Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month
Happy Hispanic Heritage Month! Chingona Ventures is proud to be a Latina founded and operated fund. Today, only 2% of venture capital funding goes to Latinx founders. With 30% of our founders being Latinx, our portfolio reflects our values and our belief in the untapped market potential of the growing number of the Latinx community. We are honored to have invested in several badass Latinx founders across Fund I and Fund II. In recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month, we will be spotlighting these extraordinary entrepreneurs and the businesses they are building.
Read below to hear what our portfolio company founders are spearheading:
Manuela Seve (CEO) and Renata Thome (CCO) of Alpha’a
Let’s hear it for the Chingonas making waves in the art world! Manuela is a finance veteran whose passion for artwork and entrepreneurship inspired her to create the world’s largest art collective. Manuela started her career in the institutional investment space and drew inspiration from growing up with an art dealer father and artist mother, working her first job at her father’s gallery, Galleria de Arte Ipanema. Renata dedicated her career to making art more accessible to new audiences and supporting working artists. She started her career in the Latin American Art department at Christie’s New York, before moving to David Zwirner gallery. She and Manuela started Alpha’a with the objective to “empower artists and other players in the art market, so [they] could challenge the rules of being an art connoisseur” and “Alpha’a has been the living proof that this can happen.”
Alex Nucci, CEO of Blanket
As Alex puts it best, “Blanket helps you book more demos” and helps customers “prospect, email, build landing pages, and schedule calls for your sales reps.” Alex has previously worked in sales and marketing for Clutch and Shyp. He sees Blanket as a tool that helps get more qualified leads and helps organizations reach their audience, generate interest, and analyze results within just one tool. The name for the company came from the idea that the platform helps cover (blanket) all of “your Total Addressable Market (TAM).”
Ruben Harris, CEO of Career Karma
The road to building Career Karma was no small feat! Ruben broke into investment banking with no connections, connected with top venture capitalists through Twitter, landed a job in San Francisco 3 weeks after booking a one-way ticket, then built an audience for Career Karma before building a product. Career Karma is the easiest way to find a job training program online. They have helped over 2.5 million workers navigate their careers every month through advice and coaching, and their team is backed by the world’s top investors like YCombinator, Top Tier Ventures, Initialized Capital, Softbank, Google Ventures and Kapor Capital (to name a few), and just raised $40 million in Series B funding.
Ruben Arturo Garcia, CEO of Certiverse
Ruben is the former founder & CEO of Innovative Exams, has 20+ years experience in education, and is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago (B.S. Business). His mission is to “help learners reach their own goals through technology that enables a wider and more affordable range of certifications.” Certiverse leverages proprietary technology and proven, economic-based crowdsourcing models to develop high-quality certification exams.
Osvaldo Montelongo, CEO of ConnectCareHero
Osvaldo is an experienced bilingual professional in global brand marketing, with over 10 years of marketing experience. He loves all things that include: consumer brand marketing, Strategic Business Planning, Emerging markets, Oral-Care Products, Paint & Coatings Products, and much more. As a first-generation Latino, he also loves initiatives that help promote longevity & aging, diversity and equality. His passions led him to create ConnectCareHero — a digital platform that powers social engagement for older adults, through curated programming to improve overall health and combat social isolation. Their mission is to deliver quality programming to under-resourced and minority communities.
Susie Jaramillo, CEO of Encantos
As a graduate of the Pratt Institute, she took her creativity and formed Vox Profero, an advertising agency. Susie recognized that as a “Latina mom exposed to songs and traditions from both the US and native Venezuela” she found it hard to find books that reminded her of the nursery rhymes she grew up with. She then went on to co-found Encantos with her husband, Steven Wolfe Pereira. Encantos PBC is an award-winning children’s entertainment company. Named by Fast Company as one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies, Encantos focuses on diverse stories and characters and brings them to life through apps, books, content, consumer products, and more. Its properties include the #1 bilingual preschool brand Canticos, the award-winning Tiny Travelers series, and the newly launched Skeletina.
Richie Serna, CEO of Finix
According to Richie, “the next generation of billion dollar payments companies aren’t going to look like Stripe or Square. They’re going to be vertical-specific software companies with payments layered into them. What you start to see is that payments [are] seeping deeper into software.” Richie started his career as a management consultant, and then left it all behind to move to San Francisco and learn to code. After sharpening his engineering skills at a startup, Serna took the leap to build one of his own: Finix, a payments infrastructure platform that has raised a total of $133 million to bring payments technology to a wide range of customers. Finix makes it easy for software platforms to process payments while increasing revenue and reducing costs. Read more about Finix in our latest article as well.
Adrian J. (AJ) DeLeón (CEO) and Luis Fernando DeLeon (CPO) of Innovare
Innovare disrupts the status quo with cutting-edge analytics, education management and strategic planning technology, expert support rooted in continuous improvement, and through fostering collaboration among leaders in education and all other social impact-focused organizations. AJ brings his 15+ years of experience in the educational ecosystem as a former administrator, school improvement coach, and data strategist. He has also participated in programs like Education Pioneers, the Surge Institute Fellowship, and Stanford/LBAN’s Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative. Luis is a former engineer and consultant with 12+ years of experience in product development, and product & internal operations. He previously worked at Google and Accenture, helping deliver stellar products. We love their commitment to building a more inclusive education system rooted in their Hispanic Heritage!
Daniela Corrente (CEO) and Alejandro Quilici (CMO) of Reel
Daniela believes that “financial independence starts with seeing the potential of your cash flow and [this is] what we focus on at Reel.” She hopes that Reel shows “people that they have the power, with their cash-flow, to make their aspirations a reality.” Before Reel, Daniela was a marketer working for some of the top global ad agencies and focused mainly on consumer products. Her fascination for consumer behavior led her to a marketing career and ultimately to starting Reel. Alejandro has 7+ years of experience in the copywriting and ads space — and is an avid surfer. Together, they created Reel — a platform that makes it simple for people to start a savings plan for anything they want, so they can own what they love debt-free.
Nestor Hugo Solari (CEO), Julio Erdos (COO), Ivan Arambula (VP of Engineering) of Sigo Seguros
Sigo Seguros is also the only insurance company in the United States that can digitally onboard Hispanic customers in their native language — providing full Spanish language support to Spanish speakers. Nestor comes from a background in investment banking, with an MBA from Wharton and started Sigo while in business school after seeing his family struggling to buy auto insurance. Julio also has a business background after working at Signpost, consulting at Bain, and getting his MBA at Wharton. Ivan brings his tech expertise as he was a software engineer at One Month and One Step Software.
Beatriz Acevedo, CEO of SUMA Wealth
Beatriz began her career as a young radio and television host. Her work has earned her three Emmy Awards, an MTV Music Video Award, two Streamy Awards, a Media Correspondent Award, among others. She has also created a variety of branded content and marketing campaigns targeting millennial and GenZ youth for numerous blue-chip brands. Beatriz was the co-founder and President of mitú, the leading digital media brand for young Latinos in the U.S. Under her leadership, she went on to raise $52M in funding, led by some of the most successful venture capital groups in California. Her latest fintech start-up, Suma Wealth, focuses on empowering Latinos via in-culture financial content, fintech products, and experiences to gain control of their economic power and build wealth.
