Co-founder · 2017–2018 · Salamanca
Yodono — solidarity crowdfunding
My first venture as a self-employed founder: a solidarity crowdfunding platform to help people cover medical treatments through voluntary donations and merchandising.
Yodono was my first venture as a self-employed founder, and my first real working period. The idea came from my partner Iskren; I joined driven by something that defines me — the urge to help whenever it's within my reach.
It was a solidarity crowdfunding platform. The premise: a presence from Spain to help, through voluntary donations and merchandising, people in a tough situation — mostly in Latin America, though we had cases in Spain too — cover their medical treatments.
Why Yodono #s1
Talking about medical bills in Spain sounds odd — we have public healthcare. But the details are where it matters: our focus was supporting people who fall through the cracks, here and especially abroad.
The model was simple and human: voluntary donations plus merchandising, with the proceeds earmarked for these social causes.
What we did #s2
Alongside the crowdfunding, we sold merchandising — t-shirts with messages like "with this t-shirt I saved a life" — and we collected bottle caps that we tried to sell, with the money going to social causes.
A real case: the social dental clinic #s3
One of our success stories in Spain was a social dental clinic that wanted to raise funds to provide oral-health treatments — endodontics in particular — to people without resources.
Running it day to day #s4
I remember being on top of manual invoicing, opening a virtual POS with La Caixa to receive the funds, and running Facebook Ads campaigns that reached a large number of people.
We started as a comunidad de bienes — a simple co-ownership structure — so we could use the prize money we had been awarded.
Recognition #s5
We won several awards for social and humanistic entrepreneurship at Salamanca and Castilla y León level. I also gave talks about the project around that time — the clip at the top of this page is from one of them, at a social-startup event in Burgos.
After I stepped away, Iskren carried the adventure on for another year, won the Explorer award in Salamanca — which took him to Silicon Valley with funding — and kept Yodono running for a while longer before it finally closed.
What I took away #s6
It was an intense, beautiful period, with ups and downs and plenty of doubts. Back in 2017 I had no idea how to start: I was still finishing my degree, giving time to this, and working weekends at my mother's shop.
I loved the adrenaline of feeling I was helping. At the same time, I felt I wanted to do something different that would grow me as a professional first — and maybe, one day, build something of my own again.
Above all, I'm grateful to Iskren, the real architect of all this. I followed his lead, excited to help, and I'll always be thankful for it.