Cesar CantuMexican-American tech entrepreneur Bismarck Lepe will deliver the keynote speech of Nexus 2024, which will take place June 12th-13th, in Jersey City, New Jersey.
The son of Mexican immigrants who moved to the US in search of a better life, Bismarck is one of Mexico’s most successful entrepreneurial stories in recent memory.
He built his credentials as a Google employee in the early 2000s. A decade later, he founded Wizeline, one of Latin America’s most prominent exporters of tech and software services. The company –based in the Mexican city of Guadalajara– stands today as a main player in the Latin American tech services industry and as a driver of regional innovation.
As the son of immigrants, Bismarck understands the transformative power of hard work. He seeks to apply that approach not only to his personal life or that of Wizeline employees, but to his parents’ homeland as a whole.
“It was until we opened [Google] offices in Guadalajara that I realized that my experiences there could not only help me in seizing more business opportunities, but also produce an impact beyond myself,” Bismarck stated in a podcast, back in 2022.
“We saw that if we brought more tech companies [to Mexico], companies that paid well, offered stock options and had a different way of doing things, we could create entrepreneurs, who could create companies, which could create even more entrepreneurs,” he added. “In 10 years, then, we could have 100,000 people with well-paying jobs. We could push so many folks upwards, into the middle class.”
Wizeline is currently one of few companies at the forefront of AI innovation and development in Mexico, a fact that reflects Bismarck’s hopes for the country and his “giant-killer” approach to entrepreneurship.
“You have to be arrogant enough to tell yourself that you’ll be able to beat monsters,” he has stated. “That you’ll be able to face them straightforwardly, with nothing but new tech. That it doesn’t matter that they’re earning millions; we, only being a couple of friends and a dog, with US$100,000 in funding, will be able to beat that monster.”
“I do believe that you need to be at least a bit arrogant. That you have to think you’re capable of doing the impossible,” he added. “That’s why Apple and Steve Jobs had a pirate flag. You need to go out there and think you’ll be a little crazier than the rest. You have to go for it, because if you’re waiting for all the market data, waiting to understand the good and the bad, that opportunity is going to pass you by.”
Nexus registration remains open until June 11. Nexus Opening Night begins at 6pm on June 12th.
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