My Startup Life
After four years of the most enriching and nerve-wrecking professional experience of my life, I have gathered the guts to sharing my [very personal] Startup story.
I have been a TV producer for over a decade, my expertise is sports original content in Spanish. I am also passionate about art and have been a sculptor for over 20 years; why this last sentence is relevant will become obvious later in my text.
Back in 2014 I started a conversation with the then leaders at my last corporate job, I told them TV as we knew it was pretty much dead and that if we wanted to reach out to our audience, we should go mobile.
They gave so many excuses: “How does that even work? how are we going to control that? what about distribution rights? what about our partners? who is going to watch that?” and ultimately, they decided the Latino audience was neither ready nor relevant enough to the network, so over and out.
That’s why back in 2015 I decided to quit my job as an Emmy nominated TV producer in order to start my own company: VozTV. The idea is simple: brief, engaging sports content in Spanish for the 300+M of latinos around the world, in an app.
I put together a team of the most talented and amazing people in the industry, that gave me their time, talent, creativity and allowed themselves to dream with me of a better, democratic sports content for the audience we very much love and respect.

I know content is not enough, so I got onboard an amazing CTO, who developed from scratch original streaming video technology that works even in challenging connections, knowing many Hispanic countries do not have the best connections yet.
VozTV’s CTO’s talent got us to launch together with the new generation of AppleTV in November 2015. We were on top of the moon.
We created hundreds of original 60-sec clips: interviews, analysis, recaps, original stories and strategically started with a strong social media presence. Over the course of 2 years we achieved 5K+ app downloads, 200K+ followers in all social media platforms combined, and in our peak our content reached out to over 3.5M people all over the world, but mainly in Mexico, Chile, the US, Spain, Argentina and El Salvador.
We started getting requests from people around the world: “hey! talk about soccer in El Salvador!” “Venezuela has an amazing basketball team!” “Talk about Querétaro and Atlas” “We want NFL in Spanish” We were onto something, we were inspired and motivated.
I personally met with as many sports teams as I could in Mexico and the US, selling them the speech of content created in Spanish for Latinos by Latinos and global distribution. Lots of teams and leagues gave us free access to their videos and showed support in many ways. We were granted media credentials for very important tournaments. Things were looking great.
In between traveling, meeting with teams and leagues, assigning stories, producing, editing, coordinating and uploading materials, I educated myself in the startup world, I attended Startup Grind in San Francisco and in Los Angeles, I went to so many fireside chats in venues like the headquarters of Google and Twitter, I networked as much as I could, even when I didn’t feel like networking.
I created a pitch deck, something I have never heard about before so the first one was a 30-page book that sloppily said everything and nothing about us. That thing evolved over the years to a very decent 10-page document that I distributed dozens times to investors and brands.
I pitched to dozens of VC’s, I shared my idea with over a hundred of fellow startuppers, I applied to a fair amount of accelerators in the US and overseas, and although everyone agreed on how great the idea is, no one invested one cent. No one.
My last effort was earlier 2018 with a bay area accelerator that rejected me without explanation (nobody actually gives you feedback for a no) but I insisted for feedback. After 10 minutes of back and forth, the answer was in a few words: “Nobody is really interested in the Latino audience. There’s no money there.”
I was shocked to hear what I knew deep in my heart was the true reason for being rejected over and over again. Very few investors take the Latino audience seriously, and of course being just me pushing forward VozTV (after 2 years of work with no pay people rightfully left) this feedback disarmed me to the core.
That meant my work had to be deeper in the roots, changing the very core of the industry, demonstrating that us Latinos are in fact very relevant… but I was tired. I put all my blood, sweat and tears in this project, believing that the market was ready for my startup but it was in fact, far behind in the conversation. I made the very hard decision to putting everything aside.
But, what is left to do when you decided to take the leap to the startup world? that decision changes you. I no longer belonged in the corporate world and the very thought of going back to working for somebody else made me hyperventilate.
So I decided to do something that truly made me happy, regardless. After some thoughts I dug deep in myself and revisited my sculptor identity, which lead me to creating a character. Yes. A character inspired by every person, book and other characters I have liked throughout my life.
Thus, a cat was born. A rag doll cat made of all the possible combinations of fabrics. A cool, nonchalant cat that likes good food, traveling, arts, reading and listening to friends. A cool, skinny, soft and cuddly representation of who would you be if you were a cat.
The name? Chiquimiau [Cheekee-meow]. The objective? be fun, free, creative… be who you would be if you were a cat. Unapologetic, elegant, fun, classy, crazy, bohemian. Appealing to both kids and grownups.
You can either choose from our designs or design your own. Are you a photographer? I can make a Chiquimiau photographer for you. Are you the girliest girl? I will make a Chiquimiau ballerina with eyelashes and a tutu. Are you a rock climber? I will make a mini version of a Chiquimiau for you to carry around. I take my time, but so far my customers patiently wait.





Making sense of this big twist in my Startup life is kind of hard, so let me say that we have not advertised and still have sold over 100 Chiquimiaus in Mexico, the US, Canada and Asia. The Chiquimiaus I have made have enlightened the lives of many kids and grown ups equally in a very short time.
We just launched our website www.chiquimiau.com and are getting orders without any supernatural effort. We have revenue, and for such a small operation like Chiquimiau that is wonderful.
On top of that, I have learnt my lesson: I am not rushing to put together a pitch deck nor going to stress out about investors, fast pitch nights, meetings, an app, producing overseas or massive-hiring people. We have a goal of improving our product, innovate, research, observe and go with the flow.
After all the ups and downs of founding VozTV, putting so much work and looking for it to be approved by a third party that never did, I decided to pursuit what I approve, what truly makes me happy and that makes a positive impact in life. I am very happy making Chiquimiaus, being able to accompany wonderful children, grown ups and entire families in their dreams and I am in a way a provider of happiness.
I feel very accomplished by creating a Chiquimiau for a little girl in Los Angeles and for a mom in Singapore. I am very satisfied that I can take people by the hand and put them back in touch with their inner child, bringing back role playing with a toy that still has very little technology involved yet triggers creativity, imagination, empathy, curiosity and hours of pure fun.
Yes, there are still days when I daydream VozTV takes off and I can make that dream come true, because I don’t think VozTV is a good idea, I know it. I know it works, but the industry has still a lot to learn and that is a job I cannot do by myself.
What I can do is something that truly makes me happy, gets me some money and makes me feel very well about my role in the world.
Because life is too damn short, especially a Startup life.
