Hugo Aristides
Schedule Time
Contemplative Tree Accelerator · Catholic & Ecumenical Entrepreneurship

Startups

Faith without works is just a feeling. These are the works.

Accelerator Introduction

An Accelerator Following a Spiritual Foundation

Entrepreneurship is the action of the living Word — lived out in every kind of work, not only in founding a company.

Not everyone has to become a millionaire — that's the ego's deception. What follows is an accelerator built on that same conviction, Catholic and ecumenical at its root. Angel investors, venture funds, and mission-aligned institutions are welcome to explore the portfolio below.

We use Lean and Six Sigma tools to move from contemplative discernment to concrete action. Every project below is built or refined the same way — asking why until the real cause surfaces, not just the symptom.

Startup 01 Hermanos de la Calle Social Impact · Rescuing the Homeless Population · Miami
Shelter
About this Startup

Every other week, Hugo goes out with Narciso, Malena, and the team to serve men living on the streets of Miami directly — meals, presence, and practical help. Free coaching is provided to critical cases, offering a path toward stability and restoration.

Visit hermanosdelacalle.org →

Note: hugoaristides.com does not represent Hermanos de la Calle — it only collaborates with them, and is not authorized to receive funds on their behalf. hugoaristides.com provides startup acceleration services only.

🏘️ Samaritan LLC — the Fund Behind This Work

A true faith impact company connecting the stock market with innovative homelessness solutions. Investment capital flows through Samaritan LLC to fund property management and essential social services — Investors → Samaritan LLC (stock, OTC market) → the homeless population it houses — creating measurable impact across specific demographic segments, not abstract charity.

The crisis: thousands sleep on U.S. streets every night, trapped in a cycle traditional shelters rarely break. Seventeen of the seventy most populous continuums of care had over 5,000 homeless people in 2024 (HUD data via USAFacts), and a critical shortage of affordable housing — also per 2024 HUD data — is a primary driver.

The model: Street Outreach & Engagement builds trust through consistent presence. Housing Placement moves people directly into safe, shared homes with supportive roommates. Social Integration turns those homes into intentional communities. Employment & Independence provides job training and placement until residents achieve financial independence — after which they pay rent and continue their lives in their new family, if they choose to.

"Living with my roommates changed everything. We went from strangers to family. When I struggled, they were there. When I got my job, we celebrated together. I'm not alone anymore." — Michael, Program Graduate

The investment: investors purchase Samaritan LLC stock (OTC market), committing to both a financial and a social return. Capital funds property management and services; sustainable operations generate potential dividend returns, similar to bonds — though returns cannot be guaranteed, and liquidity is limited, especially as resocialization takes time. For funders, every dollar is estimated to generate $3.80 in community savings by reducing chronic homelessness, emergency service costs, and recidivism.

Hugo's Note
This is where the works and the Financial Bicycle Model actually meet — the same conviction that faith and capital aren't enemies, applied to housing instead of a household budget.
Community

📑 Samaritan LLC — Full Presentation

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📑 Tu Techo USA — Draft Concept, via Samaritan LLC

A draft, unfinished proposal for review — bringing Spain's tuTECHO.es model to the U.S. public markets through Samaritan LLC, the entity that would go public.

tuTECHO combines two solutions in one vision: tuTECHO HOGAR, a business solution built on impact investing, and Fundación tuTECHO, a philanthropic solution built on altruistic collaboration — creating sustainable economic and social value long-term.

The structure: a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation (the operating, OTC-listed entity) paired with a 501(c)(3) Foundation holding a golden share / Class B vote over mission changes, major asset disposals, and mergers or liquidation — the Foundation's access to government benefits can pass through to the PBC as government-backed inflows, which in turn can partially pass through to shareholders.

Liquidity: modeled like an early-days stock market — no redemptions, no buybacks, no guaranteed liquidity. Share price is set solely by market supply and demand; if you buy, you hold until you sell to another investor.

Why this shape: market-only trading removes liquidity pressure on the underlying properties, conservative independent appraisals limit overvaluation risk, the Foundation's golden vote guards against mission drift, no redemption obligation means no forced liquidation in a downturn, and the mission charter orients toward long-term dividend yield rather than short-term exits.

The path: incorporate in Delaware, set up the Foundation with its golden vote to lock the mission, prepare management financials or projections (internally compiled, then CPA-reviewed), and file an OTCQB Venture application — plus Reg A+ if raising capital, which allows trading without two years of full audited financials. Disclosed clearly throughout: the company has no prior revenue, all financials are projections, early-stage investing carries real risk, and liquidity is provided only by other investors.

