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

far the best,” Amidi said after the winners were announced.

San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer arrived after the presentations, but in time to announce the seven winners:

—Hush Technologies. Three engineering students at UC San Diego created wireless earbuds as a new product. The wireless earplugs connect with a user’s smartphone through Bluetooth, enabling the Hush earplugs to play noise-masking audio programs for a better night’s sleep while still allowing wake-up alarms and emergency notifications to ring through. The company launched a $100,000 Kickstarter campaign in November, and with 12 days to go has raised more than $463,000 from nearly 3,500 contributors.

—Fandom Gaming. In a bid to capitalize on the explosion in live video game tournaments, known as eSports, Fandom Gaming has created a fantasy sports platform for video gamers. The company, which would take a percentage of entry fees into tournaments, plans to launch its AlphaDraft game in January.

—eLux Medical. The company has developed NanoLipo, a liposuction device that uses gold particles to remove twice the amount of fat in a procedure that takes half as long, and without cosmetic effects. After testing on pigs, the product is expected to enter human trials in coming months.

—nPruv. A health IT startup that provides an online marketplace enabling patients with a chronic disease to find and enroll in clinical trials testing new experimental treatments for patients with the same diagnosis. Founder and CEO Summer Rogers calls nPruv “the Match.com for clinical trials” and says it could save the pharmaceutical industry billions of dollars now spent to enroll sufficient numbers of patients.

—Airbitz. In a bid to bring Bitcoin to the masses, Airbitz has developed a mobile bitcoin wallet that has been integrated with a merchant directory to create a secure, easy-to-use system for making bitcoin payments.

—nCore Communications. New technology enables mobile operators to use a Wi-Fi radio as a small cell base station and connect directly to their LTE network.

—Seraphim. The company has developed a paperback-size camera drone that is small enough to attach to an armband. Founder Tyler McGahee said the drone, priced at $1,400 each, includes see-and-avoid sensor technology to stay clear of trees, and can remain aloft for as long as 45 minutes. The drone, which is designed to follow the armband, is intended to provide aerial footage of skiers, snowboarders, mountain bikers, and other adventure sports enthusiasts.

Plug and Play San Diego winners Tyler McGahee, Adah Almutairi, Behzad Mohebbi, Daniel Lee, Mayor Kevin Faulconer, Summer Rogers, Todd Peterson and Paul Puey
Plug and Play San Diego winners Tyler McGahee, Adah Almutairi, Behzad Mohebbi, Daniel Lee, Mayor Kevin Faulconer, Summer Rogers, Todd Peterson and Paul Puey
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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.