Daily Business Report: Monday, Nov. 1, 2021
Facial recognition technology comes to San Diego
Restaurateur Dennis Lee, owner of sushi restaurant Pokedon (Japanese for “Sushi Bowl”), near San Diego State University, believes facial recognition technology will help his business recover after being closed for 10 months on account of COVID-19.
Lee was forced to take on a lot of debt before reopening his 1,000-square-foot restaurant with a limited staff in January. When he got a call from a representative from PopID, a provider of facial recognition technology, he thought it would be a good time to introduce the technology.
Allowing customers to “pay with their faces” would make it easier, he reasoned, and the technology did not require a big investment on his part
“Currently, our only fee to merchants is our processing fee of 1.5 percent plus 11 cents,” said Tom Costello, a PopID senior project manager. “This fee is significantly lower than the vast majority of processing companies.”
Customers must create an account on PopID and enter their credit/debit card information to use the payment system, known as PopPay.
“Right now we’re on five campuses, San Diego State, University of Santa Barbara, Chapman, Pasadena City College, and the fifth being USC (University of Southern California),” Costello said. “For our product to be truly adopted, we need to be in the place that students want to go, so location is a huge factor.”
Costello said he hopes that 10 years in the future — with the Pop id account — people will use it to access basically anything.
“Hopefully, you can use that same account to pay at your house without any keys, to get into a Padres game, your medical records on your face, pharmaceutical products on your face,” Costello said. “It’s a single digital identity so that you never need anything else to prove that you’re you, other than your face.”
The preceding information was gathered from San Diego State’s Daily Aztec and Kiosk Marketplace.
Stefanie Warren and Betty Olson reappointed to the
San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board
Stefanie Warren, 43, of San Diego, and Betty Olson, 74, of Trabuco Canyon, have been reappointed to the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Warren has served on the board since 2013, Olson, since 2014.
Warren has been a Partner at Trails Law Group since 2018. She was an attorney at Dentons from 2006 to 2018 and a law clerk for the Honorable Irma E. Gonzalez at the U.S. District Court, Southern District of California from 2005 to 2006.
Olson has been a professor emeritus in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Irvine School of Engineering since 2018, where she was a professor from 2006 to 2018. She was a professor in the Department of Environment, Health and Policy at the University of California, Irvine School of Social Ecology from 1974 to 2006.
The position requires Senate confirmation. The compensation is $250 per diem. Warren is a Democrat. Olson is registered without party preference.
The county’s unclaimed monies refund
list might have your name on it
The San Diego County Treasurer-Tax Collector’s Office has an unclaimed monies refund list that residents can check to see whether they are owed refunds.
The county has more than $713,000 in unclaimed refunds for San Diego County residents who overpaid county departments on taxes, deposits, premiums, services or fees. The refunds range from $10 to nearly $37,000.
The only catch? You have until Dec. 17 to check that refund list or state law says that unclaimed money must go into the county’s general fund.
“The average refund is $386. If you are owed a refund, and can prove you are the rightful owner, we want to make sure you get your refund,” said County Treasurer-Tax Collector Dan McAllister.
The process is easy and can all be done online. The list contains 1,848 refunds. If you find your name, scroll to the bottom to find out how to claim it. You can email your claim to refunds@sdcounty.ca.gov or call 1-877-829-4732 for more information.
The county has refunded more than $500,000 to their owners in the last five years. If you’d like to know when new unclaimed money lists are posted, you can visit the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s website to sign up for emails.
$35.9 million in Metropolitan Water District
overcharges being returned to local water agencies
Combined with a similar payment in February, the Water Authority has distributed more than $80 million to its member agencies in 2021 as a result of its successful rate litigation against MWD. The two parties are seeking to resolve the remaining issues outside of court as they partner on water supply reliability, conservation, affordability, and climate change issues challenging Southern California.
The Water Authority won key issues in cases covering 2011-2014 and was deemed the prevailing party by the Court, which means it is also owed legal fees and charges in addition to the recent damages and interest payment from MWD. In February, the Water Authority sent checks totaling $44.4 million to its member agencies after it received a check for that amount from MWD to remedy overcharges from 2011-2014.
San Diego’s first ‘Out of the Closet’
thrift store opens in Hillcrest
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) has opened a new branch of its popular and award-winning Out of the Closet (OTC) thrift stores—AHF’s first in San Diego.
The store site, at 3580 Fifth Ave. in Hillcrest, is located in an all-in-one AHF facility that will also include an AHF Healthcare Center, a full-service AHF Pharmacy as well as an AHF Wellness Center, providing free HIV and STD testing and treatment. The other three AHF services held a separate ribbon-cutting and reception at the location on Friday.
