Francisco Santolo was invited by INICIA in conjunction with UCEMA to the presentation "Gastronomic Entrepreneurs", a series of talks where innovators and leaders of the entrepreneurial ecosystem share their experiences, and gave a key piece of advice.
On Tuesday, 9th August, we had the pleasure of offering, together with UCEMA, the Gastronomic Entrepreneurs presentation, with the aim of exposing the route and each of the obstacles that had to be crossed by different brands related to cooking, in their entrepreneurial path.
From CEMA University they started the event thanking INICIA, since several of the speakers who attended the meeting are part of our community. This cycle, which was born in 2015, was attended by Santiago Bilinkis, Andy Freire and Julián Weich, among other references of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. According to the university: "The aim of these talks is for different innovators, in both the private and public sectors, to share their experiences so that others can listen to them, beyond the academic world".
Speakers
Sebastián Ríos, creator of Almacén de Pizzas and developer of brands such as Fiera, Parrilla Urbana and Parri & Pan, told his story chronologically. Son of European immigrants, who came to Argentina to dedicate their lives to the gastronomic business, he decided to become independent around the year 2000 in order to search for a new concept in pizzas. With many successes, but also mistakes in his project, he concluded his dissertation this way: "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure, without losing enthusiasm", a highly inspiring phrase to start, fall down and start again.
Marcelo Salas Martínez of Café Martínez gave a brief and emotional presentation. From his personal presentation as a "human being", he tried to demystify the roles carried out by company CEOs, in order to humanize them. Marcelo explained that a branch of the cafeteria will be opening soon in Barcelona and he briefly told the steps that led to this cafeteria to the place where it is today.
Other presentations were given by Mariano Tortora of Moratto Helados, Mariano Echeverría of Cafone and one of the presentations that made the most impact on the audience was the one given by Francisco Santolo, who today manages Scalalbl, an enterprise accelerator, many of them gastronomic. Francisco explained his fruitful journey: "Some say that I was born with a computer under my arm. Since I was 3, 4 years old I had access to computers and the Internet. At the age of 7 there were computers connected in a network and at 13 I founded the first Spanish-language chat room. That was my first entrepreneurial experience. Francisco's advice was key: "Reading and training is fundamental to becoming a successful entrepreneur.
