 Hello everyone, welcome to the participants, judges and audience members. Welcome to SoCAP 2021. This is the Tuesday 115 pitch session. Let's let next launch pad latinas who lead pitch competition. My name is Jorge Calderon. I am the managing director for impact investments at at Hispanics in philanthropy. If we can bring up the site. Thank you. I have the pleasure of moderating pitch event and for those who are less familiar with our organization just briefly we are over 39 years in the making and we have been building social justice and shared prosperity for the Latinx community across the Americas for that time and we will continue to be doing so. I help lead our initiative on decreasing the wealth management or the wealth gap by increasing our participation in the startup economy. We have three different programs under this initiative the power up fund which directly invests and supports early Latinx startups. We have also a brand new program called the Latinx impact venture fellows and this is developing the next generation of diverse investors and then of course as today we're doing the Latinx launch pad another of our programs. This is a pitch competition series showcasing Latinx founders. We have the pleasure of having a fantastic crew of judges today joining us will be Cheryl Campos the head of venture growth and partnerships at republic where they're democratizing the investment process and she's also the co-founder of VC Familia which is really trying to again engage and enroll the next generation of investors that are from Latinx background. And then we also have Krista Velasquez who has been a pioneer in the impact investment space. She's now the director of Lumina impact and impact ventures where they're doing investing in education based startups and then she's also a lecturer at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and then of course we also have Jenny Flores who is probably a stranger to no one. She has been in philanthropy for quite a long time on the finance side. She's currently the head of small business growth philanthropy at Wells Hargo. We have seven pitch finalists today. We're really excited about Greether that who's going to be presented by Vanessa Carell Palm who's a founder is Mary Ann Kilgallon menstrual mates who will be presented by Cindy Belarado. Billingue who is founded by Emily Familia Lingo Health by Eriza Margas and then Deal Engine by Vanessa Archibald Morales and then Cali Bueno whose founder is Claudia L. Mercado. We're very excited to have these seven fantastic talented women presenting today. In terms of our overall process the presenters will have four minutes to pitch and then we'll have a hard stop and then we'll have four minutes of Q&A and questions by the judges. We'll also have a pretty hard stop on that as well. During the presentation we hope that the audience you will be able to provide comments and feedback. This is a great learning opportunity for the startups so please add those in the chat box over the time so that the founders can read those afterwards. After all the teams conclude we'll have the moderator myself and the judges will go and deliberate and we'll come back with the award winners. During that time the audience will have the opportunity to vote for the audience choice award and we will also have a special fireside chat during that deliberation time with Jennifer Garcia from Elban and the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurial Initiative. After the deliberation we'll come back and we will announce the award winners. In terms of the judging for today we've asked the judges to think about four very specific elements. Really does the presentation and the founder provide a really strong understanding of the problem and then is this the quality of the solution something that's unique and defensible and scalable and then what the judges might perceive in terms of how compelling is a team what's the skill set they might have experience and expertise they might bring to the table and then one thing that we really want to emphasize is their ability to sell right so engage and convince folks bring folks on as advisors to sell to the customers bring on teammates etc. We have four fantastic awards first place will be 15,000 second place will be 10 and third place will be five and of course the audience choice award will also be 5,000 as well so let me see if the judges have now been able to get on to the back and I think we have let's see Krista hi Krista good to see you hi Cheryl thank you for joining Jenny hi how are you thank you very much glad everybody was able to get on okay excellent okay so so now that we have our judges ready um why don't we do we have our first uh pitch presenter from Gryther is she online yes okay okay wonderful okay so now Vanessa just so you remember we have four minutes and we'll have a kind of a very um very specific on the time and so I'll let you know when those four minutes are up but please go ahead and start us out thank you all right thank you so now you'll be able to bring up your screen okay can you see my screen yes we can see your screen okay awesome thank you so much hello everyone I'm really excited today to present to you Gryther where here's the travel safety app that connects female travelers to local women around the world what is the problem well from my Saturday I conducted to over 500 travel travelers 90 percent of female travelers reported the same concern getting around safely seems to be the number one stress factor for female travelers around the world so after conducting that survey I turned around and I started asking women that aren't traveling on their own yet and it turns out that 90 percent of them are also 30 percent of them are also reporting the same concerns how to navigate a place safely communication and transportation are why stopping these women from traveling on their own so what is the solution for this great here is the app that connects female travelers to local women wherever they go how does this work well when the travel is getting ready to go to a new destination they can search for a local women they can filter by language time and dates when a traveler is looking for their next next destination they can find the person that chooses the matches their interest best and then they can book them to get to read them at the airport Taylor and or just Taylor and experience for them and use them as their local best friend wherever they go poor readers well our viewers are very fine their speak your language and they are experts on their hometown so you can choose from an array of personalities as well and you will have someone that can guide you through the obstacles that come through travel how are we different well our service combines features from travel booking experiences personal safety apps transportation and social platforms but there is a twist we do that every user that comes through a platform and they go through an interview process that where we were invited our identity and fit because travel isn't just about safety it's also about enjoyment our market opportunities are huge there's 125 billion expected to be spent by women on travel solo this year and 70 percent of women from our service reported that they feel safer when they another woman is navigating them and guiding them so each year an increasing number of women are embarking on solo adventures this keyword is so common that this increased by 1000 percent from 2014 to 2020 and despite the global warning of do not travel from the pandemic the trends are indicating that this is coming on stronger with this trend it's also coming another related topic which is safety so this is how we enter this market our revenue opportunities come from a double-sided market place where travelers will be able to book readers and the transaction fee will be coming from the travelers uh there will be also a commission from our local guides where great her will take three percent of the payment as commission for using our platform and helping with the verification process we are now gathering a troop of supporters and partnerships that will help us get to where we need to be and our progress to date is really exciting with only under seven months of working full-time work on great air our progress has been impressive we now have our working MVP a dedicated team press interest market fit verification process partnerships a daily organic growth and we have hosted two events in person and most exciting we have now creators in 75 countries and 247 series why support reader well our mission is supporting two of the most fundamental um U.N. development goals one to reduce rates for women and two to increase income opportunities for them funds that will that will gather throughout this process will go through verification process which is um okay thank you Vanessa excellent thanks so much Vanessa okay so we have our judges um why don't we go in a bit of an order um if if you don't mind Krista could you kick us off then Jenny then Cheryl sure happy to Jorge hi Vanessa so nice to meet you as a solo traveler I love this idea it's great um I like that you focus on the U.N. goals right that you're trying to to meet some of those but um could you help me understand the business model so the travelers pay you take a commission do the um the the in-country uh yes readers also get paid then yes so readers get paid through travelers um and we are trying to encourage women to support each other as they navigate destinations I think uh right now more than ever women and people uh coming out of the pandemic are trying to travel more consciously and sustainable and we want to support the local communities that have been hit the hardest which we all know that women specifically and and the tourism sector have been hit hardest so um that's why we are looking for women um to be local guides in areas that they needed the most and encouraging travelers to think about how they're supporting them as they're traveling like you are great just a quick question what is the the the range of payments yes so uh it will vary according to location because um I mean we can't charge the same base rate in San Francisco down in Mexico City um so it will it will depend on geographical locations thank you thank you hi Vanessa great job I'm curious you said you have an MVP 75 countries what feedback have you received in terms of like what's working really well and potentially areas where you can improve yeah we definitely need a lot of work with our um technology because as it's a travel platform um women are on the go right and so we want to have this mobile friendly application so um that's what we're looking seeking funding because we definitely need