (starting at 16:30): Fundings: Cloudbeds $82M Gretel $3.5M AristaMD $18M SD Life Changing/Startup SD - Who's Hiring Airtable Along with upcoming events: Meta by Acai: Startup Community Networking - April 16 (new startup emerging to serve the virtual events space) Advancing San Diego applications open Top Tech Awards nominations Thanks to our partners at Cox Business for their support in enabling us to grow the San Diego startup and tech ecosystem....
Apr 14, 2020•44 min
Lou Cooperhouse is CEO of BlueNalu, a startup that’s creating seafood directly from fish cells, a sustainable, ethical, and tasty alternative to traditional seafood. The novel product addresses issues with the current food system, which cannot sustain the world’s growing population for much longer. Lou has spent 35 years working in the food industry and has an impressive track record, having worked for the likes of Campbell Soup, Conagra, and a Nestle-funded startup. In college, he studied micro...
Apr 07, 2020•26 min
Gina Jacobs is the program manager of the San Diego International Airport (SAN) Innovation Lab, a program that works with startups innovating in the airport industry. A San Diego native, Gina grew up in University Heights and attended San Diego State, where she pursued a degree in communications. She went on to study sustainability in graduate school. During her early career, Gina gained experience in human resources and sustainability efforts. It was at a networking event that Gina met an emplo...
Mar 31, 2020•19 min
Steve Beck is a managing partner at Serra Ventures, an early-stage venture fund focused on IT and agtech. The Illinois-founded fund has about 85 portfolio companies. Steve grew up in the Bay Area, where he lived an adventurous childhood. After high school, he moved out to San Luis Obispo to pursue his bachelor’s degree at Cal Poly SLO. During his 13-year stint there, Steve became serious about entrepreneurship. At 23 years old, he was managing a surf shop and convinced his employer to help him s...
Mar 24, 2020•38 min
Amy Chang is an entrepreneur, angel investor, and healthcare analyst. Amy grew up in West Covina and attended college at UC Berkeley. After residing in the Bay Area for nearly a decade, she made her way out to sunny San Diego, a place in which Amy and her husband saw themselves having careers. When Amy first moved to San Diego, she worked at AMN Healthcare and spent the next 14 years building a career there, eventually becoming the company’s VP of strategy and investor relations. Amy left the co...
Mar 17, 2020•33 min
[Talk of current happenings in the SD tech scene starts at 24:31] Mike Krenn is the President & CEO of Connect w/ SDVG, which elevates innovators and entrepreneurs throughout their growth journey by providing educational programming, mentorship, networking events, and access to capital. Mike grew up in Mountain View, at the heart of Silicon Valley. After high school, he moved out to San Diego despite his parents’ wishes for him to attend Humboldt State. Soon after making his way to sunny SD,...
Mar 10, 2020•41 min
Pulkit Agrawal is the CEO and Co-Founder of The 5th Ingredient, a software startup that has developed a platform that breweries can use to track their data from grain to glass. During his senior year at Harvard University, Pulkit was recruited to join Ballast Point as a process engineer. He started his role after graduating in 2015 and was able to take on several projects that gave him a solid foundational knowledge of beer, a beverage he enjoyed drinking but knew little about beforehand. Pulkit...
Mar 03, 2020•27 min
Maritza Diaz is the CEO of ITJuana, a startup that enables companies to create software centers of excellence in Tijuana. Originally from Ecuador, Maritza was working her first job out of college when her company offered to move her to the US for one year. The young software engineer took the opportunity and moved to Chicago, never turning back. During her time working at Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Chicago office, Maritza was offered the opportunity to relocate to its San Diego office, and she t...
Feb 25, 2020•26 min
Al Bsharah is VP of Product Operations at Seismic, a sales enablement platform. The show is also joined by Amy Chang, CEO of Delta Nutrassentials. Neal, Al, and Amy are all members of Tech Coast Angels, which will give you an investor perspective of the San Diego tech scene in this episode. Al moved out to San Diego in 1998 after working as an engineer in the Detroit auto industry. He always knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur and spent his time in San Diego trying to build businesses and worki...
Feb 18, 2020•37 min
Cody Barbo is Co-Founder & CEO of Trust & Will, an online service making it easy, fast and secure to set up your estate plan. Originally from Huntington Beach, Cody moved down to sunny San Diego to study at San Diego State University. The diehard Aztec broke out of his shell by pursuing leadership roles on campus, the most significant one being student body president. During college, Cody had the entrepreneurial bug, hustling to get an app idea off the ground. After college, he co-founde...
Feb 11, 2020•40 min
Alexa-Rae Navarro is the new Executive Director of Startup San Diego, a non-profit that supports entrepreneurs and startups in the local ecosystem. Alexa-Rae was born and raised in Riverside and went to college at UC San Diego, where she studied urban planning. After graduating, she moved to Los Angeles to work at the mayor’s office but knew she wanted to learn more and went on to earn a master’s degree in urban planning at UCLA. Her studies coincided with a graduate internship at the LA Chamber...
Feb 04, 2020•21 min
Rob Rast is Co-Founder & CEO of both FLX Bike and Miles Board, which make electric bikes and skateboards that make commutes kinder to the air that we breathe. Originally from Sacramento, Rob spent his childhood there but says he did most of his growing up in China. In 2009, at the age of 19, Rob dropped out of college and purchased a one-way ticket to China and lived there until just a couple years ago. While in China, Rob learned the language and decided to start his first business selling ...
