the same quarter of 2009, when local tech companies got just 35 percent of the $251.6 million that VCs invested. The biggest deal of the quarter ($60 million) went to SkinIt, a San Diego company making adhesive “skins” to personalize laptops, mobile phones, and other consumer electronics. Other tech companies that got funding: Zeebo ($15 million); Verve Wireless ($7 million); Fallbrook Technologies ($6 million).
—Ricardo dos Santos, Qualcomm’s (NASDAQ: [[ticker:QCOM]]) senior director of new business creation and innovation, told me he hopes to stimulate more creative invention and entrepreneurship among Qualcomm’s rank and file by establishing closer ties with the annual “quick pitch” event that Southern California’s Tech Coast Angels organizes each year for startup founders and entrepreneurs.
—Endeca Technologies, a Cambridge, MA, startup that develops enterprise search and mobile business intelligence applications, formed a strategic partnership with Mellmo, the Del Mar, CA, startup that specializes in mobile graphic display technology for business intelligence data.
—San Diego-based Extrabux, an online retailing startup that extends cash-back and rebate offers to users of its comparison shopping service, started working with Inuvo (NYSE Amex:[[ticker:INUV]]) of Clearwater, FL, to create an integrated cash back and discount coupon application for Web publishers and mobile application software developers.
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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