Tacos and Tech Podcast

Firestorm set out to build modular drones and ended up somewhere less glamorous and more valuable. Co-founder and CTO Ian Muceus describes the company today as a manufacturing company with a drone problem: two 20-foot shipping containers that print aircraft where they are needed instead of shipping them there. He and Neal get into the FIRST Robotics kid from rural Nevada who studied under the father of the F-22 at Cal Poly, the 1.1 million face shields that taught him high-volume additive during the pandemic, the co-founder who opened with “I want a $10,000 cruise missile,” two trips to Ukraine where he ran a finger through the dust on grounded aircraft, and the stator cover a prime kept buying for a hundred times what it could be printed for. Plus Manny’s Tacos at the Firestorm shop and a food truck by Lake Merritt.

Key topics

* From modular drone manufacturer to “a manufacturing company with a drone problem”

* FIRST Robotics in rural Nevada, then Cal Poly aerospace under Bruce Wright of Skunk Works

* Why early stereolithography parts fell apart on executives’ desks, and what that cost additive

* The 1970s engineering drawing that kept a 17-cent part a $17 part

* 1.1 million face shields and 5 million swabs: learning high-volume additive in a pandemic

* Why Multi Jet Fusion and DLP scale where FDM and SLA don’t

* “I want to produce a $10,000 cruise missile” - and the three co-founders that idea assembled

* Tempest, xCell, and shipping four times the aircraft as kits and feedstock

* Printing through sea state five aboard the USS Essex, all the way to Hawaii

* Nylon spacers for Apache rotor hubs nobody planned for

* xCell Munitions: warhead casings from common tube and plate stock

* Two trips to Ukraine, and the dust test on aircraft that couldn’t be fixed

* Why the best printers come out of the wrong part of the world

* Partnering with Orca rather than building every drone in-house

* Manny’s Tacos, Tacos Mi Rancho, Tacos Los Primos and Tacos Sinaloa by Lake Merritt

Links & resources

* Firestorm

Connect on LinkedIn

* Ian Muceus

* Neal Bloom

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Tina John is a biomedical engineer who spent her career on hip implants, knee implants and drug delivery systems, then had her first child and discovered that the hardest job she had ever done had almost no technology pointed at it. Veera is her answer: a wearable device that sits in a nursing bra, pumps and feeds an infant at the same time, responds to the baby’s suckle, and reports live on the phone how much the baby is actually drinking. She and Neal get into the friend’s text message that started it, why she spent a day too scared to Google whether the product already existed, the $30,000 pay cut that moved her family to San Diego, and the finding that reframed the whole problem - that successful breastfeeding tracks with how many hands are in the room, not with biology.

Plus a Korean short rib taco that rescued a six-months-pregnant founder in Miami Beach.

Key topics

* Why motherhood is technology barren next to phones, cars and espresso machines

* Veera: pumping and feeding simultaneously, with intake measured live

* A device that responds to the infant’s suckle and delivers on demand

* Going from Merck to a San Diego design firm for a $30,000 pay cut

* The text from a friend that turned an observation into a company

* Being too scared for a full day to check whether it already existed

* The hardest thing she had ever done, with resources, a partner and family nearby

* 80% of mothers start out breastfeeding; most of a 40-hour week is guesswork

* Why successful breastfeeding tracks with help, not genetics or culture

* Hiring people who love their craft instead of dragging people into roles

* What a 510(k) submission unlocks, and a launch four to five months out

* Sensor data nobody has collected: milk characteristics, suckle strength, per-mother guidance

* Taco Taco in Miami Beach, and the short rib taco that saved the night

Links & resources

* Veera

Connect on LinkedIn

* Neal Bloom

* Tina John

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Nigel Tunnacliffe and Matt Harvey spent years building a way to retrofit adaptive cruise control into old cars - a Raspberry Pi, a camera, and a turbocharged Miata that accelerated on its own down Carmel Valley Road. Then the customer interviews came back: nineteen out of twenty people would never have anything installed in their vehicle. They killed it. They’re now CEO and CTO of Coastline Academy, which teaches hundreds of in-car lessons a day across many states on a mission to eradicate car crashes. They and Neal get into the smoke test that had strangers offering money within the hour, why every driving school they called turned down free customers, and what it took to become licensed instructors themselves. Plus a Canadian taco and a taqueria in the back of an Encinitas grocery store.

