Andrew: Hey, there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy where I interview entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses for an audience of real entrepreneurs, people who are building companies or aspiring to build companies. And I’ve flown to Santiago Chile to come and interview entrepreneurs here about how they did it.
And there’s an entrepreneur who, I don’t know if you remember, Maria, but you’ve turned us down, and then I read a book called “Crossing Borders” about venture capital in Latin America. And your story was in it. And I said, “I’ve got to have her on.” And I basically said, “Please, how do we do it?” I asked Nathan, the venture capitalist from Magma Partners who wrote that book, “Please, introduce me.” And the reason I wanted to meet you is because you had a failure.
I don’t know if it’s something you guys are especially proud of, but I am especially curious about businesses that sometimes get funding, have traction and for some reason don’t make it. I want to learn what you learned so that I don’t have to repeat the mistake and I could build something better because of it. And I know that you have. You’ve actually gone on to build several things based on what you’ve learned from this company that didn’t work out.
So you should watch your hair, by the way, on the microphone. We’ve got lavaliers on guests now. We’re here in person.
So here it is, Maria Paz Gillet. I pronounced your last name right?
Maria: Gillet.
Andrew: Gillet? I keep saying, “Ga, G.” Maria Paz Gillet. She is the founder, most recently, of a company called Jooycar. It gives clients the ability to get real-time data from vehicles. And you use this little device that insurance companies can ask their customers to put in their car, or people who own fleets of cars could put in every one of their cars to monitor how people drive and then allows the insurance company to charge based on how people drive, allows the fleet company to manage their cars. That’s the company that you’re doing now that’s doing well.
Before that, you had a site or a software called Happyshop. I thought it made so much sense. You raised some money with that. What you did was you said, “Hey, look, retail store owners, you’ve got people coming into your store anyway. They’ve got phones in their pockets, and they’re going to have more and more phones in their pockets as the world continues to go mobile. They’re going to use their phones to get research on the stuff in your store. Just make it easier for them to get research from you. And then if you do that, you can follow up with them even after.” Right?
Maria: Yeah.
Andrew: It didn’t work out, and you learned a lot from it.
Maria: Very good pitch.
Andrew: I’m ready to sell this right now.
Maria: Yeah, really.
Andrew: I do think this makes a lot of sense. All right. I want to find out about your whole entrepreneurship career. Maybe we’ll even go back as far as when you were a child and you started that little business for birthday parties.
And the reason we can do this is, because I’ve got two phenomenal sponsors who said, “Yeah, Andrew, I’ll pay you. Here’s some money. And go travel anywhere you want.” And those two companies are Toptal, for hiring developers, and HostGator for hosting websites. And I’ll tell you, Maria, about them in a little bit, I’ll tell the audience about them in a little bit.
But first, Maria, Jooycar, you’re on track. How much revenue are you doing with that business?
Maria: Yeah. We started the company in 2014. And we start like bootstrapping. I realized in Happyshop a challenge that it’s not good to raise money in the initial. Why? Because when you have a lot of money, you’re not so creative, and of course you are focusing maybe the board meetings and all of that, and really, in Jooycar, we take a different approach. We focus on the product, we focus on our clients, and we tell to ourselves to create a business that has revenue itself. And then, last year we raised a Series A.
Andrew: How much revenue in profit did you get to before the series A?
Maria: Like $1 million in Chile only.
Andrew: $1 million in sales in Chile?
Maria: Yeah.
Andrew: Wow. And a profitable business?
Maria: Yes. Because we think, in Chile we say PYME. And when you talk about the pequeña empresa y mediana empresa. PYME is like, churn the medium companies.
And when I was in the university, when I think in my first business, I didn’t say, “Okay, I want to do a startup. I want to go to Silicon Valley. I need to do a bit.” No. I think in a business. And I resigned in Cencosud to do a business, to do Happyshop.
Andrew: Cencosud was a big company that you worked for, right?
Maria: Yes, when I be entrepreneur. But the thing that I want to explain is that when you have a passion and you’re hungry and you want to make a business, you are not thinking, “Okay, I need a starter.” No, you’re thinking in the finance solution. That’s why when we started Jooycar with my partner we say, “Okay, we want to prove that our platform is good, and we will have business.” So we go directly to clients and we get our first contract.
Andrew: Oh, before you even produced the devices in the car? You know, let’s take it slow here. Let’s take it slow. I just want to have one more metric to give people a sense of the size company that we’re getting to. Revenue now, you’ve raised some money. We’re a few years in. What’s the revenue?
Maria: Yeah, we start in Chile, and our idea is to close this year in maybe $5 million.
Andrew: To close 2019. What did you close the first six . . . Well, the first quarter with? Give me a sense of how close you are.
Maria: The thing is that right now we raised money until four months ago. So we are investing right now in some product that we will launch in the U.S., in Mexico and Brazil.
Andrew: It will allow you to grow much bigger. So, in 2018, what was the revenue?
Maria: We will have an inflection point second semester.
Andrew: What was the revenue? What was the revenue last year?
Maria: $1 million.
Andrew: Oh, $1 million was last year?
Maria: Yeah.
Andrew: Got it. Okay. And this year you’re aiming a $5 million. This gives me a good sense. Let’s go back and just get to know Maria. All right, Maria?
Maria: Yeah.
Andrew: Before we started, you showed me this business card. How old were you when you created that business card that you showed me earlier?
Maria: Ten years.
Andrew: You were 10 years old, and it was a business card for a business that you started?
Maria: Yeah.
Andrew: Doing what?
Maria: I animate parties with a friend. And so the moms have . . . I was 12, I think. They have some birthday to a child that’s have six years old. So with my friend, I go to the party and animate the girls doing dancing and all of that.
Andrew: You know what? My sister did that when she was, I think, in college looking for some side work. What you would do is go in and get the kids excited, give them something to do. And you did this as a 10-year-old. And you asked for money. And you didn’t feel any compunction, any nervousness, any hesitation about asking for money.
Maria: Nothing, nothing. We have a great time because parties are fun and we eat things with my friends.
Andrew: Okay. No, I get that part. But asking for money, most 10-year-olds can’t do, most 20, 30-year-olds can’t do it.
Maria: Yes. And the good thing was the distribution marketing channel. I create these cards and I put it in all the books that the children have in the school. So all moms have it when they review the book.
Andrew: Oh, the report card book, the one that tells them how well their kids did so they get it.
Maria: I put . . . So all the moms . . .
Andrew: How did you learn how to do this? Your parents are entrepreneurs?
Maria: No.
