Like always, The LAB Miami buzzed with Miami’s familiar mix of hustle and possibility but on Tuesday night it was all about celebrating and learning from women.
Maria Derchi started Women in Miami Tech so that woman would feel supported and not alone. “I’ve watched friendships form in the community, business partners meet here, job offers come out of conversations – and countless women find the confidence and connection they needed to take the next step,” she told the women gathered on Tuesday night for a special event, the final installment of the You Belong event series in partnership with the City of Miami’s Economic Innovation Development Office.
“I couldn’t think of a better way to conclude than celebrating the women who are building the future,” said Jennifer Moy, assistant directs of the City of Miami’s Department of Economic Innovation and Development. One of its programs is the ongoing Built In Miami pre-accelerator.
Natalia Martinez-Kalinina is a co-founder of Base, a venture-backed membership platform that creates connections through curated experiences, and like Derchi, she’s also a community builder. She moderated a panel of female founders, all whose stores reflected the city’s grit, creativity, and refusal to wait for permission. “The community of women in Miami tech is really incredible,” she said, pointing around the room.
Rebekah Monson, co-founder of Letterhead, a platform powering newsletter programs, is a serial entrepreneur. Also venture funded, Letterhead spun out of a media startup she and her co-founders founded and exited. “What’s never in anyone’s founder bio … is how much help you need along the way.” The people here, she said, “really saved me,” showing up through every high and low.
Anya Freeman shared how her story stretched across continents — Ukraine, Israel, and finally Miami, where a law degree had once kept her on a safe, respectable path. But safety didn’t sit well with her once she realized no one was building solutions for Miami’s flooding crisis. “You’d have to be crazy to invest here,” she said, recalling the doomsday narrative. So to her parent’s dismay, she dropped her law career plans and built Kind Designs, a company that manufactures 3D-printing living seawalls that protect coasts and nurtures marine life.
Carolina Espinosa is co-founder of iTruckr, a company dragging one of America’s most old-school industries – trucking – into an AI-enabled future. She admitted the industry was messy and intimidating, especially for a first-time founder, but she said she and her team jumped on every opportunity anyway, scared or not.
As for fundraising advice, the women didn’t hold back the real talk. Espinosa, who is closing her first round, described the grind of raising in today’s climate: VCs demanding hard metrics, real traction, and clear articulation of AI’s role, she said. “With AI sort of turning into a commodity, it’s really sharing how you’re leveraging AI and how you’ve got an actual, real value proposition that is scalable.”
Freeman countered with her own unconventional path, where investors had funded her massive vision long before she had revenue or much of a full team. “There are still plenty of investors who are there for the huge vision, and they’re looking for a founder that’s just crazy enough to pull that off,” she said.
Monson echoed both views: numbers matter, and so does a big idea, clarity about your market, and the conviction to take the big swings, whether that’s in pitch competitions or VC meetings that might feel uncomfortable. “The thing that you should be looking for in an investor is someone who’s going to be a true partner to help you grow your business and help you level up as a founder and as a leader, and I think that’s where we’ve been really blessed and fortunate.”
As the conversation shifted into operations, culture and team building, Monson has always hired team members “who have been in the trenches” and “are excited and energized by that,” which she assesses through her interview questions. She also wants to hire people who are constantly raising the bar and teaching her and her team new stuff.
Freeman found her strongest operations hires on Craigslist, not LinkedIn. “They have to lift a 50 pound bag every 30 seconds non stop for six hours to keep the robots running. You’ve got to show up with some calluses on your hands to survive in these jobs,” she said, describing a team of immigrants determined to build something that mattered.
Espinosa, meanwhile, stressed the importance of structure, trust, and team-wide accountability, especially when everyone is learning on the job – including herself as a first-time founder and non-techie. Blessed with “an incredible team,” she recommends bringing on people that have a broader mindset when it comes to work and day to day culture, and then keeping it structured with regular team meetings.
Martinez-Kalinina’s advice on building the right culture: Spend a lot of time with candidates, and regardless of what you are hiring them for now, think about where you hope they will be in their next position at your company. “I love hiring for the team… You look at candidates differently because they’re not just fitting into a role, they’re fitting into a team.”
And it all starts with launching. Martinez-Kalinina said when Base first tried to raise $500K pre-launch to get started and investors weren’t biting, they decided to “just launch” in one week and see what happens. “Within a month, we had paying customers. We had people booked. We had people that had signed up for year-long memberships.” They returned to their investors and closed the funding in less than a week. “Then we raised a bunch of money after that, and are in 14 cities and growing.”
That scrappiness is what founder life is all about, said Derchi, who is also a VC with Florida Funders and CEO of Refresh Miami, in closing out the panel discussion. “When companies come to me and they have traction, part of what’s important to me is how they got that traction. If they’re scrappy… I just see it as a really cool way to see how creative someone can get and if they’re solving a real problem that resonates with people.”
READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:
- VCs share the realities behind the term sheet
- 3 things we learned about our careers at You Belong Series: The Power of Career Coaching
- Kind Designs secures $5M to scale sustainable seawalls
- For truckers by truckers, this platform makes owner/operators’ lives easier
- Base’s tech-enabled membership club makes it easier to make meaningful connections
- Top AIG exec to join Palantir to lead global financial services - September 2, 2026
- 8+ things to know in #MiamiTech: News from NEXA, A1R water, SPARC South Florida, tech salaries, Guident, Remitian, jobs opportunities & more - August 29, 2026
- For the win, Miami-based basketball startup league Unrivaled raises $100M+ Series C - August 26, 2026