improvement on our technology and there's a lot of features that we have plans to implement on the on the our new our future versions that will help women whether they're traveling or not great thank you yeah uh thank you so much Vanessa uh can you talk a little bit more about the team at the end of the day right like what are the the background the sort of technical expertise that you guys are bringing to the table because you know this I think in order to execute the vision that you guys have um the team is really what what comes down to it absolutely thank you so much and I run out of time uh exactly as I showed that to show that slide but yes um we now have uh nine members on our team really exciting um with a really short amount of time we have managed to gather a group of people that really believe in the mission one of them is our rock star and software developer zahid which has worked on he has built himself several startups one of them cryptosync which is an AI intelligence software and he has over 13 years of experience with software development um and then we have our graphic and visual branding designer which um she comes from a background of um in tech both tech and a really feminine brand uh zinga as a her tech background so she understands how technology startups can pivot sometimes um and then um rafsimama which is a really well known uh jewelry brand um so she brings in the feminine feminine and elegant touch to her uh our visual branding and then we have Vanessa we are gonna have to stop that was four minutes on the q&a thank you Cheryl Jenny thank you for those great comments and questions so we're gonna move on to our next participant very well done Vanessa um right now we're gonna have Mary Ann from pink lotus technologies and palm be our next pitch presenter hi Mary Ann hello how are you good good to see you are you all set with your slides i believe so okay fantastic make sure um all right can you see my slides can you put them in presentation mode maryan yes all right how are we there we're there go ahead wonderful hello everyone my name is maryann keogallan and i'm the founder and ceo of pink lotus technologies and i'm happy to bring to you palm where we provide a child's profile and health data directly to 911 personnel in an emergency i'm sure many of you are parents or grandparents but did you know that every day thousands of children face injury and harm when they're in the hands of a caregiver when i saw these numbers i said this was unacceptable so i became a mom on a mission i wanted to help better protect our children and reduce these numbers so i invented palm which is an acronym for peace of mind monitor our team has created a whole new segment called child safety as a service or c sess and it simply works with a wearable wristband that is connected to the palm mobile app the parents and the children can communicate back and forth anytime at anywhere if the parents realize that there's an emergency occurring all they have to do is simply press the red 911 button on the palm app and the child's profile and location will be sent directly to the nearest 911 call center where they can dispatch accordingly also other family members will be notified via text message on their smartphones palm is transforming child safety we want to be the voice for your child when they can't speak up for themselves there are other devices on the market but they really just target for tracking as you can see that our palm features and the benefits we focus on data and emergency response what makes us so exciting and why we're better and why we're different is that we are the first child platform to offer emergency intelligence data such as name age gender height location any health conditions the blood types any medications they may be on this really helps protect lives when there's an emergency occurring our palm platform covers 94 of the country that's over in five thousand 911 communication centers or 911 call centers even prior to our launch our we have received a lot of support from our local community and we are very proud of our nationwide partnerships that we have established the market size is pretty incredible there's over 21 million children with a caregiver on a regular basis in this country why us and why now because we now live in a digital tech age where children as young as two years old are very comfortable with a smart device how will we make money we have a one-time purchase and a monthly reoccurring fee our go-to-market we will continue our end-to-end testing along with the soft launch this quarter next quarter we want to increase our customer sales and scale our operations I couldn't have done it without the incredible team that I have we have over 120 years combined experience of marketing technology finance and business development and we have a great team of advisors who are really guiding us on our journey even though we're just getting started we are looking for the future we want to give our customers enhanced safety features and we also see another segment of future markets for human trafficking and aging with this technology that we have created we're doing a seed raise of two million dollars we are looking for a lead investor or if you can connect us with any partnerships that would be amazing I want to thank you for your time for listening to palm and I hope that you'll join our mission to help protect children everywhere thank you very much well done thank you so much Marianne we're gonna get it right in on the on the four minutes um well how about we go for judges can we go Jenny first Cheryl and then Krista hey Marianne hello hi so as a mom of course this piqued my interest just understanding the platform so I'm curious you have over 2000 customers and there's nothing better to sell this than like what they are saying about whether they feel more secure like one of them the KPI is that you're using to measure like customer experience of customer satisfaction yes we actually had to do a lot of validation we um end up doing the um going around and talking to customers we did the National Science Foundation and we had to actually tell customers ask them what is your pain point what are you looking for and their main thing was them being their children being abused and they're not knowing it maybe they're too young to even you know comprehend what is happening to them um so making sure that they're well and the safety was the number one pain point that parents pointed out to us and they feel like this is for their children like easy enough for them to understand like I push the button and like it's happening like they're doing correct so as a mom you're always connected with your child you can be at work you can be out of town and you still can see if they made it to school if they're at the park whatever's happening and we do have different health metrics in their biometrics such as the health the heart rate so you can see if something's happening if it's slowed down because maybe they're having a problem a medical condition or if it's going way too fast maybe they're scared so at that point touch a button you can call them in a second and they can touch one button and give you an SOS and immediately through the app you'll call your child it's great thank you so much thank you thank you Marianne in terms of it's a hardware play right which I feel like a lot of times especially with children and hardware right I think there's there's a lot that can go right and wrong right and so one thing is we don't want the boy who cried wolf we want like you know we don't want them to play with it we don't want them to kind of do you know other things that will set up alarms so my question is more around is there like a failsafe is there ways to kind of mitigate those things so that you know you're not on alert all the time yes absolutely so the children cannot do is 911 by themselves it has to go through the parents through the app the children can press a button on the side for three seconds and that goes as a SOS message to all the guardians so the children will not be doing any false calls the parent instantly will see if it's an SOS from the child if they're old enough if they're five six seven years old but there won't it's all navigated through the the app hi Marianne this was great can you just help me understand the pricing so there's the initial purchase and then a monthly fee is it per child or per family yes um so it they purchased the device a one-time fee and it is 995 it's a SAS business model so it is per child I love the child safety as a service terminology I think that's great yeah we like to say that we're tech with the calls I mean people are afraid of technology we our mission was to make sure that we made it very simple because a lot of grandparents are going to be actually navigating through this so tech with the calls for everyone to simply understand great the judges we have about 40 other seconds if you want to ask any more questions or provide any more comment I'm just going to put your margins on this starting out because we ordered such a small amount we're at about 60 percent right now we have an MVP coming out with 500 units for our soft launch great thank you thank you so much everyone thank you Marianne congratulations good job thank you all right fantastic now we're going to move on and we're going to hear from Cindy from menstrual mates Cindy hi good to see you good to see you all right do you have your tech ready yes i'm going to try sharing here let me know no slides yet if you can click share screen at the bottom okay let's see here are you using powerpoint google slides keynote um this is can you see this screen here we cannot okay it's set it shared let me try another way are you in google chrome yes okay that should be let's see here let's do the chrome time how about now yep okay we're all good wonderful is that full screen yep okay all right i'll go ahead and get started thank you so much for having me my name is Cindy Bellardo i prefer she her aia pronouns and i'm the ceo and co-founder of menstrual mates menstrual mates is period care made simple through our eco-friendly products our honest education and our global social give back so my background is in environmental studies pre-medicine from the University of Oklahoma where over the past three years i've become an expert in periods and have traveled to northern india to survey first time menstrual cup users so i've really learned the pain points that people are having across the globe together with my business partner drew Jarvis she has a background in international business and marketing and has just completed a summer brand internship with proctor and gamble our team of advisors and ourselves