Last night I was on a space, and an argument broke out with some people repeating an old story that has been, in my opinion, played out. The story of people of latin america being poor and striving to get things, and how most people don't have that chance. However, I think that there are more than enough people with chance to innovate and compete in the real world. I think most people just lack awareness or vision.
I have many lines to argue this point. The first one and easier, is, go to a mall parking lot on Sunday. You'll be lucky if you find a place to park as usually the mall is so full of people spending money.
The next one is: "The same country that have all this (insert brand of convenience store) employees, is the same that has owners of (insert brand), and they aren't making minimum wage, nor are they coming from another country."
With that I rather tell my story of a different latin american kid, who was raised with 2 maids and a choffer with summer trips to Cancun, or camping at the center of the country and family trips to Disney World and Universal. He also has desire to kickstart a company around innovation and is fully ready to pitch to VCs anywhere in the world.
Maybe it hurt your feelings, maybe it break your pretty picture, but is also real. And it also available to talk to and root for so we can have a new innovation company. And also I might say he is not alone, most of today's tech entrepreneur were not poor, some were slightly rich, but the level where they start doesn't compare to where they ended up.
Bill gates father William Gates was involved with politics and was even an investor of a little coffee company called Starbucks. His mother, was a high executive from IBM. And little Bill grew up in one of the most prestigious universities spending money working on a pdp computer to code a Basic program for it.
Elon Musk and Zuckerberg were also high middle class families that were able to provide a great education.
So not all stories need to start from the bottom. But in the end, people at the middle also as unproductive to achieve innovation as the next person. So a new type of education needs to happen where they go and look for the money and find it so we can have quality startups across the region. Let's be honest, no person has a couple of million dollars sitting around, but at the same time, is not meant to be that way. You still need to sell your solution and product so you can generate that expectation. Investors are always aiming at increasing their wealth, that doesn't change if they are in the US or in Africa or in Asia. The key indicator is if innovators can make them feel that return, they can validate that market and create that expectation.
Being poor is far from a guaranteed to be able to achieve this, I would even say that poor people in latin america are more removed from being a good sales guy than a guy that has had some experience selling to business and costumers. People on the middle class are more qualified to talk to business as they do from their perspective. I would recommend people to watch a show I recently wrote about called 'Halt and Catch Fire' as you see that dynamic of the sales guy being also the innovator. Taking talent that might not be all that good at selling a vision and really building a company.
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