Mana Tech has partnered with Base to nurture their exclusive events and support the growth and development of their community. At Mana Tech, we take great pride in the success story of our fellow entrepreneurs who are playing a pivotal role in shaping Miami into the next tech hub for entrepreneurs.

Q: Can you provide a brief overview of your background and how it led to your current role as Co-founder and COO at Base?

A: Academically speaking, I am an organizational psychologist, which means that I have always been deeply interested in the study of groups and group dynamics. It’s been a lens through which I’ve built both my personal and my professional lives. My career has always focused on groups of people and community building… Base is all about that, creating interesting group dynamics, matching people into fascinating groups… it ends up being an interesting kind of communal experience, and developing the technology and the algorithm that does that.
On a personal level, hosting is something I am really passionate about… I am a big believer in the power of small convenings. To me, it creates purposeful and deeper connections and surprising experiences that we don’t normally get at networking events or when we meet people randomly. So, Base is the convergence of my professional career and my professional lens with my deeply personal passions.

Q: What motivated you to become actively involved in the Miami Tech community, and what are some of the initiatives or projects you’ve been a part of?

A: When I first moved to Miami, I got extremely involved (in the community). I started several organizations, joined boards; I started to enter my foray into the tech community. The beginning of how dense my first year was set the stage for living here for over a decade. In a way, it has been deeply entrenched in the community because I started off on that foot. The tech world and the entrepreneurial world were not something that I was actively seeking out or coming from. It was in 2012 when I moved here, and Miami was going through that moment of starting to build an ecosystem. It felt like this really wonderful moment where I had no idea what was going on, but neither did other people. So, we could learn together. Nobody knew what impact investing was or how to scale companies, but we could all be in this space of learning from each other, of learning together, and it wasn’t something shameful.

Q: Could you share any specific experiences of challenges you’ve encountered as a woman in the tech community, and how you’ve navigated them?

A: I’m very fortunate in my career, and currently in the present day as well, to have been surrounded by and had visibility into really incredible female mentors,colleagues, and friends, which has had a significant personal impact on how I have learned. A lot of how I’ve assessed my failures and big mistakes, the women in my life have really helped me improve and held a lot of space for me to figure out how I wanted to show up. The community around women in technology and entrepreneurship, not only in Miami, has been an incredible asset to me.
In terms of challenges, the funding environment is definitely something noticeable. I’ve seen many female founders who have built incredible companies with traction, revenue, data and solid metrics, and still struggle to raise a round of funding. The funding that goes to women, to minority women, is still dismal, especially from venture capital. I have seen half-baked ideas from men being funded, but ideas that are robust and actually have metrics, revenue, and data, and are led by women, struggle to get it. There are still some asymmetries and biases today in Miami and elsewhere.

Q: Have you noticed any unique opportunities or perspectives that being a woman in the tech industry has afforded you?

A: Each of us, as individuals, is a cocktail of perspectives. For me, part of that perspective is being a woman, but part of that perspective is also being an immigrant, a third culture kid, and a physiologist. My perspective comes more from being a woman or from being some of these other identities. I don’t think women, as I have observed them, have a different leadership style in some contexts. I do think we show up with a different set of questions and a different set of skills, not in a better way, just different… I’m personally really excited to have two male co-founders. Ultimately, we’re stronger as a unit; not because we have different genders, but because we have three different perspectives at the table.

Q: As someone deeply involved in community building, what are some of the key factors to consider when developing and building a community?

A: Community building is vital, but very easy to do just for the sake of doing it- you tend to lose steam quickly. Whenever you gather people, whether it’s for a dinner series or a larger organization, the purpose has to be very clear. We tend to think that it will come along the way, but to me that comes first. The second factor is to be able to address gaps in community building or create gaps around something where others agree there is a need, and that this need would be served in that way. Often, we try to create a “community” in which the stakeholders haven’t been bought into that need. Thirdly, culture. Establishing the ground rules and guard rails of a particular community is also something that we come to too late. I often joke about it, saying that it’s how we want our kids to behave, but adults don’t often do it. Showing up to places of differences of opinion with curiosity instead of judgment or being willing to help before you receive is crucial. There are things that are common sense principles as values, but we don’t always build our communities starting with that assumption. You have to be very purposeful about what values you try to build a community with.

