Entrepreneurship, Mexican style

It's time to shed our aversion to risk and embrace failure. Entrepreneurship is challenging; it's not for everyone, but it's something that Mexico needs to move forward with high-value employment.

Journalist Andrés Oppenheimer commented in an article: "Everyone is optimistic about Mexico, except Mexicans themselves." While it's clear that Mexico faces significant challenges, we are witnessing how a new group of heroes, known as entrepreneurs, are transforming Mexico and the world through their innovation, persistence, and risk-taking. Mexico may not yet boast the enormous entrepreneurial success stories heard every day in Silicon Valley, but it's evident that exciting things are happening in our country, such as Startup Mexico.

In a conversation with the founders of this 3,500-square-meter innovation ecosystem in the heart of Mexico City, Guillermo Garza and Marcus Dantus emphatically reject the idea that Mexico should try to replicate Silicon Valley. "We must find our own successful innovation model, and we are on that path. That's why we created Startup Mexico, an ecosystem where you find newly created companies (startups), seed capital funds, coworking spaces, all kinds of services for entrepreneurs, and, above all, a lot of collaboration," says Marcus Dantus.

The CEO of Startup Mexico explains that in the country "the entrepreneurial ecosystem is growing largely due to the support the government has provided for the creation of funds and incubators. Additionally, universities have doubled their enrollment in the last 10 years, producing more engineers per capita than anywhere else in the world, even more than the United States. The great opportunity lies in transitioning from a manufacturing-dependent economy to an innovation-driven one. The internet is the great equalizer, a key in a country as unequal as ours. It's time to shed our aversion to risk and embrace failure. Entrepreneurship is difficult; it's not for everyone, but it's something that Mexico needs to move forward with high-value employment."

Startup Mexico seeks to create a connection between academia, science, and the business world, attracting good ideas to its incubator to turn them into companies with seed capital, legal advice, connections with research centers, support to obtain more capital (government support and investment funds), linkage with international hubs, as well as supporting these new companies with mentors and public relations. It's a constant and intense effort, as they work to accelerate between 100 and 130 companies per year, with the clear goal of either selling or getting invested in. Guillermo Garza, Director of Operations at Startup Mexico, comments that this innovation hub aims to "build an ecosystem based on Mexico's strengths," including:

• Demographic bonus: More than half of the population is under 29 years old and of working age.
• Proximity to the United States, the world's largest economy.
• We are an extremely creative country.
• Entrepreneurship is already part of the country's cultural change, seen as an additional path to having a job.
• Additionally, we have the most commercial agreements with the world.

To accelerate Startup Mexico's work, the entrepreneurs announced the recent opening of branches in Mérida and León, aiming to find regional entrepreneurs, "because good entrepreneurs are not only found in Mexico City," a topic we'll touch on soon. They are also about to launch Switch, an international startup acceleration festival that will take place from December 1st to 3rd in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, bringing together the protagonists of Mexico's entrepreneurial, innovation, and technology ecosystem with the rest of the world.

It's interesting to see how, sometimes, while Mexicans perceive a difficult landscape with many problems, communities such as the Jewish, Lebanese, Spanish, among others, have come to our country, practically with nothing, and with an entrepreneurial spirit, have achieved great economic success. Mexico has significant problems to solve, and that implies great business and entrepreneurial opportunities that we can only address if we start to undertake the Mexican way, just as our friends at Startup Mexico advise us.