Luisa Castellanos

Prior to creating Science On Call, I ran an IT consulting company for brick and mortar businesses. However, even though there is a huge need for tech support in the restaurant industry, I realized that the company was not scalable regardless of the need for tech support from restaurants. This is how Science On Call was born - it is a scalable way to provide tech support to restaurants and help restaurants leverage their technology.

The biggest sacrifice Andy, my co-founder, and I made early on was leaving our full-time jobs to work for Science On Call full time. It was exciting, but there is great risk associated with losing that stability and not knowing what the future holds. Therefore, if you are going to go out on your own, it is necessary to be resilient. Just a couple of months after going out on our own, the Covid-19 pandemic hit in March 2020. This taught us how to really be resilient and keep focusing on the problem. In March 2020, we paused service for our customers that we did have at the time. We used 2020 as a period to just be there to help our customers through whatever they needed. By offering this support, we were able to build even stronger relationships with our customers, make connections with potential new customers, and gain more trust from the restaurant community. These relationships helped us better understand the needs of our customers, and helped us learn more about the problems of the future for restaurants as the pandemic also created new IT needs for restaurants such as online ordering.

One way Science On Call has been able to grow during the seed stage is bringing on more staff such as a product development lead and sales team, which was something we were not able to afford before. Though we’re growing, there are still challenges in the seed stage. For example, I found a great deal of support from the Chicago tech community during the very early stages of Science On Call, but now that we’re entering the seed stage, I’m finding that there are not as many grants or programs for people who are in later stages of their company. One reason for this may be that people expect that since you’ve been running a company for a while now, you should already know about finances, marketing, and fundraising, but there is still a lot of new information to learn. Also, there are not as many women founders who have gotten to this stage, and they are understandably busy people so they may not have the time to mentor and teach other women founders entering the seed stage. This is one reason I was excited to be part of GET’s Seed Founder cohort because it is a program that is focused on the seed stage.

There is community and there is also friendship. Having close one-on-one relationships with other founders is really important. I have founder friends that I text all the time and invite to birthday parties. Though I love spending time with my non-founder friends, there is something unique about a founder-founder friendship. They understand the challenges you’re going through and share the same experiences. I have also found a general community in the Chicago startup space, and see the same investors, founders, and community members at different events throughout Chicago.

I wanted to participate in the GET Seed Founder cohort because of how customizable it was to me and Science On Call. I liked how instead of required sessions for founders, GET emphasizes connections and relationship building. I’ve also enjoyed that the cohort is a small group of other women founders that I can connect with and know one-on-one. Also, being in a year long program has allowed me to grow in a way that is not possible in a 12 or 16 week long program. For example, within the year, I have made new friends and connections, raised seed round, and traveled to Miami!