Andres Blank is super smart. After completing a degree in industrial engineering at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, in Caracas, Andres founded a successful lumber company. Then at the age of 24, with Venezuela falling apart and crime escalating, he decided to attend graduate school overseas. The Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) accepted him into their MBA program, where he soon began to create an app called Pixable.  Andres and his two co-founders worked like madmen for over a year, gained major investors, and was able to sell it to a Singapore telecommunications company for $26 million.



Since then, Andres is not living the high life. In fact he has started and left behind five product lines. Today, Andres works in a co-working space in New York, as lean as possible, and enthusiastically developing his best product yet, a text messaging service exclusively for your business contacts. It’s called CALIBER.IO. Download it on your phone's App store!

Andres shares deeply about his love for Venezuela, and gratitude for the US.  I also ask his thoughts on making Venezuela a more compelling environment for entrepreneurs, to which he offered a clear framework.

In this interview, Andres gives sage advice on how to:
  Move yourself from a desperate environment to an ideal one
  Believe that you can do the unimaginable (like getting accepted to MIT, from Venezuela)
  Build an ideal team for a product company

Inspire multiple rounds of investors to get involved in your start-up

Keep your start-up lean

Recognize and use your immigrant advantages

As always, please subscribe, tell us what you liked about this interview, what would be helpful to you in your entrepreneurial journey.

020  $26 million App – From Venezuela to MIT to Start-up – Andres Blank

How Immigrants Crush It, While Facing Big Challenges

Personal Journals

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One of Luis’ favorite television shows when he lived in El Salvador was Beverly Hills.  

After he arrived at San Francisco airport his uncle drove him around Pacific Heights, where all the elites live.

Luis, thinking this was what America was like, kept spotting his house.

Then his uncle drove to their actual house at 14th and Woodward in the Mission District, where Luis ended up in a bedroom with his step-brother, 2 sisters, and grandmother.

By the time, he was 21 he recognized how hard he would have to work to accomplish his dream and that he would have to take responsibility for his own children’s dream to have a stable family.

Today, after working 16 hours per day for many years, Luis is realizing both dreams, a beautiful family and running his own coffee shop – First Village Coffee on 123 Main Street, in Ossining, New York.

It’s a beauty, the coffee machinery, the art on the walls.

And the welcoming environment is like being at home.

The coffee is locally roasted, in fact everything is sourced locally.

You can find Luis there at 6am every morning, and likely until 6pm

In this podcast, Luis talks about how he built his business, about what it takes to make it successful, what he learned from his mother – who owned a comedore (a small in-house restaurant) in El Salvador, growing up during the war in that country, and his humble advice – never give up.

My favorite quote from Luis Corena

You can’t stop 

You can’t let your dreams become just a dream

And you have to make your dreams come true

Sometimes you go through life just wishing

This is it

This is the one we have.

You know, we either go our whole life just wishing – for something

Yeah, I get up every morning 

I want to stay home with my kids

I want to go to my kids’ soccer games 

I want to go to my kids’ graduation

But I know, there are people counting on me right now. 

Whether it’s a muffin, a coffee, or just a “good morning” 

I am here.

If you set yourself goals, you can achieve – what you want to do 

So, what advice would I give – “Don’t surrender”.

063 Luis Corena – First Village Coffee, Ossining, NY



Otto Berkes is Chief Technology Officer at CA Technologies, a 4 billion company with 13,000 employees in 40 countries. CA Technologies helps companies build software, run their applications, manage their cyber-security, and much more.

Today he manages engineering teams, people like himself when he co-founded Xbox, the game console on which 40 million people still play hundreds of games today.

Like many engineers, Otto is a curious tinkerer, interested to build, take-apart and put back together again, to not leave a problem alone until he can at least understand it better.

He may have had an advantage over other engineers in his determination to grapple with a problem, to persevere – which came from the appreciation of having escaped a totalitarian communist country at ta young age.

Otto’s father after seeing the stress to his children as they were indoctrinated at school, and the severe censoring his wife endured as a teacher, carefully planned for years, their escape. Finally, leaving all their possessions behind, they crossed the border to the West, where without language skills, friends or family, they built their lives.  Otto began school in Buffalo, New York, and moved around many times as his family tried different ways to succeed.

During these years, Otto spent many hours at Radio Shack, learning how to build all kinds of electronic gizmos. And began to think like a programmer.