Q: How do you see the Miami Tech ecosystem evolving in the next few years, and what opportunities do you foresee for startups and entrepreneurs?

A: The tactical system of the Miami tech ecosystem has evolved so much over the 10 years I’ve been here. I am excited to see what the next chapter holds… I have been critical of Miami, but also very bullish… What I would love to see is deepening around certain verticals. We are at a moment in time where we don’t have to do everything all at once, and we can really start to build clusters of deep expertise and deep investment. Whether it’s climate and resilience, or health tech, medial devices, and bio research… Whatever the topics are, it’s to our benefit to really start to become experts on a national and global level around the verticals that most make sense in Miami. I also think we are over the hump of the hype of COVID and crypto, which became a very hyped moment in Miami. Now that those things are a little bit behind us, we have the chance to build with the benefit of having come through that. The folks who are here are people who want to be here and are here to stay. We’re attracting different types of talent and companies. Not just because of the global pandemic, but because people actually want to be in Miami and see a benefit to being in Miami. Overall, I am excited for the upleveling that is to come and the deepening of our focus in more areas.

Q: Can you talk about the partnership with Mana Tech? How do you see this partnership helping achieve your mission with Base?

A: We have been very fortunate to be able to host some Base dinners at Loft 10 with Mana Common. It has been one of the most amazing experiences for us. We host dozens of dinners every month, and we’re constantly trying to figure out what it is that leads to the environment and connection and delight for our members, which is what Base is all about. Doing the dinners here at Mana continues to allow us to test various concepts that we can’t easily do at other venues. It’s given us a set of data points that we want to incorporate into all our dinners and scale up, redesigning them accordingly. The benefit to us as a company is the experience that our members are having.

Learn more about Natalia’s endeavors at Base and become a part of Mana Tech‘s ever-growing community. We’re thrilled to engage with and showcase all the exceptional founders in our city!

Who should be our next interviewee? Feel free to share your suggestions with us at community@manatech.com!

The post An Exclusive Interview with the Co-founder and COO of Base appeared first on Mana Tech.

Nala is focused on four areas: leadership, performance, teamwork, and the culture of the company. The support tool’s mission is to produce valuable insight that enhances employee satisfaction within an organization by basing decisions on the performance, skills, and potential of each worker. It is user-friendly, fast, and easy for HR teams to integrate.

There was always a big gap between how HR was facing challenges and how managers needed data in real-time… We want to help companies by giving them a partner that would help them identify talent no matter who they are in the company.” by=”Ximena Paul” from=”CEO, Nala”

The three founders come from different backgrounds, each bringing their own perspective and company culture to Nala’s business model. One thing they all have in common is their passion to further expand and grow Nala in the US, which is why they chose Miami as their base.

What you notice right away about Miami is its diversity. If you are coming from Latin America, there is no better place to be. Here you get access to a lot of big LATAM companies, and you get a mixture of different cultures… Miami is the gateway for LATAM into the US.” by=”Ximena Paul” from=”CEO, Nala”

Miami gives a great quality of life and now has this huge environment for entrepreneurs and startups to grow.” by=”Maria Fernanda Castillo” from=”CPO, Nala”

Keeping employees satisfied can be challenging. With Nala, you have the tools that allow managers to enhance the workforce experience and maximize the potential of their team.

About Mana Tech Talks

Mana Common’s tech division has launched a new video series, highlighting businesses and entrepreneurs that make up Miami’s tech market. Mana Tech Talks will showcase cutting-edge innovation concepts and trends in technology with various founders and influencers of local companies.

As Miami continues to solidify itself as a prime location for tech, Mana Tech is eager to showcase the latest community success stories by featuring these well-established tech companies in Miami in this virtual series. Viewers can tune in to episodes of Mana Tech Talks on Mana Common’s YouTube channel.

If you are a local tech business interested in showcasing your venture to the community, contact us for an opportunity to be featured!

The post Mana Tech Talks Episode 6: Nala appeared first on Mana Tech.

OneOf is an environmentally-friendly NFT platform that focuses on bringing iconic athletes, brands, and musicians into the Metaverse. Doja Cat, Whitney Houston, Shaquille O’Neal, and Wayne Gretzky are just a few of the A-listers using the platform to distribute their NFTs. Since its beginnings in 2021, OneOf has become one of the biggest entertainment NFT marketplaces teaching users about the creator economy and connecting them with their fans.

