In 4th San Diego Draft, Plug and Play Picks 7 Startups for Bootcamp

It took 11 judges just 30 minutes yesterday afternoon to draft seven seed-stage tech companies to spend three months next year in a startup boot camp at the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, CA.

The seven winners were chosen following presentations by 24 finalists on the 15th floor of a downtown high-rise at 707 Broadway owned by Emmes Asset Management, a firm that envisions the building as a new hub for local technology startups. As the setting sun slanted through windows overlooking San Diego Bay, a founder from each startup got five minutes to make their pitch—three minutes to describe their startup’s technology, strategy, and potential market, and two minutes to answer judges’ questions.

As one first-time observer tweeted:

“It’s kind of like SharkTankABC only less sharky.”

…Or maybe it’s just less obviously sharky.

Teams selected for the startup accelerator program must give up a 5 percent ownership stake in their company to Plug and Play when they enroll. Plug and Play also provides a $25,000 convertible note to each team that converts to an additional ownership stake when the company raises capital in its next institutional round. The size of that stake depends on the company’s valuation at the time.

The 11 judges included Saeed Amidi, founder of the Plug and Play Technology Center in Sunnyvale; Alireza Masrour, Plug and Play managing partner; Alex Roudi, CEO of San Diego-based Interwest Capital; Nathan Fletcher, a Qualcomm senior director for global strategic initiatives; Howard Leonhardt, founder of Leonhardt Ventures (and the California Stock Xchange); and Paul Grossman, managing director of Telegraph Hill Partners.

Founder Saeed Amidi provided an update on Plug and Pay "By the Numbers"
Founder Saeed Amidi provided an update on Plug and Play “By the Numbers”

Selecting the finalists didn’t take long because judges were scoring each presentation while it was being delivered, said Dave Titus, who served as one of the judges, and works as a business development executive with the Cooley law firm in San Diego.

Several hundred people attended the event, which was the fourth time Plug and Play’s satellite operation in San Diego has drafted local companies for the Silicon Valley bootcamp program. “I would say the quality of this group was by

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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.