When Pedro David Espinoza immigrated to the United States from Peru in 2013, he was one of the thousands of students attending the University of California, Berkeley. While the 18-year-old grew up with entrepreneurial parents, he knew no one at Berkeley or in the San Francisco Bay area.
“A lot of my classmates at Berkeley referred to their uncles, cousins or family members that worked at Google, Apple and Amazon,” Espinoza says. “All my family is in Peru and I had zero networks, venture capital, startups, entrepreneurship or anything because I started 18 years late.”
Through church and sports, Espinoza was determined to make connections and build a network of advisors and supporters. He admits he received a lot of nos and had to get comfortable with rejection. Almost a decade later, Espinoza has a personal board of directors he calls “amazing.”