Otto explained how he came to lead the team at Microsoft on Open GL and DirectX:

“I joined a team that was working on a graphics standard called Open GL, that was focused on the engineering space to be able to do Cad-Cam.  The cost of the hardware technology decreased, so that it became possible to use 3d graphics hardware for games.”

Xbox is short for Direct Xbox. 

WE were looking for a way for some of the technologies that had been developed on the PC, and free it from the constraints of the PC.  You put a DC in the den or in your office, but not under a TV. How to resynthesize these technologies in a living-room-friendly environment.”

I asked if game developers get to spend much time playing their games?

“It’s a little bit of a myth, that developers in the game space, that all they do is play games.

When you look at the science, it is hard software development.

They either have a bunch of code in front of them or trying to overcome some glitch.

It’s serious computer science and hard work.

What is an intrepreneur?

As an intrepreneur, one drives innovation from within.  You’re not starting with a clean slate, and you work inside organizational boundaries. How do you create something totally new in the context of something that already exists?

There is not a single right answer, but a common thread is having a strong degree of teamwork. You need to build grass root support, to find people who want to come on board, and exert force as a force multiplier.

You must look to the company to fund your investment.  Engineering help, to prove out the thing you are trying to build, and executive sponsorship.

How did they approach Bill Gates?

“Bill Gates has a strong belief in platforms, and Xbox is a strong platform for the living room. Certainly, that was our pitch, but we also pitched the underlying technology.  The DirectX graphics, the fact that we were strong with the developer community, and we knew how to build APIs, that is, we had operating systems as a core part of our DNA.”

We took a very developer-centric approach. Our core competency was software, which made it easier for developers to create great content.

We had an intense focus on the customer.


062 Otto Berkes – Cofounder of Xbox and CTO at CA Technologies

Chiara Cokieng is a young entrepreneur and copy-writer, in the Philippines who thinks a lot.

She told me she wanted to be an entrepreneur many years before she could spell it.

She lifted herself up above her environment in two ways – she became a champion free style wrestler, and she began entering math competitions starting locally and then going international. She also wrote at quite a young age, a 100 page sales letter for her first employer, to find out if through a mix of storytelling, empathizing, and reason-why copy-writing, they could double their monthly recurring revenue. They did.

I interviewed Chiara because I wanted to understand the thinking of entrepreneurs in emerging markets.

She and I are both interested in the intersection of America and Asia startups & adapting Silicon Valley principles to local realities.

She’s been inspired by immigrant entrepreneurs like Steli Efti, Hiten Shah and Gary Vaynerchuk, and she reflects on the differences between typical business attitudes in America and those in the Philippines.

Interesting for any entrepreneur in an emerging market – especially as she’s created opportunities for herself as a country manager for American based companies.

Some highlights:

How can immigrant entrepreneurs bring their experience/knowledge back to their countries?

The moment an immigrant suddenly realizes: “I’m so fucking rich!”

Why you can sell iPhones in the Philippines, where 70% of the people make $100 per month.

Why it’s easier for your ideas to persuade someone in America than the Philippines

What happens when there is less trust of each other, in your culture. What are the obstacles to that occurring in the Philippines?

What to do when you realize you have sense of entitlement? Which is a big problem in all cultures

What is and how she learned the entrepreneurial mindset?

How attending international math competitions made Chiara recognize that you are the average of the five people closest to you. And why that is the best LIFE HACK

Why she loves THE IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEUR

And most important.  How to really know who your customer is?

Chiara’s website:   http://chiaracokieng.com/

One of Chiara’s blogs:  http://chiaracokieng.com/suffering/

The Immigrant Entrepreneur Facebook group  https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheImmigrantEntrepreneur/

058 How to Think Like a Philippine Free-Style Wrestler / Entrepreneur – Chiara Cokieng

Welcome IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEUR listeners to this bonus episode.  Over the last year I have published podcasts every other Thursday. Because the number of listeners has increased, I’m considering to publish weekly. In the meantime, please enjoy these bonus episodes.

I have interviewed one hundred successful business people – some for this podcast and some for magazines. Some run major corporations – last month I interviewed a female CEO of a company with 90,000 employees – while others work solo.

I wanted to talk about what these successful people have in common. You might think in a podcast about immigrant entrepreneurs, that the common factor is hustling, innovating, persevering, which all are crucial to becoming successful. But it’s something different and at least equally important. As hustling and hardworking Gary Vaynerchuk is, and as much as he talks about those traits, he equally acknowledges this factor common to successful business people.

What do they have in common? They got lucky. The question is - how did they get lucky? Did they win the lottery? Did they make their own luck?

