PODCAST · news
Tacos and Tech Podcast
by Neal Bloom
The Tacos and Tech Podcast highlights the builders of companies, technologies, ecosystems with a local flair for our lifestyle as well. risingtidepartners.substack.com
Episodes
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Every Driving School Said No
Nigel Tunnacliffe and Matt Harvey spent years building a way to retrofit adaptive cruise control into old cars - a Raspberry Pi, a camera, and a turbocharged Miata that accelerated on its own down Carmel Valley Road. Then the customer interviews came back: nineteen out of twenty people would…
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Thirst Is a Lagging Indicator
Dr. Debbie Chen found the water signal in her own PhD data around 2007, laughed it off, and did nothing with it for a decade. Then came years of amateur Muay Thai and cramping through every session, then a dehydration health scare of her own. She’s now founder and CEO of Hydrostasis, maker of the...
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Measure It at the Source
Max Darsonval spent twelve years in the SEAL teams, most of it as a combat medic, and left on what he calls a 50.01% decision. He’s now founder and CEO of Velocity AI, building a sensor and a coaching app that take velocity-based training - the tool every D1 and pro weight room already has - out…
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A Different Person in Every Game
Cody Germain spent seven years at Riot - leading competitive games on League of Legends, with the Valorant and Legends of Runeterra launches in between - then moved to San Diego in 2022 for Psyonix and Epic. Now he’s co-founder and CEO of Bear Infinite Games, building Spark, a personalization…
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Teams Don’t Exist in Business
Larry Coval spent nearly four decades leading organizations at AT&T, Global Crossing, and Cox Business, and came out the other side convinced that most of what gets taught about leadership is wrong. He joins Neal to talk about his new book, Misled, and the argument at its center: “team” is the...
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Food for the People
Neal nerds out on tacos with Mauricio Velázquez de León - Mexico City-born writer-turned-publisher, founder of Duo Press, and author of An Illustrated Guide to Tacos and Burritos, a serious cookbook drawn like a comic book, out August 11. They trace tacos from 7000 BC southern Mexico to fine...
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Signals Before Symptoms
Neal sits down with Adam Jacobs, President of Xzōm, a San Diego company developing a near-patient platform for isolating and analyzing exosomes from a small blood sample in under 30 minutes. Exosomes are tiny particles released by living cells that carry proteins and genetic material. Researchers...
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The Connective Tissue
Neal sits down with Eric Weiss, a fellow longtime builder in San Diego’s startup ecosystem. Eric is a self-described “parallel entrepreneur,” founder coach, President of the Design Forward Alliance - which produces San Diego Design Week—and Vice Chair of Startup San Diego. Neal and Eric first...
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Beyond the Blueprint
Episode Summary Neal sits down with Janine McMurdie, Chief Commercial Officer of Pictor, a proteomics platform company that expanded from New Zealand to Carlsbad. Janine explains why your DNA is only the blueprint - and why proteins, which change in real time as your body responds to a drug or an...
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Why Great Companies Go Bad
Episode Summary Recorded live at the San Diego Angel Conference finale at SDSU, Eric Ries — author of The Lean Startup — sits down with product leader and founder coach Vidya Dinamani to unpack his new book, Incorruptible. His argument: there’s a gravitational force that pulls even mission-driven...
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Diversification Is Overrated
Episode Summary Neal sits down with Dr. Adam Link, founder of Fireweed Capital and a recovering engineer who spent a decade in tech — including six years at Coinbase through its IPO — before becoming a financial planner for founders and tech professionals. Adam makes the case that diversification...
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Inside the San Diego Angel Conference
Episode Summary Recorded live at the San Diego Angel Conference (SDAC 8) finale at SDSU, where Neal - the SDAC Fund 8 manager - and 40+ investors spent months turning 135 applications into six finalists, then handed out the checks on stage. You’ll hear all six pitches: * Cytodyme’s compliance...
