We were lucky to catch up with Aaron Chavez recently and have shared our conversation below.

Aaron, appreciate you joining us today. When you were first starting out, did you join a firm or start your own?

I began my career in investment banking in 2016 and quickly learned that while the work was interesting, I was not interested in making it a lifelong career. It was too much process and not enough strategic thought in my mind, and I felt like a very small cog in an extremely large machine. I knew I wanted to be more involved in the business building process and have more meaningful impact with my day to day work. I left banking in 2019 and launched a boutique consulting firm based in Miami, Florida called Argent Strategies which focuses on providing business planning, financial strategy, and capital raising preparation to startups, small businesses, and web3 projects. As I dove deeper into the Miami tech ecosystem I started attending events and meeting many early stage founders across a variety of industries. In a stroke of good luck (or maybe a bit of preparation meeting opportunity) I met one of the 2 cofounders of Hatch Compliance, Mike Lifshotz. It didn’t take long (a few hours of discussion over a week or two) for me to realize that if what he was telling me was true then they were in the early stages of building something truly revolutionary within the healthcare compliance space. From that time forward I began working with the 2 cofounders to take their prototype and turn it into the growing and thriving business that it is today a little under 3 years later. We’ve successfully raised multiple rounds of funding, built a truly impactful solution for the industry, grown our team to +10 employees, and established strong relationships with key players across the industry (technology companies, consultants, lawyers, regulators, etc.). I truly believe this company has a very real possibility of becoming a unicorn in the SaaS/Healthcare/Compliance space.

It’s a bit cliché, but it’s true that sometimes you just have to jump and work to figure it out on the way down. When I left my banking job I did not have nearly enough money in the bank that I probably should have and I for sure didn’t have a backup plan or family money that I could fall back on so for me it was truly a sink or swim moment. While it has proven to be a challenging journey, I wouldn’t be half the person I am today if I didn’t take the risk and that has truly made all the difference.

Aaron, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I got into the industry of consulting semi by accident once I left my job in investment banking. I knew I wanted to get more involved in actively having a role in business growth and development, but I didn’t know what that specific role looked like. I also knew I liked building and I had the skills of business and finance so it eventually became a natural progression to string the two together and bring that value to early-stage startups.

From there it was getting involved with Hatch Compliance. This came about because I had the chance to meet Mike at a networking event and then from there I came to fully appreciate how much room there was for innovation within the space, and how passionate this team in particular was about bringing that innovation to life. At Hatch, we’re able to make compliance much easier and more consistent when running a healthcare facility. It’s something that has widespread implications for the safety/health of the patients that are seen, in addition to being something that provides a substantial amount of business intelligence for owners to operate and run their businesses more efficiently.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think the main factor that contributed to my reputation build was being incredibly focused on a value first mentality and closely identifying with the problems that we look to solve for the customers that we serve. It always felt odd to me that there were so many founders and service providers that I met with who were so focused on the money and what they had built, rather than the problem that they were trying to solve and the customer that they were bringing value to. While it seems like a small distinction, and you wouldn’t really think too much of it on the day-to-day, it has had the greatest impact on my relationship building and general connection to the community on a day-to-day basis.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

At Hatch Compliance we put together the first pre-seed capital raise of $100,000 because we needed to get our prototype software turned into a more functional/scalable minimum viable product. When I came into the company, there was a prototype that had been used to do a considerable amount of customer validation, but it wasn’t functional enough on the day today to allow for the business to scale and feel confident charging customers for the value provided. Once we felt that we had a really good sense of the core features and functionalities that were going to be necessary for us to feel that we could ask the customer to pay for it honestly, we priced out what we would need to get the software and all ancillary expenses covered and came to the number of $100,000. From there, we knew that early-stage investments can be very difficult for unknown entities to feel comfortable investing in and it’s typically best to start with friends and family, so we went out to a number of connections, family members, and close friends to see if they would support us on this rebuild. We were fortunate to receive immediate feedback from a great many who were interested in contributing capital towards our success. From there it was a matter of getting the legal done and then getting back to work building the solution that today is performing and excelling in ways that we couldn’t have imagined.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.argentstrategies.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronachavez/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqECMeCfkrbEJvGubC2k5Dw