Who Gets Funded? Rewriting the Rules of Venture Capital

I Want Her Shoes Podcast

In this empowering episode of I Want Her Shoes, host Anna Aniston sits down with Laura Maldon, founder and partner at Ascendo, a Miami-based venture capital firm focused on overlooked

Key takeaways

Talent and innovation exist everywhere, but access to capital remains highly unequal.
Overlooked markets—especially those led by women and underrepresented founders—hold some of the most promising investment opportunities.

Main topics

Venture capital bias
Underrepresented founders

Notable quotes

"Great ideas are everywhere, great entrepreneurs are everywhere, but access to capital is not."

Conclusion

Laura Maldon's story underscores that true innovation often lies at the edges

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hi there, this is your friend Anna. And the question that I've been getting the most from all of my friends is what are we wearing? This age-old question isn't just about choosing an outfit. It's about choosing how we present ourselves to the world. I created the I Want Her Shoes podcast to dive deep into what it means to dress with intention, whether you're heading to a council meeting or just having a casual day out with your family. Join the conversation as we explore the power of personal style and the decisions that shape our public personas. Put on your favorite pair of shoes and step into my closet. Speaker 2 (0:50) Welcome back to the I Want Her Shoes podcast, where we explore ambition, leadership, reinvention, personal style, and the women building success on their own terms. I'm your host, Anna Aniston, and today we're talking about money, power, entrepreneurship, and who gets the opportunity to actually build. Because great ideas are everywhere, great entrepreneurs are everywhere, but access to capital is not. That's the issue here, and today's guest has spent her whole career trying to change that. which is amazing. Laura Maldon is a founder, operator, investor, and board member. The founder and partner of Accendo, a Miami-based venture capital firm investing in overlooked opportunities, entrepreneurs using disruptive technologies across fintech, healthcare, edtech, and the future of work, and also enterprise software. Those are all the hottest industries and most penetrated by AI as well, which is really exciting. And before Accendo, Laura founded Endeavor Miami, which which is kind of like a staple here. It's the first U.S. affiliate of global entrepreneurship organization. And under her leadership, its portfolio grew to 23 companies, generating more than $250 million in revenue, with several going on to successful exits. So congratulations on all that success. And thank you for doing it here. Speaker 1 (2:06) Thank you. Speaker 2 (2:06) I think that's what started the whole ecosystem here. We Speaker 1 (2:09) were pioneers. And Speaker 2 (2:11) before that, you held leadership positions at Visa and built deep expertise across fintech, M &A, private. equity payments and international business. And today, Laura also serves as on the board of International Money Express, a publicly traded company and brings an extraordinary perspective on what makes founders and companies worth investing in. So today, I'm really excited to talk about what investors are actually looking... for why extraordinary opportunities are still being overlooked, especially women in capital, AI leadership, building Miami's entrepreneurial ecosystem, and how Laura's own definition of success has evolved along the way. Laura, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the show. Speaker 1 (2:52) Thanks so much for Speaker 2 (2:52) having Speaker 1 (2:52) me. Thank you for the invitation. Speaker 2 (2:54) Of course. And Laura, before we dive in to the nitty-gritty, we have so much to talk about here. Can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself? Where are you from? How you ended up in this beautiful city? Speaker 1 (3:05) Yeah, it's been a journey. and several careers. I grew up in Mexico City. I studied economics in Mexico City. I started working in investment banking, and then I came to study my MBA. I graduated from Harvard Business School, and from there, the journey started. So I've spent all my career based in the U.S., half of my career covering Latin America, and the other half really focused on entrepreneurship with a big part of it, first as Endeavor Miami and now Ascendo. Speaker 2 (3:33) Thank you so much for telling us your journey. You've been an executive and you founded organizations. You've built a venture firm. You invest and you sit on boards. When you look back, what thread connects all of these different chapters of your career? Speaker 1 (3:46) So I think the main thread is that I've embraced change. That doesn't mean that it's been easy to embrace change, but I've always pushed through. I've had, as you said, different careers throughout my life, and some were choices I made, others were circumstantial, and I just, you know, decided to dive through. But I think what really helped me embrace those changes was first that I lost my mom when I was very young. That created a sense of independence very early. I'm sorry to Speaker 2 (4:16) hear that. Speaker 1 (4:17) Thank you. And then I also, very influential, was my father, who grew up in a small town in Mexico called Tampico, low, middle, working class family. And yet he was recruited to study in Monterrey, which is the third largest city in Mexico. And then he was the first one to graduate with a PhD in economics from MIT. I grew up with that thinking, I can do whatever I want. That's awesome. And my father really always encouraged my curiosity and that ambition. So for sure that... That ability to embrace change since I was young was really fueled by drive, ambition. And the third thing I would say is that I've always felt that I needed to drive change in the world. It's like your mission. I've always looked for what's my sense of purpose, right? And it has changed over time for sure. But I always had that feeling that we're here to make the world. a better place. I Speaker 2 (5:11) love that. I feel that a little bit as well. And you're Speaker 1 (5:15) doing it, sharing stories in your podcast. Speaker 2 (5:18) Yeah, Speaker 1 (5:18) it's been wonderful. And look Speaker 2 (5:19) at all the ladies up there that have been here. That's amazing. And I'm sure Speaker 1 (5:22) you know Speaker 2 (5:23) a lot of them too. Yeah. And you founded Endeavor Miami. And we talked about this a little bit before when Miami startup ecosystem was like pretty much nothing, right? It was pretty bare. What did you see in Miami before everybody else started talking about Miami's a tech and entrepreneurship hub? And what did Building Endeavor teach you about what entrepreneurs actually need to be successful? So Speaker 1 (5:44) we launched Endeavor Miami in 2013. At the time, I think Miami has always been very entrepreneurial in nature. There were a lot of small business, a lot of immigrant changing demographics that really create the drive for entrepreneurship when especially people coming into the country. But what was lacking in Miami was scale. Speaker 2 (6:04) Right. Speaker 1 (6:05) Endeavor. around the world had transformed and driven ecosystems where founders didn't have the resources to scale. So half of my career, which was first private equity and then corporate America, that's what brought me to Miami. The first half was covering Latin America. Endeavor is very strong in Latin America. So I knew about the organization. When I happened to be at the right moment in the right time, I met Endeavor's co-founder, Peter Conner, who recently passed. And he convinced me that I had to jump from corporate world to build the organization. And here we are, right? I was really in tune with the mission. You ask why? Because I had been for a decade in Miami already. I moved to Miami in 2002. I knew the talent was here. Geographically, Miami is uniquely positioned as well. It had everything to become an ecosystem a lot. some of the pillars to drive it, but that was exactly what Endeavor was for. That's what I saw. At the time, people really thought we were crazy. You know, like, good luck finding tech companies in Miami. Tech and non-tech, because it was broad. But I knew it was going to happen. And so we really pioneered the ecosystem. From that portfolio, I ran it for six years, built the organization. That gave me my entrepreneurial experience as well, building the organization from scratch, but also working with all kinds of founders, different stages, different industries. and they all need a different types of support. And so that was your other question, like, what did I learn? Well, being a founder is a very lonely journey. Yes. What Endeavor has built over time as a network is that compounding of relationships. And that is capital that you cannot quantify. You know, starting with our mentor network when I launched the organization to support the founders that were being selected. Of course, access to capital is another pillar and talent would be the other one. So I would list it in three, right? Capital, talent, mentorship. Just being with peers as well. because the journey is lonely.