WET Center at Fresno State onboards first high school entrepreneurs

The team with Raíces Unidas — Raul Lopez, Alexis Robledo and Ryan Arias — meet with investor Glen Schrader at the Water, Energy and Technology Center at Fresno State. The business specializing in financial literacy for the Latino community is a firm-in-residence at the WET Center. Photo by Ben Hensley

Ask any innovative business owner with a brand new idea — entrepreneurship is hard.

From the risks of placing your own capital on the line, to the time and effort that goes into making the slightest opportunity pan out, the entrepreneurial road is paved with the remnants of those who came, tried and failed.

At the Phillip J. Patiño School of Entrepreneurship in Fresno, the path to entrepreneurial success is paved with something different — staff, students and even established entrepreneurs all seeking to help one another thrive not only in their schooling, but also their entrepreneurial journey.

Three Patiño High students recently took a step toward becoming established entrepreneurs in the Valley.

Raíces Unidas aims to function as a financial literacy platform geared towards the Latino community; each of the founders — Raul Lopez, Alexis Robledo and Ryan Arias — comes from a Latino household, and have witnessed what a lack of financial literacy means in their communities.

Competing locally

Earlier this month, Quiq Labs, a local business focused on advancing young entrepreneurs through technology, marketing and collaborative innovation, hosted its second annual Student Pitch Competition.

This year’s competition featured six groups from Patiño High each pitching their business ideas in front of a panel of five judges with the opportunity to win up to $3,500 to invest in their businesses.

“As an entrepreneur myself, it’s very important,” said Lucy G. Alvarado, president of 59 Days of Code and a judge at the pitch competition. “When you have somebody like Quiq Labs, it actually guides you and gives you some kind of direction.”

Raíces Unidas placed second in the competition behind Fortaleza — a protein-based ice cream business. Raíces Unidas also took home the “People’s Choice” award and was given the opportunity to place their business in front of some very real, local investors.

One of those investors was the Water, Energy and Technology Center at Fresno State, better known as the WET Center.

While typically focused on entrepreneurial ventures in the agricultural industry, one of the center’s leading innovators, Glen Schrader, saw Raíces Unidas’ business model and proposed a once-in-a-lifetime deal for the trio of young entrepreneurs: a 5% equity investment in the business that included workspace on campus at Fresno State’s WET Center.

The next step

With office space and an additional $600 investment totaling $3,600 invested from the WET Center, Raíces Unidas toured the facility last week and was presented with the opportunity to choose their workspace as well as learn about what the WET Center does, including how the center and its fellow innovators can help them grow and capitalize on their business model.

One of the WET Center’s key initiatives — Valley Ventures Accelerator — has run seven cohorts of early-stage founders typically concentrated on solutions in the ag-tech sector.

Eric Hadden, director of the WET Center, said one of the things the WET Center hopes to achieve moving forward is to draw in more local talent.

“What I didn’t have a lot of were home-grown entrepreneurs,” Hadden said. “That’s what I want to see more of — folks that come out of either Fresno State or perhaps the Patiño School to start their ideas here.”

Hadden said that the center has played a role in developing businesses from throughout the country and even several international companies as well, but the investment in local talent is something that has recently been lacking.

“There are other areas, especially in California, where entrepreneurship is the ‘default’ thing; if you are in the Bay Area, entrepreneurship is what you do. It’s what you pursue,” Hadden continued. “Because of some of the economic restrictions we have in this area, entrepreneurship is something that you may not necessarily pursue because candidly, you need to get a job.”

With the investment from the WET Center, Hadden and Schrader hope to continue to attract local young entrepreneurs.

First of its kind

With the WET Center’s investment, Raíces Unidas became the first high-school aged group that the center has invested in.

With that ceiling now broken, the young entrepreneurs don’t plan to stop growing their business there. They also recently received $2,000 from the Fresno Area Hispanic Foundation as well as $1,500 from another local business to go along with their winnings from the Student Pitch Competition.

All of those funds will go toward growing the business, which one day hopes to provide financial literacy education free of charge to its users through app-based and web-based videos and courses.

Hadden emphasized the important role the WET Center can play in educating young entrepreneurs while simultaneously mitigating some of the inherent risk that comes with founding a business.

Additionally, the center provides opportunities similar to the environment found at Patiño High School, where budding entrepreneurs have the opportunity to work together on ideas and develop their business model with a number of other entrepreneurs under the same roof.

“It’s a great opportunity to be the first,” said Raíces Unidas CEO Raul Lopez. “To be able to be excited, as the three of us are, to continue and to be brought into a space like the WET Center and collaborate with like-minded individuals, it’s very exciting.”