What were you doing previously and what inspired you to launch your company?

Before founding Track It Up, I spent much of my professional career implementing various technological solutions for global financial institutions. I led the Data Lake operations and Data Science programs of the Cyber Security Fusion Center at Citi. Throughout my career, I developed a passion for all things related to machine learning, artificial intelligence, and technology integrations.

In my personal time, I’m an avid cyclist. I’m Colombian and we have always had top cyclists across multiple disciplines, which inspired me to take up the sport. As a teenager, I was doing duathlons and triathlons before knowing what multi-sport competition was. I recall skipping the bus ride to school with friends in favor of doing the 10-mile ride to campus and our first class on the schedule was swimming, and regularly trained after classes. When two of my friends (Daniel and Camilo) heard about my routine, they joined the training regime; and a genuine life-long bond was formed! The three of us shared such passion for what we were doing and advocated for multi-sport training at school to such an extent they introduced multi-sport racing at future athletic events.

Later in life, I participated in single sport events as well as sprint, Olympic, and 70.3 Ironman races. Unfortunately, I was diagnosed with a medical condition that prevented me from competing. Even so, I held onto my passion and wanted to continue to be part of athletic events, so I started volunteering at events like the Tampa Bay Frogman Swim Race. I love sports and appreciate the enormous impact training can have in transforming people’s lives.

Just before the pandemic hit in 2020, I reunited with Daniel and Camilo, my high-school friends, for a ski trip; both friends continued to compete athletically. Daniel is into cycling and triathlon racing; he’s an entrepreneur and worked as the operations manager for a company he co-founded. Camilo has worked within the cycling industry for years and even participated in a cross-country reality show traveling on his bike. He has experience organizing criteriums and remains highly devoted to sports racing and competing at events.

During this trip, we discussed our shared passion for sports competition and shared ideas about what seemed (to us) to be apparent gaps in the market. I saw the opportunity to use technology to cover those gaps, and together, we harnessed our experience to create an innovative product designed for weekend warriors and competitive athletes. This is how Track It Up was born.

What pain point is your company solving? What gets you excited to go to work every day?

Although there are multiple fitness tracking apps in the market, there isn’t anything out there that’s specifically geared for a structured competition, that compares individual performance, inwards and against rival clubs.****

Any competitions that exist aren’t based on a person's individual skill level, and they don’t offer any real prizes. So, for training clubs and individuals alike, there is no single tool that allows them to track and get rewarded based on individual successes or relative successes against other clubs and athletes.

Training clubs need a tool to assess and reward their athletes based on specific criteria. Outside of clubs, individuals have no structured way to compete and aren’t always incentivized to push hard and remain engaged with their training; indeed, this lack of competition can often lead to disengagement, a lack of effort, or failure to step outside their comfort zone. However, in a structured competitive environment, with the right incentives, tracking, and visibility of gains/losses, motivation is high – as is engagement.

Track It Up directly addresses these needs.

We mesh physical and virtual events, offering virtual leagues based on asynchronous real-life sports activities. By gamifying the user experience, we keep weekend warriors engaged and help them build upon their athletic and competitive skills through the provision of challenging competition.

We cater to the needs of athletes at all levels, that enjoy athletic events, enthusiasts of asynchronous competition, either as individuals or through a club.

Tracking via wearable devices makes it easy for people across the globe to partake in the leagues.

What makes me excited to go to work every day is the notion that I am building something that will help improve people’s lives. Whether achieving greater fitness levels, a sense of accomplishment, progression, better morale, or even winning a cash prize, I know Track It Up will positively impact people’s physical and mental well-being.

Name the biggest challenge you faced in the process of launching the company. How did you overcome it?

Our team shares a collective passion for developing and delivering the best product, and nobody is happy to settle for anything less. We want to create the ultimate app and present it at its very best to the market. Presently, we are restricted to a tight budget, which won’t allow us to do everything we want from the onset. The notion that we would have to forgo delivering features from day 1 was a significant challenge, not just because of the costs; development time was a huge factor too. We needed to consider the market, the opportunity, our customers, and much more. After realizing we couldn’t have ‘the dream app,’ we wanted at the start, we worked together to reprioritize requirements to create a good prototype; a marketable MVP. We now have a fully-working version of the product that allows us to test and socialize the core business functions with potential clients. Prototyping enabled us to move quicker through the design iterations to integrate customer feedback, so it turned out to be a positive factor after all.

Where do you see your company headed next?

Integration with the top sport tech brands in our market is now complete. Next, we will scale up our beta testing, then implement our go-to-market strategy with a much broader audience. We will continue developing commercial partnerships by growing the number of brands we work with. Then, we can start to roll out our virtual leagues to more markets and have enough users to take this global.

Give us a tactical piece of advice that you'd share with another founder just starting out.

Find people that understand the industry you are in, people that understand and can challenge your business model. Attend industry-related and start-up events; this will help you forge connections with people who offer different perspectives while also helping you grow your network.

Why Tampa Bay?

