Moneda Moves

Welcome back to another season of Moneda Moves mi gente. This season we are talking about food: It makes the world go round. Some might say food is everything we are: An extension of our regions, our tribes, to paraphrase the late chef and journalist Anthony Bourdain. But it’s also an interesting business opportunity.

Last year, venture capitalists invested more than $20 billion in this space even after economic conditions had tightened. And as we know on this podcast, Latinos (alongside people of color) are among the biggest creators of business in this country.

Throughout this season, Moneda Moves is bringing funders investing in the future of food and founders paving the way for intimate conversations on how they invest, fundraise and build truly scalable companies. Our panel today is from our first live event in Chicago, where we have founders from the consumer packaged goods space to the food tech space.

On the mics we have Perteet Spencer, Founder of AYO Foods, who launched the company to celebrate ingredients, flavors and culture of West African diaspora. We also have Michelle Ruiz, founder of food tech company Hyfe, who brings more than ten years of manufacturing experience from the likes of Exxon Mobile. Also joining us is Shayna Harris, managing partner of Supply Change Capital, investing in early stage, high growth food tech businesses and culture-first brands. Shayna has more than two decades of experience as a food industry leader and operator. She and her co-founder Noramay Cadena just closed a $40 million fund. Congratulations!

A trifecta of women that are joining us in our conversation today to talk about what the future of food looks like, from both a funding and scalability perspective.

Finally, a shout to our collaborators who helped put on our first live podcast event, DishRoulette Kitchen, a nonprofit working to provide funding and education for BIPOC restarateurs across Chicago, and Industrious where the event was hosted.

Let’s dive in. Welcome to Funding the Future of Food. 

Follow Supply Change Capital On Instagram: @supplychangecapital

Follow AYO Foods On Instagram: @ayofoods

Follow Hyfe On Instagram: @hyfejefe

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

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It’s the last episode of the first season of 2023 and I couldn’t think of a better topic to close this season about multi-hyphenates than with an episode on storytelling. If you’ve listened to this podcast before, you know I’ve spoken about this: The power of storytelling. It has the power to shape reality, attract and grow our businesses. Today, we are speaking with an expert in the industry on the PR side: that’s Karina Martinez, founder of The Avana House.

It’s a public relations and storytelling agency founded to reshape media narratives through storytelling. In 2018, Martinez opened the doors to the agency with the intention to celebrate leaders, flavors and brands that represent what our diverse BIPOC communities look like. The name Avana is an homage to Havana, Cuba where Martinez’s parents were born.

In just a few years The Avana House led storytelling for some of the fastest-growing emerging brands and created moments in publications like The Today Show, Food & Wine, and The New York Times. Today, we speak with Martinez about her calling to increase representation and authentic stories in media, leveraging data to do so and how her unique journey into PR has defined the way she runs her business and built her team. 

Follow Karina on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karina-martinez-001/

Follow The Avana House on Instagram: @TheAvanaHouse

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat. Our music is from Epidemic Sound.

For Rachel Basoco, community building has opened doors to a wide range of industries from lifestyle, to entrepreneurship, and as of late the world of finance and of Paris Hilton. In a world where building trust is priceless for public figures and companies alike, it pays to have an engaged community when platforms have established a relationship with them. It’s Basoco’s job to help build that through community.

Today, she is a multi-hyphenate at her core as Director of Digital Communities Advancement and Growth at Fidelity Investments, Web3 Community Manager at Paris Hilton’s company 11:11 Media and founder of Rachel Basoco LLC. Through her own company, her clients have included  self-funded start-ups, Fortune 500 giants, and tech unicorns. She helps each partner craft and execute a community strategy that enables them to acquire customers faster and retain them longer. 

Today we speak with Rachel about her entry into community building via building her own company in New York City to expand the space Latina creatives fill, Trenza. We also talk about how she built community at one one the City’s staple coworking spaces for women entrepreneurs, Luminary. Rachel also shares her priorities in community building today, from the world of finance to influencers.

Follow Rachel Basoco on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelbasoco

Follow Rachel on Instagram: @RachelBasoco

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat. Our music is from Epidemic Sound.