Key topics

* Traffic Tractor: the commute side project that started it

* A Raspberry Pi, a camera, and a self-accelerating Miata

* Training a model to mute TV commercials

* Ripping open the floorboard to find the accelerator wire

* Why 19 of 20 drivers won’t install anything in their car

* Killing a product that worked because the market said no

* The smoke test that drew customers within an hour

* Every driving school they called said they were full

* Becoming licensed instructors - 100 lessons each

* Mesh-network expansion, node by node, across California

* Why crossing a state line broke the entire playbook

* Whether today’s teens are the last to need a license

* A Canadian beaver tail folded like a taco, and El Nopalito in Encinitas

Links & resources

* Coastline Academy

* Newschoolers, Matt’s ski social network

Connect on LinkedIn

* Neal Bloom

* Nigel Tunnacliffe

* Matt Harvey

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Dr. Debbie Chen found the water signal in her own PhD data around 2007, laughed it off, and did nothing with it for a decade. Then came years of amateur Muay Thai and cramping through every session, then a dehydration health scare of her own. She’s now founder and CEO of Hydrostasis, maker of the GECA Watch, which has sold out twice. She and Neal get into why thirst is a lagging indicator, why she believes hydration is the only truly actionable thing a wrist device can measure, the multi-pivot road from collegiate sports to older adults, and the data-equity problem she won’t stop talking about. Plus El Patron in Mira Mesa - a first-time mention on the show.

Key topics

* From amateur Muay Thai cramps to a hydration sensor

* The water signal she spotted in her PhD data and ignored for ten years

* Why thirst is a lagging indicator, and why it fades with age

* Hydration as the only actionable biometric on the wrist

* Hardware, firmware, algorithms, and an app - three startups in one

* The button older users literally could not press

* Collegiate sports to clinical to DTC: the pivot path

* A customer whose creatinine normalized in three months

* The pulse oximeter, darker skin, and the case for data equity

* Women excluded from clinical trials until 1993

* 2% body water loss and measurable cognitive decline

* El Patron in Mira Mesa and the case for the shrimp cocktail

Links & resources

* Hydrostasis / GECA Watch

* Ad Astra Ventures

Connect on LinkedIn

* Neal Bloom

* Debbie Chen

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Max Darsonval spent twelve years in the SEAL teams, most of it as a combat medic, and left on what he calls a 50.01% decision. He’s now founder and CEO of Velocity AI, building a sensor and a coaching app that take velocity-based training - the tool every D1 and pro weight room already has - out of the facility and onto anyone’s barbell. He and Neal get into why 22-week strength programs break the moment real life happens, how drone IMUs turned into a wearable, why the SEAL Future Foundation became customer one, and what the wearable industry has to fix before people stop wearing them. Plus Don Pancho’s in Imperial Beach, the post-BUD/S institution.