Andrew: No, that’s just who you are.
Maria: I’m born like this.
Andrew: You’re just born like that.
Maria: Yes. When I was little, all my family would say, “You’re good for business. You’re very smart in business.” But is the way that you are born, I don’t know.
Andrew: That’s just who you are.
Maria: Yes.
Andrew: Did you want to do it for the money? Did you like the money? Did you use the money for anything good?
Maria: No, no, not so much.
Andrew: You just burned through it.
Maria: Really, for me, the money, of course, is good for anybody, but it’s not my goal. I just have the spirit to create thing.
Andrew: It’s just the creative experience.
Maria: And when I got that money, I can do a lot of things. But it’s not my final goal.
Andrew: Like, what? What did you buy? I didn’t buy anything. I had jobs. No, I started businesses as a kid all the time. I always said, “I’m going to make enough so I could buy a laptop.” I didn’t buy the laptop, because who needs it? I have enough. Then it was, “I’m going to make enough money to buy a car.” I didn’t buy the car. I just kept saving it. Did you do anything with it?
Maria: I think that the money was not so, so good, so big, but I think for women it’s good to buy the dresses and. . .
Andrew: So you bought stuff like that. You know what I did? I went to college. NYU would not give me any discount, any anything. My whole savings from growing up was decimated by college. And then I left with, seriously, $75,000 in debt. That was a big shock, something like that.
All right. Is the next big business the art site?
Maria: Yeah.
Andrew: Let’s talk about that. How do you pronounce it? Chile Art?
Maria: Yes, chilearte.com.
Andrew: Chile Arte, which is like Chile Art, chilearte.com. How’s my Spanish pronunciation?
Maria: It’s good.
Andrew: It is? Let me try it again. Please, tell me if I’m wrong. Chile Arte.
Maria: Yeah, perfect.
Maria: I don’t want to be intimidated of the R. The R is very. . .
Maria: Chile Arte.
Maria: Chile Arte. What was the idea behind that?
Maria: Yes. I study business administration in Chile in University.
Andrew: How much debt did you leave with? When you left school, how much debt, how much did you owe?
Maria: How much what?
Andrew: How much did you owe?
Maria: 18.
Andrew: $18,000?
Maria: No, no, no, I didn’t understand the question.
Andrew: Oh, like in America, we have to pay the money out of our own pockets, and we take out loans. Did you take out a loan to go to school?
Maria: No.
Andrew: No. Yeah, this is like a silly thing outside of the U.S. Same thing happened in Mexico. I was talking to a venture capitalist there. He goes, “People in Mexico aren’t taking any risks, any financial risk, and they don’t even leave school with the amount of debt that Americans do.” And so he said, “What I want to do as a venture capitalist is tell them, ‘Take some freaking risk, move out, do it’.”
Okay. So tell me what the vision was for Chile Arte.
Maria: Yeah, I was in the university, in my fourth grade, Administration is five years, and I was in my fourth year. And in 1999, I discovered internet, because, you know, the internet was not in the news, saying bright new, “Internet is born.” No, it was strange the way that you find it. I don’t know.
So when I find internet, in my life, I love technology. For example, I have computers in my home, and maybe my friends have dolls and I have computers. I love dolls also, but I have a special interest in technology. I don’t know why.
Okay. So am when I was in fourth year of the university, I found the internet. And I said, “Oh, this is amazing what we can do here,” blah, blah, blah. And in one meeting, in one familiar dinner in my house there was a cousin that sells paint art. Like they have a little gallery. So I talked to her and I imagine this plus this, virtual gallery.
Andrew: Oh, this gallery plus my love of art, together are going to create new business.
Maria: Yes.
Andrew: So you were thinking people would look at the art online and buy it?
Maria: I don’t have any idea about art, any. I don’t have any idea. But my vision was, incredible, because in Chile it’s a particular thing that maybe is global, but Chile, the art is difficult. It’s not massive. You know, you need to go to galleries, and it’s difficult to see all the paint art. So the vision was this is a better way to artists to show their works to the world.
Andrew: Got it. Okay.
Maria: And people buying it online.
Andrew: And you didn’t partner with her. You just did it yourself?
Maria: No, no, no. I saw her and I take the idea.
Andrew: That’s it.
Maria: Only that.
Andrew: Yep.
Maria: And then, I don’t know artists, but I have a friend that have a brother that is an artist. So I called him, Francisco Bustamante, that now is very important, and he’s in the U.S. also, by the way. I said, “Francisco, can you invite four paints friends to my home?”
Andrew: Okay.
Maria: Really.
Andrew: Just any four artists that you know?
Maria: I know one artist, Francisco. That is the brother of my friend.
Andrew: And look at this. I’m looking him up right now on Wikipedia. He is a famous artist.
Maria: Yes, very famous.
Andrew: How did you know him? Does he go by Django?
Maria: Bustamante, Francisco Bustamante.
Andrew: Is this is him? Excuse me.
Maria: No.
Andrew: Oh, okay.
Maria: I can show you then.
Andrew: That’s okay. I don’t want to obsess on him.
Maria: Francisco was the brother of my friend. And in that moment, it was funny, because in Chile there is no one doing web pages. You don’t have technical skills about that. So I met a German developer on this segment, and I asked him, “How do you charge me for each painter that put the work art in a page?” Una UF. In Chile UF is like a measurement of money here.
Andrew: How many pesos is that?
Maria: One UF right now is like CLP$27,00, is $50. . . $40.
Andrew: $40. Got it.
Maria: The designers asked me for $40, and I make a contract.
Andrew: That’s a lot of money.
Maria: And when they go to my home, the artist, I say, “Okay, I will build the first art gallery, and I charge you $80.”
Andrew: Oh, wow, okay.
Maria: So $40 for the designer and $40 for me.
Andrew: Got it. And you were getting charged, by the way, they were charging you a lot of money too. All they did was they took the picture that you took and put it up on its own website and made it look good. The kind of thing that now anyone can do. You just took a picture of the two of us before we started, just upload it, it’s going to be up, right? But back then, it was hard.
Maria: Yes, but in that moment, no one have a virtual gallery in Latin America.
Andrew: And so now you created, we’re talking about 1999. This is before the internet bubble burst.
Maria: We were the first virtual gallery in all Latin America.
Andrew: And so you did that. That’s where you started selling. How did you sell the next batch of artists to get on your site?
Maria: Yeah. The thing is that, this is funny, because in the meantime that I have this website and I have a manual way to publish the art works, in that moment some buyer called me and said, “I want to buy your company.”
