<aside> 😎 Background

</aside>

Ana Maria Martínez Franklin (TF6) is one of the cofounders of Laboratoria, the leading nonprofit upskilling women in LATAM into coding jobs. At Laboratoria, Ana María, Marisol, Rodulfo, and the rest of the team raised funds from Google and IDB and were recognized by global leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama.

In 2021, some of the Laboratoria team founded Kaudal, which trains employees in using technology through the use of no-code, which is operating as a for-profit startup.

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anamartinezfranklin

Full Video & Transcript

https://grain.com/share/recording/94991bc0-5cf1-45ca-9758-e771bebcc512/N5JlVpeGxeyQ3rzFeZq5U8dvBoOnB5JgjNGeBzDZ

FMF Case Study - Non-Profit.pdf

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<aside> 🤯 Main Highlights

</aside>

• Why go nonprofit with Laboratoria?
  • Clear impact model but not a clear business model to sustain the organization economically
• Bootstrapping as a starting point
  • Before building Kaudal, the team built a bootstrapped unit within Laboratoria that would deliver training to corporates and was self-sustaining
  • This helped with customer development, but also gave the team the conviction they needed to raise capital to build Kaudal as something that can really scale
• Raise venture funding when your product needs to scale and you are solving a core problem for a customer that they are willing to pay for!

<aside> ✍️ Notes

</aside>

Starting Laboratoria as a nonprofit

Laboratoria had a clear social impact model, but not clear business model to make it sustainable in time

https://grain.com/share/highlight/brfuagLj1sSmsRKZ8j5qZXWwdjAz0r0dnPADGzSd

Pros & Cons of going the nonprofit route

The main advantage was to find partners that can fund you to solve difficult problems and trust you

https://grain.com/share/highlight/XqEGQlQedscFOAa0GAo8rCyUuBdoUdYH2BdlwiwK

The main con is that it kept them from having real conversations with hiring managers for their Laboratoria graduates – companies would send them to the CSR department, they wanted to talk to the CTO instead!

https://grain.com/share/highlight/d5oAcDExB9128wwXSlsXkb27Lyern4QIJhvign2f

Transition from nonprofit to VC-backed

Before building Kaudal, the team built a bootstrapped unit within Laboratoria that would deliver training to corporates and was self-sustaining – this helped with customer development, but also gave the team the conviction they needed to raise capital to build Kaudal as something that can really scale.

Thus, they decided to build Kaudal as a for-profit startup that would look to create a scalable training program for companies.

https://grain.com/share/highlight/asFVMh6qNrDp7V7SGaSSbwTIPIOVWegTE2ffLY3W