San Diego’s Young & Restless: A Cross-Section of Tech Entrepreneurs

supported his Guide to Customer Development), Lean Startup author Eric Ries, and KISSmetrics CEO Hiten Shah.

But as Cooper puts it, “I heard from some of the entrepreneurs that it was great having these speakers, but they wanted a chance to make presentations on their own and to learn from that.” So “Demo Night” was born and Cooper says he’s been riding a wave of enthusiasm ever since. Close to 250 people registered for a recent Tech Founders Demo Night, including a few curious investors like Greg Cortese of New York-based PAR Technology (NYSE: [[ticker:PAR]]), which provides software services for the hospitality industry.


Take Lessons' Chris Waldron


So who are these young and restless Web entrepreneurs? Of the seven local companies that were invited to speak, Cooper says he wanted to present a cross-section of San Diego Web startups, from companies that are little more than early stage ideas to more established companies that, as he likes to say, “are just crushing it.” Here’s a summary:

—Tap Hunter. The startup launched its website in 2009 and has been expanding its capabilities as a Web and mobile app to help craft beer lovers find their favorite breweries as well as the places pouring a particular draft (which are often produced in relatively small batches). Co-founder and CEO Melani Gordon says the U.S. beer market is $7.4 billion a year, and “fizzy yellow beer sales are down 2 percent [while] craft beer is up 16 percent in volume and dollars.” Tap Hunter’s free mobile app provides GPS-based listings of beer, taverns, and breweries, and can push notifications when certain batches become available. The startup, funded so far by friends and family, is looking to raise $500,000 in seed funding to expand into

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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.