49 Winter Special: 'California, Here We Come'

Winter 2022-2023 Special 'California, Here We Come', say Tech Innovators. But Silicon Valley Should Not Rest On Its Laurels

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f California, the Golden State, were a sovereign nation, its economy would rank fifth in the world.

It isn’t the biggest state, but it is the most populous — and it reported a gross state product (GSP) of $3.4tn last year, and nearly 15 percent of national GDP.

Hollywood and Silicon Valley are the driving factors for the state’s global fame and wealth. Some of the world’s most valuable tech companies are headquartered in Silicon Valley, including Apple, Google, HP, Intel and Adobe. The tech sector accounts for nearly a fifth of the economic value produced in California — around $520bn in annual economic impact — and represents more than a quarter of all US tech output.

The tech hotspot, located in the south San Francisco bay area of California, is named after the main material in computer microprocessors: silicon. It has long been recognised as the global centre of tech innovation, but Sean Randolph, the senior director at the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, worries the region could lose its vaunted status if troubling trends aren’t addressed quickly.

He starts with the relationship between the state’s universities and its tech ecosystem. According to Randolph, the University of California (UC) system ranks as the top research institution in the world for US patent generation. The university reaffirmed its bragging rights in 2021, with 650 US patents and 920 international patents granted last year. That same year, UC intellectual property brought in $136m in gross revenue, $37m of which was paid out in inventor shares and $13m in campus research shares.

Randolph worries over the fact that public investment in the university has fallen by nearly half over the past 22 years. Meanwhile, EdSource reports that nearly two-thirds of California high schools lack computer science courses. It warns that the state is neglecting to prepare students to enter California’s tech industry while also neglecting to train and equip future tech teachers. Randolph believes increasingly tight immigrant policies will leave the state with even more of a deficit of tech talent. “High-skilled immigrants face systemic visa and green card barriers, limiting access to the world’s most creative minds,” he wrote in an op-ed for CalMatters. “This matters because nearly half of tech companies in Silicon Valley are founded by immigrants. Companies such as Google, Tesla, Stripe and Uber, all with immigrant entrepreneur founders, support tens of thousands of jobs.”

Combine those factors with growing qualityof-life concerns, and the situation becomes more dire. Droughts and wildfires are increasingly threatening property, lives and livelihoods. California also has some of the highest property prices in the US. A typical home in California costs over $800,000 — nearly double the US median. In the Bay Area, the disparity widens further, with homes there averaging $1.4m. California boasts a median income that’s 15 percent higher than the national median, but the exorbitant prices put the dream of home ownership out of reach for many residents.

Read on to learn about three (native and expat) tech female founders who have made California their home. i

> > CHRISTINA LOPES THE ONE HEALTH COMPANY CEO AND CO-FOUNDER

A Trailblazer for Canine Cancer Care

Cancer kills some 10 million people each year, accounting for one in six deaths worldwide. Man’s best friend isn’t faring any better. Cancer causes one in four canine deaths, and kills about half of all dogs over the age of 10.

Christina Lopes, the CEO and co-founder of The One Health Company, says that dogs have been helping in human drug trials for decades. They’ve been the research subjects, but until now, never the beneficiaries.

“Cancer care for dogs has not changed much in the last 30 years,” Lopes explains. “Dogs are still treated with the same chemotherapies as they were in the 20th Century, but we have seen human cancer care advance tremendously … Using the same advanced cancer diagnostics and precision medicine that are currently on the market and approved by the FDA for people, we are bringing cancer care for dogs. And when we open access to precision cancer treatments for our furry friends, we build data that helps advance human oncology research and treatment.”

THERAPEUTIC MARKET

Many people regard their pets as family members — and they’ll pay whatever it takes to save their lives. The pet cancer therapeutics market, which was estimated at $364m in 2021, is expected to reach $589m over the next five years, registering a CAGR of 8.89 percent from 2022 to 2027. Two-thirds of US households have at least one pet, and the country tops the global ranking of pet-care spending per person. According to the American Pet Products Association, total pet healthcare expenditure for 2019 was estimated at $75.38bn, up nearly $3bn over the previous year.

FidoCure is less expensive than traditional canine chemo treatment, which can cost upwards of $10,000. Pet “parents” (as One Health calls them) can expect a price tag in the low four figures for genetic testing and targeted treatment plans. “We come from the scientific principle that every cancer is unique,” said Lopes. “So, while some therapies might work for some populations, I don’t know of any that work for all, really. Any. In any species.”

