23 people from four different countries crowding Okurispaces, more than two and an half hour of interactive discussing and one smart guest-speaker called Jenaro García Martín, CEO de Gowex – that´s an abstract of Tetuan Valley’s newly launched event, Okuri Talks, which took place on Wednesday 8th of September.
Jenaro García Martín (@jero_net) founded Gowex in 1998 and since then he’s been creating Wi-Fi Cities worldwide. After spending ten years of rollercoaster-comparable ups and downs with his company, Gowex finally launched its 2nd major commercial product in 2008: Wi-Fi hotspots installed at kiosks and other public places that offer Internet on the go. Nowadays Gowex sells its Internet mobile solutions globally and is listed at the MAB and NYSE Euronext stock indexes. Gowex managed simultaneously two IPOs on different stock exchanges in less than three months. Believe me, that´s an outstanding record and last year’s Gowex net profit of 2,8M € is a proof of it.
Given that it was the first edition of Okuri Talks it was the speaker´s choice how to approach the talk. Although Jenaro came up with a corporate presentation of his company, he ended debating different subjects with the audience, to the point of ripping the notes he had brought and improvising the talk, Tetuan Valley style.
For all those who assisted to Constantino Goméz’ (Grupo Arcano, a.o. assessor firm for IPOs) publicity-presentation at the Iniciador_MAD event on July 2010, Okuri Talks served brilliantly to discover how biased the Arcano partner promoted his company. For instance, he alerted that a SME should not start to list stocks to raise capital, but rather the IPO must fit into the long term strategy of the company. As an advice for all CEOs that consider listing stocks at the MAB, Jenaro suggested that they should not overvalue the opinion of the assessor firm because for them the IPO process is a very lucrative business. Needless to mention that the last two cons weren’t considered during Constantino Gomez’ presentation.
Regarding the evolution of his start-up (can’t say we can call it start-up anymore 
) Jenaro insisted that the key to becoming successful consists in “going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm”. The Gowex CEO admitted that since foundation he has had to face some very hard times, but that it’s decisive to have faith in your project. His message for all entrepreneurs is that they should not build a company to gain quick money. The passion invested in your project has to be the primary driver. I guess that’s the only criteria that all the entrepreneurs I’ve met in my life agreed to.
Finally he concluded showing how Gowex tries to achieve the highest market share in the alternative mobile Internet market (i.e. mobile connectivity solutions that are not provided by licensed telecommunication-companies). Yes, I know that’s an ambitious project but we’ll see if one day we all tweet from public places using the Gowex technology. The strategy that allowed Gowex to grow over the past ten years is closely linked to Martín’s theory of R+D and business models depending on each other. Or, turning this assumption upside down: R+D without an innovative business model can be easily copied and therefore has no value. Gowex applied this theory by turning the formerly existing telco business model, necessity of a license to sell telecommunication services, into an open marketplace where companies bid for the use of exceeding bandwidth.
To sum up, Gowex revolutionized the traditional mobile Internet market and within the following two years will try to enter the Chinese market. The huge increase of Smartphone sales as well as the fact that Gowex is listed on the stock exchange probably will benefit the company’s expansion.
The second edition of Okuri Talks will probably be on Wednesday 19th of January 2011. The delay is due to the fact that in October starts our Tetuan Valley Start-up School. See you in January……
Okuri Talks 1: Jenaro García, CEO GOWEX from Tetuan Valley on Vimeo.
