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Scoolinary, a recipe for bringing people together. Success stories

IESE Standout — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 08:04:34 +0000

Five entrepreneurs have turned their passion for gastronomy into Scoolinary, the world’s largest online cooking school. The Scoolinary team is: Vicente Fortea (production director), Maria Parareda (director of content), Martin Caleau (director of technology), Lorena Hidalgo (director of marketing & communication) and Jordi Ber (CEO). All of them are part of IESE’s School of Founders (SoF).

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It has been said, “Cooking is the alchemy of love.” In 2020, that alchemy came together in the form of Scoolinary, an online cooking school now adding one new course per week to its growing catalog of more than 300 courses, with 6,500 lessons, 550 hours of video and 2,000 recipes and counting.

Scoolinary was conceived in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when half the planet was locked down at home. A lot of people suddenly decided to try their hand at cooking all kinds of new recipes, watching video tutorials online. Remember the global craze for bread baking?

At the time, serial entrepreneur Jordi Ber was looking to create “a purpose-driven, global, scalable project aimed at people accustomed to working with their hands.” In that moment, his business vision found its focus: cooking.

The right ingredients

To turn the idea into reality, Ber knew he needed to gather the right ingredients. He tapped Maria Parareda, founder of Creative Signatures, another startup related to online cooking classes. She joined as content director. Mutual friends put him in touch with Lorena Hidalgo, a skilled marketer and cook, and Vicente Fortea, a chef and gastronomy consultant. They became key members of the team. For tech expertise, Ber recruited a former colleague, Martin Caleau, with whom he had launched Habitissimo in 2009, a platform for finding home tradespeople.

The goal was for “one plus one to equal three,” says Ber. Although each resided in different parts of Spain — Madrid, Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca — the team had no problem organizing themselves remotely.

“We wanted to leverage our individual expertise and backgrounds to cover all the main pillars of the business,” says Parareda. “Although not all of us knew each other personally, our extensive experience in the field allowed us to work well together.”

For financing, they used some of their own savings, but this wouldn’t be enough to create all the quality content they needed. On top of their own funds, they secured investments from business angels and venture capitalists. And they obtained a loan from Enisa, the Spanish government body dedicated to supporting entrepreneurial endeavors.

Scaling the business

Scoolinary has amassed 28,000 paying users — a figure in line with the team’s growth expectations to date. Users are able to take their passion for gastronomy to a whole other level under the guidance of chefs who are internationally renowned, Michelin-starred and/or listed in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants ranking. For example, users can learn to cook shellfish with Spanish chef Paco Perez; create technically precise dishes and aesthetically beautiful plating with Manhattan-based Australian chef Shaun Hergatt; or delve into the world of spices with Anjalina Chugani, a specialist in Indian cuisine.

The team’s initial plan was to provide a training tool for the hospitality industry. “But we soon realized there was a great deal of interest from foodies and cooking enthusiasts in general, both from amateurs as well as knowledgeable chefs,” says Hidalgo. Pivoting in this direction has allowed them to achieve continuous growth.

Scoolinary has gone from being available only in Spanish to operating in other languages. “From the beginning, we were clear that we had to be able to internationalize the project,” says Caleau.

Artificial intelligence has been key to their scalability, allowing automatic subtitling and dubbing into other languages. Natural language processing enables AI assistants to answer queries or provide 24-hour assistance.

The power of tech

The pervasiveness of digitalization in society works in their favor. In addition to new AI tools helping to generate content, streaming platforms like Netflix have demonstrated the viability of subscription-based business models. Social media channels like Instagram have made haute cuisine go mainstream, spawning the phrase “phone eats first.”

Ber cites the Basque Culinary Center (BCC) as an example of “the democratizing power of technology.” Located in the northern region of Spain famous for its gastronomy, BCC is a nonprofit foundation that receives corporate sponsorship so they can offer courses, conferences and collaborate on culinary innovation projects and do research on gastronomy and nutrition. With the addition of an online component, people can now access training from wherever they are for as little as 6 euros a month, as opposed to attending in-person courses costing thousands of euros.

As tech accelerates content production and specialist knowledge becomes more universally available, the curation of content becomes paramount, so they can deliver content that is ever more relevant and accessible to users.

In the medium term, they expect to continue growing in the markets where they are already present, particularly in the Spanish- and English-speaking ones. “We will keep investing in the product, working hand-in-hand with the best to produce more and more content on global cuisine,” says Caleau. They also plan on increasing the experiences they offer, such as awarding qualifications, as they cultivate an ever more culturally diverse community united by cooking.

Learning to be leaders

The five Scoolinary partners are currently participating in the School of Founders, which IESE launched in 2022 to equip entrepreneurs with the skills, knowledge and mindsets they need to transform their startups into large, purpose-driven companies. For Ber, it’s “an opportunity to improve as leaders, spend time together and grow as a group.” He considers such training to be vital, since “one isn’t born an entrepreneur but it’s something that can be learned.”

Fortea highlights how enriching it has been for him “to learn from other business experiences and discover that other entrepreneurs from diverse sectors have faced many of the same challenges that a project like ours entails.”

The five teammates share a vision of conscious capitalism, as advocated by the School of Founders’ Director Sebastian Ross. In this sense, they try to amplify the voices of marginalized professionals in the hospitality sector, and they plan to offer scholarships for training. In addition, they donate a percentage of sales to initiatives that mitigate climate change, acknowledging the impact of food production and food waste on the planet. Scoolinary has obtained B Corp certification verifying the company is meeting high standards of performance, accountability and transparency.

“We believe the creation of companies and jobs should generate wealth but also make a positive contribution to society,” says Ber. A healthy recipe for doing business today.

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Christophe Chevallier, crafting beer from bread. Success stories

IESE Standout — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 07:51:05 +0000

Christophe Chevallier (IESE MiM-21) prioritizes sustainability and people. His Lavoisier brewpub in Madrid, which transforms leftover bread into craft beer, combines both his passions.

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“Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.” This quote, attributed to the 18th century French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, captures the idea that, rather than creating or destroying something, we can transform it into something new. It’s highly appropriate then that when French chef and entrepreneur Christophe Chevallier decided to open a brewpub in Madrid in 2022, he named it Lavoisier. Not only does he transform leftover bread into craft beer, based on principles of the circular economy, but he has also transformed the bitterness of his early work experiences into a more humane way of doing business and treating people.