are entering a 1.5 billion global menstrual cup segment which is growing two times faster than both tampons and pads combined and what we found as the issues and current period care options is really twofold so on one hand most people 63 prefer to use tampons or pads it's what they knew it's what their moms taught them growing up this is despite the fact that they're unsustainable they're costly up to hundreds of dollars more than a menstrual cup would cost and they often contain harmful chemicals or dyes on the other hand people are interested now in the menstrual cups they've been around since the 1930s and they are a nice eco-friendly alternative one menstrual cup can replace 528 tampons or pads per year but they just really haven't gotten the adoption they deserve because they are very hands-on there's a big learning curve and the insertion process can be very intimidating so people are wanting a better option but they just haven't found the best one yet through our surveys we found that people want something that's user-friendly effective and comfortable we find ourselves where sustainability meets user-friendliness and that's exactly what we are developing in our menstrual cup meet the unicup and applicators I have a prototype here we currently have a provisional patent and we've addressed those key pain points of user-friendliness without the harmful chemicals or dyes it's effective it holds three to five times more than a men's than a tampon excuse me it can be worn up to 12 hours there's a lot of great benefits and like I mentioned it can be used for over a year this is sold at just 34.99 direct to our consumer through Shopify on our website and amazon we are using a buy one give one model to stay true to our vision which is to help end period poverty so with every purchase one will go donated to a menstruator in need and we currently have a partnership right now with period the menstrual movement which is a global non-profit and we already donate 10 of our merchandise and graphic novel proceeds to this cause where they donate product to people in need we have completed our first beta test and gotten positive results we've reached over 20 000 potential customers through our online channels and an ad engagement surveys and tests we have raised 135k to date and we're now going into our second beta test with our finalized design we're launching our Kickstarter for pre-sales in November and we're currently raising a pre-seed round to help us launch the cup by Q2 of next year thank you so much for your attention I would really appreciate any feedback and if anyone would like to get connected please do reach out thank you good job Cindy fantastic why don't we start out with Cheryl and then go to Krista and Jenny thanks Cindy um I don't know how much it can share here but there was a time in my life where it was hard to even buy pads period right and my mom had to sit down and literally tell me like you we can't buy more than what you need right like so this is this is near and dear to my heart and part of the reason why I invest in femtech so my question to you is actually more of the mechanics right you mentioned it's kind of inserts like a tampon but it's also so can you just walk us a little bit more about how to use it and also the distraction process right and you know how is this like you're going to educate people so how are you are you going to do it more visually are you going to do it more through webinars all of that yeah thank you thank you for sharing first of all and I can demonstrate with our prototype here now I think that's probably the best way but we do plan to be on our channels to show video and just educate that way tick talk things like that are fun so we have a full technique here and then the outside of the applicator and you just twist it in like so and then with the other piece here we will push up and of course in your body it will look a little bit different and it will open exactly how it should and then it will be released so the rim is made so that it's firm enough it will open correctly each time at least that's the goal and that you don't have to adjust and it's less hands-on thanks for the question great hi Cindy this is really terrific I'm curious you have the product and then you also have education services but if you're selling direct to consumer I'm assuming that your target market is is young young women do you prioritize them above say girls or older women who are still menstruating yes that's correct our primary target from our engagement test so far we are definitely honing in on the eco-friendly and socially conscious students so specifically university students who are more open and have some more buying power of their own and they're wanting to look for a more eco-friendly alternative yeah Jenny yeah I'm wondering so first of all thank you I just love learning about new products and innovation and spaces that tend not to have a lot of innovation so thank you for that I'm curious like in terms of partnership because I of course I had the same question up front like how you segment this and like where you're going to prioritize like universities and like their like healthcare systems that on campus like I'm just curious like how you're thinking about getting into market in a very organic way have you can you share some of your initial things sure sure yeah so universities and things we found a lot of traction just targeting for people in that location but we're not specifically going to universities at this point we're really focusing on on influencers and online so we know that Gen Z is really on these social platforms and that influencers have a really big part to play and just giving some more trust to a product so that's where we're working on our brand strategies and marketing strategies right now great I would also say mom's girls would be great yeah absolutely absolutely thank you yeah I think actually here that your Kickstarter will be very important because that's usually how a lot of Fentai companies launch and it also assesses product market fit right so I hope that you know well one I think that's incredible so if you need any help on that side just let me know but two I think at some point you you will have to get this pen did right and then you can build a whole brand around that what's the timetable in that sense and what do you expect that yes thank you we currently have a provisional patent and we're working on the utility and design this year great we're gonna have to end it there thank you all thank you so much thank you so much thank you good job so now we're gonna bring in Emily Hamidas from Blingue Emily are you ready I am ready great thank you judges for all the great comments and questions so Emily when you're ready go ahead okay perfect hi I'm Emily first generation Latinx founder of Blingue also known as Billy and so personal family experiences have really exposed me to the fact that growing up on a bilingual household doesn't necessarily mean that a child will be bilingual right and throughout my life I've encountered parents that are bilingual who state that their child is monolingual despite the parents fluency and daily use in of both languages at home and that Billy we aim to be a tool for parents interested in changing this and also a tool for parents simply interested in having their child learn a second language and so Billy aims to address two main problems one the decline and loss of native language speaking skills and two current language learning ed tech tools for children failed to really intellectually and physically engage the user oftentimes creating a passive and less meaningful learning experience and so Blingue is an ed tech app designed to prevent generational communication gaps and develop secondary language as an asset within our children ages one through seven specifically with interactive engaging lessons and we incorporate our digitally interactive hardware in the form of letters numbers and shapes that actually interact directly with our app via touch screens in order to allow for that engaging learning experience and overall our solution is based on the fact that when we can hold the attention of children we can better educate them as proven through a lot of research such as the lego foundation's play-based research and so the digital language learning global market in 2018 represented 5.7 billion with an expected increase to 17 billion in 27 our strength lies in today's digital age and combining this with a platform like Billy which provides both physically and intellectually engaging platform for kids we can fill this gap in the digital language market which consists of platforms that only really engage the users intellectually and our goal is to facilitate access to secondary language development by treating it as an asset that if cultivated early will ultimately translate into generational well and so our product consists of sustainable digitally interactive hardware known as digi pieces these contain strategic touch points on the back and use the body's natural electricity to allow for shape differentiation when placed on the touch screen and our app consists of interactive engaging lessons and a child friendly layout and we'll provide access to our app using the freemium model where a pay subscription will allow for wider access to our platform and the hardware will be available at a separate cost via our website directly and so our philanthropic concept allows for membership or digi pieces to be donated early adopters are going to be language acquisition teachers with children and early expect expatriate millennial parents in the US and we aim to attract these markets through social media platforms as well as through educational trade shows and so there's no product like Billy that focuses on secondary language acquisition while engaging children both intellectually and physically through bilingual lessons marbotic all the way at the right is the most comparable platform it uses the interactive hardware and an app aims at preparing children for preschool in their primary language however it's not a secondary language app in the traditional sense where one learns a second language and so i'm Emily the founder latinx experience as a translator well bet is a language acquisition teacher and my advisor for language development in children k through five our mentors to date have consisted of James Sheridan from Blackstone Legal Greg Feeley and Julie Stapleton from Temple University the financial model is feasible if launched in 22 with an expected revenue of about one million with a growth of 300 percent from 22 to 23 and 200 percent from 23 to 24 and so so far this past summer i've raised 15 000 in non-diluted funds and