Pioneering Perspectives

Sharpening Your Senses with LacSense and The Sense Cube

• Pioneers21 • Season 3 • Episode 4

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Welcome back to the Pioneering Perspectives Podcast! In this episode, "Sharpening Your Senses," we're joined by Md. Mamunoor Islam, founder of LacSense, and Carlos Gael Hernandez Castro, founder of The Sense Cube, two UTEP student innovators who competed in the 4th Annual P21 VMS Pitch Challenge. Mamunoor and Carlos share how mentorship, feedback, and repeated refinement transformed both their ventures and the way they communicate their ideas. From overcoming self-doubt to distilling complex technologies into compelling one-minute pitches, they reflect on the lessons that shaped their entrepreneurial journeys. 

Whether you're a student with your first idea or an entrepreneur preparing for your next opportunity, this conversation offers practical insights on resilience, storytelling, and the value of embracing feedback to build something better. 

Now available to watch on YouTube! Link: https://youtu.be/l4JkVMhyuCs 

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Music: ♪ Onion (Prod. by Lukrembo)
 Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGQNrzqrGqw 

SPEAKER_02

Howdy y'all. Welcome back with another episode of the Pioneering Perspectives Podcast. My name is Michelle Kirsten Tubbs, Strategic Operations Specialist at Pioneers21. And I'll be your host for today's episode. Today I am joined by LaxSense, MD Memor. He is the founder of LaxSense. Laxense is a wearable microneedle patch that enables continuous real-time lactate monitoring through a mobile app. Designed for painless home use, it helps post sepsis patients track recovery through continuous psychological monitoring. I'm also joined by SenseCube Carlos Hernandez Castro. He is the founder of SenseCube. SenseCube is a wireless braille accessibility device redesigned to be ultra slim and thin enough to mount directly on the back of a smartphone. This compact design transforms it into an everyday carry tool, giving visually impaired users instant tactical feedback wherever they go. So MD is the first place winner of the P21 BMS Pitch Challenge, our fourth annual. And Carlos is the second place winner. Thank you guys for being on this episode. I'm very excited to have you guys on. I'm interested to see the conversation and where this goes. Thank you guys for being with me. How are you guys feeling? This is a week after the fourth annual P21 VMS pitch challenge. How are you guys feeling post-win?

SPEAKER_00

I'm excited and pretty much, you know, honored to be here after winning the competitions and especially the one-month journey that I spent with Final 21. Now I feel like uh I have come to my home to share my feelings with you guys. So yeah, it's it's a great feeling.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, likewise. I mean, I feel um really excited to be here with with you guys. So so yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So I kind of want to go back to before pitch challenge. So you birth both were in the minors pitch challenge from the University of Texas at El Paso, and it was the minors pitched competition. You were in the uh fall semester, right? And then MD, you were in the spring semester. So you both were winners of that. Uh you were first place, right? For minors, and then long since you were second. I'm really interested to see a little bit about your beginning, right? Because you went into minors pitch competition with an idea, something that you guys had already kind of established, right? So before the VMS prep sessions, what stage was your venture in its journey? Were you guys early stage? Were you guys still developing the prototype? Were you guys in early customers? What stage were you guys at? And what were you looking to gain from the pitch competition at Pioneers 21? We'll start with MD.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, thank you, Michelle, for giving me the opportunity to talk about my first podcast. So yeah, I was glad. Uh the thing is that uh I attempted the minor speech 2026 spring one uh because I wanted to be there uh uh to start my journey with my project because I was developing my project in uh because I'm a PhD student, so I was developing my project, so I wanted to tell the story to to the whole university, and that was the one of the great opportunities to start. So I I applied for that one, and then luckily, with all the workshops and all the guidance from the Mike Lawyer team, I became second. Then one of the workshops that you guys from Pioneer 21, you Andrew, you came Destiny, you came to the workshops and you informed us that okay, guys, we have another pitch competitions coming up from Pioneer 21. It's a prestigious competition we're hosting for the fourth time, so you can join because you're already in the part of the miners pitch, uh, so you can get the direct entry. So we got excited, and I saw like a couple of like a three or four workshops with their one in terms of uh business idea, business models, IP, and pattern process. So I got I got really interested about those types. Then I I got the competitions uh in the minor speech, and I thought that okay, let's let's spend one one month with Pioneers 21. I think that that's a great opportunity to learn those steps uh rather than you know winning a competition. I came here, I saw I was not expecting that much, you know. Uh that okay, it will be a workshop, but when I came here, I saw a huge change, like uh a huge preparations by the Pioneer 21. I never felt that okay, it's just like a like a formality. No, they really wanted us to learn, and we learned a lot, there they gathered a lot of intelligent minds, mentors, and you know, panels. So we got a great feedback. The main challenge was um in the Pioneers 21 page was you have to say your story in one minute. Yes, so when you hear that one minute for the student track for the student track, and because we already like presented five minutes in the minor speech, so you need to tell the whole story in one minute. That was really tough. Oh my god, I was so frightened that how I can accumulate everything in one minute because I was working in a mid-tech uh uh work, so it was so tough to but you guys, I mean the the judges and the and the you know mentors are so amazing, they gave us the perspective. Okay, you can divide in this way, and one of the questions was which stage was I mean, I was uh I was developing my sensors, so I have like a two things one is the divine main device, and another one is the sensor, so I have developed my sensors in the lab.

