Robbie Figueroa ’17 Creates Social Impact in the Fintech Space

At the age of 31, Robbie Figueroa ‘17 has already made his mark in the business world—first by helping build DoorDash’s brand in Puerto Rico into one of the company’s fastest-growing markets, and then by co-founding Maza, a fintech startup designed to help Spanish-speaking consumers in the U.S. to gain access to basic banking services that many take for granted.

Earlier this year, TechCrunch reported that the personal finance software company Flex has acquired Maza for $40 million, a deal that is expected to expand both firms’ reach to an overlooked segment of U.S. consumers. It’s not just a significant entrepreneurial feat for Figueroa and his two co-founders; Figueroa also sees it as a demonstration of something rooted in him from his undergraduate years at Pitzer: finding ways to create social impact and social responsibility with financial ventures.

“I think I’ve stayed true to the Pitzer ethos of helping people,” he said. “What’s different is the scale—you can help individuals one by one, or you can build a platform that helps hundreds of thousands.”

Figueroa also said that the inspiration for Maza—which intentionally misspells the Spanish word for “dough” and puns on slang for money—stems from personal experience.

“My two cofounders and I all have family roots in Latin American parents who immigrated to the states,” he said. “We saw firsthand with relatives how hard it was for many Spanish speakers to get a credit card or even a checking account. We knew that pain points existed.”

So Figueroa and the rest of the Maza team had a simple goal: address those pain points and make everyday banking easier for people who manage their lives in Spanish. Many Spanish-speaking consumers face unnecessary hurdles when opening accounts or accessing online tools, often because of language or documentation challenges. Maza’s user-friendly design and bilingual support have helped several hundred thousand customers gain the access they deserve — proving that smart technology can make fair outcomes an important part of innovation itself.

Financial Myth-Busting

As a political studies major at Pitzer, Figueroa said he once imagined a career in government, believing it was the best path to make an impact in the world.    

But after holding internships in the U.S. Senate, he soon recognized what others have: that the bureaucratic pace, layers of red tape, and institutional resistance to innovation often get in the way of creating meaningful change. That realization led him to take a different path—one still aligned with Pitzer’s ethos of social impact and transformation: entrepreneurship.

“The skillset of rebelling and going against the incumbents and status quo is ironically foundational to entrepreneurship and capitalism,” Figueroa said. “And if you’re successful at it, you can apply the money you make toward social outcomes you are passionate about, through the core-values lens you learn at Pitzer.”

After graduating, Figueroa stepped into the world of finance and soon found himself surrounded by a new generation of founders—young entrepreneurs in their 20s and early 30s who were already running successful companies. It was a revelation. One of the most persistent myths about business success, he realized—that you need to be significantly older and more experienced to build something impactful—simply didn’t hold up.

Through his work with DoorDash and Maza, Figueroa has helped debunk another misconception: that capitalism and social activism are incompatible. His career, he believes, proves they not only can coexist—they can strengthen each other.

As Maza transitions under its new ownership at Flex, Figueroa is helping to guide the handoff and raise new capital. After that, he said he has other ambitious endeavors in the works in the AI space. The horizon is wide open—which might intimidate others but, for Figueroa, the unknown offers endless possibilities to an entrepreneur.