Growing up in the famous French wine region of Burgundy, Chevallier developed a natural love of gastronomy, which led him to study at the prestigious Ferrandi culinary school in Paris. Before long, he was cooking at some of the best Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris.

His culinary dreams, however, ran up against harsh realities that would define his future path: “I witnessed some of the worst treatment of employees that you can imagine. The days were exhausting and the pressure was too much,” he recalls. Those formative experiences in Paris made him see things differently and reaffirmed his principles: where others only saw resources, he would always see people.

Realizing he had to find another way to pursue his dreams, Chevallier decided to get a bachelor’s degree in management from EMD Business School in Marseille. There, he encountered an entirely different way of treating people.

“The head of faculty knew each student by name. He even contacted me to wish me a happy birthday even though my birthday falls in the middle of summer,” says Chevallier. The experience could not have been more different from what he had experienced in Paris.

A plan with a purpose

Thus inspired, Chevallier wanted to continue studying management after graduation, but he wasn’t going to settle for any master’s program; it had to be underpinned by strong ethical, humanistic values. An EMD professor recommended IESE Business School. Although he would be based in Madrid, the international nature of IESE’s Master in Management (MiM) meant English was the language of instruction, which suited Chevallier, who did not yet speak Spanish. Most important for Chevallier was that IESE had the right philosophy he was looking for, which chimed with that of Chevallier’s family business group, Théos. “Our group is committed to taking special care of our employees, our customers and our suppliers, and operating in a socially responsible manner,” he says.

A highlight of the MiM was putting together a business plan: “Working in small teams, we drew upon everything we had learned and went through all the necessary steps — brainstorming, market research, financials, minimum viable product — and submitted a final business plan to a jury of professors and investors who, if they saw the project as viable, might invest in it.”

“The most difficult part was finding a good business idea. It was important to find something that we were passionate about. My team and I wanted to develop a product focused on sustainability, but with high scalability.”

Chevallier’s eureka moment came when he saw a local supermarket throwing away a huge amount of bread at the end of every day. “I wondered how we could take advantage of all that waste.”

A solution already existed: recycling leftover bread into beer. Indeed, it is believed that the ancient Egyptians had discovered a way of making beer by letting bread ferment in water. Based on similar principles, they figured the bread that supermarkets, bakeries and restaurants were going to throw away anyway could be substituted for 30%-50% of the malt used in beer.

Originally, their plan was to distribute their specialty beer directly to local bars. But the more Chevallier thought about it, he began to get other ideas.

Caring for people and the environment

Rather than being a private label brewer, distributing his product through other bars, why not open his own brewpub and distribute his own product himself? It made sense, since he would sell only what he produced, without intermediaries, and this would give him greater control over the experience he was able to offer to his own customers.

The Lavoisier brewpub opened in Malasaña, a hip neighborhood popular with students in Madrid. It offers tastings of craft beer, which is produced in collaboration with the Mica Brewery, located in Spain’s Ribera del Duero region, using leftover bread from area bakeries. Chevallier is already looking to expand his premises to be able to brew more beer.

In many ways, Lavoisier reflects the principles of caring for people and the environment that are so central, not only to Chevallier, but to his family business group, which also owns a stake in the business. He explains how their core values manifest themselves:

Renewal. “We have recovered more than a ton of bread that would otherwise have ended up going to waste.”
Conscious collaboration. “We choose to partner with a local artisanal brewer that shares our vision of sustainability, the circular economy and inclusion.”
Purposeful design. “Almost all the decor in our brewpub comes from recycled or repurposed materials — for example, reusing wood from old boats.”
Human attention. “We seek to maintain stable relationships with our customers, as well as with our employees and suppliers — whom we pay on time — built on an understanding of transparency and fairness.”
Work-life balance. “We close on Sundays and Mondays. While we could make more money if we opened on Sundays, for us it is vital that people have time off for rest, and Sundays are when people traditionally spend time with their families.”

For Chevallier, “the quality of our human relationships is what determines the economic results.” That is what life, school and family have taught him, and that is what guides his next steps. “Maybe Lavoisier is the beginning of a small revolution.”

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Elena Betés. From dreaming of a different culture to founding Rastreator. Success stories

IESE Standout — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 17:05:32 +0000

Elena Betés is CEO of Dide.org, Vice President of Education at Red Ventures, founder of Rastreator, and holder of an IESE MBA. She has two children.

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Elena Betés, founder of the insurance comparison platform and broker Rastreator, believes that, in her career, the “failures have been much more important than the successes.” “The reason for this is that I have learned a lot from them. Above all, I’ve learned how to endure,” she clarifies.

But something very important happened prior to those failures: she realized that the environment of a major international consulting firm like Arthur Andersen was not for her. She had experienced the glass ceilings and confirmed that was not her world. “I wanted to live in an environment where I was the one making the rules,” she recalls.

It was at that point that she decided to do an MBA at IESE, because she thought that was the best way to learn how to start a business or, at the very least, to clarify her ideas about what it meant to set up a business. Betés’ first company, PuntoSeguro, was created with funds from her friends, family, and classmates from her master’s degree. It was the first online insurance comparison platform and broker created in Spain.

“The business did not scale as quickly as we were expecting and, in addition, I linked it to another identical company that I started in Germany, backed by a European conglomerate, and it went bankrupt,” explains Betés. It was a moment that caused her to reflect and wonder “whether I really wanted to keep trying.”

Once she had decided, however, she changed her mentality. “I stopped being afraid of failing and started to feel as though I didn’t have anything left to lose.” The way in which other people were betting their money on the projects that she wanted to lead also began to fill her with confidence: the best part was just around the corner.

Founding Rastreator

And then came Rastreator, or rather, Betés founded it, at arguably the most difficult moment. It was 2008, and the international financial crisis was spreading everywhere like a giant tsunami. The British multinational Admiral partnered with her in a venture which, at the start, relied on two major milestones: strong growth in Spain and a technological center in New Delhi, which Betés herself created. Mapfre invested in Rastreator in less than a year.

