Home BloomBites The Spirit of Entrepreneurship in San Diego – 6/11/19

The Spirit of Entrepreneurship in San Diego – 6/11/19

by Neal Bloom
Well, it’s been over a week since San Diego Startup Week (SDSW) came to a close and I am still on cloud nine. Seeing thousands of community members come together for the spirit of entrepreneurship in San Diego is so inspiring. Some community members are teaching, others are learning, and all are connecting and densifying the ecosystem. None of this would be possible without our organizing team. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! If you haven’t filled out a survey, we would welcome your input on how to improve for next year: Attendee , SpeakerSponsor , Non-Attendee (did not attend this year).
SDSW also wouldn’t have been possible without both our content and community partners and our sponsors. One specifically, Cox Business, has been growing our collaboration for over three years. I recently had the chance to go back to Cox Enterprises’ headquarters in Atlanta and to see how a 121-year-old, private/family-owned company believes in community building and understands that long-term relationships are important to startups and the tech ecosystem as a whole. In Atlanta, Cox organized their own Techstars accelerator and help create a locally-focused corporate venture fund called Engage, in partnership with other Atlanta Fortune 500s.
In San Diego, Cox has been helping elevate top technical leaders for over a decade with by sponsoring the Top Tech Awards and have helped bring together the early stage founders, CTOs, and investors through a series of dinners that I personally organize. At these dinners, Cox even sends venture investors and its own M&A team to meet local companies. On top of support for Startup Week, Cox Business also stepped up to help the region’s largest pitch competition, QuickPitch (applications now open)! They also helped fund the U.S. Ignite Smart Cities initiative, bringing people together to solve large civic-focused problems, and (super secret) we are working on building an edge network sandbox to allow early stage companies build and learn on enterprise-grade technology. Shhh, that’s not officially announced yet. I truly love working with Jared Ruth and Todd Backus from Cox Business on making a lasting impact on our tech ecosystem.
Not bad for your local cable company eh? And we’re just getting started. Thank you for your partnership.

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