What You Missed in February: Unicorn Founder Dinner, M&A Conference & Defense Tech Meetup in San Diego
Here's a debrief of the top events I attended and the key people in attendance.
Business San Diego delivers in-depth profiles of founders and insights on the most successful companies, executives, and technologies in San Diego. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss the next story.
Note From This Week’s Newsletter Sponsor:
The LA Fund is a regional venture capital firm that specializes in investments originating from Los Angeles, a thriving hub of media and technology.
The LA Fund is a $10M LA-focused fund with investments into a variety of promising start-ups that are profitable and are sourced from Early Stage LA, Venture Society at UCLA Law, and the Economic Club of Los Angeles (an institutional investor dinner series in Westwood).
Connect with Robert Mowry, General Partner at LA Fund to learn more.
San Diego Unicorn Founder Dinner
On February 2nd, in a stunning penthouse apartment overlooking Balboa Park, twelve of San Diego’s top founders were networking before a three-course dinner prepared by a private chef, who drove down from Joshua Tree.
It was a Friday evening, and attendees congregate around a long wooden table after a few glasses of wine and eating boards of charcuterie — the event was hosted by Rebecca Bamberger, super-connector and CEO of BAM a public relations agency that was acquired last year by LLYC Global for more than $13 million.
The gathering was meant to foster new connections among San Francisco founders who moved to San Diego as well as local founders who have experienced a significant liquidity event, or two. Before beginning the dinner and conversations, Bamberger reminded the elite group that they’re more similar than not — all united by a common goal, to succeed in San Diego.
Linear App CEO Karri Saarinen shared with the group that his company is on track to have “its biggest year yet,” noting that his firm is actively hiring in engineering, product design, and sales.
Mr. Saarinen, who has a deep rolodex of Sand Hill Road connections due to his early time at Coinbase, Airbnb — has proudly championed San Diego as the next Silicon Valley and recently went viral on social media after noting the region pulls three times more capital than Miami.
Equip Co-Founder, Kristina Saffran, one of San Diego’s top women founders that raised tens of millions in venture capital funding for her eating disorder-focused tech startup was also in attendance. Ms. Saffran, who recently got back from paternity leave, said hiring Nikia Bergan, a former healthcare executive at Get Well as its new president has been instrumental to the firm’s recent growth.
Today, Equip is the largest eating disorder treatment provider in the country. The company has more than 400 employees and has raised $75 million-plus from top investors including Chernin Group, Tiger Global, General Catalyst, among others.
“2023 was a tough year for ClickUp,” said co-founder and CEO Zeb Evans, who moved his ClickUp’s headquarters to Downtown San Diego in 2019. “We had to make a lot of tough decisions,” Evans told the group, sharing that similar to other fast-growing tech startups, the company made significant reductions to its staff, including reshuffling of executive leadership.
“2024 things are shaping up to be an incredible year,” said Evans, who is focused on building a strong company culture that promotes leaders within. He warned founders in the room to be diligent about hiring “big tech talent” whose resumes often include Facebook or Google, especially early on — as they can hinder your company culture.
Others around the table included four Y-Combinator alumni founders. Jeremy Yamaguchi who co-founded Lawn Love (acquired by LawnStarter in 2022), a Coronado-based AI founder building in stealth, Kate Dilligan CEO of Cooler Heads and three consumer (CPG) operators.
CapCon 2024 Conference by ACG San Diego
On February 21st, top dealmakers from across the country flew to San Diego for the fifth annual CapCon Conference, a two-day summit featuring investment bankers, private equity and middle market CEOs, among other influential decision makers.
Event brought together 400-plus M&A minded folks for multiple panel discussions on the state of investing, and tips for raising capital in the current economic climate.
Energy in the room was high and panel conversations made references to the painful market correction that pummeled valuations, however despite this, investors seemed pretty optimistic about the path ahead. M&A bankers held dozens of meetings throughout the conference, there was also a $10,000 raffle prize to make a hole-in-one.
Panel conversations were off-the-record but there were notable San Diego-based firms in attendance including HCAP Partners, RA Capital Advisors, Seaside Equity Partners, Channel Equity Partners, Candor Advisors, and Verity Capital Advisors.
Harpoon Venture’s Defense Tech Meetup
On February 27th, Harpoon Ventures hosted a 130+ RSVP event that brought together members of government, early-stage founders and venture capital investors looking to get more involved in the defense tech community.
There was a panel discussion which included Brad Lunn, who leads corporate venture at General Atomics, Dan Magy co-founder of defense tech company Firestorm, and Jesse Gipe, a director specializing in defense contracting at the NSIN.
“Larsen did a pretty amazing job of getting investors in from outside of San Diego,” Mike Krenn, President and CEO at Connect, wrote over email. “It was very cool and was a great showcase of the diversity of industries.”
Historically the defense tech startup scene has historically been closed-networked in San Diego. Neal Bloom, investor at Interlock Capital said it was “great to see the San Diego defense tech community come together to share notes and networks,” adding that it bodes well for the overall defense tech startup ecosystem.
Harpoon Ventures, one of San Diego’s newer VC firms, closed $125 million for its fourth venture capital firm back in December.
Larsen Jensen, founder and general partner at Harpoon Ventures hosted me at their Downtown office overlooking Petco Park in mid-January. “San Diego is the leading city in the United states for defense tech,” he said. A former Navy SEAL, Olympian and worked at VC firms A16z and Lightspeed, shared that he wants to establish a robust defense-tech community in San Diego.
Harpoon Ventures is hosting its next meet up on April 3rd. You can learn more here, and follow them on LinkedIn for the latest news around San Diego defense tech.