Carbon Zen: Crossroads for a tech start-up (A)

Lara Román, founder and CEO of Carbon Zen (COz), was visiting her parents in San José de Maipo, in central Chile. She had meant to do so since they recently retired there and she hoped that a weekend hiking through the natural beauty of the Maipo Canyon would help her settle back from Santiago's hustle and bustle, and focus on the many key decisions that lay ahead for the startup she had co-founded. In the past few years, Chile has become a hotbed of tech startups in Latin America. The country had a small and stable market, access to technological expertise, and a consolidated friendly business environment. This made it an ideal place for testing and refining new products and services before exporting them to larger markets. This led to a flourishing startup community, of which her company, COz, was a promising example. After months of hard work, the company was now very close to securing its first important customer. The case examines the fledging history of COz, a startup that was developing a product based around an AI model to optimize and reduce emissions from manufacturing activities, with a focus on its three founders - Lara, Francisco, and José - and their backgrounds. COz was about to conclude its first round of financing, and Lara was torn between two different potential investors. each with different requisites regarding equity and board control. But before doing that, Lara believed the three founders themselves had to revisit their own equity split. Last, she had to ponder the hires the company needed to ensure its growth and development.