Martha Hernandez, CEO and co-founder of ESO Ventures, wants to make entrepreneurship accessible and worthwhile in every community. ESO has already deployed more than $8 million and supported more than 700 entrepreneurs, but she believes it’s just the beginning.
Hernandez and her business partners put their idea into action during the COVID-19 pandemic in cooperation with the city of Oakland.
“We wanted to do something great and support entrepreneurs as business advisors,” the CEO says. After supporting repeated cohorts through a 40 Steps to Launch framework, Hernandez realized that capital was almost completely inaccessible to them.
“What ESO is doing better than anyone else is that we have built a full solution in one place,” Hernandez says. “We’re able to grow the business and invest in the business through lending.”
What separates ESO from nonprofits operating in the space, Hernandez says, is that while other organizations offer training and education, ESO bases its own success on actual results.
“We are very excited to be able to say that we have a growth rate in relation to revenue generation, the ability for an entrepreneur to pay themselves, actually open a brick-and-mortar, or even hire somebody else,” the CEO says.
ESO prides itself on working with entrepreneurs, actually lending them money, and helping them address business needs to move to the next level.
Hernandez knows what it means to build a business from scratch, lacking access to capital because she wasn’t of a particular Silicon Valley pedigree, and finding her passion in service.
“There are so many of us that share this trajectory, and all we need is infrastructure, a model, a formula, and an actual investor,” she says.
The founder came to AVANCE Global 2026 to meet new potential partners, hear new ideas, and examine ways to continue scaling ESO to support even more entrepreneurs. Hernandez’s participation in an invite-only CEO Roundtable was particularly informative.
“Just hearing from other leaders that opportunity is there, and if we collaborate and support each other—this was a message that was reinforced by every session I went to this week. Someone has already gone through what you’re going through,” the founder says. “So, if we do this, grab the one behind, grab the one in front of us, we are all going to avanzar juntos, right? The avance part is going to be real.”