Andrew: Really? Okay.
Maria: Or, “I want to partner with you.” So I sell a scooter to them. And when I go to give the scooter, he say, “I love your company. Can I be your partner?” And they put me money.
Andrew: How much?
Maria: Like $2,000 million. No. Sorry. $10,000.
Andrew: $10,000.
Maria: Yes. But I wasn’t for . . . For me, it was cash out because they put . . .
Andrew: And you got to take the money out, so you had $10,000 in the bank now for yourself.
Maria: Yes. And I bought my first car.
Andrew: And what was this person? How did he have so much money?
Maria: He was a guy that is very love artist, and he was an advertising professional.
Andrew: He was in advertising, okay.
Maria: So they give me $20,000 for me, cash out.
Andrew: Just watch out with the mic.
Maria: Sorry.
Andrew: It’s okay.
Maria: Cash out and they put $50,000 for the company.
Andrew: Oh, got it. So now you have another $50,000 in. What did you do with that money?
Maria: And I was very rich, because for me, when you [inaudible 00:15:29] to have that money in Chile is great because you can buy a car.
Andrew: How young, how old were you?
Maria: 24. No, 23. And then, okay, we built a company. We change the technology behind the portal, and we migrate three technologies different. The last one was Arte Emol, because we join a partnership with El Mercurio, that is the leading newspaper in Chile.
Andrew: Because they were going to send you guys an audience of potential buyers and you were going to. . .
Maria: The idea was to revenue share the advertising.
Andrew: It became an ad-based business. So there were ads on top of the art.
Maria: Yes. That first business model was $80 each artist put in there, and the last one was, “Put here for free. Publish you work art for free.” And I have a media and . . .
Andrew: And you start selling advertising against it.
Maria: Yeah.
Andrew: And then I saw a place where you, a point in time when you started selling the art too.
Maria: I sell it too, but was free, all the time this virtual art gallery have a button that is Compra Offline, shop offline. Why? Because no one will . . . Until that day, online 100%.
Andrew: So you weren’t making any money from that. It was just, “If you want to buy it, hit this button and you can go and arrange to meet the artist and buy from the artist.”
Maria: Yes. And while did we do it, I have a person in charge at Chile Arte, because then I went to Cencosud in parallel. And, for example, you put, “I want to see this work art.” And I schedule a meeting and the buyer goes and I show him and they pay. It was in an offline process.
Maria: And this was the model. Do you remember how much money you got it to, what the high revenue was?
Maria: No, not so much, but I think that that is the . . .
Andrew: $100,000 a year, do you think?
Maria: Yes.
Andrew: $100,000 a year, and this is you in your 20s. What happened to the site?
Maria: Okay. I was working in Cencosud, because I started working in this, but the art money is not so big, in this industry and in Chile in particular.
Andrew: So you’re saying that you got . . . Wait, no, you were working in Cencosud. Cencosud is a conglomerate, owns a lot of different companies, mostly shopping sites, right? In-person shopping. And so you were working there even in your early 20s?
Maria: Yes.
Andrew: Doing what?
Maria: No, because Chile Arte started in 1999, right, and ends in 2002. And I started working in Cencosud in 2002.
Andrew: Okay, okay. I’m looking at your LinkedIn profile. Oh, it’s just say E-commerce and Digital Marketing Director, so that’s when you were still there at the . . . Why?
Maria: Because I have in parallel this small business for me.
Andrew: Got it. It’s not going to make enough money. If you’re making $100,000 in sales . . .
Maria: And I have a person in change so that I have to pay every month, and it doesn’t need me all the day.
Andrew: But, Maria, you didn’t feel like, “I’m an entrepreneur. I could never get a job.”
Maria: No, no.
Andrew: No, there was no issue like that. I could see in your face. By the way, your shoes are phenomenal. You’ve really nice style. Your jacket, I want to put your glasses on your jacket so it wouldn’t ruffle up the microphone. The jacket is hot. The shoes are phenomenal. Did you always have good style too?
Maria: Yes.
Andrew: You did.
Maria: Thank you.
Andrew: So you even though you didn’t have like this artist personality, you still had . . .
Okay. Let me take a moment to talk about my first sponsor, and then we’ll get back into this and find out what happened to this business, because it’s not around. Then we’re going to go into the next business that’s not around. And then finally, this last business where you took everything you’ve learned and now it’s doing great.
So my first sponsor is a company called Toptal. Maria, you’re going to need to hire developers. At some point, you’re going to say, “I need like Silicon Valley level developers. How did these people keep solving these big problems? Why is it that all these people in San Francisco spend so much time in Silicon Valley, which is just south of San Francisco, spend so much time bringing in the best of the best developers? How do I get it?”
And you’re going to be tempted to come to the U.S. and open up a U.S. office. You’re going to say, “No way am I opening up a U.S. office just for developers because it’s going to cost me too much. I’ll do it maybe for sales, but not for developers. I need better developers, less cost.”
And that’s when you’re going to go and say, “Who did Andrew say? I don’t even remember.” And you’ll go back and you’ll Google this interview, and you’ll see it’s called Toptal, where you call them up, I’m going to give you a URL, it’s a button. You call them up. And one of the best things about them is there’s a matcher. You get on a call with a matcher, and you say, “Here’s what I’m looking for. I’ve discovered that artificial intelligence is the best. I’ve discovered that we need virtual reality of that. We actually need an iPhone app. It turns out, Windows Phone is actually making a comeback somehow. I need someone who can develop for a Windows Phone. I don’t know what it is.” And they will have that person for you or two people. You can then hire them if you like, or say, “Hey, you know what? Andrew was a liar, it doesn’t work for me. I’m walking away.”
If you hire them, it’s unbelievably low price. And if use a special URL, because you’re going to remember this, you’re going to get 80 hours of Toptal developer credit when you pay for your first 80 hours. They’re even going to guarantee that you’re going to be happy with them. So here’s the URL, toptal.com/mixergy. That’s Top as in top of your head, tal as is talent, T-O-P-T-A-L.com/M-I-X-E-R-G-Y, toptal.com/mixergy.
I feel like, I’m looking at you as I say that, you don’t really have an issue hiring developers. Why not?
Maria: It’s funny, but I really are proud about the talent that we have in Latin America in terms of developers. And what we do I think or what I believe is that all our entrepreneurships that I do have a very exclusive challenge that a lot of developers that are very talented, they want to be part of a big thing.
Andrew: Yeah, they want . . . Right, I get it. And you’re right about the cost here. I think this Toptal commercial does a lot better for Americans who don’t have access to this developer.
