New Discovery Media at the Startup Nation Conference

The conference, held on February 26 and 27, 2018, was the second to bring Israeli and South Florida entrepreneurs together in Miami, MDC News reported. The Idea Center at Miami Dade College organised it with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Tel Aviv University's Entrepreneurship Center, around artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, and cybersecurity. Both editions grew out of an agreement between Tel Aviv University and The Idea Center, according to AJC Project Interchange, whose delegations of Miami entrepreneurs to Israel led to it.

The conference's speaker page placed Pasillas in the AR and VR session with Guy Etgar of InSoundz, Sasha Kreindlin of ARShow and Eran Orr of VR Health, from Israel, and Alvaro Sanint of Jaibana Studios and Abi Mandelbaum of YouVisit, from Miami. New Discovery Media was already shooting in 360° by then, as VoyageMIA had reported in September 2017.

"Israel + Miami entrepreneurs at the 2018 Startup Nation Conference," Pasillas wrote afterwards. "Very impactful event." It came six months after the founders finished CREATE at The Idea Center, the same Miami Dade College hub that ran the conference.

Her TEDx Ciudad Juárez talk tells of going blank in front of more than 30 investors in Miami, and names Startup Nation as the stage. Her posts from the time describe that pitch differently: in November 2017 she was a finalist in the Female Founders Startup Challenge at unbound Global Miami, sponsored by Babson College and WeWork, where she pitched Mersyv by New Discovery Media on the main stage to a jury. Eight women-led companies competed; KynderMed and Metastatic AI took the grand prizes.

What she took to Miami Dade College was Mersyv, the prototype built the year before inside CREATE and already pitched at unbound Miami three months earlier.