Peter Cowhey of UC San Diego’s International Relations and Pacific Studies and opening a Connect office in San Francisco to help San Diego startups meet with Bay Area VCs.
—I profiled Crescent House Publishing, an 18-year-old publisher in Carlsbad, CA, that has developed Scentsa, a technology software and services platform designed to help retailers market fragrances and perfumes. The company recently raised less than $5 million in financing from San Diego’s Huntington Capital.
—Sapphire Energy, the San Diego algae biofuels startup backed by Bill Gates, is in the early stages of using genetic engineering to develop algae that are optimized to produce natural oils that can be used to produce gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
—Two San Diego tech companies got funding in June, based on a roundup of small funding deals provided by CB Insights, a New York firm that provides financial information about private companies.. San Diego’s Envision Solar, which develops energy-producing shaded parking structures known as “solar groves,” raised almost $207,000 of a planned $2.65 million round. And Poway, CA-based Ambient Control Systems, developing solar-powered sensor technology, raised $205,000.
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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