i'm in the process of outsourcing the app and hardware prototype development as we speak and i'm conducting market research using surveys and virtual interviews as well and this past summer belingo was selected for competitive blackstone fellowship which provided funding and business development resources as well and our intention is to launch by 2022 thank you Emily congratulations well done excellent okay for judges how about we go back to the Krista Jenny Cheryl Porter great bring you back up hi Emily this was really awesome and as an education investor although we focus on post-secondary i loved i love seeing your product i'm curious i get your focusing on influencers and earlier adapters to begin with but kind of how do you over time expect to reach your customers and of course with my lumina head on encouraging you to make this accessible to lower income families as well as how how you might be able to to do that yeah so just to touch on your first question we aim to reach the first group that i had mentioned so those millennial parents and then those ELL teachers directly through social media or also just like through word of mouth as well as trade shows and then we we would like to um bring it into schools where ELL is something or English as a second language ESL is commonly used there's a lot of bureaucracy with that so right now as we launch our products we would like to just begin with those millennial parents because we think that'll be just an easier market to like penetrate at the beginning and then for reaching social lower socioeconomic families we do implement that donate buy one buy one donate one platform so that way um the person who's purchasing it feels good about doing it and then also those who don't have the financial resources can still access it great thank you is it my turn i didn't keep track of the water yeah thank you um so i think having um a second or third language is such an important thing particularly as we become more global and we're traveling around and doing business around the world and while i don't um have the expertise around how you build that capability um in adult and children i do have a lot of experience as my daughter goes to a school where they teach three languages so i'm aware of a pain point that i hear all the time and that is the parents who don't speak a second language don't know what their kid like is it right is it they don't know what's going on so i'm wondering what support you provide to parents in this in your service model because they're not going to know how to support the child right so for families who just simply want their child to learn a secondary language or even possibly like a third language um we do aim to create our lessons in a way that it's interactive with the parents so there's activities where the parent can come in and they can help or just assist with the process good children also learn through play but they also learn when their parents are incorporated in their learning process so that's something that we're interested in incorporating and there's going to be like a reading section to that as well so we hope that parents are able to sit down reach their child and vice versa if you have any experts on that let me know because my whole little school is full of them yeah definitely thank you so much you're welcome thanks jenny share so yeah um i'd say well one what at the end of the day like inspire you to do this what keeps you going here because i think that's also a key motivator a lot of times when when things get rough during a startup and you know is there anything from tukovid too that in terms of tailwinds that you might have seen there that would be interesting thank you yeah so just personal family experiences um i have a very big family latino family latinx family um and i have cousins who speak both languages spanish and english and then some that don't and i've noticed that there's communication gaps with like our grandparents for example and that's just um an issue that is dealt with a lot of expatriate families who move to the u.s so i hope to strengthen those communication ties so that they like if i'm a child who only speaks english i can communicate with my grandma who only speaks that native language within my family because those are such important um relationships to have as well as speaking another language is great for business when you grow up you know to be able to um work for multinational companies and overseas as well all right that's our time thank you Emily good job thank you very well done now we're going to invite yaditza vodkas to the stage uh for lingo health hi yadita hi how are you great i see your slides so you're ready to go awesome it's really really great to be with you all today i'm your itza co-founder of lingo health and a proud first generation dominican immigrant ever since i learned how to speak english i've been the family interpreter care navigator going to all the doctor's appointments for my grandparents parents and everyone in between and i'm sure many of my fellow children of immigrants can relate here and so i'm building lingo health for our families because we deserve a better health care experience that honors our family's language and cultures our aging population is becoming more and more diverse the number of americans age 65 plus will double by 2060 and non-white seniors will make up almost half of this population with a whopping over 503 billion dollars in medicare spending alone and even in the midst of these demographic trends our health care system is just not doing enough to help meet the needs of our families of all immigrants who have been in the u.s for over 20 plus years and this includes my own parents 43 identify as not being english proficient and of those almost half report having poor health status and so this challenge really falls on us us young adults who are helping our loved ones with health care are doing so at a rate three times higher than our peers from native english-speaking households but we're not really given the tools to be meaningfully involved we've conducted over 270 discovery interviews to date that have really summed up this journey here on the screen our loved ones just don't feel welcomed by the health care system so they're really only using it when things get super serious for example my parents try to get care when they can fly back to home to the democratic republic and when they do see care here in the u.s it's usually emergency care they're sent home with instructions either in english or as we've talked to a lot of doctors who have admitted they just throw it into google translate and send patients on their way and our loved ones are left to figure this out by ourselves and meanwhile we're left to piece together what happened and how we can best support and so of course we deserve better and so we've set out on this journey my co-founder jessica and i have built a team of investors and advisors around us to be able to tackle the question that we've heard come up in every single one of our interviews what can i do next and so we're bridging the parts where this journey falls apart by building a digital health platform that supports our loved ones care in their language and preferred cultural context our long-term vision is really to become the trusted care provider that provides culturally affirming care in the u.s and we're starting with care coordination so our initial beta is a care coordination tool for multilingual families so being able to build for the english fluent and tech savvy millennial who supports their loved ones care and so you and your siblings for example can have one place to stay on top of helping your parents with their medications visits and any follow-up care meanwhile your loved one doesn't even have to download a new app we will communicate with them in their preferred language on their preferred channel and so for my mom it's undeniably what's app and so why now the pandemic of course has shed light on the health disparities that are facing our families on a national scale but those of us from our like these communities already knew this so in a recent survey when asked about what we as a country should prioritize 70% of latinas mentioned access to health care and so let's show the health care system that our families truly deserve better care i invite you to join our upcoming beta by going to this link it's launching later this year and sharing it with others i also encourage you to get in touch i'd love to connect thank you excellent thank you that it's uh very well done okay how about we go jenny, sharyl, and krista this time hey yiritsa i definitely can empathize with what you're trying to solve because i support my mom and her health care and it is definitely a nightmare scenario going on and so my question is health care is a highly regulated compliance landmine i'm curious what is like what are top compliance issues in this business model and how are you addressing them yeah so we're starting off with direct to consumer which right now doesn't require us to be HIPAA compliant but that's something i'm definitely familiar with as i was on the founding team of a digital health nonprofit and actually led their transition to becoming a HIPAA compliant organization so i definitely saw like that takes time it takes money and so that's something that we're starting early engaging with those same vendors finding new ones in order to do it in a way that is very cost effective as well as gets us able to move to the telemedicine piece much sooner because that's something that's definitely required great thank you thank you yeah would love to learn a little bit more uh Yiritsa about your betas kind of what uh what are the key features that you guys will have in order to make this as sticky as possible um a lot of times people try to go like on lasano or whatever and be organized with their lives but then you know practice is not as as clear so would be great to kind of see how you will retain folks that will be on the platform and what are the best features yeah so really what we're trying to do is try and try not to change as much of people's already like behaviors so we heard over and over people saying like i have a family whatsapp where mom will send pictures of her care instructions that she gets after a doctor's visit for example so we fit in nicely with that because we allow your loved ones to just send that directly to us and then we digitize it ourselves by being able to pull out the action items here are the things that you should be doing here's when mom should be set scheduling that follow-up appointment because a lot of these things are just falling through the gaps uh through the cracks excuse me and