Last month, we mixed and mingled with Latino entrepreneurs, C-suite executives, and celebrity performers at L’ATTITUDE, a business event exploring The New Mainstream Economy. This year’s topic, “Forging the Future,” invited attendees to discover avenues of support, opportunity, and investment to harness the power and influence of Latinos in the U.S. economy. ProActive Founders Michelle and Lawrence flew to San Diego and took part in the panels, workshops, discussions, and parties from September 12th to 15th.
Michelle attended the screening of the documentary film Show Her the Money, which revealed that women receive less than 2% of venture capital funding. They struggle to get financing for their projects, even though women are better entrepreneurs and money managers. Michelle learned that women have only recently gotten into the VC business and are starting to invest in women-owned businesses. She also learned tips for finding VC money and ensuring the funder is a good match for your business.
Lawrence attended “The Impact of AI in the Future of the Workforce,” where he learned about practical uses for AI in business. During the workshop, panelist Gustavo Suarez demonstrated how to input payroll data by speaking into an application on his phone. It was immediately apparent how AI applications like this can be beneficial to business owners around time-consuming tasks.
We brought back several takeaways from the event sessions. The new mainstream economy theme highlights the fact that Latinos are the largest growing spending power. We are respected as consumers, but we are not receiving funding to be successful on our own. There are no shortages of Latinos entering business fields, but there are many roadblocks to securing financing. Lastly, the person with the money has control, and even great ideas must have funding to take off.
During the event, we attended a private reception hosted by our friends from the Latino Business Action Network for LBAN alums. We reconnected with LBAN’s COO Jennifer Garcia, Bay Area-based community builders Frank Carbajal and Ed Vargas, and met new like-minded friends. Another highlight was the L’ATTITUDE gala held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, with exciting performances from Tito Puentes Jr. and Xolo Maridueña, whom we met and chatted with afterward. We’re already looking forward to L’ATTITUDE 2025!
