I want to share with you a little bit of who I am and how I ended up co-founding Fuerza Ventures.
I am a first-generation American whose family is from Mexico and who is privileged to be the first in his family to fully comprehend the concept of investing.
I have two passions: innovative technology and providing value to others. I am a passionate problem solver who thrives in mapping challenges to solutions to help others achieve their goals.
I grew up in the Silicon Valley and when I was young, my mom bought our first computer, an IBM Aptiva, at a yard sale. My passion for technology naturally grew and I became the first in my family to graduate from a four-year institution and have a job in corporate America.
After graduating from UC Davis in 2015, my first job was working at Oracle as a License Consultant for two years where I learned the fundamentals of databases, business intelligence, and created a chapter for an Employee Resource Group from the ground up.
However, 2017 proved to be a transformative year when I was impacted by layoffs at Oracle. I took some time to evaluate my options and realized that I had to take drastic action if I was going to revamp my career, especially if I wanted to get into Data Science and attain stability quickly.
During that year, I completed a Data Science bootcamp in New York City, had the chance to work with Qualityanalytics.io on a contract, and completed a Salesforce Administrator bootcamp (Careerforce) all while living in San Francisco on my fraternity house’s couch. Money was tight!
Later that year, I also co-founded the Latinx in AI Coalition and became a Salesforce consultant with SaaScend giving me the opportunity to work with various SaaS startup companies.
During this time, one opportunity I am truly grateful for is spending $10 to attend an IoT pitch competition hosted by ReadWrite labs, as I was very interested in IoT. I was hesitant due to my financial situation but this ended up paying off as I met the Founder of Bay Angels, Roger King. He was one of the competition judges and he mentioned that he utilizes volunteer analysts at his syndicate. After hearing this, I expressed my interest, went through the interview process and became a volunteer analyst.
I was an integral piece of developing Bay Angels’ growth strategies, organizational development, corporate partnerships, and pitch presentation events. This experience helped me develop a deep knowledge of venture capital investment terms, from pre-seed rounds to later rounds. During this time, I was also exposed to business development strategies to help startups scale and achieve their milestones.
I have been interested in entrepreneurship since I was in college but haven’t found that breakthrough idea that I want to pursue as a founder. I have, however, seen various founders, especially those of Color, incubate groundbreaking ideas that I would like to support.
Most of the time, that support comes in the form of financial investments that help build a runway. However, underrepresented founders have to work twice as hard for this financial investment, as they do not typically have a “family and friends” round.
I want to support innovative ideas by understanding the potential impact new companies are creating. By understanding the impact, I can educate and bring awareness to my community as new technologies will displace many people from underprivileged backgrounds. In addition, I want to be a part of venture capital to support founders from underrepresented communities as even in VC, my community is not fully represented.
“Only 2% Of VC-Backed Startups Are Led By Latinx Founders” (Forbes)
One day after chatting with my friend Isaiah about my interests, we decided that we should build a venture capital firm one day. It quickly became a reality with Fuerza Ventures as our passions aligned on helping our communities in this space.
As a consultant for the past 5 years, I’ve been exposed to the latest AI/ML and cloud technologies and spend much of my time recommending solutions to a large variety of verticals and company sizes. These experiences have given me exposure to the different pain points seen in different industries. Technology changes rapidly and I have been able to quickly master them as I have obtained over 10 technical certifications in the past three years.
Given my experiences, I want to share my expertise in technology with our community, as well as what it’s like to build a venture from the ground up, share advice with and support founders of diverse backgrounds who are building innovative solutions. Ultimately, I want to level the playing field.
I want to be able to give a voice to our community in order to see it succeed and thrive in the same ecosystem that has excluded our voices from the beginning.
“Fuerza” is the Spanish word for Strength and I look forward to helping strengthen founders, aspiring investors, and the community.