so by fitting into everyone's existing workflow we're not really trying to change too much behavior um as well as we are making it so it's like multi caregiver so everyone can have their own ownership of different pieces so you can coordinate as a family and kind of hold each other accountable too hi arita this is awesome and i really find your genesis story so compelling right i did not have that experience personally but i know lots of people who have um and i think that's really important so um like sheryl i was going to kind of ask you about how the the app gets used and you did answer part of my question so i was asking you know do physicians need to um engage with the app to put in information or not you know and so you explained how you get the medical information into the app but that still is assuming that there is a point person in the family that gets that information understands that information and then shares that um with with lingo health to then upload and so i'm curious are you have you thought about providing any supports or training um to to help the users actually use it as efficiently as possible yeah so because we're doing starting off with a closed beta we're really testing this onboarding piece so we're starting off by having videos and user manuals as well as offering phone calls to both like the actual user of the app and the patient so this is something i've done before at the last startup i was at is being able to like have that high touch onboarding model so that you can really get someone to fully understand what they're joining because it can be a little bit confusing for your parent for you to say hey i'm signing up for this app they're going to need your health information and so it's really building that trust early on and that's a privilege of being able to start off with a closed beta and then figure out how to scale that moving forward great well thank you your itza and thank you to the judges for all your comments and questions um for the judges just a quick reminder to um make sure that you're updating the excel spreadsheet that's online so that we can deliberate later on fantastic so moving on um Vanessa we'd like to have Vanessa come to the stage from deal engine hi Vanessa welcome up you're on mute sorry muted no problem okay when you're ready all right hello my name is Vanessa Archambu Morales co-founder and CTO of deal engine a data-driven equity crowdfunding platform for founders and investors where regardless of background or connections founders can achieve launch velocity i personally know the challenges early startup founders especially underrepresented founders based in finding traction for their company and securing that early money i'm a queer latina software engineer who years ago had a great idea for our startup but i had no accredited network to fundraise the friends of family around to get my idea off the ground so i put my idea back on the shelf and now i'm building the very platform that would have helped me an approach that can reshape how early startups get mentorship support and access to capital so who gets funded there are an estimated 25 million u.s entrepreneurs seeking investment 99.7 of which never achieved angel or vc investment of those that do get funding black and latinx founders only received 2.6 of total funding but equity crowdfunding is becoming a viable option for fundraising equity crowdfunding is a relatively new regulation that lets startups and private businesses raise capital from the crowd in exchange for a small bits of equity it is sec regulated and allows founders to raise amounts up to five million dollars so think kickstarter indiegogo but instead of getting swag in exchange for investment retail level investors get a small piece of the company they're investing in and it allows founders to fundraise from their own communities the two major pitfalls we've noticed in equity crowdfunding campaigns are one founders not yet having the team and product market fit needed for scaling and two founders in this pricing are overvaluing their companies in the early rays therefore making it more difficult to raise institutional investment down the road let's take a look at a real example of some crowdfunding campaign issues so this company ran a real campaign on one of the leading platforms and it has a beautiful and compelling marketing page most investment decisions are largely driven by the data presented a price per share of 43 cents and a minimum investment of a hundred dollars through these campaigns the company has raised almost two million dollars over the last two years but when you look at the data provided to the sec we learned that their monthly recurring revenues are only five thousand dollars based on their most recent 23 million dollar valuation the company is valued at more than 1200 times revenues there are other signs here that show a lack of a path to profitability and there are millions of retail investors hungry to invest in bold ideas and diverse teams with a landscape of high-driven crowdfunding campaigns how can they surface the business fundamentals to make an informed decision fuel engine wants to create a better crowdfunding platform one where we focus on compelling reasons for investability where investor decisions are driven by clear data about the company and its traction one where founders can establish their crowdfunding campaign on a solid foundation of knowledge insane economics from industry reports we know that team and product market fit account for 80 percent of startup failures and for this reason we built an analytical framework that measures those key drivers we roll all of these measures into our deal score which is an easy to understand measure of the current company traction and viability we identify high potential companies while also giving those founders the direction they need before any founder can create an equity crowdfunding campaign on our platform they enter their KPIs and metrics into our complementing crowdfunding readiness platform where we provide founders with tools resources and a guided path to critical traction and viability we provide step-by-step guides to founders based on their vertical and company stage and team chemistry assessments to ensure founders are building diverse and resilient teams founders can explore an array of fundraising options and resources in addition to the crowdfunding path and along the way we collect and analyze company data to provide feedback to the companies and updates to investors you'll have been launched our beta crowdfunding readiness platform in April and have currently held two cohorts where we have helped companies achieve wins such as fundraising and winning pitch events you're currently in start-outs growth lab accelerator and we have just this week confirmed our first partnerships to bring companies into our platform okay we're gonna have to stop there Vanessa thank you very much well done I think Cheryl is that proposed that you go first and then Krista and Jenny thank you uh yeah this is clearly up my alley we just announced our series be 150 million around today which is why i'm i'm i have three hours of gossip but um i know i've been i've been probably for the past three years and i've known that this is very very regulatory legal compliance heavy we spun out of angelists and used a lot of their legal and their team and their expertise in order to in order to kind of execute and and and it's also a marketplace right you have to both be able to core for great founders and you're also able to have to bring in investors and it's a volume game at the end of the day so my questions are twofold if you could don't mind telling me a little bit more about kind of the legal compliance side of things and how you're you're dealing with that because it has to be like a great legal team that will be dealing with the sec and funeral you kind of have to be like bfs with them and then the second part is more around how are you planning on dealing on both sides of the marketplace definitely so we are fundraising for our pre-seed and prepping for our seed next year so that we can cover our legal expenses to get um you know approved for the sec funeral we know it's a very complex and heavy kind of process and so we haven't launched our crowdfunding platform yet we're planning to do that at the end of next year and right now we are focusing on our crowdfunding readiness founder platform to help collect that data give founders some direction on how to fundraise and so currently instead of referring our founders to our own platform we are referring them out to the major players such as Republic Star Engine and getting the referral fee for that so we're trying to test out our data model first to make sure that's strong to be able to find signals for early success for founders and startups especially in different verticals so that we can be ready once we pave that whole road to open up our crowdfunding platform hopefully late next year and so to build that two-sided kind of marketplace in order to get founders into our platform um our initial go-to-market plan is we are creating partnerships with VCs and accelerators to accept their rejected deal flow uh because we know there's a lot of gems in there that maybe we're just too early if you can accept 10 companies what happens to company 11 12 all the way up to the the thousand company you know maybe they just need a little bit of nudge and a little bit of help to figure out their product market fit and to figure out the next steps in order to be a really good viable company and so we're bringing in those companies through those partnerships in order to build out our data model and to test out how well uh the response is to our help on our crowdfunding um readiness platform hi Vanessa um I I love that you're examining problems and challenges that have have bothered me for a long time right that this concentration of of capital going to the the few and then everybody else um just missing out um I like the part of your model that you're focusing on this TA and capacity building for the founders I think that is really really critical um but I'm curious how that could then affect your ability to scale um the the platform if you're doing all this more hands-on stuff yeah that's a great question and so it is a numbers game like Cheryl said and so um initially you know we are bringing in thousands and thousands and thousands of companies and we are separating out our two platforms uh and to be able to really focus on that initial platform to be able to give traction um and help companies like expand and grow right and our initial idea in the very beginning before we ever thought of the crowdfunding platform was just to be a