This Hispanic History Month we reached out to our Endeavor Entrepreneurs to ask “What does it mean to be a Hispanic Entrepreneur in the United States?” Today we share the responses from three of our Endeavor Entrepreneurs.
Our first response comes from Sion Tesone, Founder and CEO of Tissini.
“Being a Hispanic entrepreneur in the US to me, it means honoring my roots and remembering we have a social responsibility to pave the way for other Hispanics to have a better future. In my case, I do it by empowering Latin women in the US to have an additional income to improve their lives and that of their family through a social selling platform of quality products, giving them a personalized and friendly service. My dream goal is to achieve social, sustainable and scalable impact that dignifies, empowers, and improves our Latin ecosystem.”
TISSINI was founded in 2015 as a for-profit social enterprise, to address the needs of underprivileged U.S. Hispanic women to earn extra income to provide for their families. It is a single-level direct sales (DS) company that seeks to develop close relationships with its client base (called Emprendedoras) and support them through their sales process.
The following response comes from Anabel Perez, Founder and CEO of Novopayment.
“To be a successful Hispanic entrepreneur in the US means competing and succeeding on the world’s biggest stage. It’s hard to think of a better, more supportive environment for entrepreneurship than the US. The number of successful Hispanic entrepreneurs in the US is really impressive and provide a great source for mentorships and networking. On a more formal level you also have government sponsored minority-owned programs and Hispanic entrepreneurship programs that are helpful. Combine those factors with the relative ease of starting and operating a business and the potential to access capital and you have a pretty good foundation for success.”
NovoPayment is a category leader in the area of Banking as a Service (BaaS) platforms. Headquartered in Miami, NovoPayment facilitates over $300M in annual transactions through a portfolio of 9,000+ clients that spans Fortune 500 companies and Latin American SMBs, with operations in Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, and Ecuador.
Our final response comes from Martin Claure, Founder and CEO of Aprende Institute.
“It has never been a more exciting time to be a Hispanic entrepreneur based in the US. Now more than ever, thanks to the proliferation of social, fintech and edtech solutions, it’s possible to build truly global consumer businesses that focus on the entire Spanish-speaking community regardless of geography or country, using the US Hispanic market as an initial launching and growth platform. Consider this: Hispanics comprise nearly 1 in 5 Americans (18.7% according the 2020 Census), and at $3.1 Trillion in GDP, the US Hispanic community alone is projected to be the 6th largest economy in the world by 2024, and if we take the entire Spanish-speaking community in the world, it’s already the 3rd largest economy after the US and China. Furthermore, Spanish is the second most spoken native language in the world, after Mandarin.
Aprende Institute traces its origins to a Mexican online cooking school called Gastronomica Internacional, which was born out of a company building effort where I was an investor. I decided to become CEO and focus 110% of my time, energy and mindshare when I realized how many Spanish-speaking consumers were out there looking for a high quality vocational education that included a solid curricula, assessments and access to instructors vs. the typical subscription-based video libraries and Youtube, and that the opportunity included other verticals such as beauty, the trades, wellness and entrepreneurship. Furthermore, research shows that Hispanics in the US and Latin America are tremendously entrepreneurial. That being said, the most exciting and rewarding aspect of being a Hispanic entrepreneur is that I get to meet regular folks and appreciate how we help them move forward economically by bringing out the best version of themselves. That is what education does, it is synonymous with freedom and empowerment.”
Aprende Institute is the leading online education platform for vocational training in Latin America and the United States’ Hispanic market. Since its inception, Aprende has enrolled over 45K students, growing 253% YoY. The company plans to keep penetrating the $4.51B US & Latam Edtech market and reach over 150,000 active students by 2023.