“It really was the opportunity that we had been looking for,” confirms the director, “to develop a unique culture in which both employees and clients were treated as authentic individuals.” It wasn’t enough to offer excellent service, or to focus on the consumer. Betés wanted to go one step further.

Based on the success of Rastreator, Admiral entrusted her with the development of similar platforms in the United Kingdom and France, and committed to financing the international expansion of Rastreator, matching the investment that she was able to get from other investors. “I was able to get €20 million, and they contributed another €20 million,” she points out. Later on, in 2020, the platforms that the director had founded and developed were sold for €500 million.

But not all these ventures were victories. In 2015, Admiral joined forces with Mapfre to move into major markets such as China, Turkey, India and Mexico. “And in all of these markets,” recalls Betés, “we were only really successful in Mexico. China, for example, became one of the failures that I have learned the most from in my career.”

“Failures have been much more important than successes in my career, because I have learned a lot from them. Above all, I’ve learned how to endure.”

Elena Betés, CEO of Dide.org, Vice President of Education at Red Ventures, founder of Rastreator, and IESE MBA.

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Failure as fuel

Betés believes that failing has been one of her biggest “sources of inspiration.” And these ideas helped her convert her defeats into major drivers to continue moving forward:

1) Failures help me understand the future of the business. They are necessary.

2) Nothing starts or ends with a defeat. The game goes on until you concede.

3) Failures are the challenge life has given me. A challenge that I know I can and will overcome.

4) Defeats only weaken you when you don’t learn from them. Or when you believe you have nothing to learn.

This is real leadership. Real people, sharing valuable experiences and lessons learned from mistakes they’ve made.

A culture of people, for people

Betés recalls that, for her, it was not enough to launch a successful business, or to learn from her mistakes. She was just as passionate about creating a culture that respected “the authenticity of who you really are, promoting a flexible work-life balance, the conviction that obstacles are just challenges that can always be overcome, and the importance of attitude over aptitude.”

When the moment came to launch and expand Rastreator, she knew for sure: “I wanted a culture where we were all obsessed with excellence, and with being the best, but where we also knew why we were doing what we were doing, and everyone was doing it in their own way, not necessarily being uniform.” No one needed to be the same as anyone else, or dress like soldiers, or sleep in a dorm in order to feel like they were part of a winning organization that shared their dreams.

And these dreams came through in a shared culture that not only encouraged talent, but also a very concrete customer concept. And this is where Betés opted to put herself on the front line: “I decided to get stuck in, speaking directly with some of our users, offering them a telephone conversation with the CEO of Rastreator, during which I asked them to tell me what they expected from us and how we could help them more.”

But what about the leadership culture? What example did Betés want to set for her own staff, for the other directors, and for thousands of women beyond her company, whether they were directors or not?

In this sense, Betés has her priorities straight, “demonstrating that you can be both a good mother, although you sometimes miss some first teeth, and a groundbreaking leader of a multinational company that launches successful products onto the market at the same time.”

“The Elon Musk model of sleeping in the office is not only unnecessary in a world where you can work remotely and automate processes, it also isn’t sustainable for anyone,” she adds.

Betés spends her time seeking to find the best way to develop talent. As Vice President of Education at Red Ventures in the United States, she became ever more aware of “the need for diversity in companies,” in addition to the role women play in “making the difference, and creating new worlds and cultures in environments that were, until recently, exclusively male.” Due to her support of this cause, Betés won the International Women’s Entrepreneurial Challenge (IWEC) award in November 2022.

Recently, Betés became CEO of Dide.org, an edtech tool with the mission of becoming a global leader in educational inclusion. The tool detects a child’s strengths and weaknesses, allowing learning problems to be identified in a holistic way and facilitating actions that can be taken according to individual needs.

All these objectives and concerns are shared by IESE, which has developed a wide range of courses and activities through the Women Win platform to support women like Betés in their personal and professional development and aspirations to lead.

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Carlos Archilla-Cady, reaching for the stars. Success stories

IESE Standout — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 10:11:06 +0000

Pediatric anesthesiologist, speaker and advocate for disability inclusion, based in Florida. A U.S. Navy veteran, he recently completed the Global Executive MBA at IESE. He collaborates with commercial space companies to test the effects of zero gravity on eye pressure in a person with glaucoma, and he is preparing for his first space flight in 2025.

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Reaching for the stars

In 2000, Dr. Carlos Archilla-Cady was driving home from work when he lost all vision – the world suddenly became a dense white fog before him. He managed to pull over, and in half an hour, his sight had cleared enough to continue home. Badly shaken, he went to an ophthalmologist. His eye pressures were found to be highly elevated, characteristic of glaucoma.

It was the beginning of many years of challenges, operations and even corneal transplants – but also the beginning of new adventures and (literally) new horizons that would soon be sending him into space.

A career backup plan

As a pediatric anesthesiologist at Nemours Children’s Health in Orlando, Florida, Archilla-Cady knew that any permanent vision impairment would have left him unable to work as a clinician. When glaucoma was formally diagnosed, “I realized how much I had to lose,” he recalls.

For the next 19 years, he was subject to a range of steadily more invasive procedures, from eyedrops several times a day, to operations to insert fluid-draining valves behind his eyelids, to eventually corneal transplants. These transplants were rejected by his body twice, but the third one, in 2019, has been successful so far.

Being a transplant recipient has made him a passionate advocate of organ, tissue and eye donation. “I am eternally grateful to the donors and their families,” he says, explaining that not only did they restore his sight, they gave him a new lease on life.

Throughout these ups and downs, Archilla-Cady realized he would need a career backup plan if he never fully recovered. As a healthcare leader, he believed in lifelong learning and had taken various courses at prestigious business schools. But now he felt he needed a formal degree, which led him to the Global Executive MBA at IESE, which he began in 2020.

“IESE was very accommodating of my disability the whole time, something that I needed most at the beginning of the program,” he says. “While I was applying, I mentioned that I would need certain accommodations, which they were happy to provide. By the time I actually started, I was on the road to recovery following my latest transplant.”

This episode of disability has sensitized him to the need for inclusion in all aspects of life and in the business world, and for Archilla-Cady, that mission has taken on epic proportions.

