Built in Puerto Rico: Three Founders on What Nobody Tells You About Scaling from the Island
Angeles Puerto Rico Forum · The Briefings Episode 2Â
Everyone talks about Puerto Rico as an emerging startup ecosystem. Fewer people talk about what it actually takes to build and scale a company from the island, the operational realities, the talent challenges, the capital gaps, and the decisions that don’t make it into the pitch deck.
In this session of the Angeles Puerto Rico Forum, we sit down with the founders of three Puerto Rico-based companies doing it right now: Raya Power, iTerra Solutions, and Supply Veins. Three different industries. Three different growth trajectories. One honest conversation about what scaling from the island really looks like, the parts that work, the parts that don’t, and what mainland capital needs to understand to show up effectively.
This is not a success story panel. This is a founder conversation and it is exactly the kind of conversation the Angeles Puerto Rico Forum was built to create.
The build — What it actually means to build a company in Puerto Rico today. What the ecosystem gets right, what it still gets wrong, and how these founders navigated both.
Operations and talent — Hiring on the island, retaining talent, building teams when your competitors are offering remote salaries from the mainland. The real playbook for operators building here.
Capital and the corridor — How these founders raised, what mainland angel investors need to understand about Puerto Rico-based companies, and what the funding landscape actually looks like from the inside.
The decision to stay — Why these founders chose to build from the island — what it cost them, and what it gave them, that building from anywhere else would not have.
Guests
Meghan Wood, Co-Founder & CEO – Raya Power: Plug-and-play solar and battery systems that give Puerto Rican homeowners and renters clean energy and outage protection — no roof, no permits, no electrician required.
Jonathan Soto-Nieves, Founder & CEO – iTerra Solutions: iTerra Solutions National security and defense technology company building autonomous threat intelligence and counter-UAS systems from Puerto Rico — the Arsenal of the Caribbean.
Charles Masters Rodriguez, Founder & CEO – Supply Veins: Supply Veins (Techstars ’24) AI-Native OS that turns supplier emails into reliable execution for procurement.
About the Angeles Puerto Rico Forum
The Angeles Puerto Rico Forum is a live, in-person event in Puerto Rico connecting Angeles Investors members with the island’s founder and startup ecosystem — bridging the capital path between mainland US angel investors and Puerto Rico-based companies. Produced in partnership with partners of the Puerto Rico startup ecosystem.