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Ugly Talk: Latino Founders Building Between Latin America and the U.S
About Event
Building between Latin America and the U.S. gets ugly fast.
Markets move differently. Customers expect different things. Teams cross borders and cultures. The pitch deck leaves that part out.
This Ugly Talk puts it back in. 3 different seats at the same problem will share the false starts, hard calls, and mistakes behind the growth.
Why you should be in this room.
- 01
Hear what building across Latin America and the U.S. actually takes.
- 02
Learn from failed ideas, wrong turns, and hard calls.
- 03
Get specific lessons from founders still in the thick of it.
- 04
See how other builders handle different markets, customers, teams, and cultures.
- 05
Meet founders who understand the friction because they live it too.
What's on the table.
- 01
What it looks like from the other side of the table — why an investor passes, and what the founder never gets to see.
- 02
The version that missed the pitch deck. The false starts, setbacks, and calls they wish they could take back.
- 03
Decisions made without a clean answer. The bets they placed before the outcome was clear.
- 04
Building across borders. The real friction behind different markets, teams, customers, and cultures.
- 05
Lessons earned the hard way. What helped after the original plan stopped working.
- 06
The next hard call. What they would do differently if they started again.
Featured speakers.
HealthTech entrepreneur with 20+ years building, scaling, buying & selling companies.
We are a Latin American fintech that makes access to mortgage and home-equity credit simpler, faster and more transparent. I lead the company's operations, building the processes, teams and technology that take a credit application from first contact to disbursement. Laura is passionate about scaling operations in regulated industries, turning complexity into great customer experiences, and helping more families and entrepreneurs unlock the value of their homes.
Ignacio Rosales is a venture capital investor with deep experience at the intersection of early-stage investing, behavioral science, and global markets. He currently serves as Chief Behavioral Officer at BuenTrip Ventures, an early-stage VC firm fueling the Latin community in building the world’s tech future. At BuenTrip, he helps shape the firm’s investment philosophy, combining data-driven insight with a human-centered approach to identify and support high-potential entrepreneurs. His work focuses on understanding founder behavior and decision-making as key drivers of long-term outcomes.
Who's hosting it.
Christopher Martinez is the Founder & CEO of Ziora Copilot and Chapter Leader for AI Tinkerers, Health2Tech and Ugly Talk in Mexico City. He splits his time between Mexico City and New York and has produced founder and healthtech events at Google, One World Trade Center, BBVA and Tecnológico de Monterrey, IBERO, each bringing together 50-150 founders, operators and investors from across the local ecosystem.
Who's getting in.
- 01
Latino founders building between Latin America and the U.S.
- 02
Latino builders managing cross-border customers, markets, and teams.
- 03
Latino founders at different stages who are still doing the work.
Who's backing this.
LaFamilia Foundation
A national network connecting Latino founders, investors and operators across US tech hubs.
Learn moreFordham University AI Hub
The Hub expands AI initiatives across Fordham, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration in education, research, innovation, workforce development
Learn moreLatinX in AI
Creating Opportunity for Latinx in AI - Increase representation of Latinx in Artificial Intelligence - Improve access to education and resources
Learn more
Questions? Talk@UglyTalk.com
Location
Belong NYC
218 lafayette st
New York, NY 10012
United States