Neal: Welcome everyone to the weekly San Diego Tech News by Neal Bloom and Jonah Peake from Fresh Brewed Tech. Every Friday at 12:30pm Pacific on Clubhouse and now we record them for you to enjoy as well. Find these episodes on Freshbrewedtech.com and favorite podcast player for Tacos and Tech Podcast
I’m Neal Bloom, entrepreneur, investor, and community builder.
Jonah: Hey I’m Jonah, fmr ops guy at Lime, Handy, and Postmates, loving San Diego life, new dad and and going head first into crypto and NFT apparel.
1. San Diego’s 9am.health snags $16 million for virtual health subscription to help manage diabetes
- This is a new company founded last year (2021)
- Subscription service targeting type 2 and pre
- 96 million americans (over 18)
- Estimates: CDC
- Typically not managed with insulin yet
- Diet
- Exercise
- Medications
- Essentially virtual care
- Add ons
- Lab tests
- Meds
- Add ons
- Great tag line: because healthcare is more than just medication
2. San Diego ranked No. 1 in women-owned micro-business starts over the past year
- Woman own over ½ the new micro businesses launched since pandemic
- Increase in black and hispanic owned
- GoDaddy Venture Forward was sorting through the impact on the 20 million online micro businesses
- 54.3% of new businesses were woman
- Jump of 10%
- Vs pre pandemic levels
- San Diego is the top city nationwide over past year
- SD
- St Louis
- Charlotte
- Detroit
- ATL
- Here’s a really important stat
- The research found that for each “every day entrepreneur” 2+ jobs are created
3. San Diego startups see steep drop in investment after record year
- Big drop from $3B in Q1 2021 to $970M in 2022
- This is still a good quarter for SD pre-2021
- Industry wide – $70B in Q1 2021 vs $69B in Q1 2022
- IPO market has closed compared to 2021
- 20+ IPOs in 2021
- 67 local companies attracted capita in Q1 2022l, compared with 117 firms for the same quarter in 2021
- SF, Washington, D.C., New York, Austin and Miami also posted year-over-year gains
- Largely biotech deals were the biggest deals
- One quarter isn’t the best to judge but 2-3 quarters will give us the trend line
4. San Diego’s Halozyme Therapeutics to buy Antares Pharma for nearly $1B in cash
- Halozyme: tech to biopharmaceutical companies
- Help develop quickly and easily patent
- Antares, out of NJ, makes generic PeiPens
- QuickShot
- BigShot
- They also have a testosterone replacement therapy
- 49% premium over current Antares share price
- Combined they will be leading drug development + delivery company
- Halozyme had developed oncology drugs
- Scrapped cancer program after pancreatic cancer drug bombed last year
- Laying off 160 people
- They shifted focus to Enhanze
- A technology reducing treatment time from hours to minutes
- Simply, instead of intravenous drip the drug is administered through the skin
- They partner with a few bigger players who pay royalties
- Roche
- Pfizer
- Etc
Shout outs:
San Diegans moving to Mexico to save money on housing
- Americans are getting access to waterfront homes for 200-600/mo
- A 2/1 is the similar price as a bedroom in Eastlake
- As long as the trends stay high there will be more movement this way
Fundraises:
Mosaic.tech – $25M from Founders Fund
