Slain Biotech Investor Leaves $1 Million to Support Entrepreneurship

The San Diego members of Southern California’s Tech Coast Angels (TCA) have established a $1 million nonprofit foundation in the name of John G. Watson, the late San Diego life sciences executive and investor who was slain here almost two years ago.

In a touching afterward to the tragedy, TCA president Stephen Flaim tells me that Watson left a $1 million gift to set up some kind of fund that would support entrepreneurs and startup activities in San Diego. “The foundation is based on this endowment,” Flaim says. “We’ve put the money under management and hope to solicit additional contributions. We want the fund to grow.”

Watson, a retired pharmaceutical executive, was active in San Diego’s network of angel investors and was overseeing plans for the group’s “Quick Pitch” competition for the second consecutive year when he died. Two TCA members discovered Watson’s body in his La Jolla townhome on June 8, 2010, after he failed to show for a regular TCA board meeting at the UC San Diego faculty club.

Kent Thomas Keigwin, a local investment adviser who was charged in Watson’s death, was convicted by a San Diego jury two months ago of first-degree murder, identity theft, attempted grand theft of personal property, burglary, and forgery. The prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Sharla Evert, argued that Keigwin used a stun gun to immobilize Watson and strangled him. She told jurors that Keigwin used Watson’s personal information to impersonate him and had transferred $8.9 million from Watson’s personal accounts at the time he was arrested. Keigwin’s sentencing is scheduled for later this month.

In a statement from the TCA, Watson’s sister, Gillian Ison, says, “John loved investing, innovation, and the entrepreneurial spirit that he discovered when he arrived in San Diego. We believe that a foundation supporting entrepreneurism is the best way to honor his memory and his life.”

A native of the United Kingdom, Watson graduated from Cambridge University with a bachelor of science degree in economics before coming to the United States to study as a Fulbright Scholar at Indiana University. He earned a

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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.