How I Got Here: How global adventurer Katalina Mayorga founded a travel tech company

El Camino Travel Founder Katalina Mayorga never set out to launch a VC-backed startup. Instead, she told Technical.ly, she just wanted to create a safe, welcoming option for women travelers.

“We were just laser-focused on creating life-changing travel experiences for women travelers where they could travel wherever they wanted to and no longer had to sacrifice the quality of the experience because of their gender,” she said.

El Camino began as a travel company for small groups but ended up focusing on addressing the issues women often encounter when traveling — especially alone. Now, the company organizes curated, multi-day group trips for women and operates a tech framework to connect them with ideal trips and local guides.

But before all that, Mayorga was a recent grad with an eye for international relations. After attending the University of Washington, Mayorga took a role as a community organizer at the labor union UNITE HERE. From there, she became an international foundation associate at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association in Arlington, Virginia, identifying rural electrification projects. Following this role, she pursued a master’s degree in global environmental policy at American University and worked as a climate change senior program officer for Partners of the Americas. She ultimately spent three years consulting for social innovation and entrepreneurship projects before pivoting to El Camino Travel in 2014.

Mayorga said this work in international development across roles gave her a chance to see the world in a way many of her friends couldn’t because of her networks on the ground. She also got an up-close view of how impactful tourism is for communities globally — and that an opportunity existed to empower local communities, instead of taking advantage.

She wanted to share these richer, more immersive experiences, she said.

“It made me realize that there was a completely different way to experience the world, and I wanted more people to have that experience,” Mayorga said.

Fast-forward to July 2014, when Mayorga launched the company. After its launch, El Camino took hundreds of women around the world and generated millions, according to Mayorga. But she struggled to grow efficiently without adding too many overhead costs, even though the majority of the team’s work was manual and repetitive. So, she turned to tech to build a marketplace, improving efficiency and giving the company a chance to scale.

“We saw a huge opportunity to apply technology to let it do what it does best so humans can do what they do best,” Mayorga said. “This led to our next phase of growth and our pivot into building the travel industry’s first marketplace for women travelers.”

If she had to do it over again, Mayorga would have joined an accelerator much sooner (El Camino participated in the Friends and Family accelerator from Slauson and Co and Gri110 in early 2022). Engaging a few key investors in a meaningful relationship over a few months, she said, allows them to see how a founder thinks and get excited about investing in their vision. Accepting VC also means “hiring your own bosses,” she added, so it’s important to feel good about them.

So far, these methods have worked for El Camino, which raised $1.1 million in January. Since last summer, employees have been heads-down building the technology for the marketplace and working on growth; the company added Japan, Spain and Vietnam to its destinations for trips. Five other destinations are also in the works.

Still, she said, it hasn’t been easy, and it took a lot of personal sacrifices to bring everything together. Her recommendation for aspiring founders: make sure you have the right people cheering you on.

“It can get lonely quickly, so surround yourself with others who have that same determination and mindset,” Mayorga said. “Build and learn in the community, it makes the whole journey way more fun.”