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Former SEAL Tests Investment On ‘Shark Tank

Last summer, the Insider wrote about Phil Black, founder and CEO of Coronado garage-based startup FitDeck, which sells exercise playing cards to fitness buffs via its website. Users vary their daily workouts by shuffling the decks and picking a card containing an exercise. The cards have become very popular with people who are tired of their old routines. Well, Black has taken his product to some big fish, so to speak, in recent weeks. The former Navy SEAL was set to appear Jan. 24 on the ABC television show “Shark Tank.” Black couldn’t reveal ahead of the episode whether the Tank’s celebrity investors, including billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, took a bite of his fledgling business. Black has been seeking up to $1 million in seed money since graduating from a prestigious Nike Inc. incubator program in June. Regardless of whether he got any of such funding from the sharks, entrepreneurs who have appeared say the exposure is valuable in itself. Black, a hardcore fitness freak who is working as a full-time San Diego firefighter, can pump out 100 pull-ups or 100 pushups at a moment’s notice. Go to FitDeck.com for more details, and the result of his appearance on “Shark Tank.” … Mid-Atlantic private investment firm Gladstone Investment Corp. invested $13 million while Gladstone Capital Corp. provided $5.6 million to buy a portion of San Diego-based automotive parts company BuyAutoParts.com. The 24-year-old business has appeared on the San Diego Business Journal’s annual list of the 100 fastest-growing private companies. … K1 Speed, which bills itself as the largest indoor go-karting business in the U.S., said it is set to open a facility in downtown San Diego on Feb. 9. The Irvine-based company opened its first track in Carlsbad in 2003 and now has tracks nationwide. …. University of California, San Diego enrolled a record setting 89,000-plus undergrads for the fall 2014 semester, an increase of nearly 9 percent from 2013. Officials said the campus has become one of the nation’s top five universities in terms of student applications. … Finally, these items of note: The La Jolla Music Society continues its Celebrity Recital Series with Joshua Bell and Sam Haywood, who will appear on stage at the Balboa Theatre Feb. 7. As one of the world’s most celebrated musicians, Bell is referred to as the “poet of the violin,” and he will be accompanied by Haywood. The two will play works by Beethoven, Stravinsky and Tartini. More information is available at ljms.org. … The internationally acclaimed Venice Baroque Orchestra will perform at 7 p.m. Feb. 11 at St. James by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in La Jolla. The performance is part of the St. James by-the-Sea 2014 Music Series. Details and tickets are at sjbts.og. Till next week.

Contributing Editor Tom York writes the SDBJ Insider. You can reach him via email at tyork@sdbj.com or tom.york@gmail.com.

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