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When Nicolas Serrano founded DataScope in 2016, he struggled to obtain funding and spent years pouring money into it.
Serrano joined several accelerator programs in attempts to garner capital, recognition and guidance for his San Antonio tech startup, which provides cloud-based platforms for businesses to digitize safety and work order tasks while helping them collect data through mobile devices.
DataScope grew from sales revenue and subsequently raised $600,000 to scale its business through crowdfunding and the Chilean investment firm Broota. By January, the company increased its workforce to 36 employees, up from 12 in 2021, in Texas, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Chile. With a small, entirely remote staff, it attracted more than 400 clients, including Coca Cola, in the United States and Latin America, and it reached $1 million in annual revenue.
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Now, having set a daunting goal of doubling revenue this year, Serrano is encouraged to have support from one of the world’s largest tech companies as a recipient of the Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund.
California-based Google recently announced it will provide $150,000 in nondilutive capital, mentorship programs and mental health coaching to DataScope as part of an ongoing effort to help Latino entrepreneurs grow businesses in San Antonio. While the largest majority-Hispanic city in the U.S. has long supported local startups, business leaders have talked about their struggles in obtaining funding. Less than 1 percent of funds from the top venture capital and private equity investors goes to Latino-owned businesses, according to a report by consulting firm Bain & Co.
Serrano said the money and services from Google will help him further expand DataScope and introduce him to other Latino startup founders who can help him navigate obstacles to fundraising and growth. He has plans to use the money to improve the company’s software, including adding features, and to develop artificial intelligence products.
“We were a mostly bootstrapped company,” Serrano said. “The Google Latino fund is a great initiative to level up the whole different ecosystem. Funding hasn’t been kind of evenly distributed.”
Serrano particularly appreciates the mentorship that comes with Google’s funding, saying that while he and other Latino startup founders “don’t ask to be treated differently,” mentorship can “help us equalize and have more opportunities and leapfrog certain challenges.”
Google’s diversity programs
Latinos and other people of color have long denounced the lack of diversity in Silicon Valley. Google is being sued by a former employee who alleges that the company has been paying white workers more than minority colleagues.
In recent years, Google and other tech titans have created initiatives for Black, Latino and Indigenous employees. Google said it met its “racial equity commitment” of increasing representation of minorities among leadership by 30 percent in 2022, according to its annual diversity report released in April. In 2020, it said it wanted to reach that benchmark by 2025.
Google created its Latino Founders Fund to help American startups in 2022, having previously established its Google for Startups Black Founders Fund to support startups in Africa, Brazil, Europe and the U.S. The company said it has provided $45 million in cash awards to 547 entrepreneurs worldwide.
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Google has expanded its efforts to help Latino founders start and grow businesses in San Antonio, though it hasn’t funded any Black founders in the city.
In 2022, Google’s Latino Founders Fund provided capital to CodersLink, which uses a digital platform to connect Latin American tech workers to U.S. companies looking to build remote teams. Google also provided funding to Irys, which uses AI-driven tools to help governments, companies and organizations communicate with the public.
“The mission for Google for startups is to level the playing field for entrepreneurs,” said Daniel Navarro, marketing lead of the Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund. “That means working for founders who consistently face obstacles that are preventing them from growing their business whether it’s their race or gender that is a hindrance to them and their communities from opportunities to build wealth.”
As part of the funding program, DataScope and other startups will receive up to $350,000 in Google Cloud credits, as well as mentorship on using artificial intelligence.
Navarro said startups are not required to use Google products but that “we’re available and have tons of tools and products if they’re interested,” adding that “from a business perspective, these can be great customers to Google.”
Serrano said he plans to use Google Cloud to process data that his company collects and to build on efforts in implementing AI into its products.
Google works with accelerators and venture capitalists to find startups that meet its funding programs’ eligibility criteria, such as being tech-based and having raised less than $5 million.
Google “doesn’t want to work with super late-stage companies” in its programs, as Navarro put it, though at the same time, he said that startups must demonstrate “some semblance of traction since we want to come in and support a company and have a clear guidance of how to help.”
Google chose to fund DataScope, Navarro said, because “they are a pretty diverse team” and “they’re doing special work to bridge off-line industries with new-age technologies to do work in the field across health care, in construction and areas where you need more on-field data collection.”
“Nicholas is an incredible founder,” he said. “This company is not also just a good idea. They have also great traction and made some really promising strides when it comes to revenue and employee growth.”
Google focuses on Texas startups
Google’s support for Latino entrepreneurs comes at a time when San Antonio-based startups are garnering venture capital but continue to struggle in competing against companies in Austin, often referred to as Silicon Hills.
The company plans to continue funding startups in small and large tech scenes across Texas. Google this month announced 46 recipients globally of startup funding from its Black and Latino founders initiatives, with about $900,000 going to six startups in Texas, which the company considers a growing startup ecosystem.
“Texas has one of the highest numbers of recipients of Black and Latino funds in the country,” Navarro said. “We expect to be working with a whole batch of Texas-based founders because the state has a strong a vibrant startup ecosystem.”
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Google has already been working with startups and accelerators in Central Texas, Navarro said, with interests in funding programs geared toward cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
One partner is Capital Factory, the Austin-based startup incubator that last year brought its Center for Defense Innovative program to the Boeing Center at Tech Port on the Southwest Side to work with the private sector and the Defense Department.
Geekdom, the San Antonio-based for-profit accelerator, said it received $20,000 to help run its incubator showcase last week. The program is designed to help first-time founders and early-stage entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground.
Google’s “funding makes it possible for us to deliver quality programming and resources to the early-stage entrepreneurs in our program free of charge,” Geekdom CEO Charles Woodin said in a statement. “Our goal is to support these founders, so they find success and become active participants in San Antonio’s growing startup community.”
Set on San Antonio’s West Side, Alberto “Beto” Altamirano, CEO and co-founder of Irys, recently reflected on how receiving funding and mentorship from Google helped him meet a new client in the U.S. Air Force.
“Google is critical to our growth at Irys,” he said. “As an entrepreneur, it can be challenging, especially as a member of the Latino community.”
Altamirano, who was raised in the Rio Grand Valley and earned a master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2022, is a rising leader in the regional tech industry, speaking at events in San Antonio and Brownsville about ways to “improve digital literacy within Latino communities.”
He recently repeated his support for the Geekdom-inspired mission of building the “the South Texas Triangle” — which includes the cities of Laredo, Corpus Christi and Guadalajara, Mexico. He believes partnering with Google and other major tech companies can speed up empowering a regional tech workforce, as the Latino population exponentially grows in Texas and across the U.S.
“Google has figured that out,” he said. “They understand it’s important to support young Latino founders to start and scale a business.”
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