Redefining “the right stuff”

Usually, children dream of becoming astronauts. The reality is that professional astronauts are an elite club – part scientist, part Olympic athlete. The term “the right stuff” – referring to the mental and physical traits needed to succeed – was popularized by the book and movie of the same name, about the first human spaceflight program of the United States at the height of the Space Race. But what if what was considered “the right stuff” in the ’50s and ’60s was wrong today? Archilla-Cady reflected on this when thinking about the 1997 fire aboard the Mir space station. In that fire, the crew were slow to respond due to a power cut that left them in the dark. Might someone with a visual impairment have been able to react more quickly?

The astronaut dream suddenly took on new meaning. When Archilla-Cady read about a group of people living with disabilities who were invited on a zero-gravity flight, he felt uniquely positioned to add value.

Astronauts who spend significant time on the International Space Station often experience swelling of the optic nerve and have reduced vision when they return to Earth. As someone living with a complex eye disease, Archilla-Cady was concerned about the effects of microgravity on visual acuity. Data have been gathered from healthy volunteers, but Archilla-Cady felt data collected from people like him could provide richer insights into the effects of microgravity on the human eye, opening the potential for people like him to participate in space travel.

Archilla-Cady has already completed microgravity training with NASA and undergone a zero-gravity simulation flight, in which he made what are believed to be the first-in-history measurements of its effects on eye pressure in a person with active glaucoma.

“My pressures were normal before the flight,” he says. “However, my intraocular pressures increased 31% in both eyes within seconds of entering zero gravity and returned to normal within minutes of leaving zero gravity.”

Asked if subjecting his eyes to these extreme conditions worries him, Archilla-Cady responds that “there are always risks but my medical team believes these are minimal. After eight minutes in zero gravity, my pressures normalized, with no lasting effects.”

With space travel getting to be less and less of a dream and more of a reality for non-career astronauts, Archilla-Cady plans to be blasting off in 2025, pleased to represent in space the kind of inclusion that he also works hard to achieve on Earth. Adamant that space exploration needs to democratize access, he is cheered that a community of businesses and individuals are working to make inclusion in space travel possible. He believes the experiences of people living with disabilities can help experts come up with innovative solutions to include them in future space exploration programs. Those who go into outer space frequently report how it gives them an entirely new perspective on Earth, leading them to appreciate the planet and value human connectedness even more – something that resonates with Archilla-Cady’s own life-changing journey.

Disability as an asset

Ever since that fateful drive home, Archilla-Cady has had to work creatively to deal with his fluctuating vision and the various interventions to improve it. The experience underscored for him both the importance of disability inclusion and the special skill set that having a disability often fosters.

Specifically, living with a disability requires resilience, grit, determination, empathy and flexibility – all desirable traits in employees and leaders more generally. Archilla-Cady, for example, has pursued education, returned to work during the pandemic when his medical skills were in high demand, and begun his training for space. Thriving with a disability demands constant innovation to function in a world that isn’t adapted to it.

“I think the skills that come from living with a disability can be helpful to business,” he says. “We’re used to having to navigate difficult terrain in one way or another. We can respond quickly and creatively if things go wrong.”

“Disability doesn’t mean inability; it means that capabilities are exercised differently. It’s also worth considering that a billion people around the world live with some type of disability – which likely includes many of your customers who would like businesses to move from ‘accessibility’ to full access in the disability economy.”

As with other forms of diversity, disability inclusion inside the company can foster greater connection with a diverse society on the outside. He insists that including people with disabilities in business adds value, and that people with disabilities and limitations should be redefined as assets for any organization. “They really do have ‘the right stuff.’ And their skill set, when applied to business, can be truly transformational.”

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Paolo Fusaro, baking social impact into a startup. Success Stories

IESE Standout — Tue, 03 May 2022 07:20:54 +0000

Social impact is baked into RobinGood’s business model, which gives new meaning to the term “soul food.”

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A man sets out on foot from Mali. He wishes to escape spiraling violence and economic precarity. He travels for two years, mostly walking, until he reaches Spain. For many, the story would end there: the man would be an undocumented migrant, unemployed and with few hopes for the future. But his story has turned out differently. Today he has a job with prospects, making artisanal food products sold in premium retail outlets throughout Spain.

The surprising twist in the story is courtesy of RobinGood, a Spanish brand that aims to be a positive force in society by sourcing locally where possible, employing people at risk of poverty or social exclusion, and bringing business back to depopulated towns.

Success story of Paolo Fusaro

Paolo Fusaro (IESE Executive MBA ’17) was on the lookout for a socially responsible project connected with food when he was introduced to Luis Font. “I’ve had the good luck to have a ‘normal’ life of privilege,” Fusaro explains. Born and raised in Italy, he has also lived in São Paulo; in Paris, where he was purchasing manager for private label products for the French supermarket chain, Carrefour; and now in Barcelona. By the time an EMBA classmate introduced him to Font, he had a hunger to transform the fortunes of those with fewer opportunities. Font had the idea to combine retail with social initiatives; Fusaro brought experience with brands. RobinGood was born.

Ingredients of success

Fusaro came from a successful career in the private sector – as a buyer for Carrefour, an auditor for Deloitte, and managing director in Europe of the HR firm, Polyglot. He also had one unsuccessful venture under his belt. “It’s true what they say: that failure is a learning experience,” he muses. “I knew how to buy, but I realized I needed to learn how to sell.”

By the time he launched RobinGood, he had learned that “you cannot do a social product without superior quality.” And superior strategy. Focusing on quality cookies and breadsticks, the first order of business was, simply, to make them delicious. The next order of business was to find a sustainable way to employ vulnerable communities.

In Spain, there are almost 12 million people – a quarter of the population – at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Helping all of them is clearly impossible. So RobinGood partners with special employment foundations, defined as either employing 51% vulnerable populations or giving 100% of dividends to social causes.

“The majority of our employees – 85% – have intellectual or physical disabilities,” Fusaro explains. The remaining 15% are from vulnerable migrant populations. In Spain, 65% of people with intellectual disabilities are unemployed, although the positive effects of work in creating stability and a sense of purpose are well documented. Working through these employment foundations, RobinGood is able to arrange jobs in a supported manufacturing environment and provide permanent contracts.

