The Founder Showcase is Silicon Valley's leading international startup pitch event, helping pre-seed startups learn, launch, and connect to investors.
Since 2009, the event has hosted Keynote Speakers like Elon Musk, Jason Calacanis, Naval Ravikant, Rebecca Enonchong, David Sacks, Phil Libin, Keith Rabois, Chris Dixon, Kevin Rose...and many more.
For our first Founder Showcase of 2023, we’re excited to announce Adrian Mendoza, Founder & General Partner at Mendoza Ventures, as our featured Keynote Speaker!
About Our Keynote Speaker
Born in Los Angeles to parents who immigrated from Mexico. Adrian moved to Boston for Graduate School at Harvard. He has spent the last 20 years leading technology teams and building products for financial services and fintech. After founding two VC-backed startups in the mobile technology space, Adrian started Mendoza Ventures to address the funding gap for people of color in early-stage investments. Mendoza Ventures is both Latinx and woman-owned and the first Latinx-founded VC fund on the east coast. The firm focuses on investments in Fintech, AI, and Cybersecurity, with diversity playing an important role in their investment decisions—about 75% of their portfolio consists of startups led by immigrants, people of color, and women. Since its founding five years ago, Mendoza Ventures has raised two funds, had one successful exit, and expanded its investments from Boston to Silicon Valley. Mendoza Ventures pilot Fund I is in the top Quartile of seed-stage firms, and the firm recently closed a third fund, a $100M Series A to C growth venture fund.
Adrian and Mendoza Ventures were recently covered in Forbes, Yahoo Finance, the Boston Globe, and American Banker. In 2022, Axios magazine listed Adrian as one of the five most influential people in Boston and the Boston Business Journal honored him as one of the 50 Movement Makers making a change in Boston. He is also a regular contributor to CNBC on the state of Venture capital in the US. Adrian received his Bachelor's from the University of Southern California and his Master from Harvard University.
About Mendoza Ventures
Mendoza Ventures takes a depth-focused approach, looking for founders who demonstrate domain expertise in one of their three main focus areas across fintech, AI, and cybersecurity. Adrian and Senofer pride themselves on being hands-on investors and setting up companies for success beyond just writing a check—they help create a strong early funding syndicate, make customer introductions, and assist with partnership conversations. Mendoza Ventures leverages investments in fintech as a catalyst for social and economic change to impact communities of color, women, and underrepresented groups. Investments include Listo!, which focuses on building credit and offering financial products to the Latino community; Finch, which helps millennial investors close the wealth gap; and Daylight, the first LGBTQ+ neo-bank.
Applications to Pitch are OPEN
As the premier pre-seed startup event, we strive to showcase startups before anyone else from all across the globe. A short-list of companies that did one of their first public pitches on the Founder Showcase stage includes Udemy, Relay Rides, Thumbtack, Realty Mogul, Kaggle, and many more. Previous Founder Showcase companies have raised over $1.5 billion in funding.
Anyone building a pre-seed technology company with less than $250,000 in funding is welcome to apply at http://bit.ly/showcase-pitch.
Application deadline to pitch on the global stage is Sunday, January 22nd, at Midnight PST.
Investors, media, executives, entrepreneurs, and anyone interested in seeing pitches from the companies you will read about tomorrow are welcome to RSVP to the event for free.
You can learn more about the application process at FounderShowcase.com/apply, and the event itself at FounderShowcase.com.
We hope to see you there!