The Veterinary Cancer Society estimates a dose of traditional canine chemotherapy to cost $150 to $600. A traditional radiation protocol runs from $1,000 and $6,000. Lopes told Scientific American that she’s heard of people spending $30,000. Some dipped into their kid’s college funds; others went into debt.

One Health Company charges a flat perpatient fee for DNA testing, and its partner veterinarians set the final price for the client. Lopes said the company was exploring new payment models, allowing dog owners access to DNA-targeted, vet-approved therapies at a fixed cost for the life of the pet. The company is already working with some 200 veterinarians in 32 states, and FidoCure has a rapidly expanding pawprint. It’s also covered by most pet insurance.

VIRTUOUS CIRCLE OF R&D PARTNERSHIPS

One Health provides veterinarians with a detailed report of recommended treatments. The company works with vet clinics and pharmaceutical companies to deliver the medicines to dog owners.

“Technology is a core tenet of any business, and gives you the bandwidth to scale your business, support your staff, collect information and service your customers and partners,” Lopes insists. “FidoCure’s informatics system is fully integrated with our veterinary, pharmacy and clinical laboratory partners to streamline operations.”

ECOSYSTEM OF NETWORKING AND FUNDRAISING

Lopes was born in Brazil but spent her formative years in the US and Ireland. Before she launched One Health with her co-founder and husband, vet Ben Lewis, she was the managing director of Cerberus Capital, a US private equity firm with $30bn under management. She has served as the advisory board director for International Planned Parenthood and as an advisor to the UN Commission on women’s issues.

Lopes was recognised as a young global leader by the World Economic Forum in 2010. She says it was a pivotal moment in her career, connecting her to a powerful community of investors and innovators.

“The Davos community was really rallying behind our mission to bring better health for all — twolegged and four-legged friends alike. Everyone seems to be touched by cancer somehow and supports the move towards effective and gentler therapies which we are enabling.”

One Health Company was founded in Philadelphia in 2016 because of the city’s robust medical research community.

“Penn Med (University of Pennsylvania Health System) has really amazing advancements there,” she said, citing studies on viruses and the immune system. Lopes found support among the academics, who helped her leverage their findings to benefit pets. co-founders were new parents. The couple showed up with a baby in tow, and Lopes finished her pitch with a fussing infant in a sling at her side. By 2017, the company had moved to Palo Alto, California, and begun to commercialise canine cancer therapies. A collaboration with global pharma company Eisai served as the inspiration for FidoCure, the company’s flagship product.

“Eisai has an FDA-approved breast cancer therapy that is based on sea sponges found in northern Japan. They wanted to see if this therapy could also help dogs with a type of

sarcoma that is considered very similar to human angiosarcoma. We collaborated with Eisai, and enrolled pet dog patients with metastatic cancer and presented results of the therapy in combating canine cancer at AACR, a prestigious cancer conference.

“The pet parents were so grateful for more treatment options, and top veterinary oncologists shared that we were helping service an urgent need for more diverse tools to effectively treat canine cancer. Eisai’s therapy is now helping humans with angiosarcoma, and is in clinical trial at Mass General. “What is particularly touching about this story is how so many different facets of our planet — the ocean, dogs, humans — all came together to produce cutting edge treatment,” Lopes said. “This serves as a constant reminder of the preciousness of our natural resources and the value of all life on earth.”

According to Crunchbase, FidoCure has raised $15m in funding. Andreessen Horowitz led a $5m seed round in 2019 and Polaris Partners led a $10m series-A round in 2020. It’s funded by 13 investors, Global Brain Corporation and Bossanova Investimentos being the most recent to join. Lopes acknowledges that the pandemic has limited in-person networking opportunities, but she encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to connect with peers and mentors through online groups and local meet-ups. As a mother in Menlo Park, Lopes is surrounded by other businesssavvy parents.

“It made life kind of interesting, because I could go to a kid’s birthday party and solve very pressing business questions,” she shared. “That’s one of the benefits of living in San Francisco or Palo Alto. This is just how stuff works there — and I absolutely love it.”

> > MELONEE WISE FETCH ROBOTICS AND ZEBRA TECHNOLOGIES

I, Robot (Ninja): A Pioneer of the Autonomous Space

Robots are here to stay, making life easier in many sectors — and Fetch Robotics founder Melonee Wise has been there from the start…

Melonee Wise is a self-proclaimed “robot ninja”, and the nickname has caught on. Wise is a rock star in the robotics community.