“We really wanted to show off why we are a different NFT platform and technology. Creating an NFT a year ago was very costly and very energy intensive. We brought the minting cost down to effectively under a penny, and we reduced the energy and carbon footprint by up to two million times” by=”Lin Dai” from=”Founder & CEO, OneOf”

We also received insider details on their latest comic NFT collections, in partnership with eBay and two of the biggest comic legends, Stan Lee and HeroMaker Studios. The collections launched at New York’s Comic-Con this year, giving fans the power to own NFTs of their favorite superheroes and participate in the creation of the character’s storylines. Dai highlights the importance of how “NFTs can be more than just collectibles, they can be new ways to build media models for things we love and have fans participate in the growth of this new industry.”

Dai closed the interview by speaking about how Miami is building up to become the next tech hub. Miami seemed inevitable for OneOf as the year 2020 closed doors for a lot of entrepreneurs, forcing many to start looking in different directions. However, he saw value in Mayor Francis Suarez’s campaign during the pandemic and sought to open those doors in South Florida. Dai was impressed with how Suarez had achieved reaching out to tech entrepreneurs around the U.S.

“In 2020 nobody else was on that level of thinking and transforming a city that was known for leisure into a tech hub. That’s what Mayor Suarez was set out to do. To turn Miami into the capital of capitals, and really attract tech entrepreneurs and blockchain entrepreneurs. Moving the OneOf headquarters to Miami was probably the best decision in my entire entrepreneurial career.” by=”Dai” from=”OneOf”

Watch the full episode to learn from the mastermind behind OneOf and how they built a sustainable creator economy.

About Mana Tech Talks

Mana Common’s tech division has launched a new video series, highlighting businesses and entrepreneurs that make up Miami’s tech market. Mana Tech Talks will showcase cutting-edge innovation concepts and trends in technology with various founders and influencers of local companies.

As Miami continues to solidify itself as a prime location for tech, Mana Tech is eager to showcase the latest community success stories by featuring these well-established tech companies in Miami in this virtual series. Viewers can tune in to episodes of Mana Tech Talks on Mana Common’s YouTube channel.

If you are a local tech business interested in showcasing your venture to the community, contact us for an opportunity to be featured!

The post Mana Tech Talks Episode 5: OneOf appeared first on Mana Tech.

In the latest episode, we chatted with Fanatiz Co-Founder and CEO Matias Rivera to understand where tech meets sports media. Rivera talked about how the idea of a sports streaming platform originated back in his college years when his friends would struggle to find a legal way to stream soccer games played in South America. Therefore, he and his co-founders developed a solution with Fanatiz, an easy and convenient way to stream live matches and other on-demand sporting events.

The project originated in the Bay Area, continued in Chile, and finally established a home in Miami.

“In 2018, we chose to come to the U.S. through Miami for several reasons: Latin American roots and connectivity, strong presence of the sports industry, logistics of the time zone with Chile, access to capital, and that the people in Miami are happier.” by=”Matias Rivera” from=”Co-Founder and CEO, Fanatiz”

The company’s goal is to enhance the fan experience, providing a simple platform to watch their favorite teams play. With this in mind, Miami was the perfect location in order to keep building the Fanatiz user community.

“Fans are at the center of what we do,” emphasizes Rivera as he talks about their mission. The platform is geared toward soccer games for Latin American fans. However, Fanatiz offers a variety of content in both Spanish and English.

Join the rest of the fans and subscribe to Fanatiz to live stream your favorite sporting events!

About Mana Tech Talks

Mana Common’s tech division has launched a new video series, highlighting businesses and entrepreneurs that make up Miami’s tech market. ‘Mana Tech Talks’ will showcase cutting-edge innovation concepts and trends in technology with various founders and influencers of local companies.

As Miami continues to solidify itself as a prime location for tech, Mana Tech is eager to showcase the latest community success stories by featuring these well-established tech companies in Miami in this virtual series. Viewers can tune in to episodes of Mana Tech Talks on Mana Common’s YouTube channel.

If you are a local tech business interested in showcasing your venture to the community, contact us for an opportunity to be featured!

The post Mana Tech Talks Episode 4: Fanatiz appeared first on Mana Tech.

