This is a long post, with no pictures. But I want you to read every word of it!
It has been said that the key to success is not so much to be remarkable yourself, but rather to surround yourself with remarkable people. I am convinced that in this city of 6 million inhabitants, I could be living in the home of the most extraordinary person in the entire region. Paul Ahlstrom's the name, and venture capital is the game.
A brief description of venture capital (VC): People who want to start new companies often have incredible ideas, but lack funding to start their businesses. No one will give you a million dollar loan to start a tech company that might not even work. Venture capitalists will. They gather millions of dollars from people who want to invest in such companies, sit and listen to entrepreneurs pitch their ideas, and pick only the best of the best to fund. The entrepreneurs come in and have to convince the VC's that their idea will work and be wildly successful, and only then will the VC's bestow them with funding (like on the TV show "Shark Tank"). In exchange, the entrepreneur must give the VC's a portion ownership of the new company (let's say 25%), which means that if the company makes it big, 25% of the profits will belong to the VC's.
This process of vigilant screening and sifting through hundreds of ideas yields the freshest, most innovative new companies around, and in the US has been a key driver of the rapid economic progress we have made in the last few decades. It encourages innovation, creating new products and services that advance the quality of life, and creates employment as these new and growing companies hire on workers. In fact, companies that were started with VC funding account for 10% of the jobs in the United States last year!
Sadly, opportunities to get funding like this are really only available in highly developed countries. A Mexican with a great idea will only be able to fund his new company if he comes from a very wealthy family and can talk them into a big loan. This means slower economic growth, less innovation, and less employment.
Enter Paul Ahlstrom. Paul has been a very successful VC in Utah for the last 15 years. He had made so many home-run investments that he easily could have rode the wave and lived comfortably in Utah for the rest of his life. But Paul is not one to coast; he is a bull. He decided to start the first VC fund in Mexico. The motive? Well, he's not here in search of fortune- he already had that in Utah. Paul is here to give a hand up to the Mexican people. He found a fantastic Mexican partner, sold everything he owned in Utah and move his family to Monterrey. I wish I could paint a picture of the enormity of the task. First, convincing investors to lend you the $100 million or so to invest in a country with some amount of economic and political instability. Second, doing it half the time in another language. Third, single handedly teaching an entire community how VC works and what they need to do. The policy makers, universities, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and investors here have never done VC, and they all play a critical role.
To help unite this budding VC community and instruct them on what has to happen, Paul organized the first ever Monterrey Venture Capital Conference. Over 200 leaders in government, business, and entrepreneurship attended, and it was a smashing success. Speakers were brought in from successful VC communities in the states to speak on how they build their industries, politicians spoke on what policy change had to happen, etc. But no doubt the best moment of the conference was when mighty Paul Ahlstrom took the mic. When Paul opens his mouth, he commands attention from every person within the sound of his voice. With his fearlessness, experience, and talent, he is charging this cause forward and everyone is jumping on behind him and helping to push. There are now hordes of talented, powerful people working to make this a reality, but there is no doubt that Paul Ahlstrom is the living, burning soul behind it all.
Somehow I have had the good fortune to be one of those people. When they interviewed me in November for an internship position, I was a lowly undergrad student who didn't speak a lick of Spanish (except for the basics, such as "Help, help! My grandmother's on fire!!!"), but something worked in my favor and they let me on board. What a joy it is to be surrounded with such people! I haven't much to offer them (although Paul has taken a liking to my guitar playing, and I have found myself as dinner entertainment at parties with more bodygaurds than guests). I do not know that I will spend my career in VC, but here I am watching a master in something even more important: how to be remarkable.
Oh yeah: Paul is letting me live in his basement this summer. How do I deserve this?
