Transforming the Lives of Millions of People with Disabilities Around the World | Alvaro Rios

Lupe is from one of the most remote places in the world: the Pacific island of Samoa. Coming from such a beautiful and distant place comes with its own qualities and challenges. When she wanted to buy goods online for her coffee shop she realized that her bank didn’t integrate with any online payment gate. It is impossible to use services such as Stripe or PayPal with a Samoan bank account. So, she decided to take matters into her own hands and started SmartPei to solve the issue not only for herself, but also for other Samoan shops in the Samoan diaspora with the need to send money or buy goods. Lupe is just at the beginning, but she has big dreams of making the lives of Samoan business owners easier and leaving a legacy for her children.

In this episode, we meet Ann, founder and CEO of DataCue, who not only launched her own company but did it with her husband as her co-founder whilst travelling across Central and South America for their honeymoon! I hear you... is she crazy ; )

Successfully securing investment from Startup Chile, despite being foreign nationals (learn how they did it as you listen) Ann and her husband Sharam, a former data scientist at Trip Advisor set about creating a solution that would give small and medium-sized businesses access to big data solutions normally available only to the Amazons of the world.

Discover how they managed to work together 24-hours a day with a young baby along for the ride too, how they overcame some big assumptions they made about doing business in the LATAM region and how they overcame a potentially disastrous situation.

With many more valuable insights about startup life across 3 continents - DataCue now has a presence in Chile and the LATAM region, Europe and Asia. 

Lucrezia wanted to be an actress and started her entrepreneurial journey when she was 8 years old, selling items to give to those most in need. This multi-award winning Italian entrepreneur, and Forbes 30 under 30, is now living in Kenya for her company Kukua, which has created an African child heroine called Sema who empowers girls and children with literacy and numeracy skills, and gives them the confidence to change the world! Lucrezia's parents and relatives approach to the failure taught her to face difficult situations like almost going bankrupt before pivoting and raising funds from prestigious Venture Capital investors. From the cover of international magazines to the small Kenyan villages, this talented entrepreneur has the ambition to impact millions of lives and create one of the most successful edtech companies on the African continent.

Kenza was born in Morocco but has quite a rich international experience: from France and Singapore, all the way to the USA. At some point, she found her calling and decided to go back to her home country. Kenza launched a regional fund to support entrepreneurs in Africa. She had some hesitations, but inspired by other entrepreneur stories, she managed to convince investors to contribute to her fund.

Now, she is driven by  the growth of entrepreneurship in Africa, investing in impactul startups from seed to pre-series A, that are aligned with the values that she and her team in Outlierz share. In this podcast, we discover those values and take a look into Kenza's eye-opening journey, the motivations and challenges behind it.

Kenza recommends reading Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers: The Story of Success

After watching the US TV show "The Six Million Dollar Man" at the age of 5 in Colombia, Alvaro Rio, founder of Human Assistive Technologies, knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life. It was his passion to explore how technology could support and enhance the human experience through the use of bionics. This wasn't a surprising choice of career given the path trodden by his lifelong hero, his father who dedicated his life to providing healthcare and housing to people in his home country of Colombia. 

Considered a thought leader and visionary in the healthcare industry, Alvaro clearly understands all the challenges physically impaired individuals, families and medical professionals in emerging countries around the world are facing. He and his team share a passion for creating solutions capable of transforming real-life healthcare problems for people with injuries. This is truly a journey of the heart.   

Sebastian comes from a middle-income family in Germany and originally pursued a career as an investment banker. However, something made him change his path and move to Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he is working to provide energy to the poorest communities through a decentralized micro-grid system. It allows villagers not only to access electricity but also to generate revenues using his  system. 

His startup SOLshare Ltd has received multiple awards for this initiative/project, including the best energy startup in the world and prizes from prestigious organisations like the UN, Ashoka, UBS or Unilever. His entrepreneurial journey is paved with ups and downs, from almost going bankrupt before being saved by Microsoft, to raising funds to survive through the COVID-19 crisis. Sebastien is a pure impact entrepreneur trying to balance profit and purpose, academic knowledge with entrepreneurial "get things done attitude", and European roots with local experiences.