Maria: I will go there.
Andrew: I think you’re going to like it too. When I lived in Argentina, my friends who were running Silicon Valley companies, who were funded, would ask me about opening up an office there for developers because of it.
All right, let’s come back. Tell me what happened with Chile Arte.
Maria: Yeah. I was working in Cencosud because I had created the company and the company was going well, but of course I didn’t have a lot of money to put on . . . I don’t think that . . . So one day, one hacker enter and shut it down.
Andrew: A hacker shut it down, just for fun?
Maria: Yeah. And for me it was like . . . Sentimiento encontrado, like . . .
Andrew: Yeah.
Maria: Because in one side I say, “Okay, maybe this is good because I focus in Cencosud.” But okay, that was the story, but I was very proud all the years that this gallery was live. And I learned a lot in that process.
Andrew: You didn’t feel upset about the revenue? Was there a profit in it? You didn’t feel upset that you lost the money that was coming in?
Maria: No, because all the money that I win, I pay it to the person in charge.
Andrew: Oh, so it was basically break even. So for you it was just a loss.
Maria: Yes. And I think in that moment that this will not be my company of my life.
Andrew: Okay. So I’m actually going to skip over the entrepreneurship part that you did at Cencosud. I’ll just sum it up by saying Cencosud owns a lot of places. A place that I loved was Jumbo. It’s like an American style supermarket. That’s overwhelming when you walk in there, which I like. And they own that and they own a bunch of other brands, like whatever the Home Depot equivalent is in South America and others.
And what you did was you built their online presence, right? You went to the head and you said, “We don’t have any online presence here. We need online stores.” And now it’s all built because of you. I don’t mean to brush over that. But I do want to get to the next business.
So 2011, you said to yourself, “Look, it’s been about 10 years that I’ve worked for this other company. It’s time for me to go back and be an entrepreneur.” Where did the idea for Happyshop come from?
Maria: Yeah. When I worked in Cencosud, I always when I have board meetings or with the manager, I show my revenue of the business, and every time that I show my numbers, the idea was like less. And why?
Andrew: The revenues before interests, taxes and amortization.
Maria: Yeah. And why? Because all the time, when I was making revenue, the manager said, “Okay, so today I will put other cost in your balance.” And why was that? Because when I create and I help with that team and with my boss creating all this online sales channels, we realized that the value of these channels are not only the online sales, is a lot of multichannel effect. People go to the internet for a media to shopping for . . .
Andrew: So I might look on the internet to see what a buzz saw would cost, but I’m not going to buy on the web and have it delivered in the mail. I get a price, I get a sense of it. And then they walk right into the store and they bought it. And meanwhile, you weren’t getting credit for closing that sale, even though you built the website that got the sale, someone else was.
Maria: I said to the manager, “Why you don’t put money for my media value?” And they said, “No, no, no. I measure you with all my sales.”
Andrew: How many sales come in. Meanwhile, you’re not just getting sales online, you’re also getting sales offline. And it’s almost like a TV ad or more effective than a TV ad to have someone on. And you said, “Why don’t you throw money at me the way you’re throwing money at TV?” They didn’t, and you said, “There’s got to be a better way.”
Maria: Yes.
Andrew: And so your vision was?
Maria: Yes. My vision was that the mobile phone was the only tool that breached the two worlds, the offline and the online, because you have your mobile phone in your pocket and you are in your home. You have your mobile phone in your pocket and you’re in the physical store. So I get amazing about the possibilities of integrating the online world with the offline world.
Andrew: To get offline sales.
Maria: Yes and no. Because when you shop in the mobile phone, you can be inside the store or you can be in your home. So the mobile phone was everywhere. That was the amazing thing that I see.
Andrew: Got it.
Maria: And was the possibility to make tracking. For example, if I am at my house, I take the offers that the retail have for me, and then with the same phone I go to the store and I have a technology that identifies you in the door and can show you offers related to you.
Andrew: Got it, to what I looked at online.
Maria: No, no, not only online. I make I traceability of the client in the physical store.
Andrew: The, what ability?
Maria: The traceability.
Andrew: Oh, the traceability, the ability to track the customer in the store. And for the benefit for the customer, if I understand it right was the customer is coming into the store. They want to know about the product on the shelf. They want to know, “Do people like this book that I’m about to pick up and buy in the store? Do people like this buzz saw that I’m about?” Right?
Maria: Yes and no, because I aim to do that, for example, to this store, in particular, the system knows that Maria is in the door of Jumbo, for example, and I integrate with their CRM coupons and I say, “Hello, Maria, you are in Jumbo. These are your offers today in this store. And I offer you a catalog personalized for you between your behavior online or offline.”
Andrew: And then when Maria buys online, is Maria using the app that you guys would have created?
Maria: Can be.
Andrew: Can be, okay. All right. So it was a combination of the two of them? And the reason that customers would want to use it is so that they could get discounts, coupons in the store.
Maria: And also because every time they check in a store, they need to scan a barcode in the door.
Andrew: On the window, yeah.
Maria: They get Lan Miles, Lan Pass.
Andrew: What’s Lan Pass?
Maria: It’s like American Airlines. Lan Airlines is the most important airplane company in Latin America. So every time they make a scan, they get a Lan Pass.
Andrew: Got it. So the incentive was twofold. One is every time they go into a store, they get miles, and the second is once you’re in there, you’re shopping anyway, you might as well get a discount. Got it. And for the store owner, the incentive was that they would get to market directly to each customer and track the online-offline.
Were you also allowing people to do research?
Maria: Yes.
Andrew: They were, right. So that’s another reason why I saw . . .
Maria: Because we put the catalogs. We have, for example, in the grocery store we have some trade marketing campaigns that, for example, imagine Pampers. If you scan the Pampers code, you get a promotion and you get the revenue about that Pampers . . .
Andrew: Information about it, to know . . . But because new parents . . .
Maria: We close a lot of CPG advertising campaigns that makes digital mobile and trade marketing, point of sale is like the first intention and the second intention of the moment of truth.
Andrew: So all this makes a lot of sense. You didn’t build any of it before raising money, right?
Maria: The story is that I was in Cencosud, and this is funny, I resign my boss. And my boss said, “Why are you going away?” I’ve been there nine years. And I say, “No, I am not going to other company. I am going to make my own company.” And he told me, “Can you invite me?”
Andrew: Really?
Maria: Yes. So I get my boss. And we start the company with my ex-boss. And when we start, I don’t know, but it was very easy to raise money. And I think the company was one month and a half, and we raised $1.5 million.