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Greener Only Scales When It's Less Expensive
Episode Summary Recorded at Natilus HQ in downtown San Diego, Neal sits down with Aleksey Matyushev, CEO and co-founder of Natilus, and Dr. Fabiano Piccinno, Global Head of Sustainability for Air Logistics at Kuehne+Nagel, for a roundtable on the real economics of decarbonizing flight. They get...
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Sleep Is the Last Unprotected Hour
Neal sits down with co-founders John Sjolund (CEO) and Jon Brilliant(CFO) of Luna Diabetes, two serial diabetes tech founders building what they call “sleep only automation” - the world’s smallest patch pump designed to automate insulin delivery while you sleep. With over 1700 nights of…
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Rebuilding the Protein Stack
Tony Martens, co-founder of Plantible Foods, joins Neal to walk through the company’s eight-year arc - from a free greenhouse in San Marcos to a commercial-scale rubisco protein facility in West Texas. They get into the science of duckweed and why rubisco is both the most abundant and most...
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SAFEs, Notes, and SPVs
Angel Academy Session 5 brings in Brian Dirkmaat, a startup attorney at Rimon, P.C and longtime SDAC sponsor, to walk the room through the legal mechanics of angel investing. Brian covers the full evolution of startup investment instruments - from the original bridge notes of the 1990s to today's...
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From Operator to Fund Manager
Episode Summary Neal sits down with Will Alaynick, managing partner at Phase Two Ventures, for a fireside chat on what it actually looks like to go from building a company to running a venture fund. Will walks through his journey from operating a life science instrumentation startup - backed by a...
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The Operator's Edge: From San Diego Angel Academy
Angel Academy Session 3 brings together a panel of San Diego operators who crossed over to the investor side - including Katherine Chapin, Dane Chapin, Ken Potashner, and Bardia Moayedi with backgrounds spanning investment banking, corporate law, and consumer products. The conversation gets…
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This Week in San Diego Tech News - May 2026
Listen & subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube. Welcome everyone to the weekly San Diego Tech News! I’m Neal Bloom from Rising Tide Partners. This week, I’m flying solo on the mic to unpack a busy week in San Diego tech. Before we dive in, we wanted to thank you and ask our listeners to help us…
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What Two Operators Learned Writing First Checks
Angel Academy Session 2 puts two founder-turned-investors on stage: Neal Bloom and Ashok Kamal. Both built companies, stumbled through first exits, and eventually landed on the investor side of the table. The conversation covers what actually changes when you go from pitching to writing checks —...
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Podcast with Paige Craig of Outlander VC: People Over Plans
Neal sits down with Paige Craig, Founder and Managing Partner at Outlander VC, the first-check fund that backs founders as early as humanly possible. Paige shares how growing up homeless, bootstrapping a defense tech company during the Iraq War, and years of studying what makes founders tick led...
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A portfolio approach to angel investing
The 2026 San Diego Angel Conference (SDAC) kicks off with Angel Academy Session 1, hosted at SDSU's ZIP Launchpad. Neal Bloom walks a room of aspiring and returning angel investors through the fundamentals — what angel investing actually looks like, how the SDAC's group diligence process works…
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The AI Strategy Gap
In this weeks episode, I sit down with Grayson LaFrenz and Chad Lohrli, two of the co-founders of Cadre AI, the San Diego-based AI strategy and integration firm helping mid-market companies turn AI hype into P&L impact. They get into why 99 out of 100 business leaders still can’t point to...
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Four Questions Before You Write the Check
Episode Summary Neal Bloom takes the stage at the 2026 San Diego Angel Conference Knowledge & Networking Event at SDSU to walk a room full of aspiring and active angel investors through the four questions he uses to evaluate early-stage companies. Using live audience exercises - pitching Uber,...
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This Week in San Diego Tech News
Listen & subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube. Welcome everyone to the weekly San Diego Tech News! I’m Neal Bloom from Rising Tide Partners. My co-host in this episode is Fred Grier, journalist and author of The Business of San Diego substack. He covers the ins-and-outs of the startup world...