Another success story is Alex, hired in 2020. At the time, he was an 18-year-old Ukrainian with an intellectual disability who had been abandoned by both his parents and adoptive parents. Regular, dignified work has been key to turning his life around, giving him hope for the future and something to work toward. For Fusaro, it’s the knowledge of making concrete differences in the lives of people like Alex that satisfies him most about this venture.

Revitalizing rural towns

“You can’t do everything at once, and I can’t employ all 12 million vulnerable people in Spain,” Fusaro admits. Even so, he has found ways to multiply the company’s impact.

One way has been to concentrate some of their employment efforts in small towns. Rural depopulation has been accelerating in Europe since the second half of the 20th century and large swathes of rural Spain are starved of human capital and investment. In Camporrells, near Huesca, the population has dropped to 137. RobinGood is the only company created in the area in the past decade and has provided work for 15 people (over 10% of the population). A further contract offered to help resettle a Syrian family not only adds to the population, it also crucially brings a child who will prevent the local school from closing. These are small changes, but Fusaro believes they can multiply exponentially over time. The idea is to replicate this impact throughout Spain and beyond.

RobinGood is available in a growing number of supermarkets and online, but Fusaro also has plans to increase their impact through partnerships with larger brands. Currently, Danone and Ben & Jerry’s are in the mix – multinationals that can help ensure RobinGood ends up at eye level in the supermarket placement battle.

More than pretty packaging

Many companies are striving to go green and earn prosocial credentials. But greenwashing and social washing are rife. How can a company that is really going the extra mile stand out? And how can consumers really know what they are getting?

The only way to fight it is with information: “Brands need to be more and more transparent,” says Fusaro. “Consumers are demanding that transparency.” Indeed, RobinGood makes it clear that all its packaging is plastic-free, compostable and biodegradable. It is currently in the process of trying to be the first Spanish food company to go “Plastic Negative.”

Brands should also build communities to make sure consumers are aware of what they are doing right, and they should subscribe to organizations that demonstrate their commitment. RobinGood, for example, is a certified B Corporation. Although this designation is not as widely known in Europe as in the United States where it started, it certifies the company’s seriousness in achieving social change. RobinGood currently scores over 80, which means the business is demonstrating high standards of verified social and environmental performance.

Fusaro hopes for a label in the future that will do for the social economy what the Nutri-Score label does for nutrition, clearly signaling to consumers the policies and ethics behind the food they eat.

For the moment, Fusaro’s plans are a mix of the practical and the aspirational. RobinGood has begun producing beer from leftover bread (bread is one of the products with the highest food waste). It also hopes to establish a training school to empower others at risk of social exclusion: while they may not be able to provide them all with direct employment, they want to be able to equip them with skills to help them find jobs elsewhere.

Beyond that, “We want to keep generating employment, to help democratize the social category of products – and to keep changing lives.”

Building a social enterprise

Make the best product. If consumers pay more, they want quality, not just the feel-good factor.
Don’t forget the business side. Social enterprises aren’t charities, and a product with no sales won’t employ anyone.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Partnering with associations and foundations makes it more likely your social enterprise will succeed. Experienced partners will have a better idea of how to adapt tasks to specific worker profiles and needs than you trying to figure it out for yourself.
Build community. Make sure people know what you are doing right, and begin a conversation about transparency that all consumers can benefit from.

Training managers who employ people with intellectual disabilities

Together with the Jose Antonio Segarra Foundation, IESE Barcelona has launched a program for senior managers of companies in Catalonia, Spain, that employ people with intellectual disabilities. Taught in collaboration with the Catalan Federation of Disability (DINCAT), the program aims to help participants improve their management of such companies to guarantee their economic viability. The Jose Antonio Segarra Foundation is a private foundation created in 2022. As part of its mission to promote the work and ideas of the late beloved professor Segarra, the foundation encourages the employment of people with intellectual disabilities as a means of social inclusion.

To further complement this story, we recommend you to also read the following article “Good management” by Rafael Andreu, Josep M. Rosanas and Jose Antonio Segarra, published in IESE Business School Insight 153

Read the article How can an MBA help entrepreneurs?

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Elena de Benavides. Promoting innovation and entrepreneurship in the electricity sector. Success Stories

IESE Standout — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 07:02:32 +0000

After founding seven startups, Elena de Benavides now faces a greater challenge: coordinating innovation and entrepreneurship for Red Eléctrica de España.

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Elena de Benavides (PDD ’13) admits that, as of late, she can hardly find time to check her personal email.

Still under 40 years old, she has already founded seven startups, invested in 10 and served as investment director at Gala Ventures. But her latest challenge is even greater: since September she is coordinating activities related to open innovation and entrepreneurship for Red Eléctrica de España (REE), one of Spain’s biggest companies.

As REE’s Open Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lead, she is looking for entrepreneurs, ideas and projects that can contribute to profoundly transforming the company. In her quiver are a “venture capital fund that allows for investing in startups where there are synergies, accelerating startups with early-stage technologies that, if given support and assets from Red Eléctrica, could offer a distinctive value, and exploring new business models with more established companies”.

Without fear of the unknown

Benavides is quite aware that one of the greatest challenges she faces is knowing how to manage the unknown. No one knows with certainty where the electricity sector revolution is headed, but none of the main players within this sector can afford to stay put, to stop moving forward or to stop experimenting with less linear and unidirectional systems until, little by little, they figure out which track is the one they should be on.

And this, Benavides points out, “implies philosophical, cultural and technological challenges for the sector’s main stakeholders, from distributors to carriers, all the people involved in the system’s operation, and the customers, who should be aware of the consequences of their energy consumption.” In addition, operators such as REE are called on to play a crucial role in electrification of the economy, key in the fight against climate change. Artificial intelligence, big data, and the internet of things (IoT) are emerging as some of their allies.

“Innovation implies philosophical, cultural and technological challenges for the sector”.

Elena de Benavides (PDD’ 13).

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It is no small challenge, but then again, neither were Benavides’ previous professional endeavors. She has founded seven startups in a country where only 22% of these projects are spearheaded by women, and has served as director of investments within the venture capital and private equity sector, where female representation in positions of leadership is minimal.

