From Colombia to Rochester, Juliana Silva enjoys navigating with business entrepreneurs

ROCHESTER — Juliana Silva enjoys working alongside entrepreneurs in the “intimidating” process.

She works with early-stage entrepreneurs and businesses as the director of navigation at Collider. Between her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration as well as a career in marketing, Silva is a “very logical” and “number-orienated person.”

“Although money is really part of the life of everyone, I mean companies and people, I really started getting involved in this field it was because of my brother,” Silva said. “Since I was a child, I really like to have my own money and manage my own money, and not to be very dependent from my parents.”

Along with her brother Luis, the two run the Sigma Show on YouTube, which shares personal financial advice and discussions on economic issues in Spanish. Silva said the videos are an opportunity to reach the Hispanic community.

“I began facing the cameras and uploading my videos to YouTube to teach other people how to manage their money. In my culture, this has been a topic where men are more active, that’s in general, like over 70% of investors are men,” Silva said.

Tell me a bit about your role as director of navigation at Collider. 

It’s really dedicated to assist early stage entrepreneurs. So it’s people who came with a business idea that do not know how to start or where to find some resources and those resources could be money, could be intellectual. So they come for help.

Or our entrepreneurs who already have established business but they want to probably launch a new product or a new service so here I am to navigate with them. … Navigating with them, trying to shape their ideas, work on a business plan until they feel ready and confident and then help them to connect with other resources in the community.

You get to work with a lot of entrepreneurs. While working with them, what financial support do you recommend? 

I always have two recommendations for them. The first is do bank shopping and understand that a low interest rate is not necessarily the best place to request a loan for your business. So you must build a relationship and go to the bank that acts on your best interest, that is not necessarily the cheapest one because you’re looking for a long-term relationship with your bank so that’s important.

And my second recommendation for entrepreneurs is avoid excess leverage. The business plan may look great but at the end that’s just paper, you know. On the paper everything can look perfect and the result is not guaranteed and if something goes wrong it is better to have like a small bruise and not a complete fracture. …

Also, because I’ve seen people to get too much debt with their own money from their retirement accounts, they took the 401k, sell their houses and get into debt, but there is no need to do that. You can always look for a grant or for funds. That’s the other part of Collider, that we’re helping them to find those resources and that matches the philosophy of a community with zero barriers for entrepreneurship.

Among the many financial topics to discuss, how do you choose what you share on your YouTube channel, Sigma Show?

(My brother Luis and I) are basically moving between two big topics, one is for the personal finance perspective like investment, debt management, savings, retirement; and the other big part of the content is related to … economic issues that are highly involved with the use of money in your day to day. So for example, with all the banks that went bankrupt … this year like how is that impacting the investors, or if you used to have an account there what’s going to happen with your money. There’s a lot of things that we should know.

You speak in Spanish in all of the videos and that’s so important for people to hear a language that maybe is their heart language on such big topics. 

Yes, and most of the books and all the theories probably most of them were written in English. So now we’re trying to bring it to Spanish so more people can use them.

I read that you like to learn about other cultures through cooking. What have been some of your favorite recipes?

Right now, I’m just trying to masterize the Colombian recipes because that is where I am from. I want to preserve the culture now that I moved here to the U.S. I’m just trying to replicate my mom’s and my grandma’s recipes and all the traditional dishes that are very savory. That’s what I’m trying to do. I enjoy it a lot.

That’s really beautiful. I absolutely hope you continue to carry on your heritage in all the ways that you hope to. 

That’s correct. I’m very proud of that, I mean from my heritage so now it’s time to bring it here to Rochester.

Is there anything else you’d like to add about what’s meaningful about that practice for you?

For me, cooking is also like a sign of love. Like you can love and demonstrate love in several ways and for me, one is taking care of someone else by feeding them. So it’s super nice to get home after a day of work and find a plate on your table with something that was specially made for you. That’s just an appreciation form.

Traci Westcott / Post Bulletin