By Andrea Siedsma This article was originally posted on the City of Vista’s Economic Development blog. In the summer of 2018, Vista-based business incubator Open Source Maker Labs (OSML) conducted a small pilot program with the Department of the Navy’s Naval Innovation Advisory Council...

Welcome to the innovation hub, a series celebrating the extraordinary companies that span across the entire San Diego region. From software to healthcare tech, precision medicine, electronics, AI, cybersecurity, manufacturing and more, this series takes a deeper dive into the innovative clusters...

By Veronica Mitchell Guest Writer Five years ago, Melissa Jean (“MJ”) Stapley was rebuilding her career and life after losing almost everything in her real estate career after the market crashed. Stapley knew she wanted to follow a dream of getting involved in a new industry where she...

By Andrea Siedsma As one of San Diego’s dot-com darlings, Active.com gained traction during the early days of the internet, and it was no small accomplishment to successfully combine SaaS, media, transactional, and membership revenue streams into one cohesive platform, “but somehow, we made...

Welcome to the innovation hub, a series celebrating the extraordinary companies that span across the entire San Diego region. From software to healthcare tech, retail tech, precision medicine, electronics, AI, cybersecurity, manufacturing and more, this series takes a deeper dive into the...

By Sandy Athniel Year Founded: 2017 Players: Reyanne Mustafa, Kristian Krugman Headcount: 5 team members In 2017, soon-to-be San Diego State University (SDSU) graduate Reyanne Mustafa was working as a server at True Food Kitchen when she witnessed copious amounts of perfectly edible...

By Neal Bloom And just like that, 25% of 2019 is over. It’s been a solid Q1 for San Diego, which traditionally has a quiet first quarter of funding. The end of 2018 definitely overshadowed the beginning of 2019 since there were so many fundings late in the year, but with the continued large...

By Fred Grier Meet Nicholas Halverson, a UC San Diego alum and CEO of Occuspace. Moving from a small town in Florida to attend college, the big city was quite a shock for him - including SoCal’s problematic parking and long lines.  After realizing this crowded annoyance was a shared problem...

By Andrea Siedsma In 2000, entrepreneur Chris Carver had just shut down the sports agency that he started out of college and was on his last $100, had maxed out his credit cards, and was sleeping on his ex-girlfriend’s couch when he came across an advertisement on the back of a Competitor...

By Veronica Mitchell Guest Writer When Ali Fakhri co-founded Direct Cannabis Network - which began organizing events for investors and entrepreneurs in 2016 - he started hearing about the many issues of ticketing cannabis events. He soon realized that many organizers and sponsors were losing...