A huge ‘Thank You!’ for all your amazing work!
Q&A w/ Tim Scott — Meet the Chairman of the Board
Tim Scott has been an active member of the innovation community for over 20 years. He is co-founder and CEO of TEGA Therapeutics, serves on the Boards of several organizations in town, and is involved across the community.
Q: To be a world-class region of innovation, what does San Diego need to do better?
A: A great innovation hub needs
- A strong intellectual network of research institutions and universities,
- The support of a broad and deep group of service providers,
- Funding sources, from angel to VC, and
- 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.
Tim Scott, Chairman of the Board, Interview Question: How to Improve San Diego
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Q: What’s your favorite San Diego story? Something about tech & innovation we should all remember?
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.
Interview w/ Chairman of Connect Board, Tim Scott - Question: Favorite SD Story
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Q: What’s a company in San Diego you’re really excited about and why?
A: I’m excited about all of the companies that have stepped up during the pandemic and applied their technology and ingenuity to developing diagnostics, vaccines and other treatments for COVID-19. Virtually every San Diego CLIA lab is now offering COVID molecular and/or serology testing. Local Dx companies are developing antigen tests to go along with their flu tests. San Diego academic institutions have come forward with an astounding number of technologies to address COVID-19. The level of collaboration that is going on in this town to fight COVID is something to be proud of.
Q: What makes you excited about Connect and the organization’s impact on San Diego’s economic growth?
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?
- Drive and foster a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.
- Enhance entrepreneurship literacy.
- Broker and promote the services of organizations by partnering with others in the innovation ecosystem.
- Celebrate the excitement of innovation and entrepreneurship, in both our success stories and our role models.
- 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.
Tim Scott, Chairman of the Board, Interview Question: What Makes You Excited for Connect's Impact
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Q: What’s on your mind these days? Any nuggets of business (or personal) wisdom that you’d like to share? Anything else you would like to share w/ our audience?
A: There is so much going on right now because of, and in spite of, the pandemic. I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the tech and biotech areas. I’m serving on a couple of different DEI committees and I’m learning a lot. We all have our personal stories of how we got to where we are. Many of us have compelling stories about what we had to overcome to become successful tech/biotech entrepreneurs. But those stories pale when compared to fighting systemic bias, both conscious and unconscious. It’s like the observation that Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in heels. It’s another set of hurdles that you have to go through above and beyond what everyone else has to do to be successful. I’m also still very much involved with supporting efforts to bring people safely back to work during the pandemic. COVID is not going away and yet we need to find ways to keep the innovation economy moving forward.
Tim Scott’s Connect Story
Tim Scott started his journey with Connect in the Springboard program with Active.com over 20 years ago. He’s served on the Connect Board for the last 5 years, and coming to the end of his term as Executive Board Chair.
Interview w/ Tim Scott, Chairman of the Connect Board - Story through the Organization
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A huge ‘Thank you!’
to Tim Scott for his substantial impact on the legacy of Connect
and the San Diego innovation economy.

Mr. Scott is co-founder and CEO of TEGA Therapeutics, a glycobiology company focused on lysosomal storage disorders and recombinant heparan sulfates. He previously was co-founder and President of Pharmatek Laboratories, a contract development and manufacturing company (sold to Catalent Pharma Solutions in 2016). Prior to that, he was Senior Vice President at Active.com (IPO 2011).
Mr. Scott serves on the Board of Avelas, a bioscience company working to create better outcomes for cancer patients with its activatable cell-penetrating peptide technology. He previously served on the board of Zacharon Pharmaceuticals (sold to Biomarin 2014).
Mr. Scott is Executive Board Chair of Connect, a non-profit organization helping to create and scale innovation companies in San Diego.
He also serves on the board of BIOCOM, a non-profit organization supporting the needs of bio/pharma companies in California. At UC San Diego, he serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council for the Division of Biological Sciences. In the community, Mr. Scott serves on the board of the San Diego Blood Bank, as a trustee for the La Jolla Playhouse, a Tony-award winning regional theatre, and on the board of Outside the Lens, a non-profit providing photography and digital media programs for underserved youth.
Mr. Scott earned his B.A. in Biochemistry from the University of California, San Diego. He earned his J.D. from the University of San Diego and is a member of the California Bar.