Hola Internet people!
Have you ever attended a StartUp Weekend? If you haven’t I really recommend you do.
It’s definitely an awesome experience, it’s so much more fluid I feel than regular 1hr talks (hey! I still love those -looking at you creativemornings.com) in many ways, from networking to being able to connect and learn from others.
So Oakland had its first Startup weekend last month and all the ideas and talent that came together in under 2 days was really good. I had the chance to be part of a great team that had so much knowledge in finances and upcoming talent in development, although we didn’t win, I felt we came so far with our idea.
Proud to have sponsored #latinxtechsw. So many great business ideas generated last weekend. Happy to see all the high energy and hard work! pic.twitter.com/57HaFE66Kq
— Kapor Center (@KaporCenter) October 24, 2016
In brief we wanted to create a website + app that would allow people to invest without having to have lots of money to risk while doing so (Investments from $1K up to $100K)
Another part of our idea was helping people in Mexico (initially, with the idea of extending after some funding to the rest of Latin America) with these investments, which in the research stage showed at times that the idea of American’s investing in people out of the USA had an outlook very divided, also it created questions by the judges since there are already sites such as Kiva.org which I had already brought up to my team before we went on to present our idea.
I came up with the line “Invest in your wallet and also in your soul” which by the end of the night I used to describe our main difference with websites like Kiva and also found being tweeted.
Invest in your wallet AND your soul @LilsG31 @Chuy101 @carohuaranca @laura @MoniqueWoodard @ipam73 @mkapor @cedbrownsaid #latinxtechsw pic.twitter.com/pzbw8fQMgE
— Eutiquio Tiq Chapa (@TiqChapa108) October 24, 2016
Although we didn’t have a whole prototype by the end of the approximate 24hrs of work, we did have a design aesthetic and a couple of screens to show, as well as plenty of research that validated the idea.
. #landon showing us how peer to peer is done @sw_oakland #latinxtechsw pic.twitter.com/Y0zBMcEChF
— carolina huaranca (@carohuaranca) October 24, 2016
I can’t thank my team enough, it was a great time.
And hopefully soon you’ll get to see a more complete prototype in the portfolio area :)
Chao!
Mary
