San Diego has rapidly emerged as a dynamic hub for startups, blending innovation with a high quality of life. Known for its thriving biotech and health tech industries, the city is also gaining recognition for cleantech, SaaS, and other forward-looking sectors. With its proximity to world-class research institutions like UC San Diego and Scripps Research, as well as a growing network of accelerators and incubators, San Diego provides fertile ground for startups to launch and scale.
In this article, we will highlight the top 10 VCs investing in startups in San Diego and provide insights into the local startup ecosystem and fundraising landscape.
The Startup Ecosystem in San Diego
San Diego's startup ecosystem is a vibrant and supportive environment for entrepreneurs, offering a wealth of resources, accelerators, and incubators designed to foster innovation and growth.
These organizations are just a few that contribute to a great support system for startups in the region:
- EvoNexus: As Southern California's leading startup technology incubator, EvoNexus provides entrepreneurs with mentorship, access to capital, and strategic partnerships to help transform ideas into viable companies.
- Connect: A premier innovation company accelerator in San Diego, Connect offers programs like Springboard, which provides startups with mentoring and access to a network of industry experts to accelerate their growth.
- Startup San Diego: A nonprofit organization serving as the gateway to the local startup ecosystem, Startup San Diego connects founders and talent to resources, networks, and support institutions, fostering a cohesive entrepreneurial community.
- BioLabs San Diego: A co-working space tailored for life science startups, offering shared lab space and equipment to support biotech entrepreneurs in their early stages.
- Hera Hub: A female-focused co-working space and business accelerator providing a collaborative environment for women entrepreneurs to grow their businesses.
Benefits of Running a Startup in San Diego
Operating a startup in San Diego offers several advantages:
- Talent Pool: The presence of leading research institutions like the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and a strong military community provide a steady stream of skilled professionals in fields such as biotechnology, engineering, and information technology.
- Proximity to Research Institutions: Institutions like UCSD and the Salk Institute drive innovation and provide opportunities for collaboration, particularly in sectors like biotech and life sciences.
- Quality of Life: San Diego's favorable climate, beautiful beaches, and vibrant cultural scene make it an attractive location for talent, aiding in recruitment and retention for startups.
Fundraising in San Diego
Securing funding is a pivotal step for startups aiming to scale their operations. San Diego offers a unique fundraising landscape, with a variety of resources and events tailored to support entrepreneurs.
Tips for Fundraising in San Diego
- Engage with Local Angel Investors: San Diego has a robust network of angel investors who provide critical early-stage funding. Organizations like Tech Coast Angels and the San Diego Angel Conference are prominent in this space. Tech Coast Angels, for instance, is one of the largest and most active angel groups in the US, offering funding and mentorship to startups across various industries.
- Participate in Pitch Competitions: Events such as the San Diego Angel Conference offer startups the opportunity to pitch to a network of over 200 angel investors. Winners receive investments of $200,000 or more. These competitions provide not only funding opportunities but also valuable exposure and feedback.
- Leverage Crowdfunding Platforms: For startups with consumer-facing products, crowdfunding can effectively raise capital while validating market demand. San Diego-based companies have found success on platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. For example, OSSIC, a tech company developing headphones with 3D audio technology, raised over $2.6 million on Kickstarter, with almost 10,000 backers supporting the firm.
- Network Strategically: Building relationships within the local startup ecosystem is crucial. Attend industry meetups, startup events, and networking opportunities to connect with like-minded individuals and potential investors. San Diego hosts many events geared towards entrepreneurs and investors, such as the annual Startup Week, which features workshops, panels, and networking opportunities.
Networking and Local Startup Events
San Diego's vibrant startup community offers numerous events that facilitate networking and learning:
- San Diego Startup Week: An annual premier conference that brings together entrepreneurs, investors, mentors, executives, and talent to connect, educate, and inspire the San Diego innovation ecosystem. The event is jam-packed with seminars, workshops, panel discussions, special events, and networking sessions aimed to foster an inclusive and collaborative community.
- March Mingle: San Diego’s largest annual startup and tech networking event, bringing together technologists from various local tech user groups to socialize and share ideas. Established in 2004, March Mingle is a platform for San Diego’s leading technologists to gather and socialize.
