Please Rate my application - Stage 1 Endorsement for Exceptional Talent

Stage 1
1

Hi, my name is Camilo, software engineer and technical founder. Could you please give me some advise on my application for exceptional talent?

Summary
I’ve been in the UK for the last 1.5 years. During my stay in the UK ('20-'22):

  • I was part of the Entrepreneur First (EF) London program in Sept '20
  • I partnered with an ex-Google employee and created a new company in the UK (www.maneki.ai)
  • We raised £300,000 in a pre-seed round in Sept '21. I look forward to growing our company in the UK

Before the UK,

  • CTO Mercadoni - A grocery delivery app in LatAm. (feat. in TechCrunch - raised $6m usd Series A) '17 - '19
  • Technical CoFounder GDX.travel (acquired by Hopper Inc.) '15 - '17
  • I spent 5 years as a software engineering university professor '09 to '14 (I quit academia in '14)

Mandatory Criteria:
How do I demonstrate that I have been recognised as a leading talent in the digital technology sector?

MC 1. Certificate of participation at Entrepreneur First London Programme Sept.'20 to March’21 (10% acceptance rate for founders)
MC 2. Article in Forbes magazine about my new startup’s impact where they interview both mycofounder and me
MC 3. Proof of Pre-seed investment of £300.000 in my new startup (Bank Statement + CapTable + ASA EIS documents)

Optional Criteria 1. Innovation
OC 4. Proof of acquisition of my previous company GDX.travel (Signed term sheet + Certificate of shares issued under my name of the new company that acquired us + Media Release)
OC 5. As the acquisition terms were confidential, Proof of revenue of GDX.travel before acquisition (30m usd GMV in '18)

Optional Criteria 2. Proof of recognition for work beyond’s the applicant’s occupation
OC 6. As the CTO of Mercadoni, I was recognized as an Amazon AWS case of success for using their cloud to scale our grocery delivery app in Latam. AWS showcased the architecture of our product - video available in the official youtube Amazon AWS channel (500k subscribers)
OC 7. Article at techcrunch featuring our series A at Mercadoni. The article mentions the company’s growth.

Optional Criteria 3. Impact
OC 8. Certificate of incorporation of our new startup in the UK + Contracts of the 4 employees we currently hire + P&L closing Feb’22

Optional Criteria 4. Academic Contribution
OC 9. Paper published in high impact peer reviewed journal (Education and Information Technologies, Springer) in Jan. 2013.
OC 10. Paper published in international conference in Jul 2009 ACM Proceedings of the 14th Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITICSE), France

LOR 1. Investor at my new company - DeepMind’s AI research lead - Focus on my current skills
LOR 2. Another founder I worked with at Entrepreneur First - now director of eng. at Monzo - Focus on my skills previous to my current company
LOR 3. Senior PM at Wise - Exceptional Talent recipient - Mentee for the last 10 years. I was his computer programming teacher at university - Focus on my skills as mentor

Thanks in advance for your advise :slight_smile:

1 Like
2

Very strong profile. Best of luck!

3

I think the evidence for OC2 do not count for work outside immediate employement that has advanced the sector. can you expain how it counts especially the article about you? The article in OC2 is more suited for MC.

Optional criteria 4 evidence 9 and 10 do not meet the criteria as both are over 5 years old. Your evidence must be within the last five years.

1 Like
4

Thanks for your feedback @Francisca_Chiedu and @Farzad_Sunavala .

I’ll definitely revisit the academic contributions as they are +5 years old
I will strengthen MC and focus on 2 OC’s rather than trying to give evidence on all 4 of them

Regards,

5

Optional Criteria 2. Proof of recognition for work beyond’s the applicant’s occupation
Evidence stated doesn’t meet the criteria. It looks more like it was part of your normal work. If you have been a judge - assessing the work of others, a panelist, or a speaker, all in structured events that are of a non-profit nature. This this would count.

Also the news article on Techcrunch, if it doesn’t mention your name and your contributions, then TN could say there’s no connection showing the part you played.