SPEAKER_02

So, are you in prototyping?

SPEAKER_00

Okay prototype stage. So while completing the the speech, I was in a prototype stage, so I learned all those things from the workshops. I got the feedback from the judges, and I I truncated my extra things, so I came up with this very pretty straightforward so judges can understand the idea in one minute also. So it was really helpful journey. I really appreciate the journey that you guys provided us to come up and finally, yeah, I own the competitions and I'm here and talking with Michelle.

SPEAKER_02

So I'll move on to you, Carlos. Same question. When you first applied for the pitch challenge, what stage were you at? Because I understand you already had the cube, um, but then you decided to change shift gears a little bit. So what stage were you in and what were you looking to get from the competition itself?

SPEAKER_01

Well, when I started on uh for pitch 21 competition, right? I had a prototype design and it it pretty much I had like a working version of it, but it didn't do the things that I that I um was hoping for it to achieve. So I wanted to make it uh faster, like a faster prototype, a more in a certain way more compact prototype as well. So I was hoping to achieve uh both uh in a certain in a certain sense, just like trying to see other people that will probably help me out on the on the process of making my prototype from bringing it from the the current stage that I that it was and just bringing it into a upgraded version of it. Because before it did some um like it showed Braille, like my devices for visually impaired individuals, and uh make text into into Braille, and that main function uh was available. But the thing that I'm looking now is trying to make that more compact. And so the technology that I was using before, microsolenoids, I'm I will probably not be using them as of right now, since I will be moving to like another sort of technology. And what I was hoping from the pitch uh 21 competition was pretty much just um mentoring in in the sense of how how I can evaluate my idea and bring it to the next level, just like trying to meet as many uh mentors as possible or people that will be able to help me out to bring the idea to like a um a better stage.

SPEAKER_02

So I kind of want to give the audience a little bit of a background in what you guys went through for those five weeks. So, Carlos, you were with us from the very beginning. Black since you joined a little after, just because there was that overlap with the other competition that you were part of. Um, but first we had the two first sessions were with instructors. We had the first session on intellectual property and patents, and we had some gentlemen come in and they talked to all the ventures about you know what it takes to have a patent, what it takes for copywriting, um, for intellectual property. And we had those um attorneys come in and help out and partners from UTEP as well to really get a background in what it takes and the capability that the ventures really need. And for the second week, we had market sizing workshop, and we had an engineer come in and he talked to you guys a little bit about the TAMSAM and some. And you looked into your market a little bit to see, you know, what you could really address, what you could obtain, and what was at your grasp in this very moment if you were to finish your prototype like by let's say tomorrow, right? And so um after that, we had mentors come in from our venture mentoring service, which is licensed by MIT. And those mentors came in. We had about 37 who supported the entire program from the P21 VMS program come in to help. And what we did was pitch grubs. So essentially they came in, listened to their pitch, and they gave live feedback in that very moment. We had two hours of that for three different weeks. So that's when you had come in for that mentoring. Um, and so yes, it was one minute. One minute of pitching. You guys are traditionally used to the five-minute structure with a six-minute questioning period. This time it was only one minute. So it's it's extremely difficult to explain to someone what you're doing, especially as you're both engineers, right? So, especially as an engineer with so much technical background and knowledge, to try and explain to someone who may know nothing about engineering your product and what you're really doing. Because what you both are doing is something that has never been done before, their innovations, uh, and their inventions and their their own. So I want to go back to that one-minute pitch. How did you guys decide? Like, okay, I need to have this, this, and this, and it's going to completely explain my product, my model, etc. I'll start with you, Carlos.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Well, um, I think the P21 uh mentors helped a lot in that aspect because at the beginning, um I wasn't I had an idea of what to do within each slide, but I wasn't really sure how to manage it so well so that everything will fit into one minute. So the mentors really um made a great job on helping um make make it make the story and the slides more compelling to the audience. So I'll I will say that uh for sure, like the mentors had a huge impact on that. But um, yeah, I mean that they show how how to pretty much explain your idea in a way that is concise, um and so that many people can understand your idea and what you're trying to share.

