We wanted to meet real entrepreneurs exactly where they were. That meant starting the first week with a simple but revealing exercise: everyone pitched their business as it actually stood. No polish required. No pretending. Just the real picture of where they’d come from, what they’d built, what they were stuck on, and where the gaps were. And the gaps were different for every single person in that room. One founder had a compelling product but no clear path to scalability. Another had the customers but not the language to make the business investable. Someone else had the vision but needed to be pushed, hard, on the financial architecture underneath it. That’s the thing nobody tells you about early-stage entrepreneurship: the work isn’t one-size-fits- all, and a program that treats it like it is will fail the people who need it most. So we didn’t.

What followed over the next eight weeks was built around what each entrepreneur actually needed. They got honest, no-BS input from people who’d been in the arena. They sat across from high-level experts and had the kinds of conversations that change how you think about your business. They were matched with mentors who understood their specific sector, their specific challenges, and their specific stage. And week by week, the businesses they were building became sharper, more defensible, more real. The goal the whole time was bigger than the pitch. It was to help each of them design a business built to scale…a business that builds wealth not just for the founder, but for a team, a community, a future beyond themselves.

On the final day, we brought in investors and key stakeholders from the Santa Fe community. And the seven businesses that stepped up to pitch were not the same businesses that walked in on week one. They were investable. They were ready and the people behind them had grown in ways that went well beyond the whiteboard.

Here are the founders who made this pilot what it was:

Meet David Swope, founder of Makers Farm, a 148-acre rural agricultural campus.  A 7th generation New Mexican and combat veteran, David is currently a student at Santa Fe Community College’s premier and nationally known aquaponics program studying under the ever-affable and highly respected Charlie Schultz to plot out one key revenue driver of the farm – modern greenhouses growing leafy greens sold in pre-packaged lettuce kits – aiming to take but a slice of the $12.6 billion market. David’s regional distribution hub greenhouse model will service the southwest’s lettuce demand first, then scale to include additional agri-products distributing Makers Farm products nationally.

Sitting on plenty of available incentives to develop the land into a productive, sustainable farm featuring multiple revenue streams, Makers Farm sets its sights to become the best of development projects.  And with a ‘local for good’ philosophy, creating a family-like environment with its onsite greenhouse workforce housing, New Mexico’s blue skies as far as the eye can see appear to be the only limit.

Meet Grace O’Grady, founder of Pollinators, a creative collective and marketing agency that blends art, community, and business. Pollinators design immersive experiences, workshops, markets, music, and installations that connect local artists, businesses, and audiences to increase visibility, engagement, economic traction for artists and to develop long lasting relationships that will carry forward Santa Fe’s prominent artistic reputation.

Having worked at Santa Fe’s Goldleaf Framemakers as a production manager, where she hand-carved 18th-century Spanish frames, gilded with real gold, using techniques dating back to the ancient Egyptians, Grace observed first-hand how the northern New Mexico art scene is packed with enormous talent, assets and innovative thinkers who are often disjointed and unable to connect into the broader community – not only to gain exposure for their artistic creations, but to win jobs, commissions and partake in and contribute to the business world and public spaces. Pollinators’ vision is to change this dynamic, lead new conversations, drive important public and private projects and solidify Santa Fe’s reputation as a unique art mecca well into the future.  ‘Local’ is Grace’s mindset and where her artist collective hopes to build its influential perch for good.

Meet David Aponte, Founder of Clean Aqua Solutions – a disruptor in algae water purification.  Dave is leading a demonstration pilot with the City of Santa Fe to create a sustainable and low cost filter solution with his innovative Sandia National Laboratory technology that purifies wastewater as recently profiled in the Santa Fe New Mexican. Congrats Dave!
https://lnkd.in/gkTEHg-F

Meet Austin Vantastic, founder of Ayurveda for Us, a wellness company taking aim at one of the largest underserved health markets in the country: IBS and chronic digestive issues. Austin’s work is deeply personal. After experiencing severe IBS that significantly disrupted his quality of life, he became determined to find real solutions. That search ultimately led him to Ayurveda, the traditional medical system of India, where he found a framework that helped him heal — and inspired the mission behind his work: Heal Your Gut for Good. From there, Austin studied deeply, developed his own protocols, and created a client-centered approach to digestive healing. He has now guided more than 200 clients and is building a broader, scalable model designed to expand access to this work by training and certifying other practitioners.

Looking ahead, Austin hopes to help make the Santa Fe region a destination for Ayurveda while expanding into additional wellness verticals, including fitness, longevity, yoga, and other specialized health markets.

Meet Kade Walenta, GUIA Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Founder and CEO of Kade’s Kleanup. Truly a natural-born entrepreneur, Kade started his cleanup/maintenance/junk removal business at the age of 15 to earn extra money. Now, just 18 and entering his 3rd year in business, Kade can be found nearly every night working, setting up for the next day, computer work, working events, drawing in new customers – following a full day managing his crews to get the job done. Kade constantly strives to give his customers and employees a 5-star experience. “We have 75 five-star reviews, team dinners to build comradery, systems developed to make jobs go smoother and much more.” Looking into the future, he has a plan and a vision. For now, Kade is constantly trying to get bigger with more complex jobs, learn skills, help his employees learn skills, attract business partners, buy better equipment and much more.

If you know anyone who needs a garage cleanout, give Kade’s Kleanup a call at 505-479-0720.

Meet Holly Lovejoy, Founder of un(Bound) NM LLC – a consent and intimacy forward sexual wellness model.  Building upon Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico’s world-class destination reputation, and a desire to introduce an entirely new generation of visitors and prospective residents to the region, un(Bound) NM LLC nurtures the market position that ‘pleasure is a human right’. Aiming to deliver a pioneer destination offering erotic hospitality and sexual literacy education while cultivating an intentional, safe culture to claim a share of the booming global sexual wellness industry, the resort especially centers underrepresented clientele who have often been left out of the existing market.

We are proud of all of them. Not just for what they built, but for how they showed up for each other and for the work. This pilot was proof of concept. It confirmed what we believed before we started: that when entrepreneurs in this region are given the right people, the right pressure, and the right support, they don’t just survive, they build things worth investing in. We are energized by what this cohort showed us, and we are just getting started.

Applications for the GUIA Fall Cohort are opening soon. If you’re an entrepreneur in New Mexico ready to do the real work, the kind that positions your business to scale and create wealth beyond you, we want to hear from you. Email rubina@guiasantafe.org with your inquiry.