Inventors & Investors

A Tech and Life Science Startup Pitch Event

TCA San Diego’s long-running John G. Watson Quick Pitch event will, for the first time in 13 years, not be held in 2020 due to social distancing regulations. While we are disappointed that we’re not able to share the excitement of Quick Pitch in person, we remain committed to finding, promoting and funding the most promising and innovative companies and upholding our commitment to bringing out the BEST in San Diego’s startup community!

To that end, we have collaborated with several of San Diego’s other major startup ecosystem organizations – San Diego Innovation Council, CONNECT, and Startup San Diego, with support from several corporate and nonprofit partners – to launch a new virtual pitch competition, Inventors & Investors, on Friday October 9th! Maintaining the spirit of Quick Pitch, Inventors & Investors has paired 10 finalists, selected from a pool of hundreds of tech and life sciences companies, with coaches from TCA’s membership to develop and refine their pitches for our competition on October 9th. The winner will receive an opportunity to pitch to TCA’s membership to receive an investment – up to $500,000 from our ACE Fund 21 – as well as contributions from individual members; previous Quick Pitch finalists have received more than $5M in funding from TCA.

This event is included with all tickets for San Diego Startup Month 2020 – use code TCA30 when purchasing tickets for our discounted rate!

The Companies

TCA Coach: Stacy Cromidas

Aero Therapeutics aims to help physicians in low-resource settings treat respiratory issues using sustainable, rugged and affordable devices. To treat premature respiratory distress in low and middle-income countries, Aero has prototyped a low-cost nasal cannula in an all-in-one mobile enclosure, delivering comparable performance to commercially available devices at one-tenth the cost.

TCA Coaches: Ray Freiwirth & Michael Kimball

Candelytics is looking to jump ahead of the emerging LIDAR 3D mapping capabilities coming to the retail market with a SaaS platform for data curation, algorithmic automation, 3D data management, augmented and virtual reality, and predictive analysis of 3D LIDAR data uploaded by users and companies.

TCA Coach: Benton Moore

ChargeNet has built a software platform integrating and optimizing EV Fast Chargers, solar and energy storage with point-of-sale systems at restaurants and retail locations, aiming to reduce infrastructure costs and provide new customer and revenue streams to retail while making EV more accessible.

TCA Coaches: Valerie Lake & Jay Kunin

Moein Health has created an alternative to traditional cervical cancer screening methods, promising to eliminate the need for multiple visits, dramatically reduce the cost of treatment, and increase access to care in low and middle-income countries.

TCA Coach: Alberto Casagrande

Novoron Bioscience develops novel therapeutic approaches to central nervous system (CNS) disorders and is advancing a pipeline of biologic therapeutics for nerve regeneration for conditions such as multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury.

TCA Coach: John Morris

Phyteau is developing a new class of natural therapeutics for managing diabetes, obesity, and other metabolic conditions using a newly developed platform for restoring and boosting metabolic hormones.

TCA Coach: Justin Jue

Softsonics hopes to revolutionize the way blood pressure is measured by introducing an easier way to track blood pressure – using a wearable ultrasonic sensor, monitoring user data and providing actionable intelligence to health care providers, with the ultimate aim of reducing costs and improving outcomes with better detection.

TCA Coach: Amy Duncan

Styx Biotechnologies has developed technology to improve vaccine efficiency through enhancing the body’s immune system’s memory, supplementing its ability to neutralize infections and malignancies.

TCA Coach: Denis Malyshev

Toragen Biotechnologies focuses on developing, repurposing and commercializing uniquely selective cancer drugs targeting cancers caused by the human papilloma virus (HPV) including Head and Neck Cancer, Cervical Cancer, and several other Genitourinary and Gastrointestinal Cancers.

TCA Coach: Hus Tigli

Tag-N-Trac provides full stack IoT solutions using their Tag-N-Trac platform to manage centralized data for analytics and AI. By combining serialized bar codes, temperature and location monitoring, tamper-resistant and labels into one service, they offer a fully integrated, less-expensive end-to-end solution for the tracking of time and temperature-sensitive medical parcels.