Hola FounderFamilia!

Hispanic Heritage Month started out with a bang as our Austin and New York City events drew over 120 founders and VCs to celebrate our vibrant community. In this newsletter, get ready to meet our latest Pitch Competition judge, dive into the inspiring stories of founders showcased at L'Attitude and TechCrunch, get a snapshot of our Austin and NYC gatherings, get the latest on programming and celebrate a key win for a special Latina founder.

• 💢 Major Updates: Pitch Competition Judge Reveal

• 🏆 Community Wins & News: FF at L’Attitude and TechCrunch Disrupt

• 📅 Programming: Austin & NYC HHM Event Recap, Upcoming HHM Events, YC Application Prep Webinar, & LBAN’s New Accelerator

• 👩🏾‍💻 Who’s Hiring?

• 💁‍♂️💁‍♀️ Community Spotlight: Codiga Acquisition

• 🔊 Call to action

💢Major Updates

🥇$25,000 Pitch Competition

Judge 1: Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed Ventures

In case you missed the big announcement earlier this week- Jeremy Liew will be joining us to judge our $25,000 3rd Annual Pitch Competition!

Jeremy Liew is a partner at Lightspeed Ventures and has funded several companies that have since been acquired or gone public, most notably Snap Inc., where he made the first investment. Gracing the Forbes Midas List several times, Jeremy is looking forward to joining us on October 12th.

🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

We are absolutely thrilled to be revealing our second judge- Lauren Kolodny!

Judge 2: Lauren Kolodny, Acrew Capital

Lauren is a Founding Partner at Acrew Capital and leads investments in fintech and SaaS. Prior to founding Acrew, Lauren was a partner at Aspect Ventures. She's an investor in startups including Chime, Divvy Pay, Gusto and Pie Insurance, among others. The former Google product marketer led neobank Chime's Series A funding round in 2016; five years later, it reached a $25 billion valuation. Lauren was named one of Forbes 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital in 2016.

The remaining judges will be revealed over the coming days 👀.

Deadline Extension

We have extended the deadline for the pitch competition- applications will now close on October 2nd at 5pm PT.

More information on the pitch competition and where to apply below!

🏆Community Wins & News

FF at L’Attitude👊🎉

FounderFamilia members are lighting up the stage at this year’s Lattitude Conference! A huge congratulations and good luck to our familia who are pitching and presenting!

Match-Up Competition - CONSUMER

• Francisco Cornejo, CEO & Founder, Storybook App

• Rodrigo Tamellini, CEO & Cofounder, GamerSafer

• Steve Patiño, CEO & Founder, Ales Grey

Match-Up Competition - TECH

• Alexander Gutierrez, CEO & Founder, L5 Automation

• Juan Manuel Barrero, CEO & Co-Founder, Lazo

• Patricio Utz, CEO & Co-Founder, Abstract

Omnitron, Portfolio Company Spotlight

Eric Aguilar, CEO & Co-Founder of Omnitron Sensors will present on the main stage.

Omnitron sensors is rewriting the script on building high-performance and low-cost sensors for the world of tomorrow.

Miami Tech Founders & Nasdaq

In the Flicker Ballroom, Beatriz Ayala of Musicasa will captivate the audience with her enthusiasm.

Musicasa enables music lovers to transform their homes into entertainment and revenue venues by hosting intimate home concerts.

Paola Santana at Tech Crunch Disrupt🔋💥

Out of thousands of startups worldwide, TechCrunch chose GLASS as a top FinTech Startup Battlefield company, becoming one of the 200 startups exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023.

CEO, Paola Santana, took the stage for Startup Battlefield 200 and shared GLASS' work and vision of connecting governments with small businesses via our e-commerce government marketplaces.

📅Programming

📽Eventos Recap

Austin HHM Event @ Malverde 09/20

Our Austin hosts provided glowing feedback from the Austin event, declaring it a resounding success. With 40 investors and founders gracing the occasion, the Austin ecosystem came alive, fostering connections well into the night. Embracing the "Elevar" theme, several attendees proudly showcased their wins from the past year, demonstrating resilience in the face of industry challenges. Seeing our early members reunite and warmly embrace new additions to our familia was a heartwarming testament to the strength of our community.

