Qualcomm Looks for Synergies With Tech Coast Angels’ Annual Quick Pitch Event to Spur Employee Entrepreneurship

Qualcomm (NASDAQ: [[ticker:QCOM]]) has begun to work more closely with Southern California’s Tech Coast Angels as part of an internal effort to promote an entrepreneurial culture at the San Diego wireless giant and to encourage employees to bring their ideas for innovations forward.

The company’s new focus on entrepreneurship and closer ties with Tech Coast Angels gained some visibility recently during the fourth annual “quick pitch” contest, which the angel investor group’s San Diego chapter convened at Qualcomm’s showcase auditorium, the 534-seat Irwin M. Jacobs Hall. While Qualcomm has hosted previous quick pitch events at other facilities, this was the first such event in the posh corporate auditorium, and “a big deal” for the telecommunications company, according to Ricardo dos Santos, a senior director of new business creation and innovation at Qualcomm Ventures.

When the San Diego Tech Coast Angels began organizing the 2010 quick pitch contest, they decided to accept applications from throughout Southern California, says Jeff Draa, who oversaw the event. “We opened up applications and got 130,” Draa says. “We got so many applications that I really had to solicit help from the TCA to give us a quick grade on the proposals.” Draa says members of the angels group winnowed the list to about 35 semi-finalists, and then 14 finalists who made the two-minute pitches to a panel of judges on October 7.

The finals of the quick pitch event drew a record audience of more than 400 people, including many Qualcomm employees who were encouraged by dos Santos to attend. Judges determined the winners based on the investment potential of their idea and presentation quality. The winners:

—Best Overall Pitch: Ritter Pharmaceuticals, a Los Angeles drug discovery and development startup focused on new therapeutic treatments for gastrointestinal diseases. Ritter has been developing a drug compound it says has the potential to become the first FDA-approved drug for the treatment of lactose intolerance.

—Best Content: Strategic Enzyme Applications, a San Diego cleantech chemistry company. Also known as SEA, the company specializes in developing

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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.