Andrew: Wow. Because of your background in . . .
Maria: I think so.
Andrew: Okay. And there was also this belief that you work with Cencosud, you could get them potentially as a customer, and you could get people like them as a customer.
Maria: But the funny thing is that we work with Falabela, that is their competitor. It’s better than Cencosud.
Andrew: Why?
Maria: Because I want to make with the leaders. And Cencosud is very good but . . .
Andrew: But they’re a bigger company.
Maria: Falabela in some target is better. And I have Falabela. I have Jumbo. It depends in the kind of retail store. Because for example, for groceries is better Jumbo, and I have Jumbo. For other kind of, for example, for other kind of retail is better Falabela.
Andrew: So you got them. How did you get them?
Maria: I didn’t have advantage for working in Cencosud.
Andrew: Oh, you didn’t. Okay. How did you get customers? How did you get these big businesses to let you in?
Maria: Yeah. When we started, we have a great attraction with the Chilean mobile users. We get like 5% of all the mobile population.
Andrew: Five percent of all the mobile users downloaded your app.
Maria: We like 500,000 downloads we have. When the universal of mobile phones in Chile was like 5 million. So we have a lot in the share. And then we put these big retailers onto the platform, and then we go to the long tail business, and we put it on top of our platform, 10,000 little shops and retailers, little retailers and restaurants.
Andrew: Yes. But how? How did you get so many stores?
Maria: One thing that is important is that in Chile we are very developed in retail things. We are recognized in the world that Chilean retail is very good, very developed and complex.
Andrew: What makes it so good?
Maria: I don’t know. But in Chile we have, for example, Cencosud that have a lot of presence in a lot of places.
Andrew: Oh, you’re saying it’s not a bunch of small stores, it’s bigger companies.
Maria: No. I have the bigger companies, and then, for example, if Falabela have one store in each city, only having Falabela I have a lot of . . .
Andrew: A lot of locations with them.
Maria: Yes. Then when I finish with the big players, I go to the long tail.
Andrew: I guess what I’m saying is, in Chile the reason that you’re saying it’s so established, that retail is so established is there are big players here. It’s not a bunch of smaller players. I’m trying to see, as I went into local places, what did I notice. But I didn’t go into the retail. I went to restaurants and bars so far, not enough bars, not enough restaurants. I get it.
So you’re saying, because it was so established, they would . . . How do you even get in the door with them? How did you convince them to try this new technology? How did you convince them to sign up?
Maria: I think that, of course, my expertise have marketability. So when I talk with the manager in Falabela, I say, “Okay, this is a tool that I think will be good for this, this, this.” And I have credibility because I have my background.
Andrew: Because they saw that you built those other online stores. They said, “She’s the one who did it. I’m kind of curious about who she is anyway. Let’s have her in.”
Maria: Yes.
Andrew: Did you know them from before?
Maria: No.
Andrew: No. It was just you said, “I did this. I created jumbo.cl.”
Maria: Yes. And, “I want to create this. The name is Happyshop, and I put in the prototype all the things,” like that vision, the idea, all the things.
Andrew: I saw it. I saw people using it. I saw videos of the whole thing.
Maria: And we have like one million check-ins in the first year.
Andrew: And then how do you get users to download the app?
Maria: Marketing investment.
Andrew: Buying ads?
Maria: And also that big retailer, like Falabela, they put in all the stores a sticker with a . . .
Andrew: This big sticker right here. What does this mean? It says, “Haz check-in acqui.” That means there’s check-in right here.
Maria: Yes. Do check in here and obtain promotions, personalized catalogs, offers.
Andrew: And this is a QR code, and the QR code that’s on their window, if they don’t have the app, they’re QRing and getting the app. If they do have the app . . .
Maria: Yes and no. Because we have one QR per each store. So if Falabela have 100, I have a QR different . . .
Andrew: 100 QRs. So the QR is for this specific store.
Maria: It’s for check-in.
Andrew: Yes. But it’s also, “Here’s how you get the app.”
Maria: Also, yes.
Andrew: Got it. And so all of them were promoting you, but that’s not where the majority of people came from. People don’t look at this different [inaudible 00:34:31].
Maria: No, and for example, I have on another, Salcobrand, that is a pharmacy, very big.
Andrew: Yes.
Maria: And they have catalogs that they put it in the newspaper. In Chile and Latin America, people read and retailers is important. So if you receive a magazine, when you open it and you see advertising of Happyshop, and we put, for example, QR, saying, “Scan this and you will get 30% discount in Pampers.”
Andrew: And so people are going to do it.
Maria: Do it, they do it.
Andrew: Right, because people are clipping coupons. They’re getting newspapers. And if you tell them instead of cutting the coupons and clipping them out, just QR, they’re going to QR. Why didn’t this work out? Let’s close it out with why it didn’t work out.
Maria: Yeah. Didn’t work out, because, as I explained, you will raise money, big money for Latin America.
Andrew: Does it say I’ve got $5.6 million.
Maria: Yes, I think $6 million. The point is that I think our mistake was to grow very faster and to waste the money before we have a business model maturated.
Andrew: But the business model did work.
Maria: Because we have traction. We have users. We have all of that, but we are trying to understand how to charge the retail. We charged it.
Andrew: What did you charged them for at first?
Maria: That is my opinion about this. But when you ask other people, a lot of people say that in Happyshop, if Silicon Valley will come, they will put more money because my investors ask me for a break even from the day one. So they don’t have the vision of Silicon Valley that this is a very good business. Doesn’t matter where we came in, put money, put money to grow.
Andrew: And then later on we’ll figure it out. And they keep wanting you to make a profit, or break even at least, and you couldn’t get to breakeven because you hadn’t figured out what to charge that would produce enough money to earn a profit.
Maria: Yes, because we are learning. We are learning.
Andrew: Yeah. And so this business . . .
Maria: And the point is that when you go to Silicon Valley, as I know, you have series A, series B, series C, D, D. For me, it’s like the investor, in that time, put the money and say, “Okay, one year and we’re okay.” So they didn’t have pressures to understand that this is a process where do you learn, you test it, you explore, and then you will have the revenue.
Andrew: Okay. And so the big takeaway from you . . . Well, before we get to the takeaway, do you remember the day when it closed up?
Maria: Yes, 2014.
Andrew: How did you feel about it?
Maria: To close that company was 2013, because you need to work to close. And I feel very comfortable with my investors, and I think I do my best and I am proud about Happyshop, all of what we do. And I think that the decisions and maybe we will if, for example, I am not a good CEO. I was not the CEO of that company, it was my boss. I think that maybe that board must to put a new CEO, not me and maybe that company will be better.
