Natalia Espinoza, Class of 2026

When I was in 10th grade, I started noticing something in Lima and across Peru: thousands of domestic workers spend most of their lives taking care of other families' homes, while many of them still can't meet basic housing needs in their own. I wanted to do something different from volunteering or one-time help, but I didn't know what social entrepreneurship was, or how to turn a question into a real solution. That same year, I applied to VTSP for the first time, and I didn't get in.

So I kept learning on my own. That question became Sueños de Hogar (Dreams of Home), an early-stage social impact venture that starts with financial education as a first step to help domestic workers, who are often the main providers for their families, access credit and improve their homes. I joined programs and competitions and talked with experts in social innovation, entrepreneurship and finance.

A year later, I applied again, this time with a more developed venture and a few recognitions, but above all with a much clearer idea of what I could learn. I got in with a scholarship.

Every morning started with Caleb Kline and a new hat (iykyk). I never got tired of his energy and his passion for teaching. With him, we learned everything from the foundations of entrepreneurship to what it really takes to pitch an idea and stand in front of investors. Then came the speakers. I still can't quite believe I got to hear Eric Ries, the author of The Lean Startup, explain ideas I had only read about. I also heard Chris Barton share how he founded Shazam and Josh Silverman talk about leading Etsy and Skype, along with many other founders, investors and leaders. Hearing them speak from their own experience showed me that strategy, technology and venture capital aren't just theory. They are decisions real people had to make without knowing how things would turn out.

I also met amazing people from all over the world. Some of them ended up on my internship project team: for five weeks, we researched the customers of Monarch, an AI-powered freight brokerage startup, and discovered that the answers weren't in our assumptions but in what customers were actually telling us. At the end, the founder told us, "Yeah, you understood who our customer is." That's when I realized the hardest question isn't what to build, but who you're building it for.

Since then, it's become even clearer to me that I always need to test my ideas with domestic workers and with the people who would fund the model. I launched my first MVP, a landing page to measure their interest, and kept digging deeper into the problem. A study in Mexico reinforced what I had learned in earlier stages: replacing dirt floors with cement dramatically reduced diarrhea, parasites and anemia in children, and lowered their mothers' stress. Improving a home means bringing dignity and health to an entire family. But a bank needs to know something more: whether domestic workers can repay a loan. Many have steady incomes, even if informal, but no way to prove it. That's the evidence I want to build, starting with in-person financial education workshops with small groups of domestic workers.

After VTSP, I was admitted to the High School Startup Launchpad at UC Berkeley Haas's B-BAY program, one more step in building Sueños de Hogar. Next year, I hope to start university, where I want to keep learning so I can help it grow.

One day, I hope Sueños de Hogar helps domestic workers across Latin America build homes as safe and dignified as the ones they've spent their lives caring for, because when a woman improves her home, her whole family's life changes. That's what Sueños de Hogar is about: empowering women, building homes and transforming families. VTSP gave me the confidence to keep building that dream.