SAN ANTONIO – SA Startup + Tech Week is shining a spotlight on small business success stories this week, and few are as compelling as Sandra Velasquez’s.
Velasquez is the founder and CEO of Nopalera, a modern Mexican beauty and lifestyle brand built around the nopal cactus. She says the brand offers a full line of bath and body products, including shower gels, body scrubs, creams and fragrances, all rooted in Mexican botanical ingredients.
She launched the company in November 2020 from her Brooklyn apartment, with no outside funding, no savings and no business background. She was working three jobs and raising her daughter at the time.
“There were just no premium Latina beauty brands,” Velasquez said. “If you look at food and beverage — plenty of tequilas, plenty of salsas — but in beauty, there were just no Latina premium beauty brands. And so to me, it was a massive gap, an opportunity to speak to today’s consumer, which is me.”
That first year, Nopalera brought in $600,000 in sales. The brand has since grown to $2 million, then $4 million, and is on track to close this year at around $7 million in revenue. It is now carried in Nordstrom, Kohl’s, Credo Beauty and more than 400 boutiques nationwide, and is sold in four countries.
Before launching Nopalera, Velasquez spent 15 years as the lead singer of the Latin alternative band Pistolera, which toured internationally and had its music featured on “Breaking Bad” and “Sons of Anarchy.” She says the music industry prepared her for entrepreneurship in ways she didn’t expect.
“What music taught me is resilience — because it’s one rejection after the other,” Velasquez said. “You have to be able to deal with rejection. And I think most people give up because they can’t.”
In January 2023, Velasquez appeared on Season 14 of ABC’s “Shark Tank,” where she received two offers — one from Kevin O’Leary and one from Kind Bar founder Daniel Lubetzky. She turned both down, saying the equity stakes were too high.
“My ancestors are whispering in my ear,” she said on the show, “and they’re saying, ‘mija, no te desprecias.’ Don’t undervalue yourself.”
After the episode aired, she raised $4 million in a Series A round — a quarter of which came from San Antonio investors. She moved to the city just over a year ago and says the support she found here was unlike anything she experienced during her 26 years in New York City.
“I was in the middle of a Series A raise when I moved here, and a quarter of that money came from San Antonio,” Velasquez said. “So that just goes to show you the amount of people that are excited to support small businesses.”
Velasquez was a keynote speaker Tuesday at Texas Public Radio as part of SA Startup + Tech Week. She said the city’s small business ecosystem is something entrepreneurs elsewhere simply don’t have access to.
“What San Antonio has here in terms of supporting small businesses is very unique,” she said. “And everyone that has an idea or a desire to start a small business should take full advantage of all of the resources that exist.”
SA Startup and Tech Week runs through the end of this week. A full schedule of events is available at the link here.
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