Coffee & Conversation

Join us for coffee and hear from a great guest speaker! Katerina Axelsson CEO and Founder of Tastry, will share her entrepreneurial experiences and journey to creating a company in San Luis Obispo. Katerina, is a graduate of Cal Poly with a B.S. in Chemistry. While in school, she worked at a custom-crush facility and noticed that one of their batches imprinted with two different labels received drastically different industry scores: it was then that she knew there had to be a more science-based way to score wine. Thus, Tastry was born. Tastry is a sensory sciences company that uses advanced chemistry, machine learning and artificial intelligence to match consumers to products they will love

Steve Ehret, co-owner of Sandbox Marketing, will join us this month to share his experience in dealing with a sudden shut down of his business amid a pandemic, identifying a new opportunity, and pivoting his business to meet a new market demand. Generating tens of millions in revenue over a few short months, Steve has a wealth of knowledge, creativity, and a small business entrepreneurial spirit to share with you. This conversation will be moderated by Simon Arkell. Simon sits on the Cal Poly business school Dean’s Advisory Council and the President’s Committee. He is currently the co-founder and president of Deep Lens, a healthcare AI company focused on matching cancer patients to clinical trials. REGISTER HERE: https://ucmsbdc.ecenterdirect.com/events/13318

This month we’ll be discussing the latest developments with the Paycheck Protection Program – with Tim Dossa, a Certified Public Accountant and acting Business Consulting Manager at Glenn Burdette. Topics will include both the Second Draw Loans and on the First Round Forgiveness fronts.  In addition, we’ll explore the Employee Retention Credit and how it can be used along with the PPP loans. Tim Dossa is known for his ability to tackle a wide range of issues related to accounting, process improvement, automation, innovation, technology and change management; Tim brings over 19 years of experience with a Fortune Top 10 company to his current role. Click here to register.

Evan Cohen, Accelerator Manager at Thrive, will walk you through what venture investors are looking for when assessing deals, and how to successfully attract venture investment. Evan is responsible for the implementation and execution of the accelerator program, and management of SVG Ventures portfolio companies. According to CrunchBase, SVG Ventures is the most active Agtech investor in the world. SVG Ventures invests in companies through their award-winning accelerator THRIVE. Previously, Evan co-led the cleantech cohort of the Canadian Technology Accelerator (CTA), and founded the agtech cohort of the CTA. He supported early-stage cleantech and agtech companies in their fundraising and expansion efforts. Register for FREE here!

Nate Stein, inventor of PLATESCRAPE, will share his entrepreneurial experiences and journey to creating a company in San Luis Obispo. PLATESCRAPE is changing the way dishes are washed saving time, energy, and water. Frustrated with how much water was being wasted while working for a cleaning company, Nate just knew there had to be a better way. That night he drilled toilet scrubbers into a super-glued, Plexiglas tub. The next morning he filled it up with water and ran a dirty plate through it.... 3-weeks later he was standing on the stage of Tech Pitch holding Audience Choice Award. REGISTER HERE

Join us as we discuss Christie Garcia's journey from the corporate business world to launching her own business, Mindful Choice, focused on improving the leadership skills of individuals in the workplace. She now seeks to reintroduce the human element into leadership development and immediately make an unignorable, positive impact on a person’s overall potential. Christie Garcia is a Leadership Coach & Ego Management Expert, Speaker, Facilitator and Founder of Mindful Choice Leadership Academy. She has 17 years of experience in sales, recruiting, and coaching. For the last 10 years she has worked with current and upcoming leaders from fast growing organizations including Airbnb, Twitter, Movement For Life and Sunrun. REGISTER HERE

Join us as we discuss growing and scaling success at the seed level with Connor McCarthy. We will cover trends in successful startups from VC and operations years. Connor is an investment associate at Trust Ventures. He has previously served as Chief of Staff at Esper, a leading govtech company. He has also previously worked at 8VC, Andreessen Horowitz, and Capitol Counsel. Connor holds an A.B. in Philosophy with a minor in African-American Studies from Georgetown University. REGISTER HERE