resource for startups and founders uh to help them kind of achieve traction and viability but then we looked at the market and we're like well this isn't something that's scalable and so the revenue model that we thought of well if we're going to have thousands of companies and be referring them out to crowdfunding then hopefully we can get enough gems into our crowdfunding platform to be able to Vanessa we're going to have to call the time thank you for those questions and sorry Jenny we didn't get to you on this go around but congratulations Vanessa thank you thank you for all the questions excellent okay so for our seventh and final finalist um Claudia from Cali Bueno is going to smooth out our our final pitches hi Claudia hi yeah can you guys see me in one second yes just getting myself situated here okay when you're ready okay well thank you for having me here let me just put a one second guys thank you for being patient okay let's go I'm ready great well thank you for having me here I'm Claudia Mercado founder and CEO of Cali Bueno and Cali Bueno came about in about 2016 when my mother suffered an injury and we couldn't figure out how to really make her better and the only thing we found to help her was a cannabis topical so that created the desire for me to help other people that might be able to use cannabis for their health and well also having worked in the tech industry and realizing that we were only Latinos and Latinos were one person of the tech industry there was also another desire in me that was built to jump into this industry make an impact be loud be seen be known and create change hence Cali Bueno delivery I'm sorry Cali Bueno started in 2018 as a licensed micro business and we operate out of Oakland California and we hope that through cannabis we can make the world brighter currently as an operator we are part of an emerging growing market alone in 2020 California saw five million active consumers engaged in the industry both recreational and medicinal generating $4.4 billion in sales and the market also is creating a lot of revenue for the state of California for every $100 the consumer spends there's an additional $25 to $38 added to their bill which is great because a lot of that money the idea behind regulating industry that that money is going to go back to our communities however in the short term the problem is that it's leaving a lot of California's without access to cannabis because they don't have cannabis retailers only half of the counties in California allow cannabis retails to be there putting people's health at risk a lot of people are ending are having to go by the weed in the black market which is currently about a billion dollars and the reason for that is the high taxation and the lack of assets we also see some social and economic disparities within certain demographics like the Latino community the average household is $50,000 so using cannabis on a day-to-day basis for your health and well-being is is not really feasible financially but as an operator what we're really seeing and what's exciting us is the need for a lot of representation in how we can be a change agent you know although 39% of the California population of Latino only 1% of licenses are Latina owned and only 2% of brands are Latina owned so this is creating a great gap in disparity with the Latino community what we did again is we showed up to the industry we've been licensed to 2018 and we were just we just are fighting for survival and are making it making a stand but also showing people that we can make you know we can build great products we have our California branded products that has flour, pre-rolls, tinctures and we're making this accessible to our communities and also building community value add by bringing products directly to people's homes by launching our delivery service and we're able to make all of this work by our ability to really leverage technology and truly building community as a Latino and Latina who do players about the well-being of my community and others I am determined to make a change in this industry so we make it super simple for customers to come to us directly order online they can call us we speak Spanish retailers can order from us only pay wholesale prices so we're available in more retail locations our revenue model revenue model since day one has been sourced our own weed build relationship with farmers we have sourced over 1.3 thousand or over a thousand pounds from cannabis farms up north sold over a hundred thousand units and made over 1500 deliveries here in the Bay Area none of this could have been possible without our team but before we get into that you know the the target roadmap is really driven by our desire to be a company that creates impact we want to be in more stores we want to be seen we want to be known we want to let them know that they too can have a suit the table and that they can actually afford these products that they're if they're coming for companies they're a value line and again none of this could be possible without our team we have an advisor who has worked in Barclays Global Investments understands data understands systems Claudia thank you very much thank you congratulations very well thank you uh Hispanics and Philanthropy and so can I appreciate you guys excellent thanks Claudia um Jenny since we weren't able to get to you last why don't we start with you then Krista then Cheryl sure first of all I think the cannabis market is exploded and I often like just cringe when like our people are not in it and we should be more um because it's also like there's cannabis of everything products how are you differentiating obviously you're targeting Latino but like within that segment like how do you differentiate like how strong is your brand who's what yeah well our goal was to really care for Latinos but along the way you know we found that our brand actually has been really well received by the general population everybody loves our culture so the reason how we stand out is by being really value-driven so all of our flower comes from small family farms up in Northern California all the legacy operators that have been here before regulation started and we also only for our delivery we only only have products that don't have any corn syrup any dyes so we really dive deep into you know is this industry going to become like cold foods or are we going to have a bunch of liquor stores in our communities and that's really what drives me I think that we're at a point where we need to really dictate how we want people to partake in the industry and it has to be from a place of empathy and values great thank you so much thank you hi Claudia great job thank you I think this is fascinating I don't know anything about this this market but um you're making me really excited thank you it's uh it's it's like uh being entrepreneurs there it's let me tell you it's probably the most challenging industry there is I'm sure I'm sure so I have a question for you about the market and kind of market acceptance just curious you know and I see this within my own family right that younger people of course are more open to this willing to try and buy whereas older folks who might actually benefit for medical reasons are really resistant and still still see this as you know as something illegal that they would never do I'm kind of curious if you've noticed that in the marketplace and if so how would you then overcome that resistance yeah definitely so right now the average the average consumer in the regulated market it's 44 years old which means that it's a profession like and actually for cannabis pay those taxes engage with the delivery service um but the biggest consumers that are coming in the pipeline are the millennials the people that are you know kind of learning more about cannabis that want to actually take care of their health and find people like heliweno that have value added you know to their to their cannabis experience um but we are facing the traditional market the black market there's a lot of people that are younger unfortunately that are falling victim because they can't afford cannabis or people that are older that are fixed income as well um so we want to overcome it but let them show them that it's easy and that there's people like us that are willing to pass any savings that we can down to them yeah thanks so much Claudia and I love the fact that you know we have more Latinx brands being a part of this movement that a lot of times you know have uh really affected portionally our community so that's one um I'd say if anything uh what I guess from your background like what are the skills and you know things that you bring into the table that will allow for this to become like a billion dollar business right like what exactly but the team is also once again something that I always look at deep and so I would love to for you to get into that a little bit yeah well for me personally I'm personally passionate I am a consumer and I really you know like when my mom started using cannabis then all of her 10 sisters started using cannabis and um not in our heart my mom works and there's a lot of women like my mother who can use this that's that's my personal passion so I think my strength is not giving up I mean it's been four years we've been burglarized we've I mean so many things have happened that at any given time we could have quit and I think quitting would have been the easy way out so I think for me it's like I'm not stopping until we really make an impact because this is beyond me this is going to impact generations to come so that's what drives me um so with that Claudia we're going to conclude and thank you very much thank you for the pitch and presentation and judges thank you again for the wonderful comments and questions so that concludes the seven different presentations so we're going to move on to our deliberation and during our deliberation as mentioned before we will have actually a fireside chat I'm going to just share really quickly by screen so you give me one second here all right okay if we can put that really quickly up excellent so during our deliberation with the judges if the judges don't mind go on to the other video platform so that we can connect on that I'll meet you there in a few minutes but during that time we'll have a fireside chat between Christine Michi and Jennifer Garcia we will also have an opportunity that Christine will explain to you in terms of voting for the audience award it's a very exciting opportunity for you all in the audience to to vote on your favorite presentation and so right now I'm going to hand this off to Christine Michi who is a senior advisor for our organization at Hispanics and Philanthropy and she