Sergio Paluch

Managing Partner

2017 - Current

Beta Boom is an award-winning venture capital pre-seed and seed fund investing in tenacious founders solving meaningful problems for underserved consumers and communities. We have a particular focus on digital health, fintech, future of work, and SMB SaaS startups. We look beyond Silicon Valley, prestigious diplomas, or connections for passionate founders building extraordinary companies with enormous reach. Post-investment our portfolio companies work alongside our general partners and growth team to supercharge learning and traction.

Board Member

2017

Atma Connect is an award-winning tech nonprofit that empowers people at the bottom of the economic pyramid through mobile technology. Our flagship product is AtmaGO.com, is a open social network for neighbors in urban poor communities throughout the world. AtmaGO.com allows neighbors to report problems, share solutions, and exchange advice. We have launched in 83 neighborhoods in four major urban areas in Indonesia. We have ad over 200K users since Jan 2015, 15K posts, 17K replies. AtmaGo won IDEO.org's Amplify Urban Resilience Challenge ((https://goo.gl/IDSbt4) sponsored by IDEO.org, Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, SIDA, and DFID. So far, we have raised over $1M from major donors like Cisco Foundation, Qualcomm and individual donors. AtmaGo is now available on Android in the Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.atmago

Co-Founder, CPO & CTO

2013 - 2017

Atma Connect is an non-profit tech startup that empowers people at the bottom of the economic pyramid through mobile technology. Our flagship product is AtmaGO.com, is a open social network for neighbors in urban poor communities throughout the world. AtmaGO.com allows neighbors to report problems, share solutions, and exchange advice. We have launched in 83 neighborhoods in four major urban areas in Indonesia. We have ad over 200K users since Jan 2015, 15K posts, 17K replies. AtmaGo won IDEO.org's Amplify Urban Resilience Challenge ((https://goo.gl/IDSbt4) sponsored by IDEO.org, Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, SIDA, and DFID. So far, we have raised over $1M from major donors like Cisco Foundation, Qualcomm and individual donors. AtmaGo is now available on Android in the Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.atmago

Founder

2006 - 2018

I am a founding partner of Boom Factor, a product innovation consultancy based in the San Francisco Bay Area. We have led product design and implementation for nearly 100 initiatives for over 60 clients ranging from YC-backed startups to Fortune 500 companies like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, TiVo, Google, Bank of the West, BlackRock, EMD Serono, Electronic Arts, Fair Trade USA, etc. Boom Factor creates breakthrough innovations that are proven in the market, not just in theory. Our small, integrated teams employ the lean startup methodology to: - Understand the problem better than anyone else by getting out of the building and having dialog with people in everyday situations. We don't even start thinking about solutions until we've validated that the problem is worth solving and we know it and the realities of the customer better than anyone. - Create potential solutions to the problems with user-centered design. We focus on perfecting two or three key features that will distinguish our product in the marketplace. - Test solutions in the real world early to figure our which particular features and design will resonate with customers. We're talking a few months or weeks rather than years. - Launch the product and iterate it based on customer input until we are confident that we have created something that people love (product-market fit).

Advisor

2015 - 2017

GroundSource is at the intersection of the CRM and surveying markets. It allows organizations to create meaningful relationships with customers and supporters through short and frequent surveys and messages to create real-time, measurable dialog. Imagine if you took the DNA from Salesforce, Twitter, and SurveyMonkey and created a new species of consumer engagement platforms. That's GroundSource. I am helping GroundSource launch into orbit by fine-tuning their positioning, product, and pitch to investors.

Director of User Experience

2008 - 2008

I served as the Director of User Experience for the world's top social reading platform. During that time, I led the Scribd.com through a complete redesign and worked with the founding executives on establishing new product features. During my tenure, Scribd's traffic grew from 2.5M monthly unique visitors to over 6M and continued to grow to over 12M shortly after.

Sr. Usability Engineer

2005 - 2006

AdSense Coordinator

2004 - 2005