A founder regrets not studying abroad and credits international moves to Austin, Madrid, and Mexico with shaping his perspective. He built a cable company from scratch, grew it to 30% market share, and sold it in October 2006, emphasizing how mentors and continuous learning in engineering and management made the difference.
My dad used to tell me, come and work, don't even finish high school. I would tell him, I don't agree. It was different for you than it will be for me. I told him I want to go abroad. One of the few things I regret is not having gone to study abroad for four years. That's my regret about why.
Because going to Austin, going to Madrid, and living here in Mexico for 13 years with a completely different perspective helped me a lot. I started working with him in the cable companies and I would go to work while I was studying. We were the first to launch broadband in tam. The business was called Inter Cable and the service was called Cablevision Monterey. That's where I started working with him. And then I went into the media to sell advertising. I went to study engineering. And while I was studying, my dad was expanding the movie theaters. And I would tell him, we have to do something here because we already had 1,000 theaters, imagine that. And the issue of retrofitting and stadium theaters came up and what was happening in the United States where they were going to turn a big movie theater into 30 theaters? And I told him, we have to redo the equipment because this isn't going to work. He said, no, man, you're just arriving, man, you're studying. I said, give me a chance to talk to the director. I promise to be professional. I spoke to the director and he said, no, well, I don't think I have the fit. He was already 70 years old. His son was working at the time. We formed a team. People came from Burbank, California, from Walt Disney, people came from Chile, Argentina. And we rebuilt the team, we rebuilt the theaters. We ended up with 30% market share and we sold the company and kept the properties right before. I remember I was on my honeymoon when it was sold in October 2006. And I've always been restless and all I ask for was to give me the opportunity to go and prepare myself. But I didn't have time to go and work somewhere else to gain experience. That's the typical thing, right? You go to study, you gain, I don't know, experience like you might have had in New York, or you go to a private school or a third party group to gain better practices. I didn't have time. So I started working, studying and I told him, I'm going to get a master's degree and I'm going to keep studying because it's going to be needed because a new generation is coming and for the sake of diversification, we need to be prepared and that's how we started little by little and we got along very well. Now it requires effort and perseverance I love that word because now you talk to the new generations and they want everything fast they don't have patience and they want to climb the ladder but that wasn't the case for me it was just work and work until I got the job. So I had, I tell you a good, good schooling because I had the school of life and the school of school, right? In addition to your father was there someone within the group or even from the same family who was instrumental in your training?
Several in general there was an engineer from Mexico City named Victor Santa Maria who managed all the technological part of the group a genius. I learned a lot from a person Manuel Gonzalez who ran the cable company. I went with Eduardo Triccio to ask for advice in Taurian. I became friends with him and I told him hey in.
