Tacos and Tech Podcast

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, Airbnb, and Palantir in one sentence, debating whether Viori was a pass or a miss - he turns startup eval...

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 including breaking news, IPOs, fundraising rounds, and M&A through his newsletter. Before we dive in, w...

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 their “early growth equity” strategy - investing in bootstrapped SaaS companies doing $1–7M in ARR and...

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 building durable revenue in a post-hype e-commerce world. They explore the tension between acquisition and re...

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 working across venture and banking, Susie is now placing focused bets in overlooked but meaningful spaces...

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 including breaking news, IPOs, fundraising rounds, and M&A through his newsletter. Before we dive in, w...

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 tasks in real time. MVPs get scoped. Outreach campaigns get drafted. Websites get built. Autonomous exec...

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 billions have been spent on weapons and command systems, military logistics still runs on spreadsheets...

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 on-chain, to experimenting with autonomous bots that learn in public. This isn’t a hype conversation. It’s b...

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 evolved - through COVID, retailer shutdowns, and customer pull - into a platform helping brands drive me...

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 including breaking news, IPOs, fundraising rounds, and M&A through his newsletter. Before we dive in, w...

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

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 for plasma-based tunnel boring, and how EarthGrid is now using that technology to dramatically reduce...

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 takes it from theory to practice with a real demo of how he’s deployed autonomous agents inside his company...

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 including breaking news, IPOs, fundraising rounds, and M&A through his newsletter. Before we dive in, w...

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, and M&A through his newsletter. Before we dive in, we wanted to thank and ask our listeners to help us...

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 an internal AI operating system using Claude Co-work - from voice-interviewing department heads to captu...

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 New York after 9/11 in search of agency, opening her first café in Las Vegas with no business plan du...

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 including breaking news, IPOs, fundraising rounds, and M&A through his newsletter. Before we dive in, w...

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 at Texas Instruments and front-row seat to Qualcomm’s rise, to founding the EvoNexus startup incuba...

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 including breaking news, IPOs, fundraising rounds, and M&A through his newsletter. Before we dive in, w...

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, visit risingtidepartners.substack.com/subscribe

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 entrepreneurship, marketing, AI, and the human moments technology should protect - not replace. Jared shares his jo...

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 access to bonus episodes, visit risingtidepartners.substack.com/subscribe

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 ins-and-outs of the startup world including breaking news, IPOs, fundraising rounds, and M&A through his n...