A new crop of “Cool Companies” in San Diego startups will have the opportunity to show off their technology to potential investors this year. San Diego Venture Group whittled down a group of 255 applicants to 33 finalists that will be featured at its Cool Companies event on April 30, and will meet with more than 60 venture capital firms and 20 local investors at a private event in May.
“Getting to 30 companies was so incredibly difficult. It is incredibly inspiring to see so many high-quality companies” SDVG President Mike Krenn said in a news release. “We believe there are easily another 30 companies that will be of interest to VCs, and at least another 50 that have a visible path to success — without raising venture.”
Claiming the title of “Cool Company” is nice, but the event is also a great way for startups to connect with VC firms from outside of the San Diego area, and can even lead to some deals. For example, at last year’s event, local real estate startup HomeBay met with Salt Lake City-based Signal Peak Ventures, which led its $13.5 million Series A round in January.
“The credit all goes to (CEO Ken Potashner) and the team at HomeBay. They’ve been busting it, and building a great company,” Krenn said. “We just created an environment where the parties were able to meet. That’s what we’re trying to do – just put great companies in front of real investors. And we’re having fun doing it!”
In 2017, NanoCellect Biomedical met Illumina Ventures and Anzu Partners at the event, closing a $10 million round at the end of the year. In total, 25 Cool Companies have raised more than $100 million in funding since 2016.
This year’s Cool Companies include:
- Accel Robotics
- Apli
- Aquacycl
- Ateios
- Atlazo
- Bitmo
- Cardea Bio
- Coursekey
- CLiCS
- ClientPoint
- Daasity
- Fhoosh
- formsense
- GigaIO
- GoMeta
- GoShare
- GoSite
- Gryphon
- Kazuhm
- Lawmatics
- Lennd
- Lynx Bio
- MemComputing
- NeuraLace Medical
- Qwick
- Sendlane
- Seraphina Therapeutics
- Shadowbox
- TicketSauce
- Tiled
- Trust and Will
- Vivid Genomics
- Voterfied
This year’s Cool Companies event will be on April 30, at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach.
