Xavi Ablaza

General Partner

Xavi Ablaza is the General Partner of HOSTARI_LABS and the CEO of Hostari and. At Hostari, he handles business expansion while bringing 9 years of professional experience in the United States eCommerce industry, building vertical software integrations.

A fast and efficient full-stack software engineer, Xavi builds with extreme urgency and has mentored junior to senior developers. He graduated from Chapman University in Orange, California, with a B.S. in Software Engineering and has received awards from renowned professional organizations such as TechCrunch, IEEE, and the User Experience Society.

Xavi's entrepreneurial achievements include purchasing a $7,500 domain and generating $300,000 in lifetime revenue over 3 years. He also successfully negotiated a $100K shared earnings agreement from a family office, showcasing his skills in term sheet negotiation and financing.

Richard Lance Parayno

Managing Partner

Richard Parayno is the Managing Partner of HOSTARI_LABS. He also serves as the Chief Design Officer of Hostari.

With extensive experience designing and building innovative products in chat, voice, XR/spatial, and other non-conventional interfaces, Richard brings valuable expertise to his roles. His HCI research has been published in CHI, the premier international conference for Human-Computer Interaction.

As Hostari's Chief Design Officer, Richard leads the company's end-to-end product design, research, and prototyping efforts. Notably, his early prototyping efforts at Hostari's predecessor, ValheimServerHosting.com, led to a successful $100K pre-seed raise from a family office and achieved extreme double-digit Month-over-Month growth from March to December 2021.

In 2024, he completed his MSc in Engineering - Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Salzburg and Salzburg University of Applied Sciences. His alma mater is De La Salle University - Manila, finishing with a BSc in Information Technology.