Julieta Porta, the Mendoza entrepreneur who inspires a generation

juliet porta light She is a 24-year-old young woman from Mendoza, of whom several will surely be written again, since she has already represented the Argentina on both occasions and stands out as a jewel of the entrepreneurship and the innovation local.

Recently, he represented the country in a World Sustainability Forum which was made in Japan. In the year 2020 he won, together with his team, the Space App Challengeorganized by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), with the application it developed to avoid some of the most feared natural catastrophes.

At 23 years old I founded a company that helps the scientists to raise funds necessary to develop your projects. His company is called mycorrhizaebut it doesn’t stop there. There is still more.

Campus Summit 2022: technology and innovation land in Buenos Aires

She is also the youngest director of the Ibero-American Federation of Young Entrepreneurs in Madrid, representing more than 14 countries and 120 thousand businessmen. In addition, she represents Argentina at the Women’s World Economic Forum and He was selected among 26,000 contestants after surpassing 268 instances.

PROFILE was able to talk with juliet porter under the Campus Summit 2022 which took place in the city of Buenos Aires and, according to its organizers, is the greatest experience of technology, innovation and entrepreneurship. Next to Portaparticipation more than 70 speakers both local and international.

From Mendoza to the world

— Tell me a little about yourself

— I am 24 years old, I have a degree in Business management and I’m about to graduate as an engineer, I have three subjects left and the thesis. I have always been passionate about problems and I have always wanted to do many projects, I am very restless. And I still do that to this day: I get together with scientists and create projects.

— What is it like to undertake in Argentina?

— it’s challenging. There are many no, many but, many prejudices, but for me it is exciting. One has to know that the way not always linear and that you are going to find a lot of obstacles. That is where one has to know their emotions because anxiety, nerves, frustration are going to happen, but when that death Valley the answer is found and the projects materialize.

— What is the valley of death?

— That process that we go to the beginning in which one has that energy to start. You already have the idea, the team to work on it and suddenly you run into a lot of obstacles that make many stay in that place. That is why it is said about startups that 90% fail, because they can’t get over that valley which is when you generally lack the resources, or the knowledge or you still can’t find what your client or your market needs.

— Do you feel that there is a lack of accompaniment or investment in entrepreneurial talents?

– I think that the Argentine is an entrepreneur by necessity and from birth. We Argentines are innovators and we have shown that. I believe that the opportunities are it happens that they are not in sight, it is in one to search, to investigate, to try to find those possibilities that, many times, are not in sight or when you applied it goes wrong. That is what I always profess: lHow many times does it have to go wrong for you to go well in one. It’s the same analogy for startups. Of 10 that you do, 9 will fail, but the one that comes out will break it.

— Did you feel accompanied at the governmental level or was it rather a solitary journey?

— I felt supported once I started winning awards. When I had diffusion everything changed. I feel that there are many entrepreneurs who they don’t have that luck and there are a lot of people in Argentina who are doing amazing things but they are invisible. I think that No you have to wait to win prizes for the backed government. There are some, but more progress is always needed.

— What was it like to be a NASA Global Winner?

– It was crazy! I was the only Latin American woman among 26,000 people that remained in the world. I still don’t believe it (laughs) when they ask me gives me goosebumps. I received an email in which they told me that she was the world winner from NASA and they were inviting me to go to the headquarters in Cape Canaveral, to the headquarters in Washington, I couldn’t believe it. It was a boom in general, because suddenly a lot of people wanted to buy the project from us and it came true.

What will the Techno Valley be like that will work in the heart of CABA

What was that project?

That project was the one we did with two Argentines and one Guatemalan. Is called zonda inc is basically an app that we send to NASA to save people from floods and estimate the costs that occur in these natural disasters in Latin America.

— How does Zonda Inc work?

The app works through an algorithm that uses historical information. Use real-time monitoring and predict future flooding using the mission’s satellites Sentinel-1 of the European Space Agency (ESA).

— Tell me about Mycorrhizae

— Well, after this happened in the NASA contest, people told me: ‘how did you do?’, ‘I need help’, and I was giving workshops and it will take me to call from different countries to tell my story and I said to myself: if I can help them, Why can’t I help others? And we were creating teams that grew a lot and Mycorrhiza was the result of giving a name to all that help or consulting that we had been doing for other projects.

— What is it like to be a woman, young and entrepreneur in a world that is being deconstructed?

— what the sense. For example, now that I had to represent Argentina in Japan, I experienced it a lot. It is a very traditional culture, few women, for example, less than 10% in Parliamentfew women work and it is a gap that is very marked in some borders.

One of my pillars is that I always promote inclusion, not only of womenbut the inclusion of people with different abilitiesto the people of the silver economy who are older and who lost their job and no one hires them or those who did not have the opportunity to study. And it’s not just with women. but it is with everyone in general.

— How important are these types of events such as Campus Summit 2022?

— I know the organizing team of the Campus Summit because when I was younger I came to listen, I participated in these events and on one of those times I came I was inspired by a story that was told here why when one hears that someone predisposed something capable, he sees it closer.

Many times these events are the triggers for the big companies of the future. Something very crazy that happens to me is that when I was younger I made a lot of friends at these festivals and today are the speakersIn other words, everyone has achieved things, and it seems to me that having the humility to listen to another makes you see yourself and find yourself in that person.

— What advice would you give to someone who is starting up?

— I would recommend that you come to these kinds of talks. To ask for help, to be encouraged to knock on doors, to send emails, to send messages. Let it taste cheap, let it fail quickly and that he always finds a team, that nothing is impossible with him. With a good team any problem can be solved and, therefore, create any solution. The important thing is to do things together.

LR