I won’t be writing about any of my consulting projects in any detail. (See Disclaimer on my Bio)
However, when I was young, my dad would walk me through periodically setting goals; I would then turn them into short term projects that I would devote my energy and time to. We did this for tennis, school, running, everything. This habit has continued and carried me through a life of tennis, highschool, college, start-ups and work. These projects have brought me joy, have tested me, and have made me who I am.
I’ll share a bit about some of the most pivotal ones in this page.
I’ve arranged them so you can identify the Pain that I was trying to solve, the Approach that I took, and the Results for each project.
This space is far too small to share all the lessons learned, so if you’re doing something similar and want to chat about what I learned, just shoot me an email at mario[dot]pulido[at]gmail[dot]com or Connect with me.
Drive Carefully week
The Pain(s): I realized that a big factor in Mexico’s corrupted police were ignorant drivers who would break the law, put themselves and others in dangerous situations and would look to pay bribes 3-10 times the actual fines. The further I dug, the more aspects of driver education I found that could be improved.
My Approach: I created a student organization that hosted a week full of conferences and workshops to increase driver education. Guest speakers were the VP of Qualitas Insurance company, the Chief of Transit Police for the city of Mexico, the Chief of the Federal Highway Police, and three Mexican drivers who raced in the 2005 NASCAR race in Mexico. The conference topics ranged from ‘What to do after an accident’, ‘Fines and laws that apply to drivers and passengers’, The Dangers of Street Racing’, and ‘Hands on workshops on how to drive a manual transmission car and change a flat’.
The Results: I was amazed by what our team was able to accomplish. Up to that point, I’d spent most of my time in competitive tennis and had gotten used to my wolfpack of one 
. This time around, my team faced challenges at every step of the process and everytime we did, someone from the team stepped up and carried us closer to a succesful event. Witnessing how a passionate group can become a catalyst in society opened my eyes to the power of teamwork. I’ll always be indebted to that great team for opening that door for me.
Volunteer Fireman
The Pain: Not necessarily a Pain but a lifelong dream of mine. I had 2 months in between HS graduation and moving to Austin for college and figured it was now or never.
The station I volunteered at
My Approach: I drove up to the local firehouse (in Atizapan, Mexico) and asked if I could be a volunteer fireman.
The Results: I went through basic training, ended up cleaning the firehouse, rolling up hoses and playing in their daily volleyball games. I never quite got the chance to go out to a fire or accident. My life saving work was limited to wearing some recently used and sweat-soaked jacket one day as I accompanied the chief to pick up a leaky LP gas tank.
Estuvida.com
The Pain(s): I had been bitten by the startup bug, I thought that plenty of the pains that US college students had and which had spawned services like PickaProf.com & Physucks.com, also existed south of the border.
EsTuVida.com Draft Logo
The Approach: I spent days doing survey after survey to understand the differences between the college student in Mexico and the college student in the US. I was then lucky enough to have a very brilliant CS student down the hall, that turned into my business partner and a great mentor . I drafted the business plan, we created a roadmap for our first product, he started working on the coding, and I worked on developing the business strategy. The portal like service would allow students to rate and review their professors, share class notes & share rides to school.
Result: This was my first market validation exercise and also my first exercise dealing with incorporation. There is a law firm in Mexico city that sucked all of our starting capital (all $300 at the time!) and we still haven’t incorporated. Throughout my start ups, I have been adamant about not going the Friends, Fools and Family route. I would intern or work on campus and use that money for clubs and start ups.
Rokkola.com
The Pains: Back when Pandora was on life support and Myspace was Facebook’s odd cousin. A. Zarak and I identified the need for an online music service that would serve fresh music based on your musical tastes.
The Approach: The system was designed to tag music based on your location and history and played songs that sounded like one of your favorites (i.e. “Hotel California”) from a band local to where you live. This allowed small and unknown bands to get exposure to listeners that would likely live near and be able to attend their concerts. Win win overall. We went about working late nights during our sophomore year in college, going from coffee shop to coffee shop looking for free wifi open all night.
The Result: This was my first experiment with off shore development. It was quite the learning experience, starting with the interviews via skype, requirement definition, etc. Eventually we realized we needed to raise some cash (if only to pay for one month of CDNs) and we decided to do it via an entrepreneurial competition. We had to do a 180* on our plan in order to be eligible for the competition and we never turned back.
