Trainlight pitched at the Venture Connect Summit

Startup Juárez, Startup Chihuahua and Manos Accelerator, which runs through Google Launchpad, organised the two days and brought investors from Silicon Valley, Las Vegas and San Francisco to the border. Mariana Ramírez of Technology HUB, Sylvia Flores of Manos Accelerator, Cristina Yvonne Touché Lozano of Desarrollo Económico de Ciudad Juárez AC, Abril Rangel Cruz of Startup Juárez, Andrés Guzmán of Startup Chihuahua and innovation secretary Ulises Fernández Gamboa opened it.

The first day was panels, and the useful ones were blunt about money: "Inside the Mind of a VC", on what actually decides an investment, and "The Challenges of Raising Early-Stage Capital in LATAM vs. Global Ecosystems", on why the same company raises differently depending on which side of a border it files from. The pitches came on day two, at the closing Demo Day, where Trainlight presented alongside Kiuey, Mamut Capital and the rest of the finalists.

The point of the border, repeated all day, was proximity: Ciudad Juárez is close enough to the United States that capital, mentorship and a first American customer are all within driving distance. What the company took home was feedback — notes to sharpen the product with, from people who had seen hundreds of pitches.

Trainlight is the platform behind the Trainlight case study, the product that came out of The Bridge Accelerator three months earlier. El Diario de Juárez, NET Noticias and El Heraldo de Juárez all covered the summit; NET Noticias reported that the visiting funds represented capital in the order of 80 million dollars.