- Startup San Diego Events: Regular events such as 1st Mondays and specialized workshops provide platforms for entrepreneurs to connect, learn, and grow within the local startup ecosystem. Startup San Diego is a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit serving the San Diego Startup Ecosystem, guiding and connecting local founders and talent to the right resources, networks, and support institutions.
- San Diego Entrepreneurs Exchange (SDEE) Events: SDEE hosts a number of truly fantastic events, ranging from monthly happy hours to expert-led workshops and networking events, providing opportunities for entrepreneurial innovators to connect and learn.
Comparing San Diego’s Investment Landscape
While San Diego's startup ecosystem is rapidly growing, it differs from larger hubs like Silicon Valley and Los Angeles in several ways:
- Scale of Investment: Silicon Valley attracts more venture capital due to its established reputation and dense concentration of tech companies. However, San Diego is gaining traction, particularly in sectors like biotechnology, health tech, and clean energy, attracting significant venture capital and driving innovation across multiple sectors.
- Community and Accessibility: San Diego's startup community is known for its collaborative and supportive nature. It often provides more accessible networking opportunities than the competitive environments of larger hubs. Events like San Diego Startup Week and organizations like Startup San Diego significantly foster this community spirit.
- Cost of Operations: Operating a startup in San Diego can be more cost-effective than in Silicon Valley or Los Angeles, with lower living costs and operational expenses, making it an attractive option for early-stage startups.
Top 15 Venture Capitalists in San Diego
Tech Coast Angels
About: Tech Coast Angels is the largest angel investor group in the United States, possessing more than 300 members in five networks in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, Central Coast, and the Inland Empire. Its members provide funding and guidance to more early-stage, high-growth companies in Southern California than any other investment group.
Sweetspot check size: $ 500K
Traction metrics requirements: Yes. Usually investing after product market fit or defensible IP.
Thesis: SoCal focused innovation companies
Correlation Ventures
About: Correlation Ventures is a new breed of venture capital firm, leveraging world-class analytics to offer entrepreneurs and other venture capitalists a dramatically better option when they are seeking additional capital to complete a financing round.
Thesis: We provide fast and reliable access to venture capital so teams can spend less time fundraising and more time building their businesses.
Qualcomm Ventures
About: Qualcomm Ventures is the venture capital arm of Qualcomm Incorporated and is based in San Diego, California with several satellite offices located throughout world. Founded in 2000, Qualcomm Ventures is a corporate venture capital fund with over 150 active portfolio companies and more than 20 exits over a billion dollars, including 99 Taxis, Cruise Automation, Fitbit, Invensense, NQ Mobile, Waze and more. As a global investor, Qualcomm Ventures helps connect entrepreneurs to the resources, relationships and deep industry expertise they need to succeed in the mobile technology ecosystem.
Thesis: The group is focused on early to late-stage investments in the mobile/wireless sector, with strong interests in 5G, IoT, Connected Automotive, AI, Consumer, enterprise, and cloud.
Section 32
About: S32 is a venture capital firm investing at the frontiers of technology. Founded by Bill Maris, the team has vast experience building iconic companies. Our goal is to accelerate the discovery, development, and distribution of revolutionary technologies that improve the human condition. We invest across the entirety of technology. This includes artificial intelligence, enterprise software, cybersecurity, fintech, quantum computing, computational biology, and biotechnology. Offices in San DIego, San Francisco, and New York.
Harpoon
About: Harpoon Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm with a deep commitment to supporting the next generation of groundbreaking technology. With $300 million in assets under management, we invest in a wide range of transformative ventures, including those in AI, deep tech, cyber security, and enterprise infrastructure.
TVC Capital
About: TVC Capital is an operator-led growth equity firm focused on investments in and acquisitions of software companies. We target a wide spectrum of software sectors and industry verticals that are poised for growth and consolidation. We invest growth equity in minority interests as well as provide capital for recapitalizations and buyouts.
Thesis: TVC Capital seeks investment opportunities with US software companies generating $2.5 million plus in annual revenue. We typically invest in such companies that are at or tracking towards profitability, meet a mission-critical need of their customer base, and are in need of capital to accelerate their growth. We also welcome the opportunity to begin a dialogue with growth-oriented software companies that are below our revenue threshold, but are at an inflection point in their development and are poised for future growth.