She was head-hunted by Willow Garage, a now-defunct research-lab that Business Insider credits with jump-starting the race in computer vision, manipulation and autonomy. It spawned a range of applications for drones, autonomous cars and warehouse operations. Many members of the Willow Garage team went on to launch their own businesses after its billionaire “moonshot” founder, Scott Hassan, decided to close operations.

FETCH ROBOTICS

Wise became a serial entrepreneur. Within a year of Willow Garage’s shutdown, in late 2013, she launched Unbounded Robotics. By July of the following year, it had folded. Wise said complications in an agreement with Willow Garage stifled fundraising. Undaunted, she cofounded a pioneer of on-demand automation, Fetch Robotics. It presented the world with the first cloud robotics platform and contributed to robot operating systems still used today.

Wise has led with a focus on innovation and partnership. Over the past eight years, the company has developed a compelling cloud robotics platform. Robots have long been a mainstay in warehouse and fulfilment centres, and the pandemic proved the worth of the technologies. Fetch contributed robot “troops” for the fight against Covid: one innovation had a disinfecting spray, another featured UV light technology.

“Even before the pandemic became an issue, warehouses and distribution centres found it difficult to find human labour,” she said. “Now, some of these facilities are faced with the additional challenges of doing more with even fewer workers.”

Fetch Robotics has raised $94m in five funding rounds over five years. A 2019 series-C round led by Fort Ross Ventures netted $46m. It attracted four new investors — CEAS Investments, Redwood Technologies, TransLink Capital and Zebra Ventures — and retained four existing ones: O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Softbank Capital, and Sway Ventures.

FETCH JOINS ZEBRA

When Fetch started series-D fund-raising in 2021, it was offered a $305m acquisition deal by Zebra Technologies, a company building and delivering edge products that enable businesses to connect assets, data and people.

“We started working together through our partnership,” said Wise. “One of the first things we did was integrate their mobile computing devices for an out-of-the-box experience on our cloud robotics platform. Our customers … could take the hand scanner they already had, scan a barcode, and call a robot to them.”

Wise serves as the vice-president of Zebra’s robotics automation division, and Fetch will become the centrepiece of its new product offerings. “One of the other great things about Fetch joining Zebra is they have a strong go-tomarket engine, and they can amplify our sales capability… It helps us reach a much broader, wider, and deeper audience.

“I think the acquisition made sense, because it aligns with our long-term vision. When we built our platform, we built it to be unifying. Not just our robots. Over the years we’ve been slowly bringing in other partners.

“We have a partnership with SICK, we have partnerships with other marketplace web service providers like VARGO. That isn’t going to change. We’re still going to be partner-friendly, and we’re still going to bring other devices into the ecosystem.”

AMR BENEFITS

A study commissioned by Zebra Technologies found that 83 percent of warehouse associates believe autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) have increased productivity and saved time. Threequarters report error reduction, while nearly two-thirds credit AMRs with providing careeradvancement opportunities. Wise hails this as a

"Wise is a rock star in the robotics community."

"Robots are finding their place alongside people in many work environments, including factories, warehouses, retail stores and even hospitals."

win-win for the business, front-line teams, and customers.

“Robots are finding their place alongside people in many work environments, including factories, warehouses, retail stores and even hospitals,” Wise wrote in Robotics Business Review. “To optimise their effectiveness, increase human-robot

collaboration, and reduce the risk of mishaps, AMRs must understand and take cues from the social behaviour of their human co-workers. Cloudbased technologies for deep learning training are key to making that happen.” journals, and she has been granted 18 patents. She was one of six robotics pioneers (and the only woman) to win an Engelberger award in 2022. It’s been compared to “a Nobel Prize of robotics”.

In June, she was elected to serve on the board of directors of Tailos, a company providing automated solutions for hospitality and industrial cleaning. It lets machines do the dull, dirty or dangerous tasks.

Tailos CEO Micah Green describes Melonee Wise as a “visionary and titan in robotics” with an “unparalleled passion for building robotics companies and supporting fellow roboticists on their journeys”.

> > NICOLE HU ONE CONCERN CO-FOUNDER AND CTO

Tackling Disaster with Data — and First-hand Experience

California-based One Concern lets tech do the thinking and take the fear out of preparation for disasters and extreme weather events.

