San Diego Tech News Weekly – February 11, 2022

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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 

 

Before we dive in, we wanted to ask our listeners and SD Tech fans to help us grow the show, leave a review and share with one other person who should be more plugged in with the SD Tech Scene. Thank you for the support and for helping us build the San Diego Startup Community.

For February 11, 2022:

1. San Diego’s Platform Science raises $115 million for connected truck fleet technology – The San Diego Union-Tribune
   1. Great story about the rise of Logistic Tech in SD
   2. High level: a connected platform, app and fleet management tech company
   3. Investment came from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 
   4. Total $198m
   5. 225 employees, most in SD
   6. Founded by fmr Omnitrcs exec
      • Omnitracs cloud-based truck management system covers nearly all fleet performance metrics.
   7. Some notes on what they do:
      • Driver wakefulness
      • Road hazards, like low bridge
      • Tire pressure 
      • Temp
   8. SD Commercial Fleet Cluster
      • Lytx
      • SmartDrive
      • Omnitracs (once part of Qualcomm merged with Smartdrive)
   9. One of many deals SoftBank has made in SD this year
2. Maya’s Cookies – Column: Black Lives Matter put Maya’s Cookies in the spotlight, and owner Maya Madsen is making it count – The San Diego Union-Tribune
   1. We want to touch non tech businesses
   2. SD is made up of many 
   3. Maya’s Cookies celebrates Black History Month with cookies honoring Chadwick Boseman and other Black icons
   4. When Maya they struggled with food insecurity
   5. She said in a phone interview
      • “When you are a hungry child in a classroom trying to focus, everything looks like food. The teacher looks like a burrito. The kids look like sandwiches. All I could think about was when I was going to eat and how good it was going to taste.”
   6. In 2020 after the killing of George Floyd mayas became part of a viral campaign to support black own businesses
   7. She was flooded with orders
   8. 15 hours a day, seven days a week for 90 days straight to keep up with customer demand.
   9. She said:
      • “I don’t even have a college degree, but what I have are problem-solving skills and passion.
   10. now shes mentoring small businesses and non profits in SD
   11. She has a new collection for Black History Month
       • Honoring black icons
         • The super hero: Chadwich Boseman, Black Panther
           • Dark chocolate cookie With extra dark chunks from a woman owned Ghana producer Kanda Chocolates
         • The first lady: Michelle Obama
           •  lemon-spiked sugar cookies, white chocolate chunks, marionberries in red wine from a black own vegan winery 
3. Element Biosciences acquires Loop Genomics to add long-read tech to DNA sequencing platform | FierceBiotech
   1. Founded in 2017
   2. Genomics sequencer player, disrupt the genomics world
   3. But already raised hundreds of millions ($276M in 2021, now $400M total) and now buying up other startups
   4. Loop’s software uses PCR technology to amplify individual strands of DNA on a short-read sequencing platform. It attaches unique “barcodes” to random sections of each copy of the genetic material, then sequences each of those copied segments. The resulting data are combined back into a single molecule, using the overlapping segments to simulate long-read sequencing data from lower-cost short-read systems.
   5. From Jason Sharf – Element buying Loop, Pacbio buying Omniome, Illumina announcing the Infinity project. The race to combine short read and long read technology is on! 
4. ResMed/Supply Chain – San Diego’s ResMed CEO: Clogged supply chains still a problem but expected to ease this summer
   1. Supply chain update from resmed
   2. We haven’t talked about resmed for a while
   3. Last time was when they were making ventilators to support hospital congestion
   4. They make sleep apnea machines 
   5. These machines need chips 
   6. They have to compete with
      • Phones
      • Electric vehicles 
      • Electronics 
   7. They are growing but profits shrunk due to freight cost
   8. They occasionally chartered jets to avoid clogged ports 
      • Can be 5-10x the cost
   9. Revenue grow by around $300+ million but could have been closer to $700 without supply chain 
5. 2018 Law is Reshaping Boards by Karen Pearlman at SDBJ
   1. CA law 826 mandated that every public company needed to have at least one women
   2. At the time 1275 companies needed to change their board to comply, now 300 still as of Sept 2021
   3. In 2018, 12% of SD public companies had women, 31% of SD companies in 2020
   4. Fines range from $100k-$300k
   5. There has also been a trickle down effect of hiring from the top and on down. 
   6. There are at least 6 ongoing lawsuits on the law itself for discrimination
   7. Credit Suisse conducted a six-year global research study that showed women on boards improve business performance for key metrics, including stock performances. It reported its findings in 2019. According to the group, companies with women directors on their boards outperformed shares of comparable businesses with all-male boards by 26 percent.
   8. NASDAQ listing rules now require a company listed on the exchange to have at least one woman and one member of an underrepresented community — or the company will have to explain why it failed to do so.

Olympic Shoutouts:

US snowboarders Chloe Kim, Shaun White advance to halfpipe finals

• SHAUN WHITE — Snowboarding
  • Carlsbad
  • Set to retire, saw an emotional farewell
• TESSA MAUD — Snowboarding
  • Carlsbad
• SEAMUS O’CONNOR — Snowboarding
  • Ramona
• LINDSEY JACOBELLIS — Snowboarding
  • Gold Medal
  • snowboard cross – race
• KAILLIE HUMPHRIES — Bobsledding
  • oceanside 
  • Very decorated but no medals so far

 

Fundings – 

Endeavor BioMed – $101M 

1859 – $40M and comes out of stealth

mPower raises $10m – space photovoltaics

Travel app Sēkr scores $2.25 million to bring campsite inventory into the digital age | TechCrunch

 

Shoutouts

Clickup SuperBowl Ad

Another SB Commercial – Cloudbeds https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf13lAgUgqw&feature=youtu.be

 

Connect’s 5.10.30 Innovation Day at Petco Park

 

 SDSU unveils new virtual and extended reality research center

• VITaL (launched 2017) to explore new tech
  • Virtual Immersive Teaching and Learning research center 
  • 56 faculty teaching 
  • 70 courses 
  • across all eight colleges at SDSU
  • “The tools will just become more and more reliable, affordable and easy to use as we look ahead,” Frazee said. “Essentially, you’re going to take your glasses off and feel dumber just like we have without our phones. Can you imagine not being able to answer every question and access every statistic on the planet from your pocket?” 
    • Deputy CIO James Frazee