SPEAKER_02

So, what exactly did you share?

SPEAKER_01

So I share, you mean like my device or like the the pitch. So I structure it in a way that first I was gonna show like a like a little story, right, for for uh everyone to be able to put their shoes on what I was trying to make. And then after that, since it was it was a short uh time, I showed the product that solved um I I put like the problem, the mean problem, right? And then after that I put the solution that I was trying to make. And then after that, I I was just explaining how this was a compellable product, why it was a good product to make, and lastly why people should help me on developing this further. The ask. The ask. I didn't thoroughly show the technical aspect within the presentation. I was mainly showing uh the problem and then the solution that I was trying to make. But I didn't really go through that technical um background because I didn't want it to like you know, there's many people that probably it will it will take longer than 10 seconds to explain how it works. So I decided to just um just do like an overview of how it will work, and then after that, if they decided to ask me like a few questions of how did uh did it work, that's when um I was trying to like put the time into like this is how exactly it will work, it will connect to your phone. But on the presentation, no, I did not uh I was not really technical on the on the product size.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I think the way that you accomplished it during the pitch challenge, the judges were really able to understand and like grasp the idea, and especially having you know, like that physical um model with you, the prototype with you, that really helped them understand, like, okay, this is viable, this is something that he can push forward with and create into a reality, you know. So, and I think you did a great job with the questions too. It's super important to make sure that you're clear and that you answer the question straightforward rather than like jumping around, and you did that. So, I just want to commend you on that. You did a great job with the questions. Uh so I'm gonna move on to MD. Yeah, tell me a little bit about how you crafted your pitch, especially being one minute. I think yours is a very interesting model because it has to do with the medical field. So tell me a little bit about that process.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it was to be very honest, it was frightening because I was when I pitched like the first time in the Mike Lawyer team, it was seven and a half minutes. And Nicole was no no Mamoon, you have to be pretty much sure that you complete within five minutes. Then I crafted that in five minutes and it pitched. Then after like uh two or three days, you guys made a next program called Takus and Tequilas. That was four minutes.

SPEAKER_02

That's our fan favorite.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that was excellent. So I have two days to trunk it from five minutes to four minutes. So then I did. I I somehow did manage that one. Then when when I heard that, okay, now we have to do like the biggest thing is in one minute. I said, no, this is not my game. I was so like I lost when I come here for the first time. I haven't made any slides.

SPEAKER_02

So I you came with your four-minute pitch, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. I came up with the Takus and Tequila slides, and I wanted to uh like a talk with the judges and the mentors that how I'm gonna craft to those lot of informations in one minute. So I saw a couple of presentations, especially I would say Sebastian's presentation, the Oscar Design and Manufacturing. He was great in terms of like uh crafting all the slides in one minute. He was great in the times and great in the presentation. So I saw his presentation, I saw Carlos' presentations, then I got okay, okay, I need to I need to craft in this way. Then then one of the judges, I don't remember, probably it's David, he was also the judges, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02

