Welcome back to the Sunstone Way.
Are you ready for the Super Bowl? No worries – you have a little time. The big day isn’t until Feb. 8 in Santa Clara, outside San Francisco.
To be honest, I don’t think anyone expected these teams to be in the title game. The Seattle Seahawks didn’t even make the playoffs last year, with a 10-7 record. And the New England Patriots were downright terrible, finishing last at 4-13 and getting their coach fired.
But that, as they say, is why you play the games. The Patriots have had a Cinderella run with second-year quarterback Drake Maye and new coach Mike Vrabel. The Seahawks leaned on what may have been the best defense in the league to get back to the Super Bowl.
Luck plays a role, too. I know a guy who says the Denver Broncos got a bad break when quarterback Bo Nix went down, but the final score said the Patriots were the winners, so…
At any rate, a new name will be on the Vince Lombardi trophy soon.
Another New Name
We’ve got a bit of a new name in our house, too – the Sunstone Venture & Innovation Center. This center evolved over the last year. The name is new, but the players are our trusted veterans. This team is led by Jasmine Jiang, our Senior Vice President of Investment Operations. Others on the team include Sabrina Li, Angie Zuo, Steven Jiang and Potter Peng.
If you have ever been to a Sunstone Stage Connects event on Friday afternoon, you are familiar with the founder development team that works with investors, entrepreneurs, and universities to build out the innovation ecosystem in Southern California.
With logistic support from the Sunstone Investment Management Services team, Sunstone Stage Connects is a weekly gathering that brings together founders, investors, and the community to spark ideas, share insights, and build meaningful connections. In 2025, these afternoons explored everything from clean energy startups to cutting-edge medical devices.
And the team hasn’t skipped a beat as 2026 begins. Last Friday’s focus on Cleantech brought presentations from Mitico, which provides point-source emitters with a carbon capture solution, and Viable Gear, a startup using seaweed-derived renewable polymers to produce fishing and marine farming gear. Cutting edge indeed!
Next Steps
New names often spawn new initiatives, and we’ve launched a big one with the new year. As part of its mission, the Sunstone Venture & Innovation Center will become a long-term platform for capital formation, ecosystem building and founder empowerment.
A founder-first innovation platform backed by investors and operators, this is a space where early-stage teams can build, access real capital, engage in conversations and grow with the Sunstone ecosystem.
“Our mission is to act as both facilitator and participant in the innovation ecosystem—attracting institutional and private capital into the region, aligning it with high-quality founders, and accelerating the development of scalable, durable companies,” Jasmine Jiang said. “We believe Southern California should not only produce great startups, but also function as a capital-efficient, founder-centric innovation hub for next-generation technologies.”
SVIC is built on four strategic pillars: Capital Access, Public-Private & Institutional Resources, Ecosystem Connectivity, and Founder Operations & Enablement. The Center is built on three values:
- Resilience — standing with founders through cycles, volatility, and scale
- Community — building bridges across capital, institutions, and talent
- Helping Others — because our success is inseparable from the success of the founders we back
You can learn more about the effort at www.linkedin.com/company/sunstoneventureandinnovationcenter — and be sure to follow them while you’re there!
Become part of the community. That’s the Sunstone Way.
And remember, always be a Sunstone!
John Keisler
CEO & Managing Partner
Sunstone
To receive a copy of this blog each week, sign up at the link.
And check out the P3 Builder newsletter here.
Have a comment about this topic, or want to suggest topics for future blogs? Click here.
Sunstone Investment Group, headquartered in Southern California, is the holding company for the Sunstone family of entities, including: Sunstone Investment Management Services, responsible for administrative services; Sunstone Advisors, an SEC-registered investment adviser, which oversees Sunstone Venture Partners LLC, a private capital fund manager; Sunstone Cities, a government economic development consulting firm; and Sunstone Community Fund, a charitable organization that supports entrepreneurship. Sunstone is dedicated to enriching lives through investment, entrepreneurship, and community. Email us at contact@sunstoneinvestment.com.
©Sunstone, 2026