Tacos and Tech Podcast

On The Radar - Episode 7

A short audio reflection on something I’ve noticed across the best teams I’ve invested in. They don’t talk about hiring as a future activity. They carry a bench. It cha

A Manufacturing Company With a Drone Problem

Firestorm set out to build modular drones and ended up somewhere less glamorous and more valuable. Co-founder and CTO Ian Muceus describes the company today as a manufact

Podcast: Motherhood Is Technology Barren

Tina John is a biomedical engineer who spent her career on hip implants, knee implants and drug delivery systems, then had her first child and discovered that the hardest

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 a

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 cra

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, bu

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 Sa

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 taugh

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

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

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

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

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

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 thr

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 13

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

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 automati

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

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 invest

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 compa