David Merrick? Yeah, he wasn't the judge. He was in the judges, but he he was pitching with you guys.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, he was pitching with us, but he was one of the judges in my minor speeds. Okay, so yes, so he gave me the perspective. Mamoni, you have the judges' rubrics, so you need to stick on that. So you have like five things problem, solutions, uh, target audiences, opportunity, and the ask. So he made like that very much simple for me, and also, so I I tried to accumulate everything in the five to six slides. Then the last day, I remember I was presenting here, like in two rooms. The first presentation was good. The judges was okay, okay, yeah, you did great. I feel okay, okay, I corrected. Then I came to the next sessions, it has the mighty Albert Alvarez as a mentor. I like he's here a lot, he was great. When I did my presentation, he pushed me in some questions and I was blank. Okay, okay, till now, whatever I was thinking, no, that was not complete. And he really gave me some perspective that Mamoon, you have to, you have to tell the story in a coherent way because in some point you are missing the connections between the slides. So I got the feedback and I took that feedback in a positive way, and I thought that okay, he's he really wants me to improve. And I had like uh, if I remember correctly, I have like a 10 to 15 days to come up with something. Then I worked on that, and that pushed uh me in a in a situation that okay, I come up with uh like a very much clear idea, and I realized that how much one second in your life is so important to to you know accommodate all those steps in one minute. And I was I truncated a lot of extra information. I didn't mention about the tech tech part, I just wanted to tell the uh judges and the audiences that okay, this is the thing, this this thing we'll do this way, and you will get the benefits in this way. So if you want to know more, we can talk after after the pitches. Uh so that was those two things that I would say that Pioneer 21 has made the like the participant pretty much clear about the documents that okay, we need these, and the judges will judge on these rubrics, so you need to keep on. That was the you I would say Andrew was pushing me, he was he was Mamoon. You need to be pretty much you know sure about your things because we are giving one minute pitch, and definitely the mentors and judges' feedback, every the all the ecosystem really helped me to uh achieve the impossible thing. I was thinking that no, no, that was not achievable, but finally, luckily, I did, and now I'm here. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02

And I kind of want to touch on something that you mentioned earlier that that one minute was so important to your guys' lives, so crucial. So I want to take it back to pitch day. So that was a week ago. What was going through your mind as you were about to present when you were up on stage? I'll start with you, Carlos.

SPEAKER_01

What was going through my mind? Um I mean I was I was nervous for sure because uh, you know, all this time practicing, right? Uh because it's a lot of like um training and practice before like before showing every everything up what you have been doing so far. So there's for sure that um nervousness that comes beforehand, but once you're on stage, you kind of like forget about how like nervous you were, and you pretty much just just like you're showcasing what how much uh like hard work you have been putting into your own idea and trying to like sell it to other people so that they can understand it, and I I think that's beautiful in in a way that there's a huge amount of work you put into something and then you show it to everyone else, and then everyone else is able to see what you have been doing. And I mean uh that is pretty incredible because you can you you never know what happens from that pitch, you know, you can like inspire people. Um there's like huge opportunities that comes afterwards, so for sure there's like before pitch a lot of nervousness, um, but afterwards it feels really great.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I would say that I was struggling to make the slides, like uh how I'm gonna make the slides in five or six things, so so combining two or three slides in one way or one slide, and also dividing the time in into that, you know. So my main challenge was to make the perfect slides less crowdy, more understandable, because we are having a nine judges. Nine judges means you have a diverse audience, so you have to cater from many different walks of many different professionals, backgrounds, and you have you will see a lot of audiences from different you know sectors. So you have to cater the all diversifications, you know. So that was one of my challenges that okay, how I'm gonna make the slides more understandable, less technical, and also you know, digestible to every person. That was my first challenge. Another one is uh to be in on time. So in my life, what I always focus that try to maintain the process, don't uh think about the results. So whatever don't go off scripts.

SPEAKER_02

No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00

You have to be, I mean, you have to be thinkable whatever you is in your hand. So the two two things is that you need to tell because you are here to tell the story to the people. So they might like it, they might not like it. It's it's uh like a fifty fifty, but whatever you have, you need to try and you need to keep the process going on. So that's the thing I did that okay, I listened the mentors, I listened the uh feedbacks from my well-wishers. I really wanted to correct myself because I I don't believe that whatever you will think that that is the absolutely perfect one, you need to listen to other people's perspective also to make that one much more perfect way. So, yeah, I mean to combine all the feedbacks and make it digestible to everyone and also be on time because one minute also it's not a not like are you winning the competitions, it's that you have to be pretty much disciplined and respectful of time because time is priceless. So that is the one thing that I learned from these competitions, and I must appreciate Pioneer 21 to post me in that video and keep the process going on. Yeah, that was the thing.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I want to say I think you both inspired so many people. We had many of the audience members come up to us after letting us know like that they loved your guys' pitches and that the potential that both of your products have on people's lives, and many of us were, or many of the audience members were like, you know what? Like, I want to do what they did. Like I want to come back and I want to pitch, like they did so great. And I think the mentors to the mentors were blown away by both of you. So I want to commend you both on that. What surprised you of the level of competition at the pitch challenge? Because there was nine students on your guys' track. We also had the service track, the product track, and the tech track. So tell me a little bit about your perspective on the level of competition. I'll start with you, Carlos.