BioPristine
Biopristine Logo
The Pains: Two key pains – Nosocomial infections have a very high financial and social cost, specially in the third world countries and there are some reports that up to 1 out every 3 people has some type of contagious disease living near their nose, which they then touch before opening the doorknob you just touched. Both of these problems could be mitigated through a better job of disinfection.
The Approach: In order to compete in the entrepreneurship competition we needed to do so with some sort of IP. We identified an antimicrobial polymer on UT’s Office of Technology Commerzialization page and went about to craft a plan to sell it in the areas where the highest pain for antimicrobial treatments existed. Hospital garments and as an alternative to carryon alcohol sanitizers were our choices. We brought in a brilliant PhD into our team and we spent countless, countless nights doing market validation, business plan tweaking, and presentation preparation.
The Results: We received over $12,000 in scholarships & angel funding. We won our regional competition and placed 2nd in our group for the global competition. Eventually, we ran into complications obtaining licensing from The University, but not before Rob Adams helped hone our project and entrepreneurial skills through his prestigious New Venture Creation class. Alek is now studying his Masters at Stanford and Ruben went on to do his Post Doc at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Watch the winning BioPristine presentation here. Bonus: Watch me cringe at the end when the IP questions come up.
PostaBargain.com
PostaBargain.com Post.Vote.Find a Bargain
The Pains:Online shopping outside of Amazon.com can be a scary world, specially for first time buyers.
The Approach: My start up hiatus lasted all of about a couple of weeks. I then started work to create the Digg of online shopping. The first business plan involved charging sellers to post their big sales to an environment where the community would vote up and identify the best deals. You would then get email notifications when a particular area of interest had great sales. Eventually, this pivoted to a channel through which anyone could be part of an affiliate marketing program. Development-wise I’d learned a few lessons and went with as little from-scratch development as possible. I took advantage of open source and off the shelf tools to put together the online solution. I went to New Orleans where I pitched it, tried to sell it and eventually got booted from eBay’s affiliate marketing program, closing off the one source of revenue that I had.
Oilfield Services Manufacturing
Pain: How do you earn the respect of manufacturing plant workers 5 years older than you and with far more experience than you.
The Approach: I was interning for one of the leading Oil Field Services companies, and I needed to implement a couple Lean & Six Sigma projects. To achieve this I needed earn the trust and manage two machinists who manned one of the manufacturing stations. I focused on bringing to light how valuable their knowledge and experience was. I would ask them “If you could improve anything , what would would you change and how?” I brought up their contributions during our weekly team meetings. You’d be surprised by how valuable and accurate their suggestions were and how important the recognition of their contributions was for them.
Results: I went in with Lean and Six Sigma training and came out with training on how to build trust. It rocked. Not taking that company’s Full Time offer in Germany was one of the most difficult decisions I ever made. I had amazing mentors looking out and pushing me at the same time. That company continues to lead the way because they understand the synergy that can be achieved by keeping your people, technology, and profits as the core of their corporate execution.
SmartCarpooling.com
SmartCarpooling.com
The Pain(s): In the summer of 2008, commuting costs had significantly increased and there were few practical alternatives for the truck or SUV driving employee who had a long commute and small paycheck. While carpooling could reduce commuting costs, it had other costs in the forms of perceived lack of comfort, freedom, and generally considered to be a hassle.
The Approach: Many of the hassles that we associate with carpooling could now be reduced through the tools that our social networks and online services provide. We can match you up with people from your friends, coworkers or trusted communities. Based on your home and work location coupled with your outlook calendar, gCal or iCal we can provide you with a list of potential carpooling buddies. We can now also manage the payments and transfer of charges behind the scenes to ease the flow of money and increasing the financial efficiency of commuting. Finally, we can provide some checks/balances and improve the general service by allowing you to provide feedback and reviews.
The Result: I met a very helpful Angel Investor that provided a lot of guidance and was interested in starting a ycombinator like deal. Shortly, after our first meeting he expressed concern around the potential liability risk and suggested I pivot and come back. I hadn’t found a clear way to get around the risk of circumventing city restrictions around cab-like dispatchers (see Uber’s issues), nor a sure-fire way to mitigate the risk of insurance companies raising issues with their customer who might start renting their daily commute’s extra seats. The time devoted to start-ups had also begun to distract from my engineering classes, and I’d gotten a couple of grades that I still kick myself over. I decided to count my lessons for the time being, and focus on graduating and moving to other types of projects where I could continue learning.
Here’s my very early elevator speech for SmartCarpooling.com
