The Latino Investable Opportunity x Chingona Ventures: Highlighting our Latinx CEOs
In my last article, I kicked off Chingona’s Hispanic Heritage Month celebration by talking about the Latino Investable Opportunity. The chart below shows how some of our portfolio companies fall into these three Latino Investable Opportunity categories.
To continue our celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, I wanted to highlight the current Latinx CEOs in the Chingona portfolio (the left and center side of the visual above), which include Manuela Seve (alpha’a), Ruben Garcia (Certiverse), Richie Serna (Finix), AJ DeLeon (Innovare), Ruben Harris (Career Karma), Susie Jaramillo (Encantos), Osvaldo Montelongo (ConnectCareHero), Beatriz Acevedo (Suma Wealth), Nestor Solari (Sigo Seguros), and Sandra LaPlante (Papaya). Learn more about them below!
Latinx Founders Running Venture-Backed Businesses:
Manuela Seve, CEO of alphaa.io
About Manuela: 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. Manuela is a finance veteran whose passion for artwork and entrepreneurship inspired her to create businesses connecting the physical and digital worlds, and rethinking asset ownership via blockchain certification, licensing, and dropshipping. Last year, she was named as one of the most influential Latinos in the world by Bloomberg.
About alpha’a: Alpha’a is an enterprise SaaS solution solving for authenticity, resale, and community building through web3 tools. The Alphaa.io API addresses authenticity, resale, and community-building in various sectors.
Ruben Garcia, CEO of Certiverse
About Ruben: Ruben is a 2x founder with 20+ years of experience in education. His mission is to “help learners reach their own goals through technology that enables a wider and more affordable range of certifications.”
About Ceritverse: Certivere is a test development platform based on psychometric science that streamlines test design and delivery. Certiverse’s online platform empowers organizations of any size or testing experience to develop high‑quality exams in weeks, not months, at an average of 80% savings versus traditional methods.
Richie Serna, CEO of Finix
About Richie: Before launching Finix, Richie held roles as an engineer at Balanced and finance director and campaign manager for Emanuel Pleitez’s mayoral campaign. He has also held roles in investment banking and management consulting.
About Finix: Finix is a payments infrastructure provider for companies that seek to embed payments, create better user experience for customers, and generate a new revenue stream.
Venture-Backed Latinx Founders Targetting Latinx Populations and/or End Users
About AJ: AJ brings his 15+ years of experience in the educational ecosystem as a former senior administrator, education consultant, school improvement coach, and data strategist. His diverse experience spans education leadership, data analysis, and strategic planning.
About Innovare: Innovare provides an all-in-one data, strategy, and project management app InnoTM which empowers education and NGO leaders to positively impact students and communities
Ruben Harris, CEO of Career Karma
About Ruben: 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, and then built an audience for Career Karma before building a product.
About Career Karma: Career Karma is a mobile platform that houses a community of career switchers and job seekers looking to break into tech. 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.
Susie Jaramillo, CEO of Encantos
About Susie: Susie Jaramillo is an Emmy-nominated director, artist, storyteller, entrepreneur, and mom. 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.
About Encantos: 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.
Osvaldo Montelongo, CEO of ConnectCareHero
About Osvaldo: Osvaldo is a first-generation Latino passionate about initiatives that help promote longevity & aging, diversity, and equality. He has been working in the senior living space for 7+ years.
About ConnectCareHero: ConnectCareHero — a digital platform that powers social engagement for older adults, through curated programming to improve overall health and combat social isolation.
Beatriz Acevedo, CEO of Suma Wealth
About Beatriz: 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, and a Media Correspondent Award, among others. Beatriz was the co-founder and President of mitú, the leading digital media brand for young Latinos in the U.S.
About Suma Wealth: 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.
Nestor Solari, CEO of Sigo Seguros
About Nestor: Nestor founded Sigo while at business school after seeing family members struggle to buy auto insurance. Before his graduate studies, Nestor spent most of his career investing in inclusive financial institutions in emerging markets and began his career in Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs.
About 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.
Sandra LaPlante, CEO of Papaya
About Sandra: Sandra is a collaborative, data-driven, and customer-focused individual proven to deliver high-impact solutions. Worked with C-level executives to solve problems for Fortune 500 companies across industries like Media, Technology Products, and Aerospace.
About Papaya: Papaya is a virtual tutoring platform connecting bilingual Latin American STEM tutors to U.S. K-12 students.
Seeking future Latinx founders we will back
We are excited for this list to grow! Pre-seed/Seed Stage investors, like Chingona Ventures, who understand the Latinx Investable Opportunity and the Latinx community are uniquely poised to fund founders building the businesses that better serve U.S. Latinos.
For us, this means finding Latino entrepreneurs building venture-backable businesses, entrepreneurs whose businesses may materially target Latino populations, and Latino entrepreneurs building venture-backable businesses that impact Latino populations. An intentional focus at this stage is critical to providing founders with capital that will allow them to break through the critical $1M ARR mark.
Our investment approach at Chingona Ventures involves going early, going big, and embracing any opportunity to get involved. This means deploying the first and oftentimes largest institutional check into an investment round, supporting company operationalization, and working with founders to achieve their fundraise milestones. If you’re interested in sharing more about your business with us, send us a message here.