Jan 28, 2020•28 min
Kim Walpole is the Co-Founder & CEO of Trials.ai, a startup that’s developing frontier technology that helps research teams develop their clinical trial protocols. Originally from Bronx, New York, Kim did a lot of traveling with her family growing up. She worked for the American Management Association and later began consulting a couple of pharma companies. After meeting her now-husband, she moved out to San Diego in 2010, where she currently resides. A few years after moving out to San Dieg...
Jan 21, 2020•22 min
Ashok Kamal is back in the studio to discuss recent happenings in the local startup scene. Listen in as he and Neal chat about venture funding, startup news, and more. In case you missed it, School of Rap, which was co-founded by Ashok, helped us come up with a new Tacos & Tech theme song that encompasses all we love about San Diego and the local startup scene. Give it a listen in this episode and let us know what you think! http://theschoolofrap.com/ For a full listing of news, events, and ...
Jan 17, 2020•17 min
Ashok Kamal is the Executive Director of Tech Coast Angels (TCA) San Diego, one of the largest and most active angel investment groups in the country. Originally from the east coast, Ashok grew up in Boston, where he later attended Boston University. At 21 years old, Ashok moved to New York City to pursue entrepreneurship. Hw founded businesses there and immersed himself in the local startup scene. In 2015, after spending 15 years in the big apple, he finally made his way out to the west coast. ...
Jan 07, 2020•37 min
Soon-Aik (SA) Chiew is the Chief Product Officer of Softinn Solutions and a Startup Melaka leader SA is from Melaka, a Malaysian state. He attended the state’s Multimedia University, where he studied international business. He moved to a larger city after graduating to begin his career in tech. SA recently came out to San Diego as part of the YSEALI Professional Fellows Program, which is a professional development exchange program for community leaders from Southeast Asia. Listen in to hear all ...
Dec 17, 2019•27 min
Elle Hempen and Ellory Monks are the founders behind The Atlas for Cities, an online community where local government officials and staff share their success stories, learn what’s working in other cities, and build relationships with partners. Elle grew up in a town called Deerfield, Illinois, meanwhile Ellory spent her early childhood in Orange County and later moved to northern New Jersey. Ellory knew since she was a child that she wanted to pursue a career in sustainability. And she discovere...
Nov 19, 2019•27 min
Ana and Octavian Florescu In Diagnostics (InD) is a biotech company that is commercializing a single-use chemistry panel. It uses digital technology to try to miniaturize a blood test to a small, single-use disposable that you can put a drop of blood on and discard after use. Listen in to hear all about their journeys as entrepreneurs, their plans for the future of InD, and their local favorite eats and brews. Thanks to our partners Cox Business for their support in enabling us to grow the San D...
Nov 05, 2019•26 min
Recently, Startup Grind San Diego interviewed Blink UX CEO and Co-founder Karen Clark Cole at Blink UX’s new office. As you’ll hear in the intro, the office has a storied past, especially related to the startup and tech community. Fresh Brewed Tech ’s Rachel Gauvin hosted and moderated Karen through her history of co-founding and her many learnings along the way. Listen in to how she grew the business, including its expansion to San Diego. Stay tuned until the end for a Q&A with the event’s ...
Oct 22, 2019•1 hr 23 min
Kendra Dixon is the program manager at Techstars Anywhere, the one (mostly) virtual accelerator within Techstars. Techstars is a global network that helps entrepreneurs succeed through its many accelerators around the world, startup events, and more. Kendra grew up in San Jose, CA during the tech boom. Both her parents worked for IBM, so Kendra had a tech influence in her upbringing. She attended college at San Jose State University, studying business and interning at nearby companies like Cisco...
Oct 08, 2019•30 min
Brenton Sullivan is the co-founder & CEO of FieldLevel, a collaborative athletic recruiting tool that helps athletes find the right colleges, and college coaches find the best athletes for their rosters. The company’s mission is to unlock the highest level of athletic achievement for both athletes and coaches. A Berkeley, Calif. native, Brenton spent his teen years at a boarding school in Ojai Valley before beginning his college career at the University of Southern California (USC). Brenton’...
Sep 23, 2019•37 min
Dmitry Shapiro is the co-founder & CEO of GoMeta, which provides users with Koji, a platform that aims to democratize app development. Similarly to how blogs democratized text publishing, and Instagram democratizing photography, the GoMeta team believes that the general public are at a point where they are ready to get familiar with, and create things from, code. The Russia native moved to Atlanta, GA when he was just 10 years old. In 1984, during his teen years, Dmitry watched a movie calle...
Aug 20, 2019•42 min
Welcome to a special edition of the Tacos & Tech Podcast, where we recorded live during the annual Top Tech Awards on May 16, giving you a backstage pass to the show. Alongside our great ecosystem partners at Cox Business, we set up backstage to briefly interview each of the recipients shortly after receiving their awards. Winners: Nathan Short - Encinitas Unified School District Keith Fernandez - Sheriff Department Matt Mowry - Point Loma Credit Union Das - CTO Family Health Centers Chris P...
May 28, 2019•39 min
Brad Chisum is the co-founder & CEO of Launch Factory, an entity that creates startup companies, focusing specifically on business execution. This focus, Brad says, makes Launch Factory startups better suited to handle the business challenges in front of them. The El Paso, Texas native attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where he studied electrical engineering and math. Although he went into college with aspirations to become a theoretical physicist, Brad always secretly wanted...
May 14, 2019•42 min
Hayley Brooks is co-founder & CEO of Whooo's Reading, an EdTech company that provides a machine learning algorithm that automatically assesses students’ comprehension for elementary and middle school teachers. This tool is a viable replacement for multiple choice and encourages students to think more critically and creatively about what they’ve read. Hayley spent most of her childhood in San Diego, having moved to the area when she was just six years old. She went away to attend college at W...
Apr 30, 2019•20 min
