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I’m currently listening to the audio of Rand Fishkin’s new book called “ Lost and Founder ” – thanks Lolita Taub for the recommendation – and I’m loving his straightforward startup hacks. He’s a great storyteller and helps us understand the potential pitfalls of startup life. He also harkens back to the bootstrap/no outside investment mentality, which we also get a perspective on in this week’s Tacos & Tech podcast with Mike Glanz , Co-Founder and CEO of HireAHelper, an Oceanside-based company that bootstrapped all the way to an acquisition by Seattle-based Porch. The team luckily is staying local and intact, and in fact is growing tremendously. HireAHelper is another under-the-radar success story in the SD ecosystem. Something to be proud of as well is in Q1, San Diego achievedhigher amounts of tech venture funding than biotech. Biotech funding isn’t going anywhere, but it’s great to see tech funding increase. Just wait until the biotech funds start funding tech-enabled bio data plays, if it doesn’t already. That’s where San Diego is really going to shine, as the late great Bruce Bigelow coined in Big Bio meets Big Data .
In the last few months, I’ve started ramping up some angel investments, including a second/follow-on investment in Concert Health. I am incredibly impressed with the team and the market potential. There are a few more companies we have closed deals on too and I will share those soon. I also joined Tech Coast Angels (TCA), being the second San Diego member to have previously raised money from TCA with a previous company (Portfolium), only after the esteemed Dean Rosenberg. TCA recently raised its own investment fund and we’ve been able to write $1.1 million in angel funds since December 1, 2018 for eight companies (Lynx, Healionics, GoSite, Paradigm, KettleSpace, Elysium, Elemeno Health, DTx); we have another $1.1 million to deploy through November 2019. It feels great to be helping local companies at the early stage, especially knowing the potential to create so many jobs and other ripple effects in the community. There is plenty of more work to do so let’s get back to it!