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Blueprint Equity’s $333M Bet on Early Growth Software
Blueprint Equity just closed a $333M Fund III - and they’re doubling down on a thesis that feels increasingly contrarian in today’s AI-fueled world. In this episode, Neal sits down with Sheldon Lewis and Bobby Ocampo, co-founders and managing partners of La Jolla-based Blueprint Equity, to unpack...
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Podcast: Beyond One-Time Buyers with Matt Holman
Matt Holman, founder of Commerce Catalyst and Subscription Prescription, joins Neal to unpack what’s really happening inside modern e-commerce and subscription-driven CPG brands. From Utah’s fast-growing “Silicon Slopes” ecosystem to AI-powered personalization, Matt shares how founders are…
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Podcast: Sleep, Science & Invisible Care
Susie Harborth joins the pod to share her journey from refugee immigrant and first-generation college student to biotech operator, ecosystem builder, and now founder-investor behind Inspirafund and Sencie. After building early-stage life science companies, launching BioLabs in San Diego, and...
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This Week In San Diego Tech News
Listen & subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube. Welcome everyone to the weekly San Diego Tech News! I’m Neal Bloom from Rising Tide Partners. My co-host in this episode is Fred Grier, journalist and author of The Business of San Diego substack. He covers the ins-and-outs of the startup world...
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Company Creation as a Commodity
Episode Summary In this episode of the AI Builders Roundtable, the builders cross a line. Instead of just discussing AI-native companies, they use one - Polsia AI - to start new businesses live on the show. Neal, Craig, and Greg spin up real ventures, fund them, and watch agents begin executing...
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Logistics Wins Wars
In this episode of Tacos & Tech, Neal Bloom sits down with Peter Goldsborough, co-founder and CTO of Rune, to unpack one of the most overlooked but decisive factors in modern warfare: logistics. Peter shares how his background in software and defense tech led him to a simple realization-while...
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Shipping with AI
Episode Summary In Episode 3 of the AI Builders Roundtable, the conversation jumps right into deployment. Craig, Greg, and Derrick break down what it actually looks like to run AI agents inside real companies - from shipping production code with Cursor to publishing crowdsourced sports data...
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The Retail Data Gap
In this episode, Neal sits down with Samantha Pantazopoulos, co-founder of Vizer, to unpack the company’s pivot from a consumer fitness rewards app to a B2B retail demand engine used by brands like Olipop and Health-Ade. What started as a mission-driven app tying workouts to food bank donations...
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This Week In San Diego Tech News
Listen & subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube. Welcome everyone to the weekly San Diego Tech News! I’m Neal Bloom from Rising Tide Partners. My co-host in this episode is Fred Grier, journalist and author of The Business of San Diego substack. He covers the ins-and-outs of the startup world...
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On The Radar — Episode 6
A short audio reflection on what changes when context stops resetting. And what happens when it starts compounding instead. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit risingtidepartners.substack.com/subscribe
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Building the Underground Super Grid
In this episode of Tacos & Tech, Neal Bloom sits down with Troy Helming, founder and CEO of EarthGrid, to explore one of the most ambitious infrastructure plays of our time: building an underground super grid. Troy shares how a chance conversation about Navy SEAL plasma cutters sparked the idea…
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AI Coworkers Are Here
In the span of days, the “AI news cycle” moved again: OpenClaw has been acquired. Craig Lauer (longtime Qualcomm builder turned angel investor), Ross Young (CEO of Clinically AI, building tools for behavioral health), and Greg Moser (CEO of ShipCalm) break down what they’re seeing… then Greg…
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This week in San Diego Tech News
Listen & subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube. Welcome everyone to the weekly San Diego Tech News! I’m Neal Bloom from Rising Tide Partners. My co-host in this episode is Fred Grier, journalist and author of The Business of San Diego substack. He covers the ins-and-outs of the startup world...
