Angels Spread Wings Over Monterey Bay Area
20 years ago, startups like Netflix had to move to the Silicon Valley to attract investment. 10 years ago, tech startups like Looker and Paystand were able to either self-fund, or get help from one of two angel groups in town: Central Coast Angels, South Swell Ventures. But it was difficult to find VC firms to invest into Santa Cruz companies. In this decade, the tables have turned.
In January of this year, Joby Aviation announced a whopping $590M Series led by Toyota Motor Corporation. It was the largest global funding round thus far in 2020. The #2 largest investment globally: Paystand at $20M.
To give you a sense of the significance and enormity of this funding, the next 6 companies funded in the same period were in increments of less than $16M. Globally. Boom!
In the last week of January 2020, two (2) VC firms and one (1) new angel reached out to Santa Cruz Works. The first was Gary Griffiths with Wisdom LLP, based in the Silicon Valley and Boston. Gary’s firm is focused on investing in seasoned entrepreneurs, particularly military vets. He believes you can’t teach wisdom - you have to live it. When news of Looker, Joby, and Paystand hit their readers, they knew it was time to look seriously at startups in Santa Cruz.
Eric Chin is a long-time Santa Cruz resident with the firm Crosslink Captial. Their successful investments include Casper, Coupa, Pandora, and many more. He is uniquely focused on Internet, software, and cloud infrastructure companies. He leads the Crosslink Capital venture program and is also co-founder and president of Alpha —the entrepreneurial networking club for more than 1,000 Founders, CEOs, and Entrepreneurs. He is also a very active surfer you might recognize on the westside. He believes Santa Cruz and the Monterey region is in a massive growth of creativity and entrepreneurship. He wants to ride that wave.
Ian McHenry might be a familiar name if you attended UCSC. His grandfather was Dean McHenry, the first chancellor of UCSC, hence the McHenry Library. Ian had several successful startups, with the most recent being Beyond Pricing. He moved his young family to Santa Cruz, and he is actively researching software startups that would benefit from angel seed funding and his experiences as an entrepreneur. He believes the Monterey Bay is the most overlooked regions in the country for growth. He compares it to Santa Barbara which has had significantly more success with tech businesses: over 300 in 2018.
Add the injection of venture capital to the graduates from UCSC’s Baskin School of Engineering, the many entrepreneurs from Cabrillo College and 11 years of CSUMB’s IIED program, and it is certainly a new era for the entire tri-county Monterey Bay.