The middle of December in Miami means holiday parties, end-of-year wrap-ups, and one more reason to head to Wynwood on a weeknight.
On Wednesday night, eMerge Americas hosted its SHINE! Pitch Competition at The LAB Miami, part of the year-round eMpower Series spotlighting underrepresented founders across the #MiamiTech ecosystem. December’s pitch competition highlighted six women-led startups who were hand-selected to pitch live, each with just a few minutes to make their case in front of judges, investors, and community members.
The stakes were real: Sponsored by Northeastern University, Google Cloud, City of Miami Beach, and B.I.G. Capital, the winning startup would receive a $2,500 micro-grant (with a surprise $1,000 micro-grant awarded by B.I.G. Capital at the end of the night), and a fast-track spot into eMerge’s Global Startup Accelerator + Showcase, giving one founder a direct path into the conference’s global pipeline.
Here’s a look at the founders who took the stage:
Nathalya Ramirez, founder and CEO of Junie, opened the night with a healthcare-rooted pitch inspired by personal experience. Junie is a communication and documentation platform designed for senior living and care environments, aiming to eliminate the countless communication tools like walkie-talkies, texts, calls, Whatsapp messages, paper notes, and missed handoffs that can create risk in care settings. Ramirez shared that the platform is already live with customers, including a recently secured enterprise contract, and emphasized its potential to expand across healthcare and 24/7 workforce environments.
Maria Fernanda Delgado (Mafe), co-founder of Glidiffy, followed with a pitch for growing companies overwhelmed by tools. Glidiffy positions itself as an “execution intelligence” layer that pulls signals from across platforms to help leaders understand what’s at risk before delays impact revenue. Delgado, drawing from firsthand experience scaling teams, highlighted how data fragmentation costs organizations time, focus, productivity, and real dollars.
Next up was Rose De Sicilia [pictured below], co-founder and CTO of Indrasy, who introduced what she called Miami’s first “AI employee company.” Built specifically for small and mid-sized businesses, Indrasy offers plug-and-play AI employees that can handle everything from marketing workflows to operational tasks.
Joyce Medeiros [pictured below], CEO of Investrio, and her co-founder Laura Texidor have built a platform focused on helping the solopreneur – entrepreneurs and founders who are generating real revenue, but struggling behind the scenes with financial organization. Investrio has built an operating system that automates bookkeeping, sends invoices, accesses grants, builds ready-to-go tax reports, and delivers CFO-style insights, all with the goal to help solopreneurs become capital-ready. Medeiros also shared that since launching the platform in July 2025, it recently crossed its first 1,000 users, driven largely by community-led growth and organic content.
Rabia Malik [pictured below], founder of JennA Bytes (from JENNAhugs) is an online platform designed for young Gen Z and Gen Alpha girls navigating beauty, nutrition, and body changes in a social-media-heavy world. JennA Bytes delivers medically reviewed, parent-approved, age-appropriate content in short, intentional formats that prioritizes education over engagement loops and mindless scrolling. The pitch highlighted both a subscription model and a growing girl-advocate mentorship program already being piloted in youth sports and school communities.
Closing out the night was Catherine (Cat) Karow, founder and CEO of ZoraSafe, a real-time scam and fraud protection platform built after her own mother fell victim to a scam. ZoraSafe detects threats across calls, texts, emails, and websites (unlike their competitors that might only detect texts, or only detect calls), then immediately turns those moments into short “micro-learning” lessons. Karow emphasized Florida’s outsized exposure to fraud, particularly among seniors, and shared that ZoraSafe already has thousands on its waitlist ahead of launch.
And the winner was…
Investrio! After a tough deliberation by the judges, Investrio was named the 2025 SHINE! Pitch Competition winner, earning the $3,500 micro-grant and accelerator fast-track. Medeiros plans to use the new funds to fuel her go-to-market growth, expand her organic content strategies across social media, and continue building the Investrio community through different programs and events across South Florida.
“To other potential entrepreneurs, my advice is to keep building,” Medeiros said. “If you believe it, find a way to do it. Now more than ever, you can ask for help, work with freelancers, and figure it out, but if you’re really passionate about something, go build. Let’s go.”
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