Managing “emotional and economic mayhem” in startups

Among the toughest challenges that Benavides had to overcome as investment director at Gala Ventures was the “the professional change in itself of moving from the realm of entrepreneurship to the venture capital sector, where leadership positions are typically held by finance experts, and where the management of the emotional and economic mayhem of the startup teams you’re investing in and which later begin to take off comes into play, and, lastly, creating an area within Gala where the particularities of this type of business operation could be better understood.”

While she was facing these challenges, the sector as a whole experienced, in the space of just a few years, a sudden change: “We professionalized quickly, many people who we could co-invest and associate with came onto the scene, and the money that came in multiplied.” She also admits that with so much capital, “some companies’ valuations skyrocketed beyond reasonable amounts.”

She knows the market well because in 2017 she had invested, directly and personally, in projects such as Zapiens Tribe, which manages knowledge and human resources; fintech Rebellion; and photo app Mimento.

She had arrived at Gala Ventures after serving as CEO of the most successful startup she has managed to date. According to Benavides, “the International Institute of Phlebology allowed us to improve the quality of life of many people with venous pathologies.” How? Essentially, by “offering an injectable solution that we had patented which prevented them from having to go through surgery”.

Her joining the institute and her time there from 2010 to 2014 can be explained by the same three factors that have prompted Benavides to participate in startups: “Completely understanding the business model and the social need that it meets, that there be an economic exchange between the company and its customers and, lastly, collaboration and total trust in the team”.

Importance of training

A few months before making the switch to the venture capital firm Gala Venture, while acting as CEO at the International Institute of Phlebology, Benavides completed IESE’s Programa de Desarrollo Directivo (PDD is equivalent in English to Program for Management Development). Then, in 2013, “the program gave me not only new knowledge, but it also helped me open my mind, to broaden my vision of seeing different areas within a company in a very practical way, and to understand, for example, finances, even though I’m not a finance specialist.

“For me,” she says, “it was a truly formative experience, and I continue to have ties to the school because I belong to its network of investors and entrepreneurs, I receive information on specialized programs that can complete my knowledge and we’ve even created a small investment vehicle with my former PDD classmates that allows us to stay up to date on what’s happening in different sectors.”

Benavides forms part of IESE’s Business Angels Network, which brings investors together with startups, and has also been a mentor in IESE Women Angels, which promotes investment by women.

IESE has developed a wide range of courses and activities through the Women Win platform to support women like Elena in their personal and professional development and aspirations to lead.

Elena de Benavides: 3 keys to remember

The main challenge: managing the unknown.

Collaboration with and total trust in the team.

Training is essential: it helps to open your mind and gives you knowledge that you lacked.

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Timo Buetefisch. From MBA to Cooltra founder. Success stories

IESE Standout — Tue, 04 May 2021 10:56:02 +0000

Timo Buetefisch, co-founder and CEO of Cooltra Group, persisted in his entrepreneurial spirit until he founded a project that today has over 400 employees and a presence in more than 50 cities and eight countries.

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It all started as great stories begin: with a dream. Timo Buetefisch wanted to start a company, create a project of his own, solve problems and have a positive impact on the world. When he was younger, he started his first company. But it was a failure and he lost “a lot of money,” he admits.

He needed to change his strategy, so shortly afterwards he began his MBA at IESE. He was attracted to the demands of the program, the case method and its strength in Europe. In addition, he wanted to meet students and professors who were as passionate about entrepreneurship as he was. He needed to create new contacts and sources of inspiration. And he did just that.

A tireless spirit

Before finishing his MBA, he had already started his next project: Lilium. A platform for the sale and distribution of flowers that was given a 60,000-euro investment from a business angel. It didn’t work out as he expected, but he went on, undiscouraged. He would only take a step back to regain momentum.

In 2004, he decided to take some time to recover financially and reflect. His education, experience and talent allowed him to become an assistant to the CEO of Grupo Bertelsmann in Barcelona. He spent two eye-opening years there until he, quite literally, hit the road again.

St. Paul fell off his horse and Timo found inspiration when his motorcycle wouldn’t start. It was when his bike broke down that he began to see things clearly.

From having a problem to inventing a sector

While he was desperately trying to move around Barcelona with the same agility as always while his motorcycle was in the shop, he realized that he wasn’t alone. This had to be a problem for more people in the city besides himself, he thought.

His irritation with the situation didn’t last long, though, because shortly after he came up with “the idea of setting up a motorcycle sharing rental company in Barcelona.” To get it started, he found a partner who “had 50 scooters in a garage and didn’t know what to do with them.” Shortly after, they both set out to buy 25 more. They were small at this point, true. But they were one-of-a-kind. They were inventing a sector.

Long before shared mobility appeared on the front page of any newspaper, Timo and his partner took over the streets of Barcelona. This is how Cooltra was born, a motorcycle sharing rental platform that today has more than 18,000 motorcycles in more then 50 cities and eight countries (Spain, Italy, Portugal, France, Czech Republic, Austria, Poland and Germany).

And that’s not all. The two intrepid partners also anticipated a widespread concern about reducing carbon emissions. For years they had felt that shared mobility should be, above all, sustainable. And that’s why today 75% of Cooltra’s fleet is totally electric.

Can an MBA help you launch a start-up?

One of the turning points in Timo Buetefisch’s successful career as an entrepreneur was his experience in IESE’s MBA program. At IESE, he says, he received a first-class education. He studied “almost 1,000 different business case studies.” The master’s degree gave him a winning mentality that helped him to learn how to never throw in the towel despite how difficult things became. “I think the MBA program gives you a lot of confidence in yourself,” he says.

The program also opened the doors to a vibrant entrepreneurial community, which includes venture capital fund Finaves and the Business Angels Network. Moreover, there was also a career platform that allowed him to contact and recruit some of the brightest IESE alumni.

But the thing Buetefisch values the most about his experience at IESE were the classes. The classrooms, he recalls, were a space where “70 talented and ambitious people of different backgrounds, ages and academic backgrounds used to meet, collaborate and debate. It wasn’t a competitive environment at all, but it was challenging,” he admits. Thus, it is not surprising that a number of Cooltra’s employees are also IESE alumni.