It is difficult to present Marc Berrebi in just a few sentences. An entrepreneur since he can remember, but an artist at heart, this multi-exit founder has, what one could say, lived it all. Born in Tunisia he was raised in an entrepreneurial family, which he claims set the foundation for his entrepreneurial journey as "you learn very early on that failures, the hard ones, are really part of the journey, so at least when I started I was not at all disillusioned by it, on the contrary, I took it as a game". 

Since he has exited from his third venture, the healthtech company e-Device (which he sold for 100 million dollars to a Chinese company), he is re-thinking his purpose as a citizen of this planet. Convinced that those who have achieved real empowerment are those who have ascended the Maslow Pyramid, Marc shares with us his new life guidelines and how he sees the next years to come as a philanthropist, impact investor and supporter of those that create value on this planet. 

"My true heroes are the hidden ones, the ones that never get recognised financially or by the press. The ones that have detached themselves from their ego and their pursuit of success and have dedicated their lives in building sustainability and support in our communities. Those are my heroes.", highlights Marc in the talk.

Ever since she can remember, Jessica has been walking the streets of Venezuela protesting with her family against various injustices Venezuelan people suffer. At 14, she had what we can call an "aha moment". One day, when she was walking over a bridge during one  manifestation, she realised that there are people who are experiencing  even worse injustices than her. She vowed from that day on that she would support those in need, and has since been working for different non-profit initiatives around the world: from children with disabilities in Tibet, children with HIV in the Gambia, sexual workers in Curacao, to at-risk adolescents in Venezuela. A couple of years later, tired of constantly fundraising in the non-profit space, she decided to launch her own social business. After pivoting several times, Programa Valentina was born with a powerful business model that trains unemployed talent with basic skills and matches them with the needs of corporates. From failing to understand the problem, to being robbed at gunpoint, this mother of two is a true hero with an inspiring journey for all.

Programa Valentina is also the winner of the Transforming Education Prize by TRECC and School of Management Fribourg. Listen to her story to learn more about why she won. You can also see more highlights from Jessica as part of our Entrepreneurial Education episode from the Online Seedstars Summit.

Hugo's entrepreneurial journey started at a very young age when he was at primary school and selling dinosaur drawings during breaks. Unfortunately, it was a short-lived business. When the faculty of the school realised he was selling his drawings for money the "shop had to close". Since then, he has become famous for his startup Talov. Talov provides two solutions: one to support people with hearing impairment and another to support people with visual disabilities in accessing the simplest of services and support in their day to day lives. 

Present in over 60 countries and with 35 languages proposed on its apps, Talov is a powerful tool that  gives a sense of community to those that feel like they are being left behind. One of the company’s latest solutions is a service that allows visually impaired people to detect the number on a currency bill, which in reality all feel and weigh the same. It gives a voice to a community of over 700 million people worldwide living the same challenges. 

From his offices of Quito, Ecuador, Hugo is able to connect with all of them, helping him continuously iterate and build new solutions. 

Talov was also selected as one of two winners of the ICT Accessibility Prize by MADA. Watch more on Hugo during the Digital Access for All Episode from the Online Seedstars Summit.

Hugo  recommends reading Eric Ries: The Lean Startup

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Being a developer, Ahmed created a website to connect therapists to their clients for Arab people all over the world. He came up with the idea after dealing with depression himself and not being able to find professional help online in the MENA region. Ahmed calls himself a risk taker as he resigned from his secure job to start the business. Now, his mental health startup Shezlong has 40 team members and lists more than 200 therapists from 20 countries who speak 7 different languages. In total, they have raised $666,000 USD. Ahmed and his team plan to turn the therapy platform into a hub of wellness in the Arabic world.

Shezlong is one of the ten winners selected for the Entrepreneur Migration Prize by HSD. This podcast along with the Migration Episode from the Online Seedstars Summit will give you a glimpse into how this company is changing mental health access in MENA.

Ahmed recommends reading Alexander Osterwalder: Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers