Joining me now, Jennifer Van Grove, she covers e-commerce for the San Diego Union Tribune. Welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. The audience for Startup Week is gone from 300 to about 2500 in just four years. Is this evidence of an unmet need here in San Diego? I don't know that it's evidence of an unmet need, I do believe more people are starting to come together. The startup community is recognizing that there's strength in numbers. We have organizations in town, including downtown partnership, connect, San Diego venture group that are getting the word out and helping to coordinate these events. San Diego startup community has been very disparate, fractured, we are seeing a little bit more of people coming together and recognizing they can get more done if they pool resources. You wrote Sunday, about the rosy narrative developing around San Diego's tech ecosystem. If you've been reading the news or watching CNBC, you've seen this narrative where San Diego is the new Silicon Valley, that's just not the case. We raised $1.3 billion last year according to the national venture capital Association, that compares to 60 billion overall. I believe less than -- or 52% of what we raised went to biotech, that should suggest we are a biocentric hub. Let's not overplay our tech community. Counterpoint, we spoke with business apps founder Andrew best techie about the reasons he moved from the bay area to San Diego. Is his story Justin outlying story or is he the first of many? I believe it is an outlier, some of our community leaders look to that story to build up the narrative. I don't think it's a bad thing, I don't know that we will see a a lot of start -- startups relocate. Talent will relocate. Some of the groups have efforts to recruit talent. What's most interesting is not business apps coming to San Diego, it's our proximity to Los Angeles, their startup community is growing, they have SnapChat, which is a flagship company. As a company gets bigger, they have talent inside that's going to get restless, they're going to want to do their own thing. Because San Diego, offers a better quality of life in Los Angeles, we are so close, SnapChat is already recruiting talent from the bay area. They are doing some work for us. We're going to get some really smart talent who's been inside top-tier startups and come down to check out what we have. One of the reasons that he moved to San Diego, was because it is not Silicon Valley. It's not so crowded or expensive. Do we have that as a draw? Yes. We certainly do you can get talent at a cheaper price, instead of paying the high six figures are low six figures, for your engineers, it is more affordable to live here. If your company, it's cheaper, California has a tax problem for businesses. There are advantages to having a company in San Diego. It's more attractive if your early-stage versus later stage. Unless you later stage and you have this team of founders, this network of resources where you can go out and raise money whenever you want. Because raising money is a problem for startups in San Diego. The startups are not generating a whole bunch of interest. What I've heard, they area investors like to invest in their backyard. They are lazy, that's what I've heard. They like to invest in what they can see. If you are not connected to Mike Krenn and some of the things that he's doing to bring the investors down here or have people go up there, you might be missing out on those connections. It's really behind the scenes kind of network thing. You can raise that money, but you have to know who to talk to. We don't have that money here in town. I've been speaking with Jennifer Van Grove, lifestyle reporter for the San Diego Eugen Tribune. -- Union Tribune.
San Diego Startup Week is seeing a jump in interest from entrepreneurs, with 2,500 tech founders attending the downtown series of talks, up from just 300 in 2013.
Startup Week attracts founders with a possible billion-dollar idea already in hand, along with those looking to get one. One of the marquee events is a pitch competition Thursday evening, with the most promising entrepreneurs facing off in front of a panel of experts. One of the contestants is Rae Lietzau, founder of DoWhop, an online marketplace for real-world interactions.
“It’s where you buy and sell what you love to do,” she said. “Maybe you’re going to play soccer or speak French, go scuba diving, sailing. Anytime you want to do something, we find you a paying partner or we let you pay somebody else to join them.”
Startup Week is helping address some of the city's tech shortcomings, including retaining more experienced entrepreneurs, Jennifer Van Grove wrote this week in The San Diego Union-Tribune.
"The startup community is recognizing there are strengths in numbers," she told KPBS Midday Edition. "San Diego's startup community has been very fractured."
Van Grove said that there's been a rosy narrative in the news recently calling San Diego the next Silicon Valley, but said that's not accurate. She said the story of tech entrepreneur Andrew Gazdecki moving his startup from the Bay Area to San Diego is an outlier.
"Some of our community leaders look to that story to build up the narrative," she said.