Tampa has been my home for the past 16 years. After graduating from the University of South Florida, I’ve seen first-hand how Tampa has advanced and developed, particularly over the past decade. And with entities like Embarc Collective, it’s a great city for startups and business development. It’s a place with so much potential for the future, mainly owing to our vast pool of talented people in the Bay Area. The sports community is growing exponentially, and I just love how it has emerged as a sports town, AKA Champa Bay!

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What were you doing previously and what inspired you to launch your company?

I’ve been working in sales and sales management roles for technology startups for the majority of my career. The idea for Skedgaroo hit me many years ago and I dreamed of making it a reality while working on the dreams of others.

What pain point is your company solving? What gets you excited to go to work every day?

Skedgaroo is a platform that allows service providers and clients of any kind to easily share and book appointments for jobs, with a unique feature called Make Me Work. Make Me Work is essentially an auction feature for time slots. A client or service provider can push notify their roster of contacts that they are looking to fill a particular time slot for a service, and their contacts can accept the booking from there. I truly believe we have found a technology gap in the market. I’ve watched service providers and their clients struggle to communicate effectively, with loads of disparate scheduling methods, many across different verticals, leveraging highly iterative and manual processes to schedule services. In our own lives in the Leclair household, we have hair stylists, personal trainers, babysitters, manicurists, pedicurists, and others with whom we need to communicate, book and pay regularly. Skedgaroo allows us to do that easily and helps our service providers manage their businesses more effectively, especially those that are independent contractors. All of this gets me excited to go to work. We can help address a large problem with which entrepreneurs are struggling, helping them to work more effectively and ultimately earn more money. Watching the look on a user's face change as they register the value of what we’ll be able to do for their day-to-day engagements is priceless and keeps us motivated.

Name the biggest challenge you faced in the process of launching the company. How did you overcome it?

Where to start? There are new challenges every day, and every one of them can feel insurmountable. I guess the biggest early challenge was learning that no one cares about your idea, least of all the investor community. I knew this from years in the startup world including a prior business I launched when I was much younger, but I didn’t understand it as fully as I did once I started pitching Skedgaroo.

Where do you see your company headed next?

We have a fine collection of service providers and clients lined up to become early adopters. We’ll be driving hard to onboard our first one hundred customers in the months following our first release, generating the revenue that should attract a solid investment partner.

Give us a tactical piece of advice that you'd share with another founder just starting out.

You’ll have to build and prove your concept in the market. Get those early customers and show some revenue. From there, you have a real shot at making it happen.

Why Tampa Bay?

The Tampa Bay Area is the nation’s best-kept secret, or at least it once was. (I think the secret is out now!) I am here by dumb luck having moved from Colorado for a technology startup job and to be closer to family. For my first two and a half years here, I wanted to move back every single day. One day, I suddenly "got it" about Florida and finally connected with the area. I’m so glad I kept at it and didn't move away. Tampa is a wonderful place to live and do business. It’s difficult to imagine living anywhere else.

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What were you doing previously and what inspired you to launch your company?

For over 20 years, I worked as a practicing veterinarian in Tampa, Florida. I started my veterinary career at Lakeside Animal Hospital in 2001. I focused on small animal medical and surgical care during my veterinary career, particularly internal medicine, and surgery. I'm also certified in animal acupuncture from the Chi Institute of Chinese Medicine. I completed a Dentistry Externship at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, applying both disciplines to my practice. Lakeside Animal Hospital then became American Animal Hospital Association ("AAHA") certified, an achievement received by fewer than 15% of all animal hospitals in the United States and Canada. In addition, I have been a co-owner of Coast Dental. Coast Dental is one of the largest dental providers in Florida, with over 100 locations. I serve on the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of the board of Coast Dental. I sold my practice in 2018 to American Veterinary Group ("AVG"), a private equity-owned company with over 100 veterinary hospitals around the southeast. I'm an investor in AVG, and though I no longer practice daily, I actively follow the business of veterinary medicine.

Veterinary medicine used to be male-dominated; however, more than 80% of veterinary students and professionals are women today. Work and emotional demands were placed on the veterinary healthcare providers and created financial and psychological challenges for those working in the profession, leading to primarily a shortage of veterinarians and veterinary staff. At the same time, pet ownership has grown and exploded during the COVID pandemic. The work-from-home caused pet owners to see all the care and attention their dogs and cats need. They realized their pets need as much attention and quality health care as our human families.

While seeing all the changes and consequences of the shift, I thought about building an app that gives veterinarians more flexibility and a more balanced professional life. Flexible Hours they desire, and they can stay home a few days a week but earn money while having a life-work balance. I decided to go back to school and graduated from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts (MIT). And I was awarded an Executive Masters in business administration degree. I also received a certificate in Business Analytics from MIT in May 2021. Now with a particular emphasis on telehealth platforms for pet care, today, I'm building a veterinary care telehealth platform founded with the support of other MIT graduates.

Our app is close to launching, and it offers an integrated solution for the pet owner to manage their pet's health from a single easy user experience and get all pet owner's questions and concerns resolved when you need them most.

What pain point is your company solving? What gets you excited to go to work every day?

