THIS IS COMUNIDAD: LATINX INNOVATORS AND CAPITAL PROVIDERS.
120+ LatinX founders/innovators from across the nation gathered this week to learn, share experiences, and network at Stanford. Photos: J Fairbanks
I met with four promising LatinX founders as part of the Latino Business Action Network’s (LBAN) capital provider matching session at Stanford University last month.
LBAN’s mission is to grow the American economy by empowering Latino entrepreneurship across the US. 1,271 talented people have graduated from its selective inaugural accelerator and 17 business scaling programs. LBAN has a strong and growing network of capital providers, corporate partners, educators, and ecosystem builders. I love being a part of this incredible community.
We are working to address the dismal venture funding rate of less than 2% out of an ask from LatinX-founded startups representing 30% of total investment requests. These current numbers do not reflect the potential to make stellar investment returns from LatinX innovators.
I welcome the opportunity to meet these founders face-to-face and hear their personal stories. I am a venture investor seeking billion dollar opportunities with meaningful positive impact on people and the planet.
Guadalupe Murga, Co-Founder & CEO of Sylvarum, is a bioengineer with a solution to increase the yield of hydroponic agriculture. She and her co-founder, Manuel Sobrino, have developed a proprietary solution that works without violating a crop’s organic or non-gmo status. It works via electric and magnetic stimuli in a modular hardware plus responsive software solution. I look forward to learning more. Guadalupe was one of only 4 of the promising 120+ founders going through LBAN’s Spring programming selected to present to the wider audience on Friday.
Augustus Holm, Founder & CEO of CheckRx, is a very talented 18 year old taking a gap year from college to develop a Medicare Part D selection application with real-time information that reduces this incredibly cumbersome process to minutes from days of tedious and frustrating research. Augustus saw a need for a more straightforward and efficient solution when assisting his grandmother to determine the best plan for her given the myriad of choices in the context of her medical requirements. Augustus taught himself SQL, Microsoft’s query language, and leveraged his extensive family network of Medicare insurance plan brokers to create a product they need and would pay for. Good stuff, Augustus.
Adrianna Cantu, Founder & CEO of Revealix, is a board certified wound specialist who created a simple to use solution to prevent amputations. Adrianna created a smart thermal and risk screening technology for foot health. She is addressing the twenty plus weeks typically lost of essential footcare that precedes an amputation with a solution that is cost effective and incorporates her own lived experiences and technical training in diagnostics. An amputation occurs approximately every 3 minutes in the United States. Diabetics are particularly vulnerable.
Juan Carlos Pacheco, Co-Founder & CEO of ExstoBio, has followed an unconventional path to entrepreneurship. After seminary college, he altered his vocational plans and completed a joint MD/JD. He leveraged his education and experiences into a startup to address the disconnect between pain management prescriptions and individual needs. The valedictorian of his high school, a friend, had tragically died in an incident related to opiate abuse arising from an initial pain prescription after surgery. Interested in the application of cannabis to chronic pain, Juan Carlos enlisted a team of academic experts in the topic to learn more. His digital health solution addresses the lack of specific dosing information physicians have for their patients. ExstoBio provides research, data, and tools to understand the therapeutic options and effects of cannabis for pain management. In this way, the typical self-dosing based on trial and error is mitigated.
Thank you LBAN founders and amazing team members (Jennifer Garcia and Elian Savodivker plus many more) for your excellent programming and community building! Así se hace!
Arturo Cazares, CEO of LBAN, reminded us of the LBAN motto: “Do business with each other and for each other.”
Will do.
Happy to have a conversation about collaborating to enable these and other talented LatinX and women tech founders.
Founders building tech-based solutions with meaningful impact on people and the planet, feel free to reach out.
