San Diego Tech Roundup: Givit, ID Analytics, and Rain on the Parade

venture investors in San Francisco this week. Connect organized what it calls “The Connect Venture Roundtable Roadshow” as part of a broader series of initiatives intended to improve the venture funding prospects for startups in San Diego.

—The San Diego Festival of Science and Engineering got off to a soggy start Saturday. The “DNA Dragon Parade” through Balboa Park was postponed due to inclement weather. Not to worry, though. More than 500 events are planned in the week-long celebration of a four-letter word—STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math)—culminating in an Expo Day at Petco Park in downtown San Diego.

—A private equity firm, Vista Equity Partners, has acquired Essential Learning, a San Diego provider of interactive e-learning solutions for behavioral and community health, substance abuse, corrections, developmental disability and child welfare organizations. Financial terms were not disclosed, according to a statement. Essential Learning co-founder and president Lorraine Watson also will be retiring.

—San Diego-based Skinit, which sells customized covers for laptops, smartphones, and other electronic devices, has raised almost $8.1 million toward a nearly $12 million round from investors, according to a regulatory filing. The company increased the size of a debt, rights and securities offering to $3 million earlier this month. Skinit raised $60 million in a 2010 round led by ABS Capital Partners, with participation from Norwest Equity Partners, according to VentureWire.

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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.