Extreme weather events are wreaking global havoc. The US suffered nine billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the first half of this year. Drought and record heatwaves have sparked wildfires across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Flooding has become a recurring nightmare for many communities.

Climate-charged catastrophes in 2021 caused an estimated $343bn in economic losses — more than half of which were uninsured — but one company is harnessing data science and machine learning to mitigate, and prepare for, the damage.

One Concern’s team is unified behind the need to solve real-world problems. Its CEO and CTO, both born in India, bonded as young immigrants in the start-up scene. The company, based in Menlo Park, California, was founded in 2015 by three Stanford alumni: two structural and earthquake engineering graduates, CEO Ahmad Wani and board observer Timothy Frank, and computer scientist Nicole Hu, the company CTO.

DIGITAL TWINS FOR THE CLIMATE WIN

One Concern creates “digital twins” of cities, communities, and infrastructure systems to build climate resistance. The company combines AI, machine learning and trillions of curated data points to create interactive simulations to help communities and industries stay ahead of climate risks. The model maps out potential hazards, including earthquakes, floods, and windstorms, then analyses vulnerability factors to predict direct and indirect impacts.

“With digital twins, we’re able to measure resilience using data,” she says. “Armed with better data and AI, we can run thousands of … simulations before a natural disaster to identify vulnerable communities and critical infrastructure in harm’s way. Our machine learning systems also ‘fill the gaps’ within the data to account for the ongoing effects of climate change, allowing us to improve our predictive analytics and see into the future with greater confidence.”

FROM THE CLASSROOM TO THE C-SUITE

First-hand experience prompted the trio to turn a machine-learning class project into a purposeled start-up. Indian-born Wani was visiting his home in Kashmir when the 2014 floods hit, stranding him and his family for seven days without food or water. Shortly after his return to the US, he experienced another shock as a severe earthquake shook South Napa, California. Chief resilience officer Craig Fugate once led emergency management forces at the federal and state level.

The founders credit their Stanford professors with pushing them to pitch their ideas to investors. Wani says the first batch of municipal emergency managers and venture capitalists thought the algorithm was “magic” — and seven years of continuous investment in tech and data mastery followed.

BUILDING CLIMATE RESILIENCE THROUGH A SINGLE PLATFORM

“Resilience to climate threats — a framework where organisations, communities and private and public sector actors understand, forecast and mitigate climate risk — is among our most critical global priorities,” Hu says. “It demands an entirely new approach to understanding and acting on climate risk, one that mitigates climate threats and their ripple effects on businesses and communities, rather than scrambles to react after the damage has been done.” The One Concern platform is underpinned by three pillars. One Concern DNA compiles curated resilience data for precision riskmitigation. One Concern Domino provides enterprises with advanced resilience analysis and visualisation tools. One Concern Ready Fast focuses on improving the decision-making process for disaster preparation and response.

“We help cities understand that by running multiple scenarios [for disaster] events, they can figure out which places have the highest level of risk,” Hu said. “We also try to show that if you add certain mitigation strategies, you can reduce your risk and your cost of responding to disasters.”

The company is developing a climate resilience scoring system that it hopes will become an industry standard. It works with clients across the financial services, real estate and insurance sectors to increase accuracy in risk pricing and selection, valuation, and mitigation investment.

“One Concern provides clients a first-mover advantage as asset valuations begin to reflect differentiated resilience,” said chief strategy officer Jeffrey Bohn, suggesting that “market participants who incorporate new analytics to capture a differentiating valuation driver — before the driver is widely reflected in market prices — can potentially find positive alpha strategies”.

TEAM COHESION AND CULTURAL FIT

“For a mission-driven company, company culture is pretty important,” Hu said. “Once you are able to get the right team, all these other problems surrounding prioritisation work themselves out because you have key players helping to solve those issues. I wouldn’t say I have all the answers; my team has all the answers.”

INVESTOR SUPPORT AND INDUSTRY RECOGNITION

Since its launch, One Concern has raised $119.2m in funding. The latest infusion of $45m, in June 2021, came from the holding company of one of Japan’s largest insurers, SOMPO. The investment is part of a multi-year $100m deal easing the company’s expansion into the Japanese market.

One Concern was recognised as a WEF technology pioneer in 2019 and has been selected to participate in an ESG-impact programme organised by Taronga Ventures.

Hu has been listed among Inc. Magazine’s top 100 female founders and Forbes’ top 30 under 30 innovators.