The first day of class at Manos Accelerator

Remember the first day of school, not knowing anyone’s name, and realizing you have lots to learn? That’s what today felt like. My team, the first place winners of the AT&T Mobile Education hackathon for the Read With Me mobile app, started our first day at the Manos Accelerator in San Jose. Reina and Francisco, two Oakland teachers and myself, a developer, have first-hand knowledge of problems faced by millions of teachers, students and parents in the classroom everyday. We can change the world.

Manos (meaning hands in Spanish) Accelerator is a three-month long program that will connect our team and six others, each with at least one Latino co-founder, to experts and the knowledge to help us succeed in growing our companies.

I’ll mention more about the goals of the program and why our first cohort is so important to our industry as the program progresses.

Our first day of “class” consisted of meeting the people that will support us everyday. Edward Avila, the man behind the idea of having a support sytem to support Latino co-founders, is very friendly and ready to listen anytime. He was the one who approached our team and encouraged us to apply.

Co-founders David Lopez and Sylvia Flores welcomed us and reiterated the support that they are offering our teams, and the personal dedication to seeing that this program succeeds, that our teams succeed, and most importantly, that Latino co-founders can play an important role leading companies that change our world everyday.

The program continued and introduced the seven teams. We range in age from two months to five years old and come from around the world. Here’s the slide for our company, sleek-geek.

For lunch, we had sandwiches and fruit and socialized with our new classmates.

Slyvia came in with the San Jose Mercury News and announced that the story about the accelerator was on the front page. My team was quick and eager to point out our company’s name, the first time in print.

After lunch, John Stanton, President of the Innovation Center where the program is hosted, welcomed us.

Mary Grove, Director of Global Entrepreneurship Outreach where she leads Google for Entrepreneurs inspired us with all the support that Google will be providing and the how they will provide contacts to mentor us in what we need to grow.

Brad Woodcuff and Carlos Rosario, legal advisers, gave us an introduction in how they will be able to help us.

Lastly, San Jose Councilmember Sam Liccardo welcomed us to the wonderful City of San Jose and offered any assistance we needed. He mentioned San Jose is a great place for startups to be.

Wasting no time, our team got to work preparing for what we would say on Wednesday night in front of nearly 300 people. Julia Sullivan coached us on the key points and helping us to refine how to present.

Finishing off the day, our team got up in front of the group and talked through our pitch deck. It was recorded and will be used to customize coaching session as we progress through the program so that at the end of the program we will be proficient at pitching to investors. It is very exciting to think about where we will be in just twelve short weeks.

The whole group went to dinner at SP2 down the street and enjoyed fall-off-the-bone ribs, shrimp pizza, and other delicious eats.

We are really looking forward to what Manos has to offer and we know we will grow both personally and as a company, a very exciting time for our young company. We also look forward to being part of a revolutionary program that will change our world culturally.