Andrés Moreno se ha convertido en una reconocida figura del emprendimiento a nivel global por haber creado Open English, la empresa líder en la enseñanza del inglés en más de 20 países. Como Director General de su empresa, ha levantado más de US$120 millones de capital de inversión y ampliado sus operaciones de manera explosiva,sirviendo a casi 500.000 estudiantes.
Al mismo tiempo, Andrés es Fundador de Next University, institución de educación superior online, dirigida a la clase media emergente latinoamericana, para desarrollo de destrezas prácticas que permiten ingresar de inmediato al mercado de trabajo.
Andrés es un pionero en llevar proyectos latinoamericanos a Silicon Valley. A pesar de todos los obstáculos, demostró el potencial que tiene nuestra región para dar vida a empresas de alto crecimiento. Hoy en día invierte su tiempo en apoyar emprendedores a perseguir sus sueños, no solo como inversionista ángel sino también como mentor, y a través de su rol en la junta directiva de la Fundación Endeavor, dedicada a potenciar empresas de impacto global.
El crecimiento explosivo de Open English y el pujante rol de emprendedor de Andrés, ha sido ampliamente reseñado en los medios más importante de las Américas como el Wall Street Journal, CNN, El Mercurio, Miami Herald entre otros.
I'm Andres Moreno, founder and CEO of OpenEnglish.com. Growing up I lived in 8 different countries, from Slovenia to Chile, and I'm currently working to roll-out our online English school in over a dozen emerging markets. The following is an account of the people, experiences and ideas that spark along the way.
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 9:31AM Say hello to the people that will be working on continued improvements to your learning platform! Our new team in Buenos Aires joins forces with our 15 existing Caracas-based developers.
Friday, November 4, 2011 at 12:50PM It’s easy to be tempted to take too much investor money when you’re first starting out. Recently I’ve talked to a couple entrepreneurs who were ecstatic to secure $500k -1million with just an idea. It’s sometimes hard to understand this early on, but a lot of money upfront isn’t always the best move for the long-term success of your company.
I worked with one talented, eager entrepreneur recently. He had started his company with a single investor who was willing to fund a half million upfront and give him 10% equity to run the business. It sounded great to him at the time. But ironically, as he became successful and raised more money, that initial half-million soon became irrelevant.
He suddenly found himself stuck. Since he had already traded away most of his company equity for that one upfront investment, it was difficult to progress much further
When he needed more funding, he didn’t have much left to offer new investors. When he wanted to hire top-notch executives, he couldn’t really offer them much in the way of a company stake.
Plus, can you imagine how hard it is to stay motivated once you’re working for 10% ownership in your own company versus a higher stake? Working all those long days, nights, and weekends became a lot tougher. After all, 90% of all his success would just keep going back to one investor…someone who didn’t even play an active role in the company anymore.
This entrepreneur would have been much better off with a more conservative approach.
Maybe he could have started smaller: pulling together dedicated time/brainpower to develop a beta site, launch it and show some promising traction early on.
Maybe he could have squeezed by with a $20k loan from friends and family, just to cover some expenses.
That would have given him a lot more breathing room and flexibility to give away some equity to people who could have helped him take the company to higher levels, as he continued to grow.
Think carefully before you give away too much valuable equity when you first start out. The long-term price you pay may not be worth it. There is a right time to raise a lot of money…but it may not necessarily be during your seed round.
Monday, October 31, 2011 at 6:20PM Our Miami team dressed up for halloween today! The finance department won the costume contest by dressing up like gypsies (it was witty...gypsies managing our money...we had to give it to them!). The product team on the other hand, won the baking competition with their themed cupcakes. Can you believe the level of detail on those spider and mummy cupcakes!! Unreal... and so yummy...
Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 10:04AM Here's a pic we took of our board of directors during our quarterly meeting this week. Glad Jon Karlen was smiling, because everyone else looks so serious!
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 9:18PM We've been getting some great testimonials on our facebook page...here are my favorties from this week. Enjoy!
