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Written by: Javier Solorzano, Founder of Elektet
At the age of five, my family and I left Nicaragua. In 1989, afraid of Nicaragua becoming a communist country and the limitations in education, my family left everything behind for a chance at a better life in the United States. We crossed four countries with nothing but the clothes on our backs, ultimately ending up in East San Jose where my parents each worked two jobs to make ends meet for many years.
Growing up Latino in East San Jose, I was a statistic. When I graduated from high school in 2001, the high school dropout rate for Latinos was 30%. Only 31% of those that graduated from high school enrolled in college, and only half would graduate with a bachelor’s degree. Today, only 4% of the entire U.S. Latino population have a graduate degree. It didn’t help that my parents were unable to help and guide me through the education system. My parents barely spoke any English and had to work low-paying jobs in order to support me. The odds were stacked against me as a Latino. I wasn’t supposed to graduate from high school. I wasn’t supposed to go to college. I wasn’t supposed to get a Master’s Degree. However, I used these odds in my favor. It motivated me to succeed in life because I didn’t want to become just another statistic. I reached out to find guidance on my own. Without the guidance of others, I would not be where I am today. It was challenging, but I’m thankful and fortunate to be one of the 4%.
For the last 10 years I have worked in the Silicon Valley as an applications engineer for multiple semiconductor manufacturers, including Cypress Semiconductor, Micrel, and Touchstone Semiconductor (now a part Silicon Laboratories).
After helping over 18,000 electronics design engineers find product information, I realized engineers need a simple way to find what they need and a way to organize this data efficiently.
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Because of my background, I am motivated to give back and help people succeed. As an engineer, I see the struggles engineers have on a daily basis. Even today, over 1 million engineers cannot find simple product information like datasheets or part numbers and spend 50% of their design time visiting and going through website after website looking for this information.
It really bothers me that no single place exists where engineers can find imperative data on parts and where companies can listen to and talk with engineers during the buying decision process. Elektet wants to solve this by building one website where electronics design engineers can transform an idea into an end product. Elektet will do all the heavy lifting with features including a collaboration environment similar to Google Drive, a circuit sketch tool, a datasheet annotation tool, and a workplace tool helping them organize all the data they find.
In order to make the biggest impact for over 12,000 companies, Elektet can boost sales growth by providing a stage for product and service providers involved in the electronics design process to acquire new customers and connect with the engineers that are looking for their part information or services.
With a social community component to the website where engineers can upload their lab data and share their thoughts about it, companies will gain insight into what engineers think about their products and services. Additionally, features like an analytics tool, a toolbox of design tools and a messaging system gives them even more insight and access to their customers , enabling them to make informed business decisions. For engineers, this enables them to easily find and analyze imperative data unavailable anywhere else, organize it and share it with others. This expedites finding a design solution for the product.
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To build out the fully functional file sharing system and design tools we’ll need funding. The beta version of our website will be released on June 7th, 2015. To help us gain funding, we want to know if engineers would be willing to purchase a subscription to use our tools by visiting our landing page and selecting one of three pricing options. For more information, you can also visit and support our campaign page or call me at (408) 421-9064.
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