Key topics

* From sponsored big-mountain skier to dishwasher to BUD/S at 17

* Why SEALs build their own medics and what that taught him about the body

* Leaving the teams at twelve years on a 50.01% decision

* Velocity-based training, and why most lifters have never heard of it

* Power equals force times velocity: measuring readiness at the source

* Why a 22-week program can’t know what you did yesterday

* Drone IMUs, a hideous first PCB, and why you need 200 Hz

* $500K, 20 developers, seven months to an MVP

* The SEAL Future Foundation as customer one

* Data fatigue and why coaching is the next frontier for wearables

* San Diego’s wearable cluster: Google, Fitbit, Dexcom, Oura

* Don Pancho’s in Imperial Beach and the case for Tacos El Gordo

Links & resources

* Velocity AI

* SEAL Future Foundation

* Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval

Connect on LinkedIn

* Neal Bloom

* Max Darsonval

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Cody Germain spent seven years at Riot - leading competitive games on League of Legends, with the Valorant and Legends of Runeterra launches in between - then moved to San Diego in 2022 for Psyonix and Epic. Now he’s co-founder and CEO of Bear Infinite Games, building Spark, a personalization layer for competitive play, and Project Grizzly, a game designed so no player can buy an advantage. He and Neal get into why the industry’s walled gardens strip players of identity, why San Diego’s gaming talent stayed invisible for so long, and the Barrio Logan tacos that catered his wedding.

Key topics

* Why you’re a different person in every game you play

* 700 million competitive players, two to three titles a week

* Spark: personalization that learns as you play

* Project Grizzly and the “action sport” format

* Designing a game where nobody can buy an edge

* From QA analyst to leading League’s competitive

* Why San Diego’s gaming talent stayed invisible

* Shutting down Prio App when it stopped solving a problem

Links & resources

* Bear Infinite Games (playtest signup)

Connect on LinkedIn

* Neal Bloom

* Cody Germain

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Larry Coval spent nearly four decades leading organizations at AT&T, Global Crossing, and Cox Business, and came out the other side convinced that most of what gets taught about leadership is wrong. He joins Neal to talk about his new book, Misled, and the argument at its center: “team” is the wrong unit of analysis for business, leadership was never a soft skill, and the fundamentals got skipped while the keynote circuit sold platitudes.

He also makes the case for the smoked marlin taco at Oscar’s - drowned in orange sauce.

Key topics

* Why teams don’t exist in business — and the three things real ones have

* Leadership Industrial Complex: why substance lost to style

* Gallup’s data: managers are now as disengaged as their people

* Hiring for sameness as the founder’s most expensive mistake

* Red teaming: how the military pressure-tests decisions

* Setting expectations with crystalline clarity — confusion is friction

* How hoarding work robs your people of development

* 60% of managers get zero training when promoted

* The ARCANE model and why career planning has no playbook

* The smoked marlin taco at Oscar’s Mexican Seafood

Links & resources

* ARCANE Leadership Concepts

* Misled: Why (Almost) Everything You Learned About Leadership Is Wrong and How to Fix It

Connect on LinkedIn

* Neal Bloom

* Larry Coval

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Neal nerds out on tacos with Mauricio Velázquez de León - Mexico City-born writer-turned-publisher, founder of Duo Press, and author of An Illustrated Guide to Tacos and Burritos, a serious cookbook drawn like a comic book, out August 11. They trace tacos from 7000 BC southern Mexico to fine taquerias in Tokyo and Norway, unpack why the burrito is actually a California invention, and get into Duo Press’s backwards publishing model - concept first, author second.

Mauricio makes the case that tacos are “food for the people, from the people, to the people,” defends small tacos against the supersizing trend, and hands over a short list of spots worth crossing a border for.

Key topics

* A serious cookbook built like a comic book

* Why tacos are “food for the people”

* The burrito as a California (Mission Street) invention

* Duo Press’s reverse model: concept first, author second

* Tacos de canasta - the bicycle-basket tacos

* Corn in the south, flour in the north: the tortilla map

* Taco al pastor’s Mexico City origins

* Why bigger tacos are worse tacos

* Quesabirria, Korean tacos, and the fusion wave

Links & resources

* An Illustrated Guide to Tacos and Burritos (Duopress, out Aug 11)

* Duo Press

* Jeffrey Pilcher - Mexican-food historian (University of Toronto), writes the book’s history sections

* Josefina Velázquez de León - Mauricio’s great-aunt, renowned Mexican cookbook author

Connect on LinkedIn

* Neal Bloom

* Mauricio Velázquez de León

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Neal sits down with Adam Jacobs, President of Xzōm, a San Diego company developing a near-patient platform for isolating and analyzing exosomes from a small blood sample in under 30 minutes.