Timo Buetefisch: Keys to his success story

Learn, always. Never give up.
If you want to win, believe in yourself.
If you don’t have contacts, you have nothing.
You are good. Communicate that well.
Do you want to be a great CEO? Get training.
Open your eyes wide: good ideas appear unexpectedly.

Read the article How can an MBA help entrepreneurs?

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Iván Tintoré. From a parachute jump to a general management course. Success stories

IESE Standout — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 10:39:43 +0000

Iván Tintoré, director at iContainers Solutions, enrolled in IESE’s General Management Program after losing a bet to his wife. Want to know what the bet was?

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Discover his story in this video:

Elena Fontelles, CEO at Happets.com, had it very clear: when challenges arise at work, you need a clear method for finding the best solution in record time. And that can be learned. What’s more, you have to learn it as soon as possible.

Elena had completed the IESE General Management Program (PDG) in 2017. And it had served her precisely to learn this approach to problem solving. The case method had given her a new strategic vision and she believed that the same path would also be very useful for her husband, Iván Tintoré. But she also knew that it wouldn’t be easy to convince him to do it.

Iván acknowledges that his working hours are extremely long and that he turns off his cell phone around eleven or twelve at night. All this, plus his family responsibilities barely leaves him time for another one of his passions: flying. Occasionally he also enjoys parachuting. Where was he going to find the time to go back to school?

But Elena hadn’t reached where she was professionally by giving up on the first try. So, she started a campaign to persuade her husband that the program was going to be as useful to him as it had been for her. Ivan, however, was hiding an ace up his sleeve to avoid pressure. Aware of his wife’s respect for heights, he told her: “I’ll do the PDG, if you parachute.”

Contradicting how well Iván believed he knew his wife, in less than a week they had already jumped out of a plane. Elena smiles whenever she remembers how everything happened: “They say that you always have to find new ways to surprise your partner, right?”

Both agree that there is a clear parallel between doing a management program and parachuting: they are both experiences that prepare you to know how to react to pressing challenges without being overwhelmed by confusion or fear.

Exactly one year after Elena finished her General Management Program (PDG) at IESE, Iván began his. The equivalent to this Spanish-imparted program for English speakers is the Advanced Management Program (AMP).The first day of classes, when a professor asked participants why they had decided to do it, he got up “with great humility”, smiled and said: “I’ve been forced to do it because I lost a bet to my wife.” And it didn’t take long for him to plunge into the experience with the same giddy illusion with which his wife had jumped out of that plane.

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Amna Alyamani. Empowering Saudi women. Success stories

IESE Standout — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 11:53:51 +0000

Amna Alyamani, an MBA graduate, returned to her home country of Saudi Arabia to set up a bakery-café that employs only women.

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Amna Alyamani returned to Saudi Arabia after finishing her MBA, where she dreamed of empowering women and putting into action her new entrepreneurial skills – one croissant at a time.

Alyamani, a Class of 2019 MBA, is set up a bakery-café in her home city of Jeddah that employs only women: three the first year, and another six the following year. If all goes well, in the third year she will begin franchising, with an estimated nine employees per location.

Amna Bakery was founded in Sep ’19 on the grounds that the hospitality industry in Saudi Arabia needs to be more inclusive, empowering women to learn and grow in the industry.

But if the scale is initially small, the ambitions are not. “The objective is to empower women and create jobs,” she says. As someone who trained formally as a pastry chef, she wants to start small and scale once quality and training standards are in place.

The bakery produces high-quality but reasonably priced breads, croissants and other pastries, as well as sweets such as brownies, cookies and cakes. It sells fresh juices, teas and weekly roasted coffee as well. Her production estimate for the first year was around 90,000 units.

That’s 90,000 brownies, cookies and pieces of cake produced by women who historically have had limited opportunities in the labor market but who in recent years have been allowed to work in sectors, such as hospitality, once closed to them. “I want to empower more people to work,” she says. “I will give you the tools and the training to be able to work.”

Slipping through cracks in the labor market

It’s a hopeful return to Saudi Arabia for Alyamani, who earned a BA in Hospitality Management and Marketing from the Glion Institute of Higher Education in Switzerland and has a certificate in Basic Patisserie from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.

After she finished her undergraduate degree, Alyamani decided to go back to Saudi Arabia to work in the food sector, with the idea of learning the industry from the ground up. But that plan was thwarted by strict regulations limiting what Saudi women are allowed to do in the workplace.

Instead, she began working in the marketing department of Al Baik, a Jeddah-based fast food chain specializing in fried chicken and shrimp. Of the 5,500 employees of Al Baik at the time, only three were women, including two daughters of the owners. “Women weren’t really allowed to work in the hospitality sector,” she says.

But in recent years, the kingdom has introduced some tentative economic and social reforms, in the hopes of preparing the economy for a post-oil age. While last year’s lifting of the ban on women driving has received much media attention, just as important are recent measures to expand their role in the workplace.

They are reforms born, at least in part, of necessity: While unemployment for Saudi men is just under 7%, according to official statistics, joblessness among Saudi women is more than 30%.

“It taught me to have a voice”

After five years with Al Baik, Alyamani realized she wanted to strike out on her own. She also realized she didn’t have the business skills to do so. “I realized I didn’t know what I needed to know to set up my own business,” she says. “Entrepreneurship requires a lot of mental strength.”

She decided an MBA would be her best bet, but the path to her MBA was difficult, and she has found the coursework challenging. “But the first ‘A’ I got was in entrepreneurship, so I knew I was on the right track,” she says.

A summer between the first and second years of her MBA spent working in a Paris-based bread factory in the mornings and consulting for a restaurant looking to expand in the afternoons, strengthened her resolve to set up a bakery after graduation.

Beyond acquiring the skills and knowledge to set up and run her own business, the case method used at IESE, with its real-life focus and its reliance on discussion, has taught her to speak her mind and challenge the opinions of others. “It taught me to have a voice and to speak up,” she says.

IESE has developed a wide range of courses and activities through the Women Win platform to support women like Amna in their personal and professional development and aspirations to lead.

“I look at the person who I was before and who I am now and I’m so happy. I’ve never been more ready.”