Marcia Chong Rosado (she/her/ella) faces multidimensionality head on. She holds multiple identities within her work, but also in her personal life as she’s navigated cultures across continents, socioeconomic spaces, and industries. Her goal? To bridge venture and civic engagement worlds.  Personally, Marcia operates within and outside of evolving labels, including identifying as multiracial from diverse ancestors, Ecuadorian, as an immigrant to the United States.

Today, she is a Director at Cinematica Labs, focused on building mission-oriented entrepreneurial ecosystems in partnerships with ecosystem builders, like Pharrell Williams’ Black Ambition. Marcia is a Coach with the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator program uplifting teams of scientists addressing national-scale societal challenges. She is also involved in civic engagement as a Commissioner on the Worcester County Commission on the Status of Women to promote rights and opportunities for women and girls, and as an Advisory Board Member for the Commonwealth Seminar, a privately funded program focused on “Opening the Doors of Government to Everyone”.

Marcia’s work in venture ecosystem building, startups, nonprofits, and partnerships has been noted by Amplify Latinx, HBCUvc 31 under 31, Boston Business Journal, Harvard Law & Policy Review, and Forbes.

We speak with Marcia about the navigating identity, community and venture ecosystem building in the startups ecosystem and what an equitable future looks like. Take a listen.

Connect with Marcia Chong Rosado on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marciaxchong/

And on Instagram: @marciaxchong

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat. Our music is from Epidemic Sound.

If there is anyone who knows the ins and outs of building a team for success, whether it’s in entrepreneurship or venture capital it’s Rachel ten Brink. Today she’s General Partner and co-Founder of Red Bike Capital, a Latino and woman-led Venture Capital fund based in New York that invests in early stage, high-growth startups that drive the economy and improve people’s lives. Red Bike supports US-based founders in FinTech, Ecommerce SAAS, Marketplaces, and Wellness, leveraging the team’s 30+ years of experience with an authentic connection to the startup ecosystem and a strong track record in asset management. And just earlier this year it closed equity investment from Bank of America, which we discuss at the top of this podcast.

Prior to founding Red Bike Capital, ten Brink was Co-Founder and CMO of Scentbird, a Y-Combinator backed ecommerce startup that raised $29M in venture funding. Today, it is our pleasure to welcome Rachel, a proud daughter of Cuban immigrants who has built a career in entrepreneurship and venture capital to the show as we discuss the firm’s Bank of America investment, navigating tough economic times and building a winning team. 

Follow Rachel ten Brink on Twitter: @rtenbrink1

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat. Our music is from Epidemic Sound.

Zack Guzman is a crypto journalist through and through. But in the last few years, he decided to also challenge the current media model and raised $3.25 million dollars for it. Today, he is the co-founder of Web3 media company Trustless Media, and host of the first community-owned, mainstream crypto show "Coinage."

Now, Zack has worked for his fair share of traditional US news outlets. He has also previously worked at Yahoo! Finance as an anchor and at CNBC as a reporter covering startups and tech. His reporting has been featured across multiple platforms including the New York Post, Washington Post, Huffington Post, NBC, Entrepreneur and AOL. Today, we speak about to new media model Zack is fostering, how raising funds had everything to do with the right connections and timing (among them, Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph) as well as how community plays a core role in the future of Web3.

Note: We also discuss navigating uncertainty given funding was raised by Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research and the recent downfall of Alameda/FTX.

Follow Trustless Media: https://www.trustless.media/

Follow Zack Guzman: https://twitter.com/zGuz?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat. Our music is from Epidemic Sound.

Hello Moneda Moves listeners and welcome to a new season of the podcast, where we serve you stories about money and cultura from first builders. For the next few episodes we will be talking with multi-hyphenates of the business world: whether they’re part-time models and VCs, a journalist turned Web3 company founder, or a community builder working for Paris Hilton and Fidelity at the same time, the super power shared here is that these leaders in their respective spaces transit different worlds, and with that comes rich lessons in money.

