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Zaldivar Labs

San Diego

Eddie Zaldivar

I’m Eddie Zaldivar, founder of Zaldivar Labs in San Diego. I’ve spent about 20 years in marketing and analytics, including leading a data science team at Omnicom. Over my career, I’ve managed more than $1 billion in advertising, with clients including Unilever, Mercedes-Benz, and Apple.

Today I lead Zaldivar Labs’ work with business owners. We help owners understand where sales are getting stuck, what they keep from each sale, and where their next dollar is best spent. We work in English and Spanish, from the first conversation through putting those decisions into practice.

Eddie Zaldivar at his desk in a black sweater, resting his head on his hand.

What I'm working on now

Alongside client work, I build my own products. Cohort Institute gives educators tools to form and support student teams, and it's now in a pilot. Grown Home connects home growers and food makers with nearby buyers. It started with my daughter and our garden, and she pitched it with me at SDSU, where it won the 2025 Social Venture Challenge grand prize.

Some of the most rewarding work I do right now is with San Diego Partners for Economic Prosperity (PEP). Zaldivar Labs is the digital and technology partner for its El Camino Fund program, with support from San Diego Foundation, helping local owners, most of them Latina/o, get found, chosen, and measured. It brought me back to the kind of businesses I started with, and I get to do the work in English and Spanish.

  • Cohort InstitutePilot

    Tools for educators to form and support student teams.

  • HomebirthIn development

    Connecting expectant parents with midwives.

  • Grown HomeIn development

    Connecting local producers with nearby buyers.

Recognition

  • Grand prize, SDSU Social Venture Challenge 2025, for Grown Home

    SDSU News

  • Featured in “Building a database application the DIY way” (2020)

    TechTarget

  • Co-author, “Connecting Tableau to Google BigQuery” (2020)

    Supermetrics

Outside the work

For a while my curiosity ran in every direction. I traveled through Latin America, worked with Univision on sports coverage, and helped on documentaries about Honduran soccer and, of all things, mangoes. Somewhere along the way my Spanish went from rough to fluent.

The one constant has been martial arts: wrestling, jiu-jitsu, MMA, and now judo. I seriously considered going pro. These days I train in the evenings, I'm a Southern California judo champion, and most of my free time belongs to my daughter and son.

Tell me what you're trying to solveeddie@zaldivarlabs.com