Originally posted on Ramblings from David Paul
If you live in San Diego you know or have heard of the legendary Neal Bloom. He is the managing director Interlock Capital, an early stage seed fund, as well as a media tycoon with all things Startup in San Diego. You can watch/listen to the podcast on YouTube, iTunes, and Spotify.
Neal Bloom is the CEO of Rising Tide Partners, a communications firm, and the co-founder & Managing Director of Interlock Capital, a venture investment firm. He is Chair Emeritus of Startup San Diego.
Neal graduated with an undergraduate engineering degree from UCSD and went to work on NASA's Space Shuttle program, launching astronauts to the Space Station. He has since obtained an M.B.A. with an emphasis in entrepreneurship and marketing.
Neal later co-founded Portfolium to help new grads brand themselves with existing classwork as work experience in a visual format. Portfolium was acquired by Instructure ($INST) in 2019. He then went to work building an investment community of domain expert operators to close the gap between capital and subject matter experts. This group, Interlock Capital, has deployed $3.6M into 17 companies in 17 months.
Mr. Bloom has focused on a variety of
- Build a multi-city media company and a marketing agency that focuses on economic development, sustainability, and evangelism of the SoCal tech ecosystem, winning multiple awards along the way
- Amplify the story of dozens of local governments and special districts in connecting with their communities
- Interviewed hundreds of leaders for tens of thousands of downloads through his podcast
- Helping create an annual conference to inspire entrepreneurship
- Mentor dozens of founders to either leap and/or to keep building quality businesses
- Advising stakeholders in multiple regions on the changing needs for talent and capital in the technology space
- Angel investing into 50+ early-stage companies while inspiring more entrepreneurs to become investors as well
- Recruit 250+ operators to begin their angel investing journey with Interlock Capital
- Raising a venture fund to double down early-stage investing in dynamic technology leaders
LinkedIn: /in/nealbbloom
Twitter: @NealBloom
What You’ll Learn:
- Angel Investing to Raising Fund I
- Understanding of the marketplace model
- Building community prospective
- How to educate the community to get out of their bubble as a company
- The necessity of a founder to be a talent scout
- Importance of being active in sharing an opinion
- Community understanding that everyone is after the same thing
- Importance of connecting talent to talent
- Fund structure
- Social media presence growth
Favorite Quote:
“Show up! And do not wait to start!”