Amna Alyamani (MBA ’19)

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5 tips from Amna on becoming an entrepreneur amid adversity

Find your voice, make yourself heard and say what you think
Be aware of your mental strengths and work on them
Train, prepare and learn for the future
Follow your gut instinct and don’t be discouraged by others
Plan based on what you believe in — it’s far more effective (and rewarding) than planning on “going viral”

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Steffen Sauer. Entrepreneurship with purpose in Africa. Success Stories

IESE Standout — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 11:22:20 +0000

Walking with rangers in Kenya inspired Steffen Sauer to set up a business that supports rangers and reforestation to protect African wildlife.

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An eye-opening trip to Kenya in 2018 changed Steffen Sauer’s life. The German executive volunteered to live and work alongside rangers as they patrolled Kenya’s wilderness in search of illegal poaching and logging. Kenya’s elephant population and forests are under threat from black-market trade in bush meat, ivory and timber.

“Witnessing the beauty of wildlife and the rangers fighting for it every day while being exposed to so many threats and challenges really made me think,” he recalls.

Getting his hands dirty

“Leave your comfort zone”. That’s one of Sauer’s mottos. And it’s something he has done throughout his career. Working for the German automotive supplier ZF Group, when a role came up as Head of Production for the Asia-Pacific region, he jumped at the chance and moved to China. “If you get a chance to work abroad, do it,” he says. “It will totally change you. You’ll develop a completely new skillset, collect lots of new impressions, and meet people along the way who will leave a mark on you or become your friends”.

After three years in Asia, he returned to Germany and got in touch with Raabia Hawa, a Kenyan conservationist who runs the Ulinzi Africa Foundation, a nonprofit focused on ranger welfare and wildlife protection. Sauer explains, “At that point, I wanted to get more involved than just sitting on my couch watching nature documentaries and donating to organizations at Christmastime”.

Little could he have imagined, as he watched the sunrise over his camp, that in a year’s time he would launch a social enterprise, and the hot drink in his hand would be a Kenyan coffee whose purchase would go toward wildlife conservation in the country he had grown to love.

He signed up for one of her initiatives, Walk With Rangers, which involved two weeks of doing exactly what the name suggests. “It was a mind-blowing experience,” he says. He would help the rangers find and dismantle animal snares and destroy kilns used to burn trees for charcoal. “We even caught an illegal logger”.

The hot, sweaty, dangerous business of being a ranger impacted him, as the rangers showed him their scars from being attacked by a wild animal or by a local with a machete. And those were the lucky ones who had lived to tell the tale. “It took me some time to digest all of that.” Even more disturbing for him to learn was that few of these rangers had any health, life or disability insurance or received any PTSD counselling triggered by a colleague’s death in the line of duty. They lacked basic supplies like boots, tents and GPS devices, and needed more training.

Brewing up a new business

This started Sauer thinking: “How could I generate a sustainable source of funding for the foundation? What product could I sell that’s linked to Kenya and/or the purpose of wildlife conservation? What’s something that people need, want or do on a daily base that I could link to Kenya and/or the purpose?” His answer: coffee.

Sauer, who had just completed a Program for Management Development (PMD) at IESE, decided to follow two of his other mottos: “Be the change you want to see in the world” and “Follow the gold and money will follow.” Regarding the first point, he took a sabbatical from his job to set up Ulinzi Conservation Coffee.

And with regard to the second, he says: “What do you want to do in life? I believe it’s important to work for a purpose, to contribute to something bigger, to chase a dream (the gold). If you start with that, money will follow”.

The idea is to sell fair-trade coffee products — enabling a larger share of the sales price to reach the coffee farmer, contributing to the development and living conditions of the producers’ business, while supporting wildlife and reforestation activities in Kenya through local partners, the Ulinzi Africa Foundation and Seedballs Kenya. “Everyone involved gets a fair share — I believe that’s the only way to do it,” he says.

“I wanted to get more involved than just sitting on my couch and donating at Christmastime”.

Steffen Sauer.

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Besides Raabia Hawa, Sauer’s own brother, who did an MBA at IESE, also became a partner: “Tobias was already curious about my trips. He liked the idea so much he joined the team.” And he convinced an IESE PMD classmate, Kai Gradert, to join him on a return trip to Kenya this past summer to experience Walk With Rangers for himself.

Though it’s still early days, he’s optimistic about the future: “Things may not work out how we want them to be, but it’s all about how we react, adapt, learn, stand up and do it again, but next time better”.

His final advice for those contemplating their New Year’s resolutions: “It’s so easy to stick with what you know, but if you stay too long where you feel comfortable, you won’t achieve any further development. As soon as you feel too comfortable, you need to change something. Keep moving forward. I learned the biggest lessons when I left my comfort zone. Always go for the choice that scares you most”.

Once again, he’s heeding his own advice: after eight years with ZF Group, and amidst the launch of his new coffee venture, he recently joined Lilium, the German startup building a flying electric taxi. For Sauer, things are literally starting to take off.

Resolutions to change your life

These mottos from Steffen Sauer (PMD ’19) changed his life. Might they change yours, too?

Be consistent: Stand up for what you believe in, but make sure you practice what you preach: this builds trust.
Be yourself: Be the kind of person you would want to meet in life.
Be inconvenient: Don’t hold back from stating inconvenient truths – but also propose solutions.
Challenge the status quo: Just because you’ve always done things a certain way doesn’t mean it’s the best way. Make little improvements every day.
Be the change you want to see in the world: To change others, start by changing yourself. If others see you willing to make the changes that you’re asking them to make, it’s easier for them to follow suit.
Leave your comfort zone: Go for the choice that scares you most, rather than the easy option. That will help spur you forward and develop further. If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.
Accept failure: We all make mistakes; what matters is how we react. Do you complain and give up? Or do you learn from your mistakes and resolve to do better next time?
Follow the gold and money will follow: Work for a purpose, to contribute to something bigger: that’s the real gold; money comes after.
Do it with passion or not at all: You only live once, so do it now or never.
Work abroad: If you get the chance, do it. You’ll develop a completely new skillset, collect lots of new impressions, and meet people along the way who will leave a mark on you or become lifelong friends.

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