Fil-Am striving to make it big in US tech sector

A Filipino-American man and his African-American business partner are striving to make it big in the United States technology sector despite apparent problems with racial representation in the tech sector.

According to an article published in May on website New America Media, 25-year-olds Isaac Reed and Fil-Am Chris Cruz started making their mark in the tech industry in 2011, when they developed the smartphone application Zuggol.

According to the report, Zuggol "allows users to set a personal goal and track progress toward that goal, which is assigned to one of six given: art, business, fitness, fashion, education, and music."

The goal statuses of users can be updated in relation to their progress, and they can also track people using the app with similar goals, or to give advice on how to help others.

The report said that users can look to Zuggol's "push" page to get inspiration from successful individuals such as Maya Angelou, a prominent author who endured hardship in her life.

Zuggol became available in February this year in the Apple Store.

"Fittingly, the path taken by Cruz and Reed to create Zuggol was one forged by perseverance and self-sacrifice in service of a shared goal," the report said.

Cruz taught himself the Objective-C programming language within six months because he and Reed couldn't afford a programmer.

“Initially, motivation was probably the only thing that kept me going,” Cruz said in the article.

“There were times during those six months of coding, I lost all hope—same with Isaac—and every single time, I would read quotes or talk to somebody in the tech industry, which helped reignite my motivation," he continued.

The article noted that Cruz's father was imprisoned for selling drugs when he was young, and soon after that he and his family were evicted from their home and had to rent a bedroom in a San Francisco house.

He was raised in that bedroom by his mother for 16 years, and had to finish high school in a public school with a tough reputation.

“It taught me a lot more about just surviving and about how life is,” Cruz said.

And now, Cruz and Reed struggle with race issues in the tech industry.

“Sometimes I’ll talk to people and say I’m a programmer, or I develop—but if I say that I coded Objective-C in six months, then they will pay attention to me. If I don’t, I’ll usually get ignored,” Cruz said.

However, it seems Cruz and his partner's hardships and struggles have borne fruit.

Zuggol's office in San Francisco's financial district now has 20 employees from diverse backgrounds, the story said, from Filipino to African American to Hispanic.

The duo's company is gaining steady growth, and the pair are busy with fundraisers as well as securing investment deals.

“I feel like we’re the underdogs and that Isaac and I are doing it for our people,” Cruz said.

“I feel we have our ethnicities on our shoulders in the tech industry," he continued. — Gian C. Geronimo/BM, GMA News