Forward Ventures
About: Forward Ventures, founded in 1990, has a team of investment professionals with extensive experience in entrepreneurship, venture capital, biological sciences, operations, and corporate management. The most recent fund focuses on biopharmaceutical products in early clinical development. We maximize returns through capital efficiency in our portfolio companies. We use our financial, technical and business resources to support founders and management. On a number of occasions, we have seeded companies from scratch, building strong teams to pursue compelling opportunities.
Spark Growth Ventures
About: Spark Growth Ventures is a community driven, early & mid stage, vertical-agnostic, technology venture capital firm. Our mission is to support gritty and exceptional founders in their missions by bringing forth the combined value of our strong community. We are fortunate to have a global network of entrepreneurs, C-level relationships, subject matter experts, world-class talent, institutional investors, high net worth individuals and family offices, many of who are investors in our platform. Our team has several decades of global experience in venture capital, entrepreneurship, innovation, executive & board management, functional leadership and advisory work.
Sweetspot check size: $ 1.50M
Traction metrics requirements
Post PMF with min. $1M in SaaS ARR or $4-5M in non SaaS annualized run rate. High capital efficiency and scalability metrics
Thesis: Capital efficient and scalable business model rooted in tech enabled products and services solving real and large problems. Mission oriented and gritty founders are a must.
Longley Capital
About: We invest in meaningful companies at the forefront of emerging technologies. Focusing on underserved markets, we champion management teams with visionary ideas and nurture our investments with the quantitative and qualitative disciplines necessary to accelerate enterprise value and mitigate portfolio risk. We implement business fundamentals and control early in a company’s lifecycle in order to ensure success in later stages.
Radical Growth
About: We discover world-class entrepreneurs and emerging technologies changing food and agriculture. Many of our founders took part in the Radicle Challenge, our pitch competition. By bringing our expertise and network, we help entrepreneurs and large corporations positively impact the future of food.
Thesis: The Acceleration Fund solves some of the most pressing issues facing the earth today by reducing the time to bring the latest Ag technologies to market. The fund is focused on tackling global farming problems by investing and accelerating companies in the areas of Digital Ag, Biologicals, New Farm Systems and Seed Technology.
Crescent Ridge
About: Crescent Ridge invests in early-stage companies on a mission to build a better world. We want to back entrepreneurs solving deep problems that affect Health/People/Planet. We bring the rigor of institutional capital with the trust and closeness of family and friends.
Versant Ventures
About: Versant Ventures is a leading healthcare investment firm committed to helping exceptional entrepreneurs build the next generation of great companies. The firm’s emphasis is on biotechnology companies that are discovering and developing novel therapeutics. With $2.4 billion under management and offices in the US, Canada and Europe, Versant has built a team with deep investment, operating and clinical expertise that enables a hands-on approach to company building. Since the firm’s founding in 1999, more than 70 Versant companies have achieved successful acquisitions or IPOs.
Founders First Capital Partners
About: National lender serving BIPOC, veteran, LGBTQ+, & women-owned businesses, as well as businesses in LMI zones & those committed to diverse hiring practices. Helping accelerate business growth through our Revenue-Based Funding products & Advisory Services.
Together, we can create more jobs, increase your revenues and bottom line, and provide more growth capital to help your business. We’re backed by the nation’s top philanthropic organizations, so that we can fund you with the right capital.
Thesis: We help companies grow and scale through strategic advisory and revenue-based investment.
Lolita Taub
About: Lolita Taub is the Chief of Staff and interim Head of Sales at Catalyte, and a 2x TEDx speaker, with a venture capital and enterprise tech background. She is also Scout at Indie.VC, an investor at NextGen Venture Partners, an LP at Operator Collective and Portfolia’s Enterprise Fund; and a former VC at Backstage Capital and K Fund. Lolita holds over a decade of enterprise B2B software, hardware, and services sales experience at IBM, Cisco Systems and in Silicon Valley. She has a BA from the University of Southern California and an MBA from the IE Business School. Lolita has been recognized for her work on Forbes, Inc.com, The Huffington Post and Entrepreneur.com among other publications.
Sweetspot check size: $ 20K
FusionX Ventures
About: FusionX Ventures is a Southern California-based venture capital firm that invests in promising, early stage startups in technology, industrial and medical/life science sectors.
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