Editor’s Note: This guest post is courtesy of Francisco Sáez, Nixter CEO. In this post Francisco writes about a ‘real story’, his story!
..and if you’re from Chile or Latin America, it’s probably your story, too!!
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First off. Chile doesn’t need more (cut and paste) engineers.
Chile needs more artists, more innovators and of course…more entrepreneurs.
I’m trying to find the reason why Chile has a low rate of entrepreneurs and I think it’s all because of history.
We all know that being an “entrepreneur” is something kind of new (Bullshit…what about Einstein?, J. Clark? T. Edison?…) but let’s keep it that way.
For my experience I personally blame (and thank) my parents for almost taking me to the other side – I mean the regular side of life… being a … hmmmm… normal person with a job right?
I want to study music. That’s what’s makes me have chicken skin… that’s my passion.
A: What? No, no way you’re studying music… how are you going to live? How are you going to make money?…
That’s the classic answer for all of these kind of questions.
Then… in school… two years ago, while I was doing my first startup and studying engineering.
I need to freeze my studies to work 100% on my startup.
A: Nope. You can’t, you have to finish what you started, get a degree and get a job… “tu no te mandas solo” they said like “buen chileno” if you want to do that… you’ll have to live by yourself…
I can guess you are having or had the same kind of discussion
That kind of answer is almost automatic… it’s like an auto-reply for your e-mail, you just start talking about it and BANG! There you go… all your dreams to the trash…
Is just a damn old fashioned mindset, a mindset with over 200 years of history.
Unfortunately, our parents had the same trouble when they were young… I can guess…
but different times, different rules…
they didn’t have the guts to say to our grandpa’s… Fuck it!
I WILL FOLLOW MY PASSION…
I WILL FOLLOW MY DREAMS.
And that was the same answer our grandpas should have given 100’s of years ago to our grand grandpa’s…
So how can a father, tell to his son to do something he never did…
how can our parents can give us advice about taking this new road of entrepreneurship…?
Once… they had a dream…that was trashed out and they were scared… so scared that they decided to join the easy way… study + degree + job = keep writing history
I was almost kicked out of college two times…
TWO TIMES, for listening to my parents giving me old fashioned advice… advice that in a globalized world like this are simply not working.
I wasn’t a student… I was just trying to follow my passion… and college wasn’t the road to it.
Now I’m following my passion… and I won’t stop. I won’t stop!
I blame history. I blame high school.
I blame the universities for cutting off the wings of people that needs to fly.
But hey!! Enough crying… you already got the point right?
The thing is…what can we do to change that?
Easy. IT’S UP TO US!!!
Just US… a generation of young Chilean entrepreneurs trying to follow their dreams.
Chilean entrepreneurs that will change our country and then the world with life changing startups or crazy ideas that nobody thought of before.
It’s up to us to fail, get up, fail, and get up… but never GIVE UP.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noDbA_R5x8A[/youtube]
It’s up to us to spread the word…
It’s up to us to change this world, fighting against years and years of and old mindset.
Let’s change the Chilean mindset
So when your son tells you “I want to be an entrepreneur” You just have to answer.
GO FOR IT … I did… and I’m having the life I always wanted.
GO
FOR
IT!!
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/10865829[/vimeo]
Image credits: Random picked from the web. Unfortunately, i don’t remember the source for each pic. If your picture is listed here and you want me to remove it, please send us a message.