also runs her own social and hi everybody here we are Jennifer hi Christine how are you great so so you all should know in the audience it feels like it's just Jennifer and I having a one-on-one zoom but we know you're all watching and so thank you for being in the audience and participating um this has been so much fun and Jennifer and I in our own separate places have been watching along with you I've seen all these great ideas these great women and it's fun to be another pair talking about the same subject so Christine Michi with impactful and a senior advisor to Hispanics and Philanthropy and so proud and grateful to introduce Jennifer Garcia who's the chief operating officer of Elban which is a great acronym and it stands for Latino business action network and I'll tell you that those of us in this work around social change of any type need to be able to measure things right they say what what's measured is can be improved and Elban and the folks that Jennifer works with are one of the go-to organizations for data about improvements and change the Latinx community specifically around business and economic resiliency so Jennifer I'd love you to give us get the audience a quick overview of what Elban is and does and we'll get into how that relates to what we just saw and what is happening well if I could just start Christine by commending all of the seven women that just presented and pitched that was phenomenal and if it shows me anything which it showed me much but one thing is to say that our community is so diverse we are not a monolithic community where we have the stereotypical Latino or Latino owned businesses but what did I see it range from travel app to ed tech to fintech you know and kind of everything in between cannabis which is really exciting and I just want to say rock on women you guys did phenomenal in your presentation well a little bit about Latino business action network we are a nonprofit that collaborates with Stanford University and we have a mission and a focus of strengthening the United States and our lens is Latino entrepreneurship and so how do we do that we have three different areas of focus one is research second is education and the third is ecosystem development so on the research side Christine you mentioned we are the producers of the most robust research on Latino entrepreneurship our goal is to understand what is impacting you as Latino and Latino business owners what are the trends what are the factors contributing and impeding growth and disseminating that information into the hands of policymakers corporate leaders business leaders anybody that has the ability to shape environments that are conducive to growth that's the research side on the education side this is probably what we are most known for every twice a year we facilitate a scaling program at stanford graduate school of business where we go out and we recruit Latina and Latino business owners from across the country this is a nationwide program and they come to stanford to participate in an eight-week online scaling program taught by stanford professors augmented by alban you get a one-on-one mentor you get tons of information assignments and education around access to capital um so i'm just going to put the requirements out there because i'm sure there's many of you on this call it could qualify is one you have to be Latino owned business headquartered in the united states and then the third requirement is that you have to have 500 000 in external funding so that's our pocket of startups or you have to have a million dollars in annual revenue or greater two days to give you a sense we have 800 alumni from across the country and if i could just give a shout out to the last one claudia who you just heard she is one of our alums from our program and and really what does it do it pushes you to scale to scale your business it provides you with the business principles to take your company to the next level fantastic thanks so did you get to say all three or did i cut you i did it but i saw this message from alex i don't know if you want to insert alex's note awesome just a verbal shout out to go along with what you can see there it is time and you're available to jump into the platform and vote for your favorite of the seven women that you just saw there will be a 5000 our audience award so you could be a part of making that money move by voting now and so i'll send it back to jennifer for the third item i do want to i want to jump onto your your 800 alumni from the scaling project if i'm if i read correctly they have a combined income of four billion um an annual revenue that the founders and enterprises that have been through the program the scaling program for those of you thinking about do you want to jump in on that it sounds like a very successful model and a very successful program absolutely absolutely and i and i say that that is our signature program that's our gateway into our network but our third pillar which is ecosystem development starts with those 800 alumni right so we take our 800 alumni we take a network of mentors a network of our capital providers and we ask ourselves how do we continue to create growth pathways that are empowering nothing on business owners to continue to scale because we know scale doesn't happen in a program it doesn't happen in eight weeks but it's a journey and our ecosystem is designed to be with you in that journey to equip you throughout your journey of scale so within the ecosystem development there's everything from capacity building to digital transformation supplier diversity access to capital definitely is a pivotal element in that but beyond that is networks right it is now that you were connected to 800 other alumni from across the country who in a moment's notice is there to support looking to collaborate looking to do business with each other to find business for each other it's just an amazing professional network i love it and you know that's how business has always been done right and how it's done day in and day out and this is creating for the latinx community that vibrant network to deliver to them and each other these sort of services and supports so folks in terms of a statistic that we can kind of hang the discussion on around which we were just watching these wonderful founders less than two percent of all venture dollars go to latinx owned businesses two percent so and what we've talked about before jennifer and i'd love you to say a little bit more about now is you know it's not because they're riskier they're maybe perceived you know perceptions reality problem right so elban is in the business of breaking down those perceptions with reality with introductions to women like these because their their growth rate is comparable their credit worthiness is comparable there's perhaps just for some some perception that needs to be broken down so tell us how elban works on that yeah and if i could just really highlight the opportunity here both from um from entrepreneurs i think this is important for you to understand this in your own mindset but also for capital providers both on the debt and the equity that there is an investment opportunity and the investment not opportunity is not only for an ROI on your investment but it is the country's opportunity so let me tell you that if if we would get latino owned businesses to perform at the average rate of non latino owned businesses of white owned businesses if they were equally generated if they were generating an equal amount of revenue not not anything greater just on par that would generate an additional 1.4 trillion dollars um to the country's economy 1.4 trillion dollars now when we think about the investment opportunity as you mentioned latino owned businesses are oftentimes outpacing the revenue growth and on par with their credit riskiness as other non latino businesses and so there was a there was a comment that is just so good that i have to share is when you're thinking about investment opportunities you cannot look east when you're looking for a sunset right so you have to be intentional about finding these latino owned businesses and great investment opportunities because they're out there they're not they do not offer any other risky um riskiness than their counterparts and they certainly are as we've seen today innovative they're persistent they persevere they have that grit in them and all in all just amazing ingenuity in what we think today and and not only today but that are out there in our community i love it and i i guess maybe the corollary would be true you don't look west if you're looking for a sunrise like you need to look in the right place for what you're looking for and what we're showing now what elban is showing and what this pitch competition is showing is that these opportunities and these great ideas and great great founders are everywhere i was interested that the um elban kind of mission statement doesn't start by talking about businesses it talks about strengthening the us by improving the lives of latinos latinx people you could just stop period there and then you know different organizations and different people could do different things your focus is on the business opportunities but the goal is still to strengthen the us kind of full stop and then how by improving the lives of latinos i'm interested in that in that uh kind of foundational statement i'm so glad you asked yes you're absolutely right there are so many amazing organizations that are impacting the lives of latinos that are impacting the us and why we chose to specifically focus on entrepreneurs and and have that entrepreneurship lens here is what we know the data tells us that that latinos are the fastest growing business unit right we are starting businesses at a faster pace in any other segment we also know unfortunately that latino owned businesses tend to stay small so only three percent of latino owned businesses ever reach a million dollars in annual revenue or greater we believe that if we are able to create and empower businesses to become really large businesses the ripple effect on that is amazing right we are we are by creating large businesses we are creating wealth we are creating general wealth generational wealth um latino owned businesses would then more likely would would most likely they were being more likely to promote other latinos into senior leadership roles they would be creating more jobs for our economy and they would be investing back into the communities and where they live and serve so when we have large latino owned businesses they have more influence they have more clout within their community they are often more involved in policies and in very high level networks and so we believe