ViaSat’s Moore Discusses Future of Space-Based Internet Service, High-Tech Jobs Grew Last Year, CommNexus Absorbs EvoNexus Incubator, & More San Diego BizTech News

electromagnetic railgun, which uses high-powered electromagnets instead of gunpowder to fire projectiles. General Atomics disclosed that it successfully test-fired a prototype railgun at Utah’s Dugway Proving Grounds in September.

—San Diego’s Fallbrook Technologies, which has spent more than a decade developing advanced technology for a continuously variable transmission, raised about $39 million in a Series E preferred stock private placement. After filing for a $50 million IPO in February, Fallbrook Technologies still hopes to go public.

—Is Chip Yates for real? In a press release issued last week, the former Boeing engineer says he plans to race an electric superbike he’s developed against conventional twin-cylinder, gasoline-powered race bikes at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, CA, on January 9. Yates, who owns SWIGZ.com Pro Racing in Aliso Viejo, CA, plans to demonstrate his electric superbike on December 15 at the Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, CA, as part of a private road test and media day.

—Takelessons won the San Diego Venture Group’s 11th annual business plan “pitchfest.” The San Diego startup, which helps connect music students and teachers nationwide, took home a check for $20,000. TakeLessons, Aonori Aquafarms, and Corticare were chosen as finalists from among 70 entries to give presentations at the venture group’s annual awards dinner. The audience voted for the company with most promising business plan.

—San Diego’s CommNexus wireless industry group has absorbed EvoNexus, the free technology incubator, and folded its operations into the programs the non-profit group provides throughout the year. Former DivX CEO Kevin Hell is now the volunteer chairman overseeing EvoNexus. Former executive director Cathy Pucher is now heading sales at Grid2Home, the startup developing specialized software for smart grid wireless communications.

—Helix Wind, the San Diego company developing vertical wind turbines, is searching for a new CEO. Former CEO Scott Weinbrandt resigned as chief executive and board member on December 2. The company had an accumulated deficit of nearly $41.7 million at the end of September, and Helix Wind’s accountants have raised doubts about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.

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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.