AHF, the largest global AIDS organization, currently operates 84 AHF Healthcare Centers as well as 62 AHF Pharmacy outlets in 14 states throughout the United States as well as one of each in the District of Columbia and in Puerto Rico. Each Healthcare Center provides medical programs tailored to the specific needs of asymptomatic and symptomatic HIV/AIDS individuals from qualified medical and support professionals.
Andrew Ewald, Sean Fitzmaurice and Brianna Papalia
join Cushman & Wakefield office in San Diego
Cushman & Wakefield has added veteran tenant advisory and occupier services specialists Andrew Ewald, executive director and Sean Fitzmaurice, managing director, in San Diego. Working as a team, Ewald and Fitzmaurice will specialize primarily in advising occupiers in the life sciences, medical device and technology sectors both locally and over a broad geography of markets.
Ewald and Fitzmaurice both join Cushman & Wakefield from CBRE. Also making the move with the team is supporting member Brianna Papalia, who serves as the team’s advisory and transaction coordinator.
Ewald specializes as a real estate tenant advocate solely for corporate users in the Southern California region and Western United States. With over 20 years of experience, he is specifically focused on the sale and leasing of office and industrial buildings to local, regional and national companies. Fitzmaurice has nearly a decade of brokerage experience and provides occupier focused corporate real estate advisory services and executes complex transactions across a variety of industries and geography of markets. He specializes in the life sciences (R&D, cGMP & Medical Device) and technology industries.
Omnitron founder and CEO Eric Aguilar
wins Latino Startup of the Year
Eric Aguilar, founder and CEO of Omnitron, has been selected as the 2021 Latino Startup of the Year by L’ATTITUDE VENTURES. After meeting with over 100 Latino founders, 23 were invited to showcase their business, and five were selected to pitch on the L’ATTITUDE main stage in front of industry leaders serving as judges.
The judges selected Aguilar, who also secured a $1.6 million seed investment from L’ATTITUDE VENTURES.
Ominitron will use the capital to accelerate its technology platform in silicon through fabrication, allowing strategic partners to use Omnitron’s platform to build the next-generation sensors using their 3D silicon manufacturing tools and processes.
ClickUp raises $400 million, bringing
its valuation to $4 billion
Following a $100 million raise from Georgian and Craft Ventures, ClickUp racked in an additional $400 million in VC, bringing the software startup’s valuation to $4 billion. Now a San Diego unicorn, ClickUp moved from Silicon Valley in 2019 to build its “one app to replace them all” from Downtown San Diego, where the company is rapidly expanding its workforce. Zeb Evans its its CEO.
Workforce Partnership program
to provide youths with green jobs
The San Diego Workforce Partnership has launched the County Youth Internship program to offer positions in the green economy to young people.
The partnership estimates there are 31,000 San Diegans between the age of 16 and 24 who are neither in school nor employed. The organization dubs them “opportunity youth.”
The program will provide 40 qualified young people from that category with paid on-the-job training through work placements with county departments focused on environmental quality and stewardship.
San Diego tech startups outmuscle
life science firms in VC funding
When it comes to venture capital, San Diego has always been a life sciences town. Startup biotech and medical device companies consistently pull in the bulk of local VC funding every quarter. But that wasn’t the case during this year’s third quarter ended Sept. 30. In a rare turn, the four largest VC deals locally went to non-life science companies — from defense tech outfit ShieldAI, which raised $210 million, to truck-fleet safety platform Netradyne, which garnered $150 million.
Sempra Foundation donates nearly $500,000 to
give cleaner cook stoves to Mexican communities
Sempra Foundation, founded by Sempra, has donated nearly $500,000 to Fundación Mozcalti to provide cleaner cook stoves to vulnerable and indigenous communities in support of energy access and emissions reductions in Mexico. More than 20,000 people in 28 communities will benefit from the project, with about 2,400 households receiving cook stoves in the states of Baja California, Chihuahua, Morelos, Nuevo León and Puebla.
The cook stoves are replacing three-stone stoves or U-type stoves that openly burn firewood and are expected to reduce the consumption of firewood by about 9,000 tons per year.
Burning firewood exposes these communities to smoke and indoor air pollution, especially affecting women and children who spend more time in the household.
Cubic named among the 2021 healthiest
Workplaces in America
Cubic Corporation was named 98 on the 2021 Healthiest 100 Workplaces in America by Healthiest Employers for its investment in the health and well-being of its employees. This award honors the organizations that are demonstrating care for their people by investing in health and well-being solutions and initiatives.
Scoring is based on each organization’s Healthiest Employers Index — a metric based on six categories: Culture and Leadership Commitment, Foundational Components, Strategic Planning, Communications and Marketing, Programming and Interventions, and Reporting and Analytics.
The questionnaire, scoring, and benchmarking were formed with the help of a national, non-biased group of representatives from the academic, medical, and wellness communities.