A special thanks to our hosts Alejandro Lozano, Alonso Mujica, and Ivan Huerta as well as the J.P. Morgan team in Austin- Gabriela Smith, Gabe Terrazas, Heidi Hubbeling Leach, and Stephanie M. Lopez, and for all their support. 💛

NYC HHM Event @ Comodo 09/21

The event at Comodo kicked off with a line that stretched out the door—an early indicator of the remarkable night that awaited us. And truly remarkable it was! The diverse gathering of over 80 local founders and VCs was a heartwarming manifestation of our community coming together to celebrate the NYC ecosystem. The event felt like a family reunion, and we couldn't be happier with the turnout.

A special thanks to our hosts Alicia Cepeda Maule, Elias Davis, Julian Fainzaig, Joshe Ordonez, and Mercedes Zhang. as well as the Lift Labs Team: Isaiah Marcus Jenkins, J.P. Morgan Team: José A Pérez, Karen Rios, Mireya D'Angelo, and Monica Badia, and the Vouch Team: Vanessa Kuhlor for all their support! 💛

🎟Upcoming Events

RSVP for all of our Hispanic Heritage Month 2023 Celebraciónes below!

To view all of the events, check out our HHM’23 webpage.

AWS & FounderFamilia Presents: How to Prepare for the Y Combinator Application

AWS Startups and FounderFamilia invite you to join us on October 4th as Edrizio De La Cruz and Jeff Henriod provide an in-depth look at the Y Combinator application process for the Winter 2024 batch.

Keep in mind: the application deadline is October 13!

• ​​📅 Date: Wednesday, October 4th

• ⏰ Time: 2 pm PT/5 pm ET

• 🖥 Location: Virtual (zoom link provided upon approval)

Seize this chance to benefit from insights by industry experts who possess firsthand experience with Y Combinator and can offer valuable tips to bolster your application.

RSVP here!

📣 Spread the Word

3rd Annual Pitch Competition

Deadline: September 24th, 2023

We are bringing some of the best VCs in the industry to judge the final round of pitches of top Latino startups. We will select 8 finalists before the final round of the pitch competition on October 12th where they will have a chance to win a $25,000 non-dilutive cash prize!

Requirements to enter:

• Minimum of one Latine founder

• The company’s founder stock must be >33% owned by Latine founders

• Maximum $2.5M in total capital raised to date; and

• The company must be incorporated in the U.S.

Breaking Barriers: LBAN's New Startup Accelerator for Latino Entrepreneurs

VCFamilia and FounderFamilia are proud LBAN partners and we have good news!

LBAN, in collaboration with Stanford University, is thrilled to introduce its Startup Accelerator aimed at promoting equitable access to funding for Latino entrepreneurs. Thanks to support from J.P. Morgan Chase, this initiative will pair 40 Latino-founded startups with Latino-friendly capital providers, including venture capitalists, bankers, and CDFIs. These startups will receive valuable mentorship from industry experts and gain essential knowledge from Stanford professors to enhance their go-to-market strategy, profit model, financial statements, and startup valuation. Participants will also earn a Stanford Graduate School of Business Executive Education certificate. This program marks a significant step towards empowering Latino founders and fostering their success in the startup ecosystem.

Learn more and apply here!

👩🏾‍💻Who’s Hiring?

Let us know if you or any other startup you know is in need of filling a position and we’ll post it here in this section of the newsletter.

To be featured here, fill out the form below!

💁‍♀️💁‍♂️Founder Community Spotlight

Codiga gets acquired by DataDog

Jessica Mercedes, co-founder of Codiga, has a BIG win to share. Codiga was one of the finalists in our first annual pitch competition and has recently been acquired Datadog (NASDAQ: DDOG)! She has her sights set on her next startup, askMay, which was recently accepted into Techstars Chicago powered by J.P. Morgan!

FounderFamilia is a grassroot community for founders, let us know if you’d like to be featured. We are stronger together, and we want to amplify your wins- click below to be featured in our next newsletter!

🔊Call to Action: Referrals

Do you know someone who would be a perfect fit for our community? Send them this link and have them apply to our community!

See you next week investors!