Describing the Experience

I will do my best to explain the "universe" in which I am currently living in. Otherwise, if I would try to explain every detail, every emotion, everything, I would never finish.

The Place

Imagine yourself living in a college fraternity house, in Boulder Colorado, that does not has the best looks from the outside but is extremely cosy once your are in it.  

The People

Imagine sharing your room with four strangers that speak other language and sharing the whole house with other 35-40 people that also speak other language, have different cultures, etc.

Imagine yourself that the first time you enter the house you encounter the following:

• An unknown person opening his arms to give you a welcoming hug.
• A number of people completely happy because you arrived.
• The same people offering to carry your bag, show you around, asking how you feel and how was your trip.
• Incredible food on the table in case you were hungry.

(I must confess that the only places I have experienced the same thing is back at home and in the small villages in La Sierra Tarahumara in Chihuahua when I was a missionary).

And just in case you are wondering, no, they are not using strange things to cook the food - that is the actual energy and the current situation of this place.

Is not enough when you start meeting the other roommates or "Fellows" and find incredible stories such as the life of Tricia Compas who has dedicated her last 5 years to solve the problem of quickly providing safe drinking water following disasters when transport is limited, or the life of Tiago Dalvi who is drastically innovating product design by enabling local brazilian crafters the chance to earn a better living. 

Your ability to get emotionally moved and inspired triplicates when every single night we welcome either a mentor, a consulting partner or a capital partner.  

The welcoming format is usually carry in an interview format run either by Dan or Teju (Co-founders of this universe). The interview lasts about 45 mins and then they open the discussion for a couple of questions from the fellows. Let me now speak about who this people are.

The Mentors

Do you remember reading stories about people that were incredibly successful both in their entrepreneurial life and in their corporate life but always tried to look for more and more until they found out that helping people and mentoring was the right thing to do and they put all what they´d learn to make things work better? Here´s our mentors.

The most incredible part is that we get to meet with them on a one-on-one basis to discuss whatever you want to chat about. But of course, this happens while you´re wearing shorts, flip flops or going on a hike to the Flatirons every morning at 7 am.

Today we welcomed Karman Elahian. An amazingly inspirational guy who has exited 3 of his 10 startups for between 75 and 700 million USD, and who kept saying during his speech that he has NO talent. Extremely humble and savvy, he shared one thing that I believe every entrepreneur or intrapreneur can use on the topic of hiring the right people. He said to hire people who have the following characteristics:

1. Are intelligent - better if they are more smart than you.
2. Honest - they will be the ones lifting their hand as soon as they see something is not fine.
3. Perseverant - with all the ups and downs in a startup... you get the idea.
4. Knows how to work on teams
5. Has a good sense of humor - anyone that can crack a joke in a tension situation can help you get rid of some ulcers.

A few days ago we welcomed Rafe Furst. He has built many companies, is a world series of poker champion, and has helped so many people in his life. He is currently trying to find a solution to cure cancer... and if we all help, he´ll definitely reach his goal.

The Partners - Consulting and Capital

This guys you already know what they do.  The consulting partners are helping us reshape our business models, create and find amazing ways to solve problems and expand possibilities. The capital partners are trying to understand each one of the ventures to see if there is investment opportunities.

All this could not be possible without the creators of this universe and the staff who also share the same home.

Imagine now all the previous components living together under the same roof for 6 weeks.

I´m telling you, I have seen amazing things happen in this few days.

I believe that www.yoreciclo.com has already benefited from all this. 

Who am I to define progress in our time?

I wanted to share the speech given during the opening ceremony of the Institute. All of the entrepreneurs had 2 mins to answer one question: Who am I to define progress in our time?


Here´s what I believe:

I looked up the definition of the word progress and Google shows that progress is to move forward, to dream and change.

Everybody in this room knows that we all have the opportunity to change things; My dream of change began while being a missionary in rural communities. This experience made me understand the issue of the lack of natural resources when people needed to walk huge distances to get water or lumber.

So a few years back, I thought on doing something to reduce climate change and create a positive impact. I was fortunate enough to meet my partner who actually came up with the idea and here´s what happened:

We put together the following ingredients to start our venture:

1.     A strong will to educate about recycling with a twist of passion and humility

2.     A large involvement of people from children in schools to corporate and government employees.

3.     And a chunk of excitement when transforming waste into raw materials and forgetting about landfills.

All this to save natural resources and to increase recycling rates in Latin America, which are close to 0%.

In so little time we´ve already educated more than 5,000 people and saved and huge amount of resources but I believe we can still do so much more.

So adding to Google, progress of me is to achieve, through the help of millions of people, positive change so we can leave behind a better world for future generations.

