San Diego's Most Active VC Firms

Key facts on Qualcomm Ventures, Section 32, Keshif, Avalon, Social Leverage & Longley Capital

---

Learn from San Diego's greatest entrepreneurs and companies. Every week, I write a newsletter breaking down the business and money in San Diego. Join hundreds of entrepreneurs and investors by subscribing below.

---

Despite a challenging fundraising environment, some of San Diego’s top venture capital firms have been announcing humongous new venture funds.

---

Founders,

San Diego is home to several venture capital firms.

While most VC investments come primarily from the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston and Los Angeles.

There is a growing number of managing partners and capital allocators, writing checks for life science and tech companies.

I breakdown seven of the most active venture capital firms in San Diego: Section 32, Qualcomm Ventures, Moore Venture Partners, Avalon Ventures, Keshif Ventures, Social Leverage and Longley Capital — this is by no means an exhaustive list.

Please enjoy this week’s breakdown.

---

Quinn Li, oversees Qualcomm Venture’s $2 billion strategic venture investment portfolio of over 150 investments.

---

Qualcomm Ventures

• Fund Size: $2B+

• Investments made: 150 companies

Notable Exits

Cloudflare, Fitbit, SentinelOne, Zoom, and Magic Leap.

Active Portfolio

Airspace, Braincorp, Wiliot, Lookout, and RetailNext.

Key Partners

Quinn Li and Carlos Kokron manages Qualcomm Ventures, which operates in the United States, China, India, Israel, Europe, LatAm, and Korea.

---

Section 32 makes investments into biotechnology, advanced diagnostics, precision medicine, cybersecurity and machine learning startups.

---

Section 32

• Fund Size: $1.8B+

• Investments made: 130 companies

Notable Exits

Cue Health, CrowdStrike, CoinBase, Relay Therapeutics, Thrive Earlier Detection, and Singular Genomics.

Active Portfolio

Neuralink, Medcrypt, Aspen Neuroscience, XOKind, and Cradle Genomics.

Key Partners

Bill Maris, Andy Harrison, Michael Pellini, and Steve Kafka.

Bill Maris, who’s best known as the former Silicon Valley investor who created and led Google’s startup investment efforts at GV (Google Ventures), He managed over $3 billion and led investments Uber, Nest, Slack, and 23andme, among others.

---

Avalon Venutres manament team: Jay Lichter, Sergio Duron, Sanford (Sandy) Madigan, and Tighe Reardon, pose in front of La Jolla’s Glider Port / Black Beach.

---

Avalon Ventures

• Fund Size: $750M+

• Investments made: 183 companies

Notable Exits

Zynga, Synthorx, Calporta, Janux Pharmaceuticals, and Avelas Biosciences.

Active Portfolio

Arista MD, Neurocrine Biosciences, StackIQ.

Key Partners

Sergio Duron, Jay Lichter, Tighe Reardon and Sanford Madigan.

Jay Lichter has been involved in licensing or merger and acquisition deals valued at more than $1 billion. Avalon recently raised $135 million for Avalon BioVentures to invest in over 50 biotech and health tech companies.

---

Keshif Venutres, Founder Taner Halicioglu, was the third employee at Facebook and Andy White, was an early investor in AngelList, 500 Startups and Buffer.

Keshif Ventures

• Fund size: Unknown

• Investments made: 82 companies

Notable Exits

Abreos Biosciences, BioAtla, Portfolium, and Stemonix.

Active Portfolio

Cloudbeds, SOCi, Personal.AI, PetDesk, Nanome, and Mercato.

Key Partners

Taner Halicioglu and Andy White, co-run Keshif Ventures.

Taner Halicioglu was an early engineer at Facebook. Andy White worked for Zappos' Tony Hsieh and helped VegasTechFund to become the 5th most active Micro VC firm in 2014.

---

Coranado-based Social Leverage management team: Tom Peterson, Howard Lindzon, and Gary Benitt. Social Leverage was an early investor in Robinhood, the social trading app.

---

Social Leverage

• Fund Size: $100M+

• Investments made: 122 companies

Notable Exits

Robinhood, Bitium, Joist, Little Bird, Shoefitr, DataFox.

Active Portfolio

Beehiiv, Manscaped, Rally Rd., Civic, and BetFully.

Key Partners

Tom Peterson, Howard Lindzon, and Gary Benitt.

Lindzon, who splits his time in San Diego, Arizona and New York. He co-founded StockTwits, a social network for investors. He also hosts an annual Stocktoberfest West conference in Coronado.

---

Since inception, MVP has made over 20 investments, with many headquartered in San Diego. Terry Moore operates one of the oldest VC firms in the region.

---

Moore Venture Partners

• Fund Size: $50 - 100 million

• Investments made: 20 companies

Notable Exits

EcoATM, Daylight Solutions, Edico Genome, Take Lessons and Cloudbeds.

Active Portfolio

Vessel Health, Chroma Code, UCAP Power, Events.com, and WhiteFox.

Key Partners

Terry Moore and Brady Beauchamp manage MVP’s fund.

Terry manages one of the oldest VC firms locally. He also hosts the “VC Regatta,” event which brings together 100+ investors annually in San Diego.

---

Denise Longley (left) and partner Steven Longley are co-founders of Longley Capital. They were a lead investor is San Diego-based startup GoSite.

---

Longley Capital

• Fund Size: $75M+

• Investments made: 12 companies

Notable Investments

Manscaped, GoSite, Groguru, Iridia, Lab Fellows, LeadCrunch, Omnisync, AlwaysAI, RevAI, Contently, Copia, and Gales.

Key Partners

Denis Longley and Steven Longley

Based in La Jolla, invest together as co-founders of Longley Capital.

---

Your feedback helps improve SD Founders. How did you like this week's newsletter?

Great - Meh - Bad

---

Are you interested in partnering with SD Founders? Click the button to learn more about sponsorship opportunities.

---