When Alexander Gallego started his first company in 2014, he approached it with the same determination he’d used to learn English as a teenager, or to navigate the admissions process as a first-generation college student: “I just had to figure it out,” he said. “I had no backup plan.” Gallego, who was born in Colombia and immigrated to the U.S. at 14, has since launched two companies: data processing company Concord, which he sold to Akamai Technologies for an undisclosed sum in 2016, and Redpanda, which makes software for managing real-time data streams. Companies like Tesla, SpaceX, Lacework, Cisco and Vodafone use the latter, which earlier this year closed a $50 million Series B led by GV, Alphabet’s investment arm, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Here, Gallego shares his journey to startup success, and his aspirations to bring more people from underrepresented backgrounds into Silicon Valley’s inner circle.