Karina Derbez

Meet the absolute unit that is Karina Derbez, she’s the real deal in Latin America’s startup scene. This girl jumped into tech super young, started at Tecnológico de Monterrey, crushing her degree in IT and Communications Engineering back in 2012. Even before she graduated, she was already in the game, doing internships at Grupo Staff and SOLCOM de México, basically, her feet were wet from the jump.

Then she landed at Microsoft, where she spent almost a decade as a Software Engineer. That’s no small feat, working at one of the biggest tech giants, really honing her craft, learning how big tech moves. She even kicked things off with a program manager internship there in 2012. So, she’s got that solid background in software, knows how to build stuff that scales, and understands the tech inside and out.

But here’s where it gets interesting, she didn’t just stay in the corporate world. In 2020, she co-founded Monto, a fintech platform based in Monterrey that’s all about salary on-demand. Basically, it’s giving people flexibility with their paychecks, no cap. It’s smart, it’s needed, especially in Latin America where financial flexibility isn’t always easy to get. And get this, they jumped into Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 batch. That’s the big leagues. It means she’s got the hustle, vision, and the skills to take her ideas global.

This story? It’s about a girl who saw a problem, learned how to fix it from the best (Microsoft), then jumped in and built something that actually matters. She’s all about creating real impact, making life easier for everyday people, not just tech for tech’s sake. She’s proof that if you’re hungry enough and good enough, you can go from a student in Monterrey to pitching at YC and leading a fast-growing fintech. That’s the kind of process that screams: this girl is building real shit, and she’s just getting started.