Pickup Coffee’s Diego Lorenzo and Jaime González Fernández Join the Endeavor Network
Endeavor selected the Philippines’ Diego Lorenzo and Jaime González Fernández of Pickup Coffee at the 99th International Selection Panel held in Nairobi, Kenya on May 22-24, 2024. The panel included Jose Bonilla (Chiper and Endeavor Entrepreneur), Songe LaRon (SQUIRE Technologies, Endeavor Entrepreneur, and Endeavor Western NY Board Member), Michael Mutiga (Safaricom and Endeavor Kenya Board Member), Nevzat Aydin (Yemeksepati, Endeavor Entrepreneur, and Endeavor Turkey Board Member), Costantza Sbokou Constantakopolou (Phāea and Endeavor Greece Board Chair), and Shu Nyatta (Bicycle Capital and Endeavor Global Board Member).
Pickup Coffee was founded by four co-founders, Diego Lorenzo, Jaime González Fernández, Miguel Macaalay, and Bien Lee. Diego, CEO and Co-founder of Pickup, had the initial inspiration to start the company. From an early age, Diego Lorenzo was exposed to the challenges and nuances of the food and beverage industry. He spent the first 12 years of his career following a traditional path working in finance and private equity firms such as Sierra Madre Private Equity, the Abraaj Group, and HSBC, before taking an investment role for his family. After earning his MBA from The Wharton School in 2018, Diego got the entrepreneurial bug. During his time at Wharton, Diego recognized how many of his Filipino peers left to get an education in the United States, and never returned home. He aimed to start a company and to achieve great success to show and inspire the brightest Filipinos abroad to come home. Diego set out on a mission to identify an opportunity and build a business that would showcase successful outcomes for Filipinos. He saw the coffee opportunity with successful models in markets like China (Luckin Coffee) and Indonesia (Kopi Kenangan) and realized it was a model he could apply and innovate on in the Philippines. Today, Diego is responsible for the overall direction, management, and performance of the organization. His team sets the company’s vision and strategy, and makes critical decisions that impact the company’s operations, and financial performance.
Jaime, on the other hand, is a Spanish expat living in the Philippines and is an engineer by trade. He holds a bachelor’s in aerospace engineering, followed by a master’s in aerospace mechanics and avionics from Universidad de Leon. Jaime began his career at Airbus before he moved to McKinsey. During this time, Jaime fell in love with the Philippine market. After earning his MBA from Harvard Business School, Jaime returned to McKinsey, joining the team based in Manila. Jaime then joined local VC Foxmont Capital Partners as the Director of Investments and founded his first company, BIGPAT Development, a real estate development firm, marking the start of his entrepreneurial journey. After meeting Diego and hearing about the coffee opportunity in the Philippines, Jaime, and Diego, alongside their two additional co-founders, decided to team up to launch a more affordable and high quality coffee option in the Philippines, launching Pickup Coffee. Today, with a more technical and operations-based background, Jaime is responsible for developing and implementing the company’s long-term strategic plans. His team works to identify growth opportunities, evaluate market trends and the competitive landscape, and make recommendations on how to optimize the company’s resources to achieve its goals.
The ISP is the culmination of a rigorous multi-step selection process to identify high-impact entrepreneurs who demonstrate the potential to leverage Endeavor’s resources and mentorship to create large-scale wealth and jobs, and are committed to reinvesting their time and money in their local entrepreneurship ecosystems to help others take off.
As part of Endeavor’s network, the newly selected entrepreneurs will gain access to comprehensive, strategic, global support services, including introductions to local and international business mentors, investors, and volunteers from Fortune 500 consulting firms who will help them address key needs.