SPEAKER_01

What I liked about this sort of competitions is how how organized it was. Like Pioneers21 did an incredible job at organizing this. And also what surprised me the most was how diverse each um pitch was. So it was like many like some people were pitching some healthcare aspect or any like uh a venture regarding healthcare, and then another venture was pitching something more about manufacturing, and and another venture was pitching like some software, right? So it is incredible to have a lot of like-minded people who are pushing innovation in a in a closed space, and I think that's awesome because it like even though it's so diverse, the amount of people that are willing to push forward innovation that is on a room, it's amazing. And I think what you guys said was incredible.

SPEAKER_02

Thanks, Carlos. What about you, Elonar?

SPEAKER_00

Um, I would say that it was it was really hard because I I think that all the nine ventures those are presenting, everyone was a winner on that point because it takes a long effort to reach at that type of level of competitions. And you see the people are pitching for manufacturing, people are pitching for some AI um websites, and Carlos, me, we're pitching for the med tech, and some of the people are presenting like already they have the business, they are already getting the revenue. So it was really hard to see uh the like a the level of competitions in that level, and I was I was nervous, nervous in a positive way that okay, okay, whatever you are doing, so you are you are competing in a you know you know in a top way in a top level, and I really appreciate all the guys that how they crafted their story to tell the peoples, and I also learned a lot that how they are thinking on on their business or like that how on their ventures. And apart from that one, I will also say that Pioneers 21 gave us the opportunity to learn about the other other tracks also, like the product track, the tech track, and the service track. So those people are already like uh on and that on that stage that they are going to scale from their own. So we we had the opportunity to learn that okay, how they're thinking, because those are in our future stages, and you can get this some like some kind of idea that okay, how you need to navigate those steps, and what are the next things that you need to think from now on. So, in terms of you know uh the competitions, in terms of the experience and learning, and also getting the feedbacks from the nine different judges, that was amazing. It was not that because we had only two minutes to talk, like uh have a conversation, but I had like a I would say like I spent like a one hour with all the judges. I talked with everyone. That uh, what do you think about my PTS? What do you think that I need to develop? What do you think that I need to consider if I forward move forward in the future? So they gave their really you know priceless opinions, and overall, I mean it was a great competition, it was a great ambience. You have a pretty much you know a lot of intelligent audiences. So I would say that it was tough, but it was worth it.

SPEAKER_02

I'm glad to hear that, and I think it's great to see like the level of community that is being built here in El Paso, like you said, Carlos, like the innovation that's being built here, and that's incredible to see an ecosystem like that building in El Paso. Um, so I wanna take it to I guess another level. If a student is listening right now to this podcast or watching us on YouTube, what is one quick takeaway that you can tell them as advice? A piece of information that maybe someone told you that you've taken and like that's changed the perspective of your business or of your life. I'll start with you, Carlos.

SPEAKER_01

I mean I will say go for it if you have an idea. Because there's like for me, the the the sense cube was something that I was it was like, oh I have this idea. Why why has nobody else uh perhaps like thought about it? So if you have an idea about anything, just please go and pitch because you never know how many people you're able to influence with your ideas. And it I mean it's your idea. You you don't like everyone has different ideas, so so yes, I mean just just go for it, uh go pitch your idea, and you got this.

SPEAKER_02

I got chills. What about you, Mamonar?

SPEAKER_00

I would say that uh idea is priceless, don't confine them in your brain, just go for it, tell your story to the rest of the world and believe in yourself. Otherwise, if you don't believe yourself, nobody will believe in yourself. So if you have an idea, pitch it to the world, and who knows that you can be the next, you know, motivator on the influencer in the world that can change the a lot of things in the in a positive way in the world. And believe in yourself, yeah. Otherwise, you know, it's it's one life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Well, thank you guys so much for being on this podcast. This has been a very inspiring morning for me listening to both of you. And um I'm very happy that you both were winners. You you both are so deserving, and I'm excited to see where you guys go from here next. So thank you for being on this podcast.