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This Week In San Diego Tech News
Welcome everyone to the weekly San Diego Tech News! I’m Neal Bloom from Rising Tide Partners. My co-host in this episode is Fred Grier, journalist and author of The Business of San Diego substack. He covers the ins-and-outs of the startup world including breaking news, IPOs, fundraising rounds…
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From AI Toys to AI Operating Systems
New podcast series within Tacos and Tech: AI Builders Roundtable! Neal sits down with Craig Lauer and Ross Young on a day both Anthropic and OpenAI dropped major releases to talk about what it actually looks like to build with AI right now. Ross walks through how his team at Clinically AI built…
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Why Hustle Culture Breaks Community
Episode Summary In this episode of Tacos & Tech, Neal Bloom sits down with Juanny Romero, founder and CEO of Mothership Coffee Roasters, for a raw and deeply human conversation about building businesses rooted in belonging—not hustle. Juanny shares her journey from growing up in Queens, leaving…
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This Week In San Diego Tech News
Listen & subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube. Welcome everyone to the weekly San Diego Tech News! I’m Neal Bloom from Rising Tide Partners. My co-host in this episode is Fred Grier, journalist and author of The Business of San Diego substack. He covers the ins-and-outs of the startup world...
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How SDSU Became a Startup Connector
In this episode of Tacos & Tech, Neal Bloom sits down with Cathy Pucher, Executive Director of Entrepreneurship Initiatives at San Diego State University, to trace the roots and the future of San Diego’s startup and early-stage investing ecosystem. From Cathy’s early career in semiconductor sales...
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This Week In San Diego Tech News
Listen & subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube. Welcome everyone to the weekly San Diego Tech News! I’m Neal Bloom from Rising Tide Partners. My co-host in this episode is Fred Grier, journalist and author of The Business of San Diego substack. He covers the ins-and-outs of the startup world...
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On The Radar — Episode 5
A short audio reflection I recorded after noticing where momentum actually comes from. It’s not from more events. It’s from proximity, repetition, and trust. 🎧 On The Radar — Episode 5 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes,...
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AI for Main Street, Not Just Big Tech
In this episode of Tacos & Tech, Neal Bloom sits down with longtime friend, founder, and self-described “Maine Melon,” Jared Ruth, founder of Ripcurrent. What starts as a walk down memory lane through San Diego’s early startup ecosystem turns into a wide-ranging conversation about…
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On The Radar - Episode 4
A short audio reflection I recorded after noticing a familiar pattern while reading rock band autobiographies over the holidays. It’s not about music. It’s about how talent develops -slowly, quietly, over time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get...
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This Week in San Diego Tech News
Listen & subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube. Welcome everyone to the weekly San Diego Tech News! I’m Neal Bloom from Rising Tide Partners and the Tacos and Tech Podcast. My co-host in this episode is Fred Grier, journalist and author of The Business of San Diego substack. He covers the...
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Omnitron: From Self-Driving Cars to AI Data Centers
In this episode of Tacos & Tech, Neal Bloom sits down with Eric Aguilar, co-founder and CEO of Omnitron Sensors, to unpack the deep tech powering the next wave of robotics, autonomous systems, and AI infrastructure. From Eric’s early days working on defense sensors and his journey through Google...
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On The Radar - Episode 3
I’ve been noticing something lately about what happens after meetings - and what changes when the work doesn’t stall anymore. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit risingtidepartners.substack.com/subscribe
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
The Tacos and Tech Podcast highlights the builders of companies, technologies, ecosystems with a local flair for our lifestyle as well.
risingtidepartners.substack.com
HOSTED BY
Neal Bloom
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Tacos and Tech Podcast have?
Tacos and Tech Podcast currently has 215 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Tacos and Tech Podcast about?
The Tacos and Tech Podcast highlights the builders of companies, technologies, ecosystems with a local flair for our lifestyle as well. risingtidepartners.substack.com
How often does Tacos and Tech Podcast release new episodes?
Tacos and Tech Podcast publishes regularly with 215 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Tacos and Tech Podcast?
You can listen to Tacos and Tech Podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Tacos and Tech Podcast?
Tacos and Tech Podcast is created and hosted by Neal Bloom.
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