An Albuquerque startup developing an immersive Spanish language learning video game recently received a grant and opened a crowdfunding campaign to continue its growth after landing its first school contract last month.
Isabel Last founded Faena Co. in May 2022. Since starting the video game company, growth has come fast for one of last year's Inno Under 25 honorees.
Faena secured a contract with RFK Charter School in Albuquerque in late January, its first agreement with a school, after releasing a pre-alpha demo of the language learning game.
Then, last week, Dove Chocolate awarded Last a $10,000 grant through its DOVEInstaGrants program. The program is focused on women entrepreneurs and their companies.
After pitching the startup through a 30-second video, Last was named one of three grant recipients. Forbes featured Last and the two other grant recipients in a Feb. 21 story.
"I pretty much see this as months [of work] continued," Last said. "It's just more verification that I should keep going."
Following the Dove grant, Faena opened a crowdfunding campaign through the platform Indiegogo for $20,000. The campaign had raised more than $2,500 as of Friday afternoon.
The startup previously planned to open a pre-seed round of funding early this year, but with the grant money and support through the Indiegogo campaign, Last said she's pushed the timing of that raise back a bit.
"We're gearing up for a raise and making sure that we're as de-risked as much as possible," Last said. "All of this is to get in the position where I don't have to think about money."
Alongside the Dove grant and crowdfunding campaign, Faena was also recently tapped as one of 12 companies to participate in Ski Lift Pitch, an annual pitch event held at the Taos Ski Resort on Feb. 23. (Rhea Space Activity, a D.C.-based aerospace manufacturing company, won $10,000 through the pitch event this year.)
And, Last said the company has expanded its game demo into two more schools, both on the East Coast, where Last is originally from.
She said she's received positive feedback from students and teachers about the game so far.
"The biggest thing is just the engagement part of it," Last said. "It's always how engaged [the students] are, and are they speaking? The two classes that have played, the feedback from both of them is that the class before is typically very quiet, and after the class was loud, it was vibrant, everyone was speaking Spanish."
