LAUNCH
A Tech Coast Angel is among backers of Float, which wants to go wheels up offering charter commuter flights—call it air taxi-as-a-service—to let passengers in crowded areas “fly over all traffic.”
Lisa Walker, an OC chapter member of TCA and an avid pilot is also advising Float on strategy and marketing.
The Pomona company’s website lists Fullerton Municipal Airport as a possible OC destination and is theoretically able to land at any airport in its SoCal service region, starting in 2020.
It looks to charge a monthly subscription from $1,250 to $1,950 to take commuters to weekday work in 9-passenger Cessna Grand Caravans from Southern Airways Express LLC.
About 3,000 people have signed on so far, company execs said.
Arnel Guiang, Tom Hsieh, and Rob McKinney, a senior exec at Southern Airways, founded Float last year; it’ll seek more funding early next year.
Aliso Viejo-based MateraCor Inc. is working on a new mode of cardiac repair using proteins produced by cultured stem cells and hydrogels and delivered via catheter to boost the heart’s pumping capacity and oxygen consumption.
The year-old company is raising a seed round to run clinical trials, but its roots trace back to 2010. The hydrogel treatment was developed by LoneStar Heart Inc., a SoCal startup whose investors shuttered it in 2017.
That team launched MateraCor last year and licensed research from prior partner Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, which fashioned the hydrogel catheter delivery system. MateraCor has since added treatments using cultured stem cells.
Chief Executive Frank Ahmann, president and chief executive at Lone-Star, is optimistic about MateraCor’s future.
“The great thing about medicine,” he said, “is the good things succeed and the bad things tend to fail.”
Irvine-based Waterborne Skateboards has its “surf adapter” technology on a line of specialty decks from Penny Skateboards, an Australian company with U.S. operations out of Oceanside.
The idea behind Penny’s High-Line Surfskate collection is to make skating more like surfing, letting users carve with greater agility through turns. The adapter also fits individually onto any skateboard deck and is sold through Amazon and Waterborne’s website.
The Penny partnership will help Waterborne scale to a global audience, Chief Executive Patrick Dumas said.
Waterborne has “blown past all of his expectations” for popularity and revenue.
Dumas comes from a family of aerospace engineers, and as a kid he tinkered a lot in the garage. He taught himself to weld at age 14 and while a student at University of California-Irvine he began to craft the surf adapter.
Some 20 iterations followed before he was satisfied with the design and started selling it “guerilla-style” at the U.S. Open in Huntington Beach. In 2016, he joined UCI Beall Applied Innovation’s Wayfinder program and raised $42,000 on Kickstarter. He secured another $100,000 from private local investors.
Dumas plans to keep innovating; he’ll tackle snowboarding next.
PERSONNEL MOVES
Aliso Viejo-based OCTANe named Janelle Brunette chief administrative officer.
Brunette’s been with the med-tech accelerator 11 years; she most recently was vice president of operations and will continue as board secretary.
Chief Executive Bill Carpou said her new tasks still include operations and performance oversight, with more focus on expanding relationships and driving community engagement
“We have created a strong vision and solid plan for future success,” Brunette said.
OCTANe in September launched a nonprofit extension of its accelerator and revealed plans to open a fintech incubator upon its relocation to FivePoint Gateway in Irvine early next year.
Digital Motors Corp. added Timothy Gill, president and chief operating officer of San Pedro-based Advent Resources Inc., as a strategic advisor.
Gill over the last 25 years has helped build Advent into an auto dealer platform with accounting, inventory and sales management services. The company has more than a hundred employees and 900 automotive clients in the U.S. and Canada.
His experience and insight will help “create high-performing digital solutions,” DMC Chief Executive Andy Hinrichs said.
“Digital Motors has a unique approach to digital retailing,” Gill said in a statement, that “empowers dealers to run their business in their own way with fully customizable digital solutions that plug directly into their systems and processes.”
The Irvine startup is building a platform to let customers complete as much as of the car-buying process online as they wish.
FINANCING
Recros Medica, an aesthetics company developing skin-tightening medical devices, closed a $14 million Series A round. Shanghai-based Haohai Healthcare Holdings Co. financed the entire deal.
Funds will carry the company through product development, a clinical study, FDA clearance and commercialization in the U.S., company execs said.
The firm said its Nuvellus Focal Contouring system removes excess skin, fat and wrinkles by “fractional resection,” which it’s pitching as an alternative to traditional surgery and other devices, with results possible from one treatment.
The FDA is reviewing the company’s de novo regulatory submission, which can expedite the review process for some devices. The company plans further clinical study next year.
Chief Executive Tom Albright started his career at Allergan. Recros’ leadership team is in OC; its headquarters is in San Diego; it maintains a research facility in the Bay area.
Recros has raised more than $36 million and has 18 employees.