YoReciclo in the HP Communities Worldwide blog site

Melissa Zieger from HP wrote an article about Unreasonable Institute and interviewed some of the fellows - I was lucky enough to sneak in her interviews.  


The question we needed to answer was: Who am I to define progress in our time?


Please click to see the article and the video.

First official day at the Institute = a great impression

So today was the first official day at the Institute.  We started the day making a scavenger hunt (nothing to do with the other type of recycling scavengers : )  As you could expected we did all crazy things from dancing tango with a stranger on a bus, to building three stories human pyramids while running around the city.  The reason was to get to know the city and the different places where we will be working during the following weeks.


My team was lucky enough to come in first place. And then after lunch, Daniel Epstein and Teju Ravilochan both co-founders of the institute gave a great welcoming speech. I will share two things that really sticked:

1. Treat everyone as if they were the Messiah - with lots of respect, lots of attention, lots of love, lots of will to learn from what they represent.
2. And this also made me remember what my great friend R.A.S. told me about making something different to really attract attention from your potential customers.  While they told an incredible story about a guy that sent watermelons to get attention of potential investors, they conclude that in order to get the attention of Fortune 500´s CEOs you need to think as an unreasonable fellow.  In their specific case of the 2011 Institute, they sent big stuffed penguins with a hand written note to every mentor and capital partner asking them to join the institute.  You can be sure that all of them will always remember getting that big box, the penguin, and of course, the written words.  

We then had time to talk about our strengths and weaknesses as entrepreneurs and to meet and chat for at least 2 mins with the other 26 entrepreneurs.  It was amazing to hear people from around the world sharing the same feelings and to confirm that everybody lives for their venture and for helping people in various ways.


At the end of the day we met our first Capital Partner, Taryn Goodman, who manages the Impact Investing at RSF Social Finance, a nonprofit financial institution offering investing, lending, and giving services that support social and spiritual renewal.


Tomorrow is the opening reception and every entrepreneur would have the opportunity to give a two minutes pitch answering the following quesiton:  Who am I to define progress in our time?


I might post my answer as soon as I have it...

Arriving to the Unreasonable Institute

I arrived to Boulder, CO yesterday to begin this amazing experience of living under the same roof with other 26 entrepreneurs from around the world.


The flight was fine compared to people that traveled for 30 hours coming from China and Pakistan.  The welcome was quite an experience when the first person that opened the door actually hugged me as a sign of warm welcome.
He is an African that wear his first pair of shoes at the age of 13 and saw TV for the first time at the age of 15.  
Still he managed to become the first graduate of his clan and start his company which is transforming lives of African people. I spent 3 hours talking with him and I had so many moments of WOW during this conversation.  I am sure we will be hearing from him later in the world news.


Like with him, every talk I have started with the others entrepreneurs have already left a positive mark. 


I want to take this opportunity of the first Unreasonable post to thank all that have supported us: God, our families, our employees, our customers and suppliers, our friends...  I am sure this will be an amazing experience that will help and be supportive to what we have been doing since day one: promoting recycling to save natural resources.

YoReciclo en Televisa Monterrey

Aqui les compartimos un video de una entrevista que nos hizo Televisa Monterrey a través de su programa Mi Casa.


Esperamos lo disfruten.


Saludos,

YoReciclo seleccionado para el Unreasonable Institute 2011

Rápidamente les compartimos que después de muchas entrevistas y procesos de selección, hemos sido seleccionados dentro de las 27 empresas que entrarán al Unreasonable Institute este 2011.

La historia

Después de ser la única empresa Mexicana elegida dentro de los 45 finalistas entre +450 empresas alrededor del planeta, nos quedaba un último paso.  Los primeros proyectos que levantasen cierta cantidad en dolares, donado en su totalidad en pequeñas aportaciones de  gente que crea en sus proyectos, serían seleccionados.  

Durante las 6 semanas de duración del “workshop” estaremos en contacto con emprendedores de todo el planeta con quienes podremos discutir mejores prácticas y estrategias de crecimiento global. 

Creemos que esto puede hacer la diferencia para seguir creciendo y caminar más rápido hacia cumplir nuestra visión de un mundo con más reciclaje, menos contaminación y más sustentable.

Un poco acerca del Unreasonable Institute

Es una aceleradora de negocios internacionales con base en Boulder, Colorado. El Instituto  apoya a emprendedores de alto impacto que tienen un negocio en marcha el cual apoya un fin social o ambiental.

Es un programa que dura 6 semanas en donde 27 emprendedores de diferentes nacionalidades se unen para ser guiados por 60+ mentores expertos con experiencia emprendedora, corporativa (VP´s de Coca Cola World Company, exdirectores de Google, dueños de fondos de capital, entre otros) y de enfoque social.

Aqui pueden ver el video que utilizamos para pedir apoyo VIDEO