An estate-planning option: for larger investors, the draft sketches a collateral-assignment life insurance structure — an investor's PBC stock backs a life insurance policy held in an irrevocable trust, with a supplemental trust as backstop for any premium shortfall. On the investor's death, the insurance company receives the pledged stock and premiums, while the trust pays heirs the death benefit income- and estate-tax free — potentially shielding $20–25M+ from federal estate taxes, while the investor keeps economic exposure and voting rights, and the mission, during their lifetime. Any stock surplus returns to the PBC.

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Startup 02 PredictGrow Startups · AI · In Testing
Forecast
About this Startup

Predictable Growth helps B2B companies Assess, Plan, and Execute revenue — powered by AI. Tools that help founders forecast, prioritize, and scale with the kind of clarity that used to require a full data team. Currently in development, in testing phase.

The problem: most B2B revenue teams are flying blind — stitching together guesswork, spreadsheets, and gut feel. No pipeline math, isolated planning, zero visibility into pipeline health, static annual forecasts outdated the moment they're finished, and companies spending $50K+ just to get insights they should have continuously.

The market: the global Sales Enablement market is valued at $5.62B in 2025 and projected to reach $11.48B by 2032, a 10.73% CAGR — driven by B2B orgs investing in RevOps infrastructure at record pace, while consulting-grade insight stays locked behind $50K+ engagements, leaving the SMB segment underserved. (Source: 360iResearch, Sales Enablement Software Market Global Forecast, 2026.)

The platform: one integrated Assess → Plan → Execute loop, with no data silos — assessment scores power planning tools, which drive live execution tracking. No spreadsheets. No consultants. No lag.

The AI advisor: not a chatbot — a senior commercial advisor grounded in proven revenue frameworks (MEDDIC, Challenger, SPIN), with recommendations backed by credible, cited sources (Gartner, HBR, Forrester), turning weeks of strategy consulting into minutes. Built in English, Spanish, and Portuguese for global and Latin American markets from day one.

The model: one-time assessments as a low-barrier entry point, recurring subscriptions for the full Sales Machine Tools suite, and multi-language support built for expansion across LATAM and beyond. More at predictablegrow.com.

Hugo's Note
Built for founders who don't have a data team yet — because most don't.
Community

📑 Full Presentation

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Startup 03 DUACS Finance · AI · In Development
Signal
About this Startup

An AI-driven hedge fund strategy focused on distressed assets and high-risk, high-growth opportunities — applying systematic intelligence where most investors fear to look. Currently in development.

Visit duac.ai →

Hugo's Note
Same discipline as the Financial Bicycle Model — just pointed at distressed assets instead of a household budget.
Community
Startup 04 Bicy Education · Gaming · On Hold
Balance
About this Startup

Bicy.ai democratizes financial expertise through community — expert-led financial education combined with peer-to-peer learning, on a cyclist-themed platform where knowledge compounds and communities thrive. We teach people how to manage money better, not just track it. On hold, awaiting the right partners.

The market: four channels — corporate wellness (150M US employees, $22.5B), university programs (20M students, $4B), government training (22M workers, $2.2B), and advisor tools (330K financial advisors, $1B) — for a combined $29.7B total addressable market.

The edge: unlike Mint/YNAB (track spending after it happens), Cleo/Dave (basic chatbot tips), NerdWallet (product comparisons), or advisors at $200+/hour, Bicy.ai pairs expert guides with community Q&A at $19.99/month — building financial skills that last, not just oversight, with gamified learning (points, badges, challenges, leaderboards) that drives real behavior change.

The model: a franchise approach where certified coaches join at $299/month, create content for their community, recruit organically from their own networks, and earn 30% of regional revenue — content is created once and serves infinite users, community self-service replaces large support teams, and coach-driven acquisition means zero required marketing spend, targeting an 85% gross margin.

The numbers: revenue splits across consumer subscriptions (60%), franchise partners (25%), and enterprise licenses (15%, $999–$4,999/month). Projected growth runs $1.4M (Year 1) → $14.4M (Year 2) → $57.6M (Year 3) revenue, with a $480 lifetime value against a $45 acquisition cost — a 10.7x LTV:CAC ratio, more than 3x the industry benchmark.

Why now: 500M people worldwide lack basic financial skills, community-driven platforms are growing 40% year-over-year, and middle-class consumers want expert guidance they can't afford at traditional advisor rates — three trends converging on the same opportunity.

