Angels Launch New Seed Capital Fund, DoCoMo Acquires PacketVideo, St. Bernard Gets Red Condor, & More San Diego BizTech News

A couple of deals topped the tech news last week, but the development most worth watching might be the formation of a new type of fund by Southern California’s Tech Coast Angels. Find out why, and catch up on the rest of San Diego’s tech news here.

—The angel investor group Tech Coast Angels is creating a new fund that will allow non-members to pool their money to collectively invest in seed stage startups, a move that could prove to be the most important news of the year for San Diego tech entrepreneurs in need of seed capital. This Angel Capital Entrepreneurial Fund (ACE Fund), which will be at least $3 million, is one more sign of the rising importance of angel investors.

—Japanese communications provider NTT DoCoMo said it was paying $111.6 million to acquire the stake in PacketVideo it didn’t already own. DoCoMo paid $45.5 million last year for a 35 percent stake in PacketVideo, a 12-year-old San Diego company that provides software and multimedia services for mobile devices.

—St. Bernard Software (OTCBB: [[ticker:SBSW), which specializes in hybrid hardware and software network security technology, acquired the assets of Red Condor, an e-mail security technology specialist in Rohnert Park, CA. St. Bernard did not disclose terms of the Red Condor acquisition.

—Ecotality (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ECTY]]) CEO Jonathan Read unveiled his company’s plans for a network of 1,500 electric vehicle charging stations that will be installed throughout San Diego County. Ecotality has been working on the charging infrastructure for six months with regional transportation planners, San Diego Gas & Electric engineers, and city and county officials.

—SG Biofuels said it is establishing an advanced research and

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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.