Crated With love CEO Tyler Turk reacts to winning the Pitch 4’em competition hosted by Confia on Nov. 9. Photo by Frank Lopez

Several local entrepreneurs, business leaders and elected officials visiting from Mexico gathered at the Grand 1401 in Downtown Fresno for Confia’s first Fall Festival on Nov. 9.

Confia, an expansion of the Fresno Area Hispanic Foundation dedicated to helping business owners find funding, mentoring, incubation, marketing help and more, hosted the event for networking and to announce the winner of a pitch competition.

Confia’s first Pitch 4’em competition, made possible by the San Joaquin Valley Investment Fund (SJVIF), featured six local business finalists, down from an initial 40 applicants. The winner took home $100,000.

The SJVIF provides investment capital opportunities with pre-seed and early-stage funding for entrepreneurs with an innovative product or service that has the potential to scale.

The fund also aims to activate angel investors who are a representation of the local community and willing to fill the void of startup capital.

Yery Olivares, Fresno Area Hispanic Foundation chief operating officer, organized the pitch competition over the last year. She said the organization is thankful for everything the investors provide.

“They bring so much valuable expertise, and they are helping us bring much needed invested capital here in the Central Valley so that we can provide these opportunities to small businesses and innovative entrepreneurs,” Olivares said.

The winner of the $100,000 investment was Crated With Love, a two-player board game meant to bring couples closer together on date nights.

CEO Tyler Turk founded Crated With Love with his wife Michelle in 2014.

Turk said the idea came about when they decided to add a little more romance into the relationship, landing on a monthly date night where they tried something random, new and fun.

After seeing how well their dedicated time worked, they decided to launch Crated With Love and shipped over 5,000 copies across the globe in the first year.

To date, Turk said that they have made over $6 million in sales, and they are proud to have a “Crated Couple” in every state.

He said that Crated With Love was the first date night monthly subscription.

In the beginning, the couple was designing a new boardgame each month. They honed what Turk calls their superpower in creating games that will get couples to laugh together.

Business spiked after the onset of the pandemic as people were spending more time at home and trying to find ways to still have fun date nights, but sales waned after Covid-19 restrictions were lifted.

Crated With Love has published over 100 games in the last nine years.

At first, the games could be found in specialty stores and mom-and-pop shops, but as the business continued, they wanted to go to the next level.

Some Crated With Love games could be found locally at Barnes and Noble, as well as nationally.

They are also in talks with major retailers to get their games into Target, Wal-Mart and Hobby Lobby. 

Getting his games purchased in bulk by retailers is easier than trying to get individual subscriptions, he said.

Most of the $100,000 prize will go toward fully transitioning Crated With Love to the retail environment, with plans to launch five new games in the next year.

A surprise second $10,000 prize was given to Need2Say, a language app for the construction industry meant to help employers connect with their Latino workforce to ensure safety and productivity.

 

Oscar R. Garcia, founder and CEO of Need2Say, is the son of an immigrant construction worker who suffered numerous injuries at work through the years, as well as missed career opportunities.

He said Latino construction workers have the highest mortality rate than any other sector, with more than 4,000 of them dying each year.

He started the company right before the pandemic to help people like his dad and give back to the community.

The app would feature a Spanish to English and English to Spanish translating system and will allow workers to ask questions to safety managers and watch safety videos.

Need2Say recently signed on new clients and is on track to make $84,000 by the end of this year.

“We don’t have competition. If you find something similar to us, please let me know,” Garcia said to the judges during his pitch.

Epiphene, founded by Jim Phene, another of the six finalists, is a liquid filtrations company that has worked on some of the largest district cooling projects in the world, with their products being found in data centers, steel plants and major airports in the Middle East.

Another finalist was The Pee Pipe, a prototype device designed to help persons with disabilities to urinate without the use of a catheter. The Pee Pipe was created by Scott Johnston, who was born 3-months premature and had a heart attack when he was a week-old, causing cerebral palsy.

He has been in a wheelchair since age 2.

He said going to the bathroom is difficult for persons with disabilities. Solutions on the market, including catheters and wearable devices, don’t work well for everyone and are not made or designed by persons with disabilities.

He said that there are 90,000 people in Fresno County with disabilities, representing a big market for the medical device industry.

Other finalists were Hybridly, a platform that allows companies that are engaged in hybrid work to build and control data tables, and Strong Family Fitness, a gym in Fresno that is aiming to help Latino families overcome language barriers when it comes to fitness and nutrition.

Investors still have the opportunity to invest with the startups in the pitch competition.