Exosomes are tiny particles released by living cells that carry proteins and genetic material. Researchers believe these particles could provide useful signals about disease earlier or more dynamically than some existing biomarkers. Xzōm is working to turn that science into a compact testing platform, using a disposable cartridge and a mobile-device interface.

The company’s initial focus is early pancreatic-cancer detection. Adam also discusses how the underlying platform could potentially be adapted for other areas - including sepsis, preeclampsia, transplant monitoring, and neurological conditions - by changing the biomarkers targeted by each assay. Those applications would require their own development, clinical validation, and regulatory pathways.

Adam shares his unusual route to biotech: Torrey Pines High School, Cornell baseball, professional ball in Australia, a clothing brand, a yoga studio, and a consulting firm. He also explains how technology originating at UC San Diego eventually came back into his life, Xzōm’s partnership-led development model, and the role data analysis may play in interpreting complex biological signals.

Plus, Adam and Neal bond over a shared appreciation for Roberto’s on Carmel Valley Road.

Key topics

* Isolating and analyzing exosomes on one chip in 30 minutes

* Why exosomes catch disease earlier than DNA - “stage zero”

* A point-of-care lab that runs on a cell phone

* The difference between a versatile platform and a validated diagnostic test

* From pancreatic cancer to sepsis, preeclampsia, and brain injury

* How Xzōm works with clinical and commercial partners

* Adam’s path from pro baseball to biotech

* Why AI on the back end makes the whole thing work

* Giving back: showing up, not just writing checks

Links & resources

* Xzōm

* A Morning Inside Xzōm’s Lab

Connect on LinkedIn

* Neal Bloom

* Adam Jacobs

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Neal sits down with Eric Weiss, a fellow longtime builder in San Diego’s startup ecosystem. Eric is a self-described “parallel entrepreneur,” founder coach, President of the Design Forward Alliance - which produces San Diego Design Week—and Vice Chair of Startup San Diego.

Neal and Eric first crossed paths during the early days of San Diego’s startup community, around EvoNexus and the 101 Broadway vertical campus that helped give rise to Startup Week and Startup San Diego. They revisit that era and trace Eric’s unconventional path from teenage black-hat hacker to earning an MBA in entrepreneurship at SDSU, followed by roles at Raytheon, Sony and Qualcomm. He eventually made the leap into the startup world with EvoNexus company Rock My Run.

At the heart of the conversation is the connective tissue that makes an entrepreneurial community work. Neal and Eric discuss what San Diego lost after COVID, why “third spaces” and professional community management matter more than a coworking lease, and Eric’s tendency to step into leadership vacuums - including helping San Diego become the first U.S. city, and first binational region, named World Design Capital.

Eric also makes the case that San Diego’s smaller, more tightly connected network—and its constraints - can be an advantage. The conversation closes with a preview of San Diego Design Week, running September 15–20, and a sleeper taco recommendation near the marina.

Key topics

* The “founding cradle”: EvoNexus, The Vine, and 101 Broadway

* Reformed hacker to Raytheon, Sony (PS3), and Qualcomm data science

* Why he’s a “parallel entrepreneur” who falls into leadership vacuums

* San Diego becoming the first American World Design Capital

* Opening Design Week beyond digital - fashion, architecture, interiors

* Connective tissue: third spaces and professional community management

* San Diego vs. the Bay: tighter networks, constraints that filter imposters

* Where San Diego wins: deep tech, hardware, and life science

* The investor-vs-community-builder tension of being “the picker”

Links & resources

* San Diego Design Week (Sept 15-20, 2026)

* Design Forward Alliance

* Startup San Diego

Connect on LinkedIn

* Neal Bloom

* Eric Weiss

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