San Diego company. SmartDraw has shown slow-but-steady growth as a niche developer of graphic design software for ordinary people. But Stannard envisions a much-larger market among the 95 percent of business software users who do not use a graphic or diagramming software of any kind.
—San Diego’s Fallbrook Technologies inked a deal with China’s Chengdu Bus Co. to put its accessory drive technology into buses made for use in the Chinese market. Fallbrook CEO William Klehm said the deal represents “a major validation” of Fallbrook’s technology and its “potential to deliver fuel efficiencies for vehicle manufacturers.”
—SmartDrive Systems expanded its targeted funding round to $28.5 million. The San Diego venture-backed company uses video recording technology and Web-based services to help motor vehicle fleet managers reduce their costs.
—San Diego’s On-Ramp Wireless raised $4.5 million out of a planned $18 million round of equity and debt. The company launched its low-cost, long-range wireless networking technology last September.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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