Press Room
>Our first print ad in CocaCola’s magazine!
>Now that our product is ready for playtime, we have to experiment with different ways to reach shopkeepers to see what works best. In that regard, we are extremely happy to count with Coca-Cola’s support in Mexico. They have worked with us to develop the ad below for Tiendatek, which includes an implicit Coca Cola endorsement through the use of their logo.
The ad will appear on Coca-Cola’s national magazine, with an audience of 68,000 of their most dedicated shopkeepers all over the country. We’re looking for 100 to get started, hopefully we get more than enough responses.
The ad was put together by Kristel, our wonderful graphic designer, with help from others. We think it will resonate with shopkeepers both graphically and textually, would you have any suggestions about it?
>Christopher Columbus as an Entrepreneur
>
Today five centuries and some years ago, Christopher Columbus completed a remarkable journey that connected two continents and radically shaped our ensuing history, both for good and bad. After such a feat, he became a legendary figure revered and hated alike. But if you look closely, you can see all the elements of a fantastic entrepreneurial story.
Let’s start with his industry, that of exploration, conquest and colonization of Atlantic islands. In the two decades years before 1492, Portuguese and Spanish entrepreneurs bloodily wrested control of Madeira, Cape Vert, Azores and the Canary islands. All these adventures were funded privately with the returns provided by the pillaging of natives and the establishment of sugar plantations.
Columbus participated in this trade industry, sailing north to Iceland and south to Senegal. He learned from the best, the Portuguese sailors, and became himself an expert in the new technologies enabling Atlantic voyages. Then he started dreaming of reaching a noble status, which at that time you could only achieve through feats of war or bold acts of exploration.
So he put together a half-cooked plan and started looking for funders and backers. He pitched and pitched, changing his story to suit his audience. And the audience was select, since only kings could help defend any gains from other rapacious kings. He tried Portugal, England and then Castille, where he was paid a salary to stick around and polish his plan. Today we call that an Entrepreneur In Residence.
After seven years of fundraising, he signed a deal with the Catholic Kings who had just unified all the smaller kingdoms in Spain. This document, called the Capitulations of Santa Fe, is plain and simply a Term Sheet. Its main points are quite familiar to a modern entrepreneur:
* Columbus and his descendants would enjoy the title of Admiral of Castile (there you go, a noble! that meant huge perks and privileges in a post-feudal society)
* He’d also be the Viceroy and Governor of all the lands he discovered (today we call that CEO)
* A tenth of all the profits from trade and other enterprises (that’d be a 10% equity stake)
* The right to contribute up to an eighth of capital for any ensuing enterprises (an anti-dilution clause!)
Once the deal was closed, the start-up got on to a full swing. The total capital deployed was equivalent to the annual income from a lowly noble person. The Crown provided about half, the other half coming from private investors, mostly Genovese financiers.
And off the three boats sailed, towards a direction no one had ever come back alive from (imagine the hiring interviews for the crew…). Columbus pulled it off though and pioneered a breakthrough route to the Indies, er, to the Americas. That sailing discovery started a grab for riches and eventually a huge trade industry between the two shores of the Atlantic ocean.
In pure start-up fashion, the story didn’t end so well. Columbus was a gifted sailor but a terrible administrator. He fumbled the management of the conquered islands so badly that his own henchmen asked the King for a replacement. So the main shareholder, worried about the bottom line, organized a board coup and brought him back to Spain in chains, only to strip him of all his entitlements. For the following three centuries, Columbus’ progeny fought the Crown in court to recover their fair due, sadly to no avail…
This story holds a few lessons for today’s entrepreneurs. First, we’re very lucky to risk only our money and time, and never our lives. Second, our profession has been going on and on since Adam and Eve. Third, don’t make deals with Kings!
>Moving to Mexico
>
After a year of running Frogtek from New York City, I finally moved closer to our customers and markets this month. As of October 1st, my home address is in the exciting neighborhood of La Condesa, in the heart of Mexico City.
We have completed our first version of the product and I was feeling increasingly removed from the action back in nyc. As we shift into deployment mode and we negotiate distribution and partnership deals, it makes a lot of sense for me to be based in Mexico. Parachuting in and out is just not going to cut it at this point. So it’s exciting to enter a new stage and being able to witness it first hand!
>At Mexico’s top business school!
>
Yesterday Yael and I attended a very interesting lecture given by Edmundo Vallejo, a former LatAm CEO at GE that is now a professor at Ipade, Mexico’s foremost business school. Ipade organizes an annual refresher for former alumni and Edmundo’s presentation was focused on the aftermath of the economic crisis.
The room was full of senior managers from large organizations hailing from the spectrum of Mexican industries. Edmundo wanted to give them a taste of the new trends in global business, from cloud computing to strategic partnerships to crowdsourcing and the base of the pyramid.
To our relish, he used Frogtek’s example to thread a number of disparate concepts together. He provided a masterful description of our business model, which you can see in the picture above (I’m so stealing his slides!). Afterwards Yael and I took the floor to answer a few questions from the audience.
It was hard to believe our young company held any lessons for such an experienced crowd. But with a Professor like Edmundo, anything is possible!