Today, we’re going to speak with Cheryl Campos, called “The Multihyphenate Queen” in article we wrote for Hispanic Executive, having transited investment banking, modeling, community building and venture capital. It’s some of these many skills that led her to build La Familia, an ecosystem built just two years ago for Latino founders and venture capitalists to come together. Today, it supports more than 300 venture capitalists throughout their careers from breaking into venture to creating their own funds and is backed by the likes of SVB, Comcast, Samsung Next, Techstars, and more. 

I met Cheryl when we were early in pursuing our careers in New York City and from one first gen kid to another have very much enjoyed seeing her growth to Head of Growth and Partnerships at Republic, the investment platform helping everyday people get access to private markets. Recently, we spoke with her from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she’s getting her MBA. We talk about breaking into VC, the importance of community and the future of her career. 

Follow Cheryl Campos: https://twitter.com/modelvc?lang=en and https://www.cherylcampos.com/

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat. Our music is from Epidemic Sound.

Mi gente, it’s your host Lyanne and your are listening to the last Moneda Moves episode of 2022! To close out the season, we are featuring a staple Latina brand near and dear to my heart that we’ve followed for years, the iconic apparel and accessories company Jen Zeano Designs. Its Texas-based founders and couple Jen and Vero Zeano are community-builders at their core having engaged their family, friends and locals in their business as they bootstrapped on their way to their historic debut in Target in 2022.

A bit of background JZD and what it stands for: You may have run into their work via Jessica Alba or Jenna Ortega who have both worn their work, or their relatable, empowering and witty designs that echo phrases engrained in Latine culture (think Poderosa, Vibras Bonitas). Having created their renowned Latina Power design in 2014, and launching as an Etsy store, they were far from an overnight success, but what they did learn was how to lean on each other, harness the power of their community as they expanded their social media, sales as they quite literally prepared to land in a retailer like Target this year during Latinx Heritage Month.

Today, we speak with the founders about their reflections on the journey here and taking bigger bets on their business over the years.

As we enter the thick of holidays and sala season aka dressing your best for the living room parties, we’re also thinking about how to spend our moneda mindfully. So you can bet today’s featured builders have a holiday gift guide. You can see their gift guide here: https://shopjzd.com/pages/holiday-gift-guide

Felicidades, Jen and Vero! Onto the interview. I hope you enjoy as much as I did, mi gente, and I’ll see you in 2023.

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat. Our music is from Epidemic Sound.

Today, we are talking about Latina power and community building. We speak with the founder and CEO #WeAllGrow Latina, Ana Flores, a digital and IRL lifestyle community of impactful Latinas and Femme-Latines who support and uplift each other. Their goal? To increase visibility and grow our social and economic power.

The community started in 2010 and since then has grown into a following of 253K and counting on Instagram and bringing people together in person from their Las Founders events out west to their annual summit which just made a return this year.

I first attended their summit several years ago, where I had the opportunity to meet other Latinas growing businesses and spaces of their own from writers to life coaches and ecommerce. All are mujeres I still follow and keep in touch with today. In this episode we speak with Ana about We All Grow’s story, turning a profit and the nonlinear story of building.

Follow We All Grow Latina: https://www.instagram.com/weallgrowlatina/?hl=en

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat. Our music is from Epidemic Sound.

We are deep in the fourth quarter of the year and while personally it’s a time of gratitude, it’s also a time when companies are knee deep in the annual budgeting process to set themselves up for the new year. So naturally, we're also thinking about building! What are our goals, visions and plans for the new year? These are the kinds of questions we encourage you to begin thinking about as well.

Today, on Moneda Moves we have a guest who is a firsthand expert in this space to share her story and practical tips for our listeners creating their financial plans for 2023: Jen Hemphill,  money expert and podcast host of Her Dinero Matters. Jen is an Accredited Financial Counselor and started her podcast to talk about the importance of learning your money story and how to build confidence in personal finances. 

Jen started her podcast around the same time our host started covering the influence of Latinos and money, so we discussed her storied journey, the difference between different kinds of financial guides and how to best prepare for the new year. Take a listen.

Learn more about Jen Hemphill and Her Dinero Matters: https://jenhemphill.com/her-dinero-matters-podcast/

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat. Our music is from Epidemic Sound.