Why I love company building

Raised in Silicon Valley by an American father and a Mexican immigrant mother I’ve always been fascinated with how this region works. Immigrants with very little showed up and built billions of dollars in value – from Winston Chen founding Solectron in 1977 to Jensen Huang founding Nvidia in 1993.

At 12, my father introduced me to commodities trading. Back then it wasn’t tracked in sophisticated trading software I would grow up to work with at Derivix, but in a small green notebook. I went on to study finance as one of only a handful of women at Cal Poly in the major.I was the odd ball but I stuck with it. I started my career in investment management for hedge funds run by Bernard Osher and Will Weinstein and later tech M&A, where I was the only woman and non engineer on the semiconductor team. In 2005, I moved to New York to do healthcare investment banking. It was then that I fell in love with the art of building companies.

In 2007, I founded Atelier Advisors to fill a major void – startups needed investment banking support but didn’t have options. From there I morphed into a fractional CFO out of necessity. That’s a polite way of saying none of my clients had their books together. Finance is one thing most founders need but avoid.

In 2015, Finance for Entrepreneurs was born. I realized there was a strong demand for startup education. How to build a growth model, GTM strategy, or select the right type of capital. I become the go to person for thousands of startups around the world. I know what it feels like to be in a room where everyone else seemed to speak a language you were never taught. When I started in tech M&A selling semiconductor companies, I didn’t know a circuit board from an ironing board. The founders I work with are often exactly there. Smart, capable, building something transformative, and without a map for the financial terrain in front of them.

Since 2007, I’ve advised companies from early stage through acquisition across fintech, health tech, CPG, design, analytics, and more. I’ve sat on both sides of the M&A table. I’ve helped founders raise capital, structure deals, and exit on their own terms.