The current veterinarian experience is inefficient for both pets and pet owners:

• It is inconvenient for clients to schedule a vet office visit during their hectic work hours and wait hours in an exam room to see the vet.
• The cost of animal ownership and veterinary care is a challenge for many clients, leading the veterinary profession to balance the cost of optimal care with the financial constraints of their clients on a case-by-case basis. It is critical for the veterinary work at all levels to expand efforts to help the public and clients grasp the value of veterinarians and veterinary healthcare.
• The experience is very stressful for both pet owners and pets. Research shows that over 90 million cats could not see a vet during their lifetime. As we all know, cats have six senses; they will hide under the bed for days if they sense an appointment with the vet or a ride in the car.
• Inflexibility in the workplace: Our app is an excellent place for vet professionals seeking flexibility in the workplace without disrupting their lifestyles. As a female founder and a veterinary professional, what gets me excited and motivated is envisioning accessible Veterinary care for all pets and their owners at every income level. Leveraging technology and artificial intelligence to help solve the fundamental issues we face in the veterinary profession today. Providing flexibility to veterinary professionals in a workplace with no ceiling for growth in their carrier is a mission for a female founder looking for flexibility and diversity in the workplace.

Name the biggest challenge you faced in the process of launching the company. How did you overcome it?

• A fundamental principle of digital transformation is the implementation of digital technologies. As a veterinarian, I lack the expertise to build and understand the terminology of a platform or app terminology. I also found that engineers need a veterinary professional to provide the vision and the landscape to know what they are building. To stay in line with the digital transformation initiatives, I was personally involved in every little detail during the app-building process. I put myself in the pet owners' and veterinarians' shoes to ensure flawless user experience and touchpoints.
• Planning and strategy were critical to the outcome of success; a reliable digital transformation requires a careful approach, and a weak strategic plan can make the job difficult during the building phase.
• As a start-up founder bootstrapping with a limited budget can be very stressful.

Where do you see your company headed next?

Millennials are demanding a new way of communication, recent trends, and services and are the fastest growing segment of pet parents, so this app is both efficient and available. Boomers find it more challenging to get out and often have limited assists. Our app also addresses their needs. Since most pet parents consider pets to be part of the family, this app will help all of them take better care of their pets. Our vision to become the leading site for pet owners' education and community engagement with other pet owners sharing information and experiences is what sets us apart from other apps.

Give us a tactical piece of advice that you'd share with another founder just starting out.

It sounds cliché, but having the passion and love for what you do, is a sure way to succeed and be able to do something meaningful that others need and appreciate.

Why Tampa Bay?

Tampa is my home - so it is an excellent place to start, but this app is not limited to Tampa Bay - it has the potential to reach pet parents everywhere. Also, Tampa is known for its diversity, history, culture, and beautiful beaches. It is rated one of the highest-ranking regions in the country in Entrepreneurship Magazine for population growth and job creation.

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What were you doing previously and what inspired you to launch your company?

I was an architect, with a passion for designing small sustainable communities. But one day I realized we first needed sustainable infrastructure, and that the starting point for that was food. Everything is dependent on a sustainable food system. When I looked for one that met all the criteria I believe to be necessary to qualify it as sustainable, I didn't find it. So I put a team together to build lemonGRAFT.com, a peer-to-peer decentralized supply chain for buying and selling local food with your neighbors.

What pain point is your company solving? What gets you excited to go to work every day?

We are producing a peer-to-peer platform where you can shop in your neighbors’ backyard to buy and sell local and homegrown food. Like Airbnb, or Uber, but for food. The current supply chain for food is unsustainable and collapsing. Prices are going through the roof, farmers are broke, and selling their farms, and the environment is bearing the burden of the toxic waste produced by our industrial agricultural systems. The food currently being produced is nutrient depleted, and we are experiencing a public health crisis. There are monopolies, mafias, and injustice all wrapped up in how we currently get our food and it won't last forever.

Name the biggest challenge you faced in the process of launching the company. How did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge is losing faith when you encounter a LOT of tiny failures or hurdles. I've had to learn how to cherish the little wins and not get discouraged by the bumps in the road. Persistence is key in this industry, it allows us to iterate, try something else, and make it work. We only truly fail when we decide to stop trying to succeed.

Where do you see your company headed next?

Once we close our seed round, we are going to officially launch and expand throughout Tampa and a couple of other cities as we push major marketing campaigns to onboard members to the platform. Our goal is to reach the first breakeven point within 1 year and become cash flow positive, which will be 12k monthly purchases through lemonGRAFT.com.

Give us a tactical piece of advice that you'd share with another founder just starting out.

Don't be afraid to do the work, produce the minimum viable version of your product or service, and talk to tons of strangers to discover what their needs and pains are. And learn to sell by pitching in very high volume.

Why Tampa Bay?

I've grown up here, went to college at USF, and got married here. It's always been home. In the last few years, Tampa has really grown to be a major city in the U.S. The fast growth and establishment of resources like Embarc Collective made it apparent to me that we could successfully launch a tech company here.

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