On January 12th 2022, Founder Institute hosted a global Founder Showcase featuring 5 up-and-coming FI portfolio companies—and more than 1000+ entrepreneurs, investors, tech media and executives registered to join the virtual event.
We were excited to welcome to the Founder Showcase stage the event's featured keynote speaker, Lisa Besserman of Expa VC, who has been named to Business Insider’s “Top 100 Most Influential Women in Tech," and a “Business Innovator of Latin America” by the Council of the Americas. She has also been credited as “The Woman Behind Argentina’s Startup Revolution.” Watch her opening keynote interview with Founder Institute EIR Martín Martinez below:
This Founder Showcase event featured pitches and investor Q&A from 5 promising international pre-seed stage companies. Previous presenters on this event have raised over $1.5 billion in funding, and include industry luminaries like Udemy, Relay Rides, Thumbtack, Realty Mogul, Kaggle, and many more.
The following 5 selected companies were chosen to pitch from hundreds of startup applicants around the world, because all show promising early traction - they hail from 5 different countries and 3 continents. Watch the founders pitches from the event below:
Trendy Seconds Founder & CEO Maria Burgos
Trendy Seconds, based in Houston, curates ethical and more sustainable apparel from across multiple sites for conscious fashion consumers.
Grow For Me CEO Nana Prempeh
Grow For Me, based in Ghana, is a crowdfunding platform that helps farmers to sustainably scale up their growing operations.
Stabl Founder Hamza Shaikh
Stabl, based in Ontario, is a TeleHealth company moving post-operative recovery care out of the clinic and into patients' living rooms.
MeetGeek Founder Dan Huru
MeetGeek, based in Bucharest, maximizes the value of meetings, calls and interviews by automatically recording, taking notes, and sharing highlights.
Tally Legal Co-Founder Pablo Rocha
Tally, based in Mexico City, is a LegalTech company that makes it simple to charter, incorporate, and register a company in Latin America.
About the Keynote Speaker Lisa Besserman
Currently, Lisa Besserman serves as the Managing Director at Expa VC, an early stage venture fund and startup studio led by Garrett Camp (founder of Uber & StumbleUpon), investing in pre-seed to series A startups. Prior to Expa, she was the Head of Indeed’s corporate Incubator program in Austin Texas, and the Founder of Startup Buenos Aires accelerator (acquired).
Lisa is a Google for Startups Mentor, and has been a judge for dozens of startup competitions around the world. She was recognized as a successful entrepreneur in Forbes magazine, and an International spotlight entrepreneur by the U.S. Department of State. Lisa has been featured by CNBC, Bloomberg TV, Reuters, Entrepreneur Magazine, Fortune, and CNN. She has guest lectured on entrepreneurship and innovation at prominent universities including NYU, MIT, Northwestern, Berkeley, and the University of Pennsylvania.
The next Founder Showcase is scheduled for April 6th, 2022, and you can learn more at FounderShowcase.com.
Featured Investor Panelists:
- Walied Albasheer is a serial entrepreneur, launching the first venture studio for mobility & logistics in MENA. He founded MENA’s top mobility and logistics company, MENA’s 1st startups (hosting - 2004 , fintech - 2006, Sports Tech 2007 & Schools Supplies Marketplace - 2013), advised ITU on autonomous vehicles and road safety. Venture Partnered with Turn8 Fund, I360 Accelerator. Mentored at Seedstars, Techstars, Khalifa Fund, YAL, and YALI.
- Rajesh Gopi is the Founder of Tides Capital and the Co-Founder and CTO at TWO12. TWO12 is committed to democratizing access to cap table management software for the startup industry and provides data and tools to help startup founders understand their valuation, manage cap table, model pro-forma financials for future valuations, and more. Tides Capital is launching a data-backed predictive analytics Seed fund that invests in founders on the TWO12 platform.
- Juan Cruz Valdez Rojas is the Founder & Managing Partner at iThink VC. iThink.VC is a Paraguay based firm that invests in Latin American startups developing solutions to address the region's most pressing challenges, within health, education, food and agriculture, finance, mobility & logistics and new ways of working. Prior to this, Juan was a former Corporate Executive and an Industrial Engineer.
- Saka Saddiq Nuru is a General Partner & Tech Investor at Funnder. He spends his spare time public speaking and mentoring to create a world where the best ideas win. Saka is passionate about Fintech, Technology, Venture Capital, Culture, Conversation. Saka is also a Venture Scout at Backed VC, a €50m community-driven seed stage VC fund, based in London. Additionally, Saka holds a B.Sc in Engineering with honors from Manhattan College and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a Master’s in Engineering & Business as the youngest valedictorian in the engineering graduate school’s history at 21 years and 190 days old.
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The Founder Showcase is Silicon Valley’s leading international startup pitch event, helping seed-stage startups learn, launch, and connect to investors.
These free online events feature presentations from up-and-coming pre-seed startups across the globe, and attendees can learn from world-leading venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. In addition, each Showcase features several networking sessions to connect with the featured companies, and other attendees from across the global startup ecosystem.
Since 2008, speakers like Elon Musk and startups like Udemy and Thumbtack have presented on the Founder Showcase stage. Learn more at FounderShowcase.com.
