Ansir Innovation Center in late 2010. His family owns a small consumer electronics manufacturer in Tijuana, and he speaks Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Taiwanese.
In a statement today, Flavio Olivieri of the Tijuana Economic Development Corp. says, “HardTech Labs is providing a bridge between San Diego and Tijuana that offers great promise” by combining the development skills of San Diego with the implementation prowess of Tijuana.
The sustainable advantage of the cross-border ecosystem in San Diego and Baja includes high-level software engineers, strong biomedical research and development centers, and a cluster of businesses that specialize in manufacturing and assembly, Footer says. As a result, he says, startup companies could greatly reduce their costs and time-to-market in half.
Footer says Origo could provide as much as $150,000 in upfront startup funding, most likely as a loan that could be converted to an ownership stake, and up to $300,000 more when the company exits the HardTech program. The accelerator plans to admit 10 startups for its inaugural class, but Footer says after a couple of years, the program could be graduating as many as 30 companies a year.
“We’re really trying to take advantage of the strengths on both sides of the border here,” Footer says. He tells me he wants to raise a $20 million venture fund just for HardTech startups by September 1, when the first class of startup companies is expected to begin.
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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.
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