Now, not everyone believes in luck. In fact, maybe you don’t. You may think that you can plan out and execute every part of your life.

To unpack this let’s turn to Howard Marks, a gentleman I interviewed this year, who in 2014, took the time to detail the many ways he encountered luck in his life. He included those details in a well-known essay he wrote, Getting Lucky.

Now Howard Marks has the right to feel lucky, because the company he founded, Oaktree Capital, has $100 billion under management, as a global alternative investment management firm. But he also has the right to feel he made his own way in life, because he’s always worked hard and he is one of the world’s highly skilled investors. In fact, Warren Buffet wrote: “When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail, they're the first thing I open and read. I always learn something."

His essay, Getting Lucky, is long, but I encourage you to read it. I’ll include a link to it in my show notes.

One type of luck he talks about is ‘demographic luck” meaning for example where one is born, or perhaps how wealthy one’s family is.

However, Mr. Marks is not lucky because he was born rich. He grew up in Queens, New York, and was the first generation in his family to attend college.
His luck was that he was born in America, the son of immigrants. (I wish I would have known that when I interviewed him, I would have asked him about his story, and asked to use it for this podcast. I did ask him about his youth. He said: “I learned to work. I always had jobs.” That sounds like a young immigrant entrepreneur!)

In his essay, Marks writes about his response to comments made by Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey, who said: "Success is never accidental. No accidents, just planning; no luck, only strategy, no randomness, just perfect logic".

Mark’s response:

"That's all it took to get my juices flowing. I believe a great many things contribute to success. Some are our own doing, while many others are beyond our control. There’s no doubt that hard work, planning, and persistence are essential for repeated success. These are among the contributors that Twitter’s Dorsey is talking about. But even the hardest workers and best decision makers among us will fail to succeed consistently without luck.”

“What are the components of luck? They range from accidents of birth and genetics, to chance meetings and fortuitous choices, and even to perhaps-random but certainly unforeseeable events that cause decisions to turn out right.”

One of my interviewees, in episode 30, looked back in his luck in life. When Parviz Parvizi and his family escaped a war, 35 years ago, in the middle of the night, on horseback, through the mountains of Iran, they didn't know if luck would be with them. And even, when his family finally made it to America, there was no ticker tape parade welcoming them,

054 How To Get Lucky!  (Hat Tip to Howard Marks) – Bonus episode

Jonathan Moyal cofounded Oliver.ai, to reduce the cost and stress for those applying for a visa to the United States, a problem many of their friends had faced. They promote themselves as The easiest and most secure way to get your visa for the United States.

Jonathan’s ancestry is so global, Moroccan, Jewish, French, American, with a Spanish last name, that he can have empathy for almost any tourist, student, or immigrant trying to navigate the visa system.

Their service is combination of software – which checks the applicants’ paperwork for errors or potential problems – and personal service which sets up appointments and guides the applicant through the process.

Although he comes from generations of old world entrepreneurs, famous for trading, his secret skill is in building his network of exchange. He explains exactly how his ‘favor bank’ works.

“If you go as a tourist to the old city, to this day, in Marrakesh, and you want to buy a pair of shoes, and he doesn’t have your size. He’s going to say sorry, hold on hold on, and he’s going to bicycle to the other end of the market, to someone who should be his competitor. And he’s going to grab a pair of shoes and sell them to you.  

So there is this network of exchange, largely based on trust, based on favors. 

I realized that I’ve created a similar network of support in the investor community, the entrepreneurial community, and in the not-at-all entrepreneurial community – so that’s my secret sauce.  When I look at my success today – we just raised a round, it will be in the news soon – as compared to when I started out – I started out very alone. It’s not networking.  My mother calls it the favor bank.  When people need something, they come to me and I give it to them, I don’t ask why.  If I have the right contact for you and you are someone that I trust, I will not hesitate a second and will give it to you. Inevitably over time, it’s not that people owe you one, it’s that people trust you, so when you need something, you don’t need to feel ashamed to go ask.  That network has been invaluable to me over the years, and continues to grow.”

That’s why he wants to help you!

He also shares valuable advice he receive from his dad, who arrived in the US with about two dimes in his pocket.

I asked him if the French were really the way Americans perceive them.  As a board member on La French Tech, he was the perfect person for me to ask.  Guess what. The French tech scene in New York, is a lot bigger that you imagine.

020 $26 million App – From Venezuela to MIT to Start-up – Andres Blank

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