that when we when we lift up this community of a growing community a young fast-paced latino community that is growing and business segments that is the fastest creators we the ripple effect then has an overall positive tremendous effect on the entire country i love it i was thinking and and you may recall this statistic or maybe outdated but i think i heard once that the median household net worth of a family with a business associated with it broadly is about one and a half times but in the latino community it's about three times just because there's there's more disparity the baseline is lower and the opportunity is greater that closing the racial wealth gap is something that's gotten some attention over the course of the last year and a half the pandemic and the racial reckoning can you talk a little bit about the racial wealth gap and how small business ownership and scaling of enterprises fits into that yeah well here's here's the thing when i when we think about latinos we are a segment that is probably comes from less educated parents right just by nature of of our background and what we've experienced and so many immigrants coming we may not have the same social capital that other other segments have and so when you don't have the social capital you don't have the networks right you don't have the networks you don't pick up a phone and say oh my you know my tennis coach is also the banker at xyz and i'm going to call him and ask him for a loan or you know i know the founder of xyz and so we are building that and that will be built over time but it is so important right now for us to be intentional about building a social capital because when we have social capital it is exponential right if i am connected to someone the ripple effect and the impact of me sharing that information or that introduction down to the second and third connection really becomes a powerful element in the the elevation of the entire community and so when we think about you know the wealth gap and the racial wealth gap a lot of that stems from the social capital that we do or do not have and another reason why i would encourage all of the business owners that might be listening on on this call right now how important it is to be plugged in to a professional network i invite you to take a look at elban if i could put my plug there take a look at elban but take a look at local you know local networks trade organizations anything that's going to increase your network and increase your social capital well i was just looking at your name again your last name is network right so right you're intentional about saying um if that isn't there already we can build it which is how networks have always i mean that is the case right ecosystems and networks are built by those in it clearly and that's exactly what we've known we had to do and i think there is a movement here on the vc space as well right if it if the current structure and framework is not serving our community let's build it and that's what we've seen some of these latino owned um or latino led uh vc firms really focusing on diverse communities diverse founders or latinx founders specifically and we need to do that right we need to have the ability to say let's create that doesn't exist for us let's create it and we're seeing that um we definitely want to accelerate that pace and we want to break through in some of the traditional um norms as well but it's certainly something that we can do is create i love it i'm thinking for different people in the audience from different categories i'm thinking we've talked about small business owners and encouraging them to check out the website check out possibly being in a cohort um which i think spring is the next application for the scaling program we've talked to investors saying you know keep these kinds of businesses in mind and i'm wondering um jennifer if there is like is would you talk to your financial advisor and say hey i want to find latino owned businesses is that a conversation that investors should be having here yeah let me if i could just add a couple things to what you just said there christine so for anyone that is you know interested in scaling their business and taking their business to the next level that may qualify um we are accepting applications now so i would encourage you to go onto our website it is the stamp for latino scaling program one of the things that we always get right the question is how much does it cost the program is valued at over 11 000 but we want to remove any cost barrier and so the tuition cost to participate in the eight week program will be $2 000 in 2022 so it is very affordable i would encourage you to get your application in as soon as possible we will have rolling admittance um and then the second question is how do we as elban how do we really connect with other vcs and other organizations that are trying to serve latino businesses across the country both for investment purposes or otherwise i welcome relationships and conversations i think we need to link arms and be fluid oftentimes i say we have such a pot of gold of these amazing companies and there's these vc companies that are looking to connect and find you know gems we need to be able to have that fluid conversation and referral and and the reverse is true also right there's some vc communities that come in con connection with some really great companies that would qualify for our program and there can be that um inner dialogue between the organization so for anyone listening um certainly open to conversations and collaboration on that regard i love it and and i feel like you know this is sort of this is this is the american story right and this is the next wave of the american story creating these opportunities and creating a rich and vibrant ecosystem to support them so thank you jennifer so much for being part of today it's gonna be really exciting to see folks don't forget to vote probably there's just a minute left to to get your vote in for the crowd um prize and um we'll be hearing what our judges have to say thank you christine thanks jennifer all right well thank you um so we we just concluded deliberation as you can imagine it was really really hard um to be able to um get to just uh three awardees um you know i think part of the goal here is really to make sure that we're showcasing all seven of these fantastic talented latina entrepreneurs um and just we want to give a congratulations to all of them uh for really wonderful presentations but also uh for their startups their did the start design um and uh we look forward to seeing them in years to come uh with their successes um so what we're gonna do now is we are going to have each of the judges uh present one of the awards we're gonna go in uh reverse order so we're gonna go um third second then audience and then first um so i'd like to invite jenny um to tell us about the uh third place winner great was you mentioned it was a very hard process and i think we landed on some good decisions but everybody did phenomenal um but when we went through the scores and deliberated our third place winner is marianne with pum and a couple of feedback points so hooray hooray that pitch was just really well done it was um like you hit all the highlights the the problem statement the solution um very impressed you have 120 years of combined experience like your you have a you were able to answer the questions around customer experience and so we see a huge potential here so we want to congratulate you and um let you know we support you in this journey um of bringing a solution to many particularly working families who have to you know be away from their kid during the day um and have that worry so congratulations excellent yay uh unfortunately can't have you can't find you on the screen so but we know you're out there um marianne and congratulations okay so now we're gonna go um onto the second award um and sharyl uh will be presenting yeah um it's an honor once again to even listen to these pitches and um it was hard right so um the second place winner right here is lingo health uh your it's i think uh what you have uh you know really uh paid for for us was something that came from your personal experience uh you have already been uh testing it out and figuring what will be the best solution for this massive you know problem that i feel many of us uh feel as well and so um continue going i hope this helps a little bit and thank you once again for pitching thank you sharyl yep and congratulations again uh irith uh and lingo health wonderful job um so we uh we're gonna skip the audience award really quick because we haven't figured out the vote yet so oh we'll come back to that in a second um so let's go to uh the first award christa sure well i echo all of the other judges comments and how amazing all of these women founders are and the exciting products and services that they offer um so our uh the first place award goes to menstrual mates um we think that you've got a really great understanding of the problem and of customer needs it's a really cool product right never seen anything like this um we love the sustainability aspects of the product and now speaking just for me and i am normally a very cynical person but i think that this could actually change the world in in a significant and important way that's a really great great product excellent thank you christa yep and then yep congratulations that's wonderful i'm really excited for you cindy and so now i have the pleasure of letting everybody know the audience award and that will be to greeter with 49 percent of the vote congratulations greeter vanessa well done very exciting i am just going to do one last quick share of my slides so that i can close this out really quick um i know we're at time or just a little bit over time but you know none of this could happen without the wonderful um support of socap the technical team everybody getting us on here so thank you very much for socap for partnering with us on this judges all three of you are fantastic leaders in our uh in our ecosystem um your role models and it was really exciting to have all three of you um join us today and volunteer your time and thoughts um and thanks to the audience for joining us and and really congratulations to all the teams and founders like i said before you know we're excited for you this is a great opportunity to showcase and amplify what a wonderful talented pool of latinas we have in the startup community and you know for the audience out there let's make sure that we're amplifying these seven all of them are fantastic and doing really really great stuff so with that i'm going to close out and thank everybody appreciate it enjoy the rest of socap