In the latest episode, we meet the team from The Shrimp Society, Miami’s community-building platform for aspiring entrepreneurs. During the conversation, Founder Chris Daniels, COO Ernesto Mandowsky, and CTO Jackson Davis describe how the concept started, the success that it has become, and why they choose to focus on individual investors and entrepreneurs rather than companies as a whole.

The Shrimp Society’s mission was to make their platform the innovative ecosystem for entrepreneurs in Miami, and they did exactly that. Their community has grown from 10 to 2,000 members, thanks to word getting out about their frequent happy hours, dinners, and meetups. In fact, some members who sat at the table during those Sunday dinners have made waves in the tech industry with their startups, becoming successful companies.

As The Shrimp Society’s community continues to grow, and as Miami continues to solidify itself as a global tech hub, the team shows no signs of slowing down.

If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or investor, join The Shrimp Society tribe today!

About Mana Tech Talks

Mana Common’s tech division has launched a new video series, highlighting businesses and entrepreneurs that make up Miami’s tech market. Mana Tech Talks will showcase cutting-edge innovation concepts and trends in technology with various founders and influencers of local companies.

As Miami continues to solidify itself as a prime location for tech, Mana Tech is eager to showcase the latest community success stories by featuring these well-established tech companies in Miami in this virtual series. Viewers can tune in to episodes of Mana Tech Talks on Mana Common’s YouTube channel.

If you are a local tech business interested in showcasing your venture to the community, contact us for an opportunity to be featured!

The post Mana Tech Talks Episode 3: The Shrimp Society appeared first on Mana Tech.

CEO & Co-Founder, Rodrigo Bernardinelli, opened the conversation by revealing the unique story behind how the company began. Having originally launched in São Paulo, Brazil, Digibee navigated its way into the U.S. market due to the current tech momentum.

He emphasized that his team built this platform to be utilized on a global scale, in hopes to show other Latin American businesses the upside of bringing their company overseas. Over the past few years, there has been a significant increase in Latin American unicorns setting forth efforts to bring their businesses to the U.S., and more specifically, Miami.

Through the Mana Tech Talks initiative, we will explore many more companies, their stories, and strategies that led them to success.

About Mana Tech Talks

Mana Common’s tech division has launched a new video series, highlighting businesses and entrepreneurs that make up Miami’s tech market. Mana Tech Talks will showcase cutting-edge innovation concepts and trends in technology with various founders and influencers of local companies.

As Miami continues to solidify itself as a prime location for tech, Mana Tech is eager to showcase the latest community success stories by featuring these well-established tech companies in Miami in this virtual series. Viewers can tune in to episodes of Mana Tech Talks on Mana Common’s YouTube channel.

If you are a local tech business interested in showcasing your venture to the community, contact us for an opportunity to be featured!

The post Mana Tech Talks Episode 2: Digibee appeared first on Mana Tech.

“Having been born in Miami, there’s not really a big VC culture out here,” says Ovadia regarding the beginnings of his startup. After visiting Silicon Valley to secure investors for the company, he was turned down countless times. However, he still decided to pull through and look elsewhere.

Due to the support of the VR community that saw AEXLAB’s potential, investors were eager to get on board and provide funding. As Ovadia mentions, once the community began supporting, other companies hopped on the bandwagon, and that’s when AEXLAB took off with over 10 million dollars in funding. AEXLAB plans to launch its game’s beta this summer of 2022.

About Mana Tech Talks

Mana Common’s tech division has launched a new video series, highlighting businesses and entrepreneurs that make up Miami’s tech market. Mana Tech Talks will showcase cutting-edge innovation concepts and trends in technology with various founders and influencers of local companies.

As Miami continues to solidify itself as a prime location for tech, Mana Tech is eager to showcase the latest community success stories by featuring these well-established tech companies in Miami in this virtual series. Viewers can tune in to episodes of Mana Tech Talks on Mana Common’s YouTube channel.

If you are a local tech business interested in showcasing your venture to the community, contact us for an opportunity to be featured!

The post Mana Tech Talks Episode 1: AEXLAB appeared first on Mana Tech.

As Miami continues to solidify itself as a prime location for tech, Mana Tech is eager to showcase the latest community success stories by featuring these well-established tech companies in Miami in this virtual series.

If you are a local tech business interested in showcasing your venture to the community, contact us for an opportunity to be featured!

The post Mana Tech Launches Tech Talk Series appeared first on Mana Tech.