Support Structure: Getting by with a little help from my friends

My parents emigrated from Mexico to work as migrant field workers in the US. They worked incredibly hard to provide me with a great education. After graduating from Stanford, I joined Google as an early employee and in the last 15 years have started a few tech companies and become an active angel investor. Getting more Hispanics into tech and supporting them as tech entrepreneurs is important to me.

During Hispanic Heritage month, I am going to write an article per weekday about my experience growing up between Mexico and the US - and my experience as a Latino in tech. Posts:?1 ,?2 , 3 , 4

By the time I was a Sophomore in High School, I was confident that I would go to college and I was pretty sure that I would study Medicine (1 out of 2 isn’t bad). My grades were good, SAT score was acceptable and I piled on extracurricular activities. My good friend, Amit Patel, also wanted to become a doctor, but he was laser-focused on programs that combined undergrad and med school - he was accepted into the Boston University med school program and is now an anesthesiologist practicing in Ventura, CA. Me, I had less of a clue of where I would go. California’s public University system is incredible - so I figured that I would apply to UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara… or one of the other UC or State school programs. That changed when my track coach told me that one can get a great education anywhere, but the real value of college is in the people you end up meeting. He told me that I should aspire to go to the schools where politicians, heads of industry, royalty… send their kids. He continued... “the access those kids have because of the zip codes and families that they were born into will become your access.” So when it was time to enroll in college, I applied to Harvard, West Point, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford and most of the UCs.?

My track coach, like many of the people who have helped me at different points in my life, did not look like me. Ms O’Brien who ran an after school program, Mr Evans who was my best friend’s dad who helped schlep our basketball team, Mr and Mrs Pasienski who schlepped me and my brother to track practice when my parents were working, and countless others played an important role in my upbringing.

I was lucky enough to get into Stanford. And just as my coach predicted, the friendships I made changed the course of my life. My freshman roommate’s family ended up being my first investors when we started Ooyala. My sophomore year roommate, Joseph Smarr, helped me see the value and future of the Internet. His dad, Larry Smarr, had founded NCSA.?

Joseph Smarr and Daniel Ambrosi visited Wizeline Guadalajara and held a tech talk on AI and their work on Deep Mind/Deep Dream.

While in school and after I graduated I worked at Elance and Google, where I worked with people who would eventually become my investors, partners, customers and most importantly friends and mentors. Imran Khan was my boss at Elance, Olana Hirsch gave me the opportunity to work at Google, Ronny Conway first helped me get funding from his dad and eventually became an investor, Adam Smith was my first investor at Wizeline, Gokul Rajaram and Keval Desai have always been willing to provide some mentorship. When we had to change our approach to Wizeline’s business, I reached out to Chris Sacca, and he said that he was supportive, and that if there were investors who weren’t supportive of the strategy, he would buy them out of their stake. Most recently, I reached out to Dave Habiger about board composition and dynamics as we look to expand our board at Wizeline - he spent over an hour and a half with me.

In the tech industry, fewer than 2% of entrepreneurs who receive venture capital are Hispanic. So it’s harder to find the mentorship and examples within our community. So until that changes, it’s important that we teach our kids and people we know to look beyond our community. More often than not, you will find that people are receptive and willing to help.

And for those who have the cultural connection and are in a position to help, it’s their/our responsibility to do so.