Thank you to our Chairman — Tim Scott

A: A great innovation hub needs

1. A strong intellectual network of research institutions and universities,
2. The support of a broad and deep group of service providers,
3. Funding sources, from angel to VC, and
4. Entrepreneurs, those with the desire and the understanding to create and build great innovation companies.

Fortunately, San Diego has a terrific intellectual network with Scripps, Salk, UCSD, General Atomics and other tech and life science institutions. We also have a premier roster of service providers in San Diego including law firms, accounting firms, banks, and contract development and manufacturing organizations. San Diego has funders with some veteran and start up VCs, excellent seed funding groups like TCA, and angel training groups like the Brink. I think that we can do better there.

The SDVG/Connect merger helps us attract venture money to San Diego both in terms of investing in San Diego companies and in terms of locating VCs in San Diego. Finally, we have a great culture of entrepreneurism in San Diego, but entrepreneurs need more than just a desire to create companies, they need the training to do it well. I think that the new Connect does a good job of helping entrepreneurs get the skills they need, connects them to the service providers and helps match them with the right funding partners.

A: There are so many great stories about San Diego startups. I love hearing about startups that began with a really clever idea. I also love hearing about successful collaborations among San Diego startups. And I love those stories of hard work and perseverance leading to success. These are all different examples of the paths to success among startups, and most of us entrepreneurs have had one or all of these experiences. For most startups, we talk about the “aha moment” when we first had the idea for our company. We’ve all had key partners that were critical to our success. And we’ve all had to slog through parts of our business plan as we grew the company. I think DTx is a great example of all three. They had a clever idea of how to solve the problem of delivering RNA therapeutics, a very exciting class of molecules, using fatty acids conjugates. They’ve had to grind out every permeation of how these diverse fatty acids attach to the RNA drug. There are scores of different configurations, and you just have to make each one and collect the data on how well it works. It’s very laborious, but it leads to a valuable portfolio of patents describing the technology. DTx has also partnered with a number of RNA development companies that have interesting therapeutic targets.

A: We’re always tinkering with the formula for making Connect successful, but really the basic premise hasn’t changed in 35 years: Connect helps create and grow great innovation companies. How do we do this?

1. Drive and foster a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.
2. Enhance entrepreneurship literacy.
3. Broker and promote the services of organizations by partnering with others in the innovation ecosystem.
4. Celebrate the excitement of innovation and entrepreneurship, in both our success stories and our role models.
5. Bring organizations in the innovation ecosystem together to solve grand challenge problems.

The challenge today is that we are trying to build upon San Diego’s already amazing innovation center that our Connect elders have left us. Now we need to scale that model. And the only way we can do that is with the help of all the incubators, accelerators, funders and mentors working as a team. Together, we can take San Diego’s Innovation economy to the next level.