Hugo's Note
Yes — same bicycle. It shows up everywhere I look at money.
Community

📑 Full Presentation

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Startup 05 DUO Technology · Community · On Hold
Connection
About this Startup
An app that connects people by Mission, Values, and Path — helping people find collaborators, mentors, and community based on shared purpose rather than surface-level interests. On hold, awaiting the right partners.
Hugo's Note
Most networking apps match by industry. This one matches by why.
Community
Startup 06 Feed the Hunger Kids Social Impact · Nutrition
Nourishment
About this Startup
A low-cost protein powder designed to feed children at scale. Local communities simply add rice and beans, making it logistically feasible to deliver real nutrition to distant, famine-affected regions around the world.
Hugo's Note
Designed for logistics reality, not a lab — that's what makes it deliverable.
Community

📑 Full Presentation

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Startup 07 GSCP Technology · Social Impact · MVP Charter
Belonging
About this Startup
Global Social Connection Platform — a free forever platform that connects people with people and with support organizations, built around the simplest gaming experience ever. Currently in MVP charter definition, the early blueprint stage before development begins.
Hugo's Note
Among the earliest-stage of the ten — still just a blueprint, but one of the most ambitious in scope.
Community
Startup 08 Ferropanel Construction · Wind-Resistant, Insulated Housing · In Development
Resilience
About this Startup

Ferropanel (Bogotá) engineers prefabricated panel systems built for the two things that actually break low-cost housing over time: wind and heat. Hugo represents Ferropanel and is working to align its manufacturing with the Tu Techo USA housing initiative, to produce homes at scale in Florida or Panama.

The problem: the affordable housing deficit across Latin America and parts of the U.S. isn't just a financing gap — it's also a construction one. Conventional low-cost building methods are slow, labor-intensive, and often perform poorly against wind loads and thermal transfer, driving up long-term costs in repairs and energy.

The product: engineered panels designed to meet high wind-resistance and insulation standards while staying fast to manufacture and assemble — built for scale, not one house at a time.

The alignment: pairing Ferropanel's manufacturing capacity with Samaritan LLC / Tu Techo USA's housing vehicle, and pursuing support from multilateral development banks (IDB, CAF, World Bank/IFC) to fund production at a scale that brings the per-unit cost down.

Hugo's Note
The piece Tu Techo USA was missing to actually build at scale — a manufacturer, not just a financing structure.
Community
Startup 09 OASIS Ocean Systems · Water, Energy & Food · Angel Round
Source
About this Startup

One intake, four yields: OASIS Ocean Systems is an offshore platform that pulls seawater once and sells it four times over — as drinking water, firm power, desert fertilizer, and food grown in local greenhouses. The MVP is planned for the La Guajira coast, Colombia — strong wind, chronic water scarcity, little firm power, and few jobs beyond salt-harvesting.

The insight: share the intake, the power block, and the site — four separate plants become one. A single offshore intake feeds the platform; its fuel cells power the desalination process and produce captured CO₂ as a byproduct. Onshore, that seawater becomes product water — its leftover brine and CO₂ become fertilizer — and water, fertilizer, and power together grow food in HVAC greenhouses that employ the local workforce.

Not unproven technology: every major system here already runs at multi-billion-dollar scale — Sundrop Farms' 20-hectare seawater-fed greenhouse in Australia, NEOM's $8.4B green hydrogen platform in Saudi Arabia, Ras Al-Khair's 2,400MW cogeneration plant with 1M+ m³/day of desalination, and FuelCell Energy's commercial SureSource fleet (NASDAQ: FCEL). OASIS combines proven pieces, not new ones.

Illustrative economics (pre-FEED): $41.2M in annual revenue across four lines — product water, power export, minerals/fertilizer/CO₂, and greenhouse produce — at roughly 48% EBITDA margin, against an illustrative $373M CAPEX and about 220 local jobs. Full model in the companion investor deck.

The ask: raising $3.5M (SAFE, $20M cap) for a 20-month runway — FEED engineering and subsea design, a pilot demonstration skid, environmental impact studies and permitting (ANLA/DIMAR), a greenhouse pilot plot, and hiring a project manager to lead FEED-stage execution — plus engagement with the Colombian government, the World Bank Group (IFC), and the IDB.

Hugo's Note
Every piece of this already works somewhere in the world — desalination, fuel cells, seawater greenhouses. The only new thing is refusing to build them four separate times.
Community

📑 Executive Summary

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For angel investors, VCs, and institutions — tell us which project caught your attention, and Hugo will follow up directly.

Faith without works is just a feeling. If one of these stirred something, that's the whole point — reach out.