Andrew: If you would have had another CEO before, it would have done better? Okay, but wait. The day when you knew that this was going to close, you’re an entrepreneur who was successful at everything up until that point, going back to when you were 10 years old, success, success, success. You finally stood out, raised a lot of money, got a lot of prominence. You had your stickers in the stores. Did your mom and dad go to the stores and see your stickers?
Maria: Yes.
Andrew: They did. Your friends did.
Maria: In all Chile, 10,000 stores.
Andrew: Yeah. And the day that you realized, “This has to close.” How do you feel? I’m seeing your eyes actually water up as you’re thinking about it.
Maria: No.
Andrew: They’re not?
Maria: Really?
Andrew: Yeah, I thought so.
Maria: I don’t feel so bad . . .
Andrew: Why?
Maria: . . . because I feel proud about all other thing.
Andrew: But I felt something about when I had to close something that didn’t work. I feel like a failure and also I feel a sense of relief. Now I get to start a new life.
Maria: No. The most sad thing for me was to close the team, because I have a great, great team that support us and be with me in the good and in the bad.
Andrew: You didn’t want to lose the team. I get that.
Maria: And I love them, because they are very important support for me in the process of closing. We tried to race it. We tried to do it, but I think that I feel sad for that. But when you’re an entrepreneur, you think in the next one to . . .
Andrew: That’s it. You don’t think, “I’m a failure. I couldn’t do this.” You don’t need to recover, just the next one.
Maria: It’s like the cheese in the maze.
Andrew: That’s it, the maze.
Maria: I was sad, of course. I am not so cold. I am very sad.
Andrew: Did you cry about it?
Maria: Maybe.
Andrew: You did. Did you ask God why did you fail me or where did I fail you? Nothing like that?
Maria: No, no.
Andrew: Were you ashamed?
Maria: No. I don’t think that the fault is 100% mine.
Andrew: What do you think then? Let’s talk away about the takeaway.
Maria: The administration.
Andrew: The way that it was organized. Meaning?
Maria: Meaning you need a new CEO.
Andrew: If you could have just gotten a CEO who did what, you would have done better?
Maria: Organize, focus the company.
Andrew: You were not focused enough?
Maria: No.
Andrew: Give me an example of something that was distracting.
Maria: That’s why now I am the Innovation Officer.
Andrew: I saw it, Chief Innovation Officer was your title. I saw that.
Maria: I love the title.
Andrew: Like Bill Gates.
Maria: No, because for me I am very innovative. So every day, if for example, imagine that I launch Happyshop and I have all very good, but the next day I am worried because I just do it. And I’m thinking in the next technology.
Andrew: So what would you do? What’s the next thing that you would add that . . .? Give me an example of one thing that’s completely crazy . . .
Maria: In Happyshop?
Andrew: Yeah, Happyshop.
Maria: For example, we make the first Happyshop TV experience. We put a tag in the commercials. For example, you’ll see a commercial of Pampers and you receive a coupon in your mobile phone.
Andrew: And now you have to figure out how to make that work. How many people are doing it. How do you get. And so that whole thing becomes a distraction to the newspapers, which are already working.
Maria: Yeah, and maybe my time on the IT team was needed in that time to be in the coupon, not in the TV experience.
Andrew: You know what? So I just interviewed, in preparation for here, I bought this recorder, I got these mics and everything, and I recorded with a friend of mine, Hiten Shah, who started KISSmetrics, raised a bunch of money and he closed. He said he did the same thing. And his company was called Hiten Bombs, meaning everything was working well and he’d go into his team and he’d go, “I have this new idea,” and he would throw it in like a bomb that would destroy what they were focused on and have them all focus on this new thing.
Maria: I have that failure.
Andrew: The Maria bomb, the entrepreneur bomb is maybe what we call.
All right. Let’s talk about the second sponsor. The second sponsor is a company called HostGator. For anyone who needs a website hosted, they are the right people to go with. Number one, because if you do that, you’re going to be supporting Mixergy. Let’s be honest, Maria.
Number two, you’re going to get a really low price on hosting service that just works. And number three, I really like the fact that you just sign up with them and you can forget about hosting. Meaning, you like WordPress? Boom, one-click install WordPress, you have your website hosted. You’re done. Go concentrate on getting customers. Don’t concentrate on finding the better hosting company that maybe has 1% better this or that. No, go focus on getting customers. Go focus on building your site.
If you hate your hosting company right now, Maria, I think you like your hosting company, but anyone out there who’s listening to me who hates their hosting company . . . Why am I talking so fast and so like shouting at them? If you hate your hosting company, go to hostgator.com/Mixergy. Hostgator.com/mixergy will get you the lowest rate from HostGator, and they already have low rates, and will frankly get you backed up by us. We will support you. Meaning, if you ever have any issues with them or any of our other sponsors, you can let us know and we will stand behind you, not behind our sponsors.
I’m grateful to them for sponsoring and paying me to come here. That’s phenomenal. Isn’t it?
The new business, the one that’s like your best so far, right, Jooycar, joy with two Os, J-O-O-Y-C-A-R, how did you come up with the idea for this?
Maria: Okay. When we close Happyshop, in Happyshop I have the IT manager. I know him there. Someday we realize that connected car will be amazing. And we talk and we said, “Okay, make do this company to explore this opportunity.” And we launched it.
Andrew: You just thought, “Connected cars are going to be the future.” Meaning what? In your vision of the future, what would cars look like?
Maria: To be clear, in 2020, 70% of all the cars that we sell worldwide will be connected.
Andrew: In 2020, connected to what? What kind of connection are we talking about?
Maria: Connected will be that the car will have IoT inside embedded.
Andrew: Internet of things, to do what?
Maria: For example, to send data from all the sensors and to probably track with the infrastructure, for example.
Andrew: With who?
Maria: With the infrastructure.
Andrew: What does that mean?
Maria: For example, with the city, you know, with the light . . .
Andrew: Oh, with the infrastructure. So it would know that the red light is going red and . . .
Maria: In the future, yeah.
Andrew: In the future you’re seeing that. Got it. You’re also thinking insurance companies are going to want to not say, “Hey, you know what? Steve is 21 years old. That means he must drive badly like all 21-year-olds do.” But instead say, “Steve is actually really responsible. He drives better than other 21-year-old people.” And Steve hardly ever drives his car. Why are we charging him the most money? We should be charging him the least and winning him over. And the only way we know all that is if we have something in the car. You’re envisioning a future with that. That’s basic. You’re even thinking further.
