Chicago and its life lessons: A story of steel and 3D printing.
When I was a Kid, Michael Jordan played with the Chicago Bulls and the famous Jordans boots produced by Nike were a best seller around the world. My father became a successful businessman by marketing Jordans in Venezuela. Then the years went by until July 2017, when I received a congratulatory email saying, “…you were identified as one of the most talented and promising entrepreneurs”. The Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative was offering me the opportunity to foster my new project in the city that contributed to my father’s success: Chicago.
I of course took the opportunity, got on a plane, and flew to Atlanta, where I found myself surrounded by around 250 entrepreneurs from Latin America and the Caribbean who were selected to participate in the YLAI program. I like to call them “Outliers”, or talented people who decided to use their skills and ideas to build projects and create progress in their society. Atlanta was the city selected for the program’s opening, where we spent a few days working on our strategy to get the most of the weeks when we would be in the US working on our projects.
After the opening conference in Atlanta, I boarded another plane. This time I was headed to Chicago, a city with an important history in manufacturing and heavy industry. Just imagine Chicago’s industrial power and spirit of progress: after a great fire destroyed most of the city in 1871, in 1885 they constructed the world’s first skyscraper made using a steel skeleton, in 1900 they reversed the flow of an entire river to avoid polluting the city’s freshwater source, and during World War II, the city alone produced more steel than the United Kingdom every year from 1939 to 1945. If you ever have the opportunity of visiting the city, take a few minutes, walk by one of their bridges on the river, and admire the wonderful structure made a century ago, its construction embracing the expression, “Chicago has endurance and was built to last in time and memory as a city of greatness”, an expression that my friend Roland Kulla knows how to capture very well on his paintings.
Now imagine a young engineering student working on a project to produce raw materials for 3D printing using recycled plastic in a city with such a deep-rooted history in manufacturing. I was assigned to work with 3Degrees, a consulting company that works to support organizations and maximize their investments in 4th industrial revolution manufacturing technologies such as 3D Printing. The company is lead by Mike, an engineer from MIT who became my mentor and friend during my YLAI fellowship. The workplace? Mhub Chicago, an amazing makerspace focused on product development. While working there, I was surrounded by an ecosystem of innovators, world-class talent with access to all the