DBiM Day 3

To sum it up, today was about contrast between three very different spheres: the goverment, the big multinational companies and the new, innovative entrepreneur-driven enterprises. The day began with the visit of Manuel Ángel Núñez, who is the current governor of the state of Hidalgo. It's not very common to have this kind of visitors, but the role of the politics is crucial to understand the whole social and economic picture of the country. Also, Manuel was one of the key negociators of the North American Free-trade agreement (NAFTA).

He talked about the overall environment that surrounded these negotiations, and the new challenges Mexico must face and the role of the political leaders in it.

After that,we had Jesus Sotomayor, who has worked and initiated a large number of successful business in the telecommunications business (such as the mexican branch of AT&T, just to mention one of them). He came to tal with us about the the entrepreneur spirit, and broke one of common places of this kind of discussions by stating that entrepreneurs are both born and formed.

Jesus has the knowledge and the skills, of course... but most importantly, he has so much PASSION that it's impossible not to feel thrilled and with a lot of enthusiasm after even the quickest chat with him. All of us felt renewed energies and huge inspiration for our future projects, whatever and wherever they may be.

It was evident form te very beginning what the key for his success was: his intense, open-minded personality, combined with a sharp mind, an extremely developed sense of humor and "buena onda, no mamila" way to get along with people. Here's some quotes so you get a feeling of it:

"Please forgive my english aztec accent"
"Feedback is the food of champions"
"Banks in mexico are curious,they have this tendency to always lend people to all those who don't need it and never lend money to those who need it"
"Entrepreneurs don't need money as much as they need ideas"
"My english sucks SO WHAT??? i'll still do business with english-speakers"
"The biggest mistake an entrepreneur can do is to try to sell his company, instead of selling himself"
"Never seek to sell something, seek for the other one tu buy it" (No lo vendas, que te la compren)
"Aways kind, never arrogant" (Buena onda, no mamilas!!)

After lunch, we went on to on of the most representative and important mexican companies in the world: Bimbo. We actually had to prepare carefully for thisvisit, watching our dressing to comply with the strict sanity measures needed to go in there. We were able to witness the production process and the overall ambient of the company, and also had a quick presentation of the financial performance of the group (which you can find here)