Maria: Yes. And also we think that insurance, because Jooycar is insure tech, realized that insurance industry are very old and they didn’t have any relation with the customer. When I become from their retail site, where all day you are thinking in the final consumer and how to engage and how to give him value, and in the insurance company you say, “The client, the broker,” like they don’t have relation.
Andrew: The broker is the client.
Maria: Yeah, the broker is the client. So for me it was very strange that industry very important didn’t have any relation with the final customer.
So when we’re thinking Jooycar, we’re thinking like the new version of car insurance, more sexy, because until now the insurance was a paper, very old and awful, and the next time you see your insurance partner is one year later when you crash. It’s a bad relation.
Andrew: And you’re thinking, “We could do better than this. We could digitize it.” But the reason I was, and I shouldn’t have interrupted, but the reason I was interrupting is I feel like you also had this futurist in you, the Maria Bomb with great new ideas, who’s so visionary had a vision of the future of cars, and here’s why I’m thinking it. Look, I just googled your name right now, the company name Jooycar. Look at what it says. This is what I saw when I was researching you. “Jooycar, connected car.” It doesn’t say, “Lower your insurance costs.” It just you’re seeing a future of connected cars. Insurance companies is a start, and the future is going to be more meaningful for that..
Maria: For me, insurance will be part of a service that you will demand in the car. You will enter to your car, and you will activate insurance policies, location services, mobility services. So for me, insurance is one of that service.
Andrew: And this is the entry point into your futuristic thinking. You said you got a client before you did anything else. Who is the client?
Maria: That client is Sura.
Andrew: Sura, what’s Sura?
Maria: Sura is the leading insurance company in Latin America.
Andrew: And you said to them, what? “I will build . . .”
Maria: Usage-based insurance is an industry that is in the world since Progressive, they do in 10 years ago or more. And then we realized that in Latin America we have this opportunity, and we create Jooycar. And when I go to Sura, I show them what experience was in Europe and in the U.S. in this. But in a very recently way, because in the U.S. there was starting.
Andrew: You said, “Look, if you check out Progressive in the U.S., what they’re doing is charging per usage, based on usage.”
Maria: I showed the benchmark and I say, “I have that for Latin America.”
Andrew: And did Progressive have a device that they would put in people’s cars?
Maria: Yes.
Andrew: They did.
Maria: Snapshot.
Andrew: Snapshot?
Maria: Yes.
Andrew: And you said, “I could do the same thing for you here.” Now the difference between Chile and South America and the U.S. is, as I understand it, in Chile specifically, people don’t have insurance as much as they do . . . What’s the insurance problem here?
Maria: Yeah. In Latin America, it’s not mandatory to have a car insurance.
Andrew: It’s not?
Maria: No.
Andrew: Whoa. Oh, so if somebody who doesn’t have car insurance hits me tomorrow, I don’t get paid.
Maria: No.
Andrew: Oh, wow.
Maria: You get paid, but you need to take it from the pocket.
Andrew: From that person?
Maria: Yeah. You need to go to the lawyer and say, “Pay me, pay me.”
Andrew: And they’re not going to have money. Got it. Got it.
Maria: It’s a legal issue, finally. So for example, in Chile, 35% of the drivers have an insurance policy.
Andrew: Devon, why am I crossing the street like a freaking madman here? I’m actually going to start to pay attention.
Maria: No, no, but we have only one insurance that is mandatory that is only for third parties.
Andrew: Okay. If they hit me, it is mandatory that they get insurance for that.
Maria: Yes. We have that, but it’s a little coverage. In other countries, you have a legally . . . So the optional insurance is the insurance that you have for your car, for your crashes, your personal life.
Andrew: Got it. But still that’s optional. It’s mandatory that you have a little bit for hitting Andrew in the street.
Maria: Yeah.
Andrew: Got it.
Maria: So feel free to cross the street.
Andrew: I’m really . . . No, no. I’m not going to get paid that much and who knows. Okay. But still, and so you said, “We could get even more people to sign up for more insurance.” Why would they even bother?
Maria: The two problems of Latin America is, one, that not all the penetration is not so big. Second, people thinks that the insurance policies are very high, and also they are changing the mobility behavior. For example, 10 years ago, my father used a car all the day. But right now people goes in subway to the office and then use the car only the weekends. So you have mobility trends that you realize and you say, “Why I need to pay for the whole policy if I drive less or I drive more safety?”
So we launched first Pay How You Drive program, very successful. You have discount if you will drive well. And the second program that we launched, and we are very proud, is we launched the first pay-per-mile program in Latin America. Do you know Metromile?
Andrew: Yes. That’s what Devon was saying.
Maria: We are like Metromile in Latin America.
Andrew: I should say Devon Meadows is here. He’s shooting the video with me and actually setting up the whole audio. Or actually, I set it up and then he improved it. I wonder though, what about cannibalization? Meaning, were they worried that they would take customers who are already signed up to them paying high premiums and reduce them to lower . . .
Maria: Good question.
Andrew: What happened?
Maria: The thing is that when we knock the door, of course, the big insurance that have huge a participation say, “No.” And they said, “Please, Maria, don’t exist because you will change the market.”
Andrew: Yeah.
Maria: But when you go to the second base, the third base, they say, “Okay, I need to make a . . .”
Andrew: Whatever it takes, that’s what it was. So you didn’t get the top insurance company, you went after the others and you got them in. And then you had to create the product.
Maria: Yes. And now I think that will be the new normal. We put the product in the Chilean users, and Chilean are happy with this, and they love the product, and we have, for example, net promoter score superior than the average.
Andrew: I get that. I get it and I get now why you were doing it.
Maria: So people love it, and they are happy with the company, make a relation with the company. So a lot of things good.
Andrew: You get paid by the insurance company or by the user who buys it?
Maria: The insurance company, but the insurance company are very happy because the product is good in terms of [sales ratio 00:51:03], is good because people love the product and love the company, because they can make cross-selling.
Andrew: What’s the other thing they would sell?
Maria: Other insurance.
Andrew: Oh, once they get somebody for a car insurance, home owner . . .
Maria: They have more clients. They kind of trademark. And I believe that in one year more, we will have all the insurance company in Chile, big ones, offering this because it’s the new normal.
Andrew: Wow. Okay. Who made the device? Where did you buy the device?
Maria: We bought in the U.S. in Detroit.
Andrew: From who?
Maria: From a company named Dunlop.
Andrew: Dunlop?
Maria: Yes, that is the most important company of IoT devices and they worked before with the State Farm farmers.
Andrew: And so you buy the device from them and then . . .
Maria: But I fabricate it there, because the firmware is from us. I need to configure some special device.
Andrew: What did you do that is different?
Maria: Because I think the way that the data that we collected we transform it in services and in different things. So the configuration of this recipe, I put it in the device. Because you don’t take all the data from the car. We have algorithm to make pay-per-mile scoring or driving behavior a scoring.
Andrew: Oh, got it. And they didn’t do that.
Maria: So it’s not so easy, because imagine that in Chile we have . . . Chile is the country that has the most brands and models of cars in the world.
Andrew: I didn’t know that.
Maria: You’re see in the street you have Japanese, Europeans.
Andrew: I’ll look. I’m not a car person, I never noticed it. Okay, I get that you did that. And then you decided to raise money, because?
Maria: Yes, because with all the money that we earn, we have two clients in that moment. Then we realize, and me realize, that it’s also one thing that I always say, I am a woman entrepreneur and that is a characteristic that for Latin-American people is important, because for us the family is so important, and for me I have three kids. So it is difficult for me to be in the plane every day, closing business in Mexico, in Colombia. So I have like a need that some investor came and put money for a good CEO.
Andrew: Put enough money in that you could hire a good CEO. That was the big need.
Maria: Because I realized that I have from the . . . I am going to say . . . limitless, is one, my family so important and my company also, but my family, of course, is important, and my kids are little, so I cannot be in Mexico, in the U.S. all the time. So I realized that.
And second, I need smart money and people that can help me focusing this talent in a good business. And that’s why we are very proud about our HCS Capital investor. They are people very smart and they help us.
Andrew: This is Rodrigo Labbé. I’m looking him up.
Maria: Rodrigo Labbé is our new CEO.
Andrew: That’s the new CEO.
Maria: Yes.
Andrew: Let me see his background here. He was before this, working at Direct TV Chile.
Maria: Yeah. Corporate.
Andrew: And then he was at Procter and Gamble before that. All right.
This is the mistake that you wish you would have not made at your previous company. Bring in a good CEO who can run things.
All right. Let me close out with this. What’s one thing that I, just like I was blown away by the insurance thing, what’s one thing that I as an entrepreneur from the U.S. would be shocked by from entrepreneurship here in Chile? What’s different here?
I’ll tell you one thing, Nathan, from Magnum Partners, he’s the one who introduced us to you. He’s one of your investors?
Maria: Yes.
Andrew: Oh, he is. Okay. So he said, “I helped a company raise money, and it took them forever to open up a bank account, just to put the money into it.” You think that it’s easy because every kid, frankly, every kid in the U.S. could go and open up a bank. It’s harder here. What else? What else am I missing as I understand this country?
Maria: I think that in Latin America people are, because the market is so little in Chile, we need to make more complex things. When I get invited in one of the car insurance events, I go to as a speaker, and a lot of times they ask me, “Maria, what you are doing is amazing, is very complete. How you do that?” And my answer is, “In the U.S., you make one thing, a glass and you have a huge market. In Chile, the market is little, so you need to do a lot of things very complex.” So I think that is one thing, that in Chile and in Latin America, people are more . . . How can I say . . . They put more complexity in some way. I don’t know how to say.
But really, I don’t feel that I have barriers. Right now, our company, Jooycar LLC is in Delaware.
Andrew: It’s in the U.S.?
Maria: Yes, in Delaware. And for me really, I have a business plan for the U.S., and I feel that we will very success.
Andrew: And you will eventually go to the U.S.
Maria: And I am not afraid about the market. I feel that it’s easy, because in the U.S. people are very . . . How can I say? Have a pattern. All people in Miami is the same, and the people in . . .
Andrew: So what are you planning here?
Maria: There is a lot of cars.
Andrew: And they’re similar, you’re saying?
Maria: And for example, for me it’s amazing in the U.S. because you are more developed in connected cars. So right now, last week, I processed one million cars of connected cars from the U.S. in my platform.
Andrew: Oh, already? Through which insurance company?
Maria: It’s not from insurance company. It’s from [inaudible 00:57:03]. I cannot say the name but . . .
Andrew: So there’s a car company that’s buying your product, putting it in their cars . . .
Maria: No, not buying it. I am testing the data of that million connected cars.
Andrew: They’re giving you access to a million of their cars. Who paid to put the device in their cars?
Maria: With our device, connected cars.
Andrew: No wait. They paid you for the device?
Maria: No, no. Remember that in the future all the cars will not be necessary to have a device.
Andrew: Oh, without the device you’re saying, “Look, they already have the device in the car. It’s part of the car. All you’re doing is adding software.”
Maria: Imagine like Netflix before the Smart TV and post Smart TV, inflection point. My vision is that.
Andrew: That all these cars already have the device in there, you’re just going to be in there.
Maria: The device is for the moment to learn. In the future, all the cars will be connected.
Andrew: I actually can hear that you’re getting more excited, because I could hear the mic get bumped. Okay. Wow, congratulations. Now I see why that big smile on your face. And so your vision is eventually this will be . . .
Maria: No, and the best thing is that we process that in our platform, and we have 150,000 message per second. That is huge. Amazing our processing. And we are putting machine learning [inaudible 00:58:07]. We are happy.
Andrew: All right. For anyone who wants to go check you out, it’s joooycar.com, right? Two Os, jooycar.com. I want to thank you for doing this interview.
I want to thank . . . Actually, I’ve got to say, Magma Partners is the one who introduced me to you. They’ve been so phenomenally helpful.
Maria: Yes, and Magma was the early investor that put money in the second year, I think, and they help us a lot. And then we made the series A for Jooycar.
Andrew: And I read about your new book. That’s what you’re seeing here, if you’re looking at my iPad, I was circling all kinds of stuff.
And I want to thank my two sponsors who made this interview happen. The first is HostGator. Check them out at hostgator.com/mixergy. The second is Toptal. Check them out at toptal.com/mixergy.
I will be running a marathon here in Chile. We’ll see if my leg can hold up. Frankly, I’ve been pushing my body too much, so I got injured. If I get hurt, I’m not going to finish the marathon, but I expect fully to finish it and I definitely will be starting it.
If you guys want to follow along with me as I run marathons all over the world and achieve my big goal for this year, and if you want help achieving your goal, I’m not helping that much, we’re just kind of doing it together. Here’s a website we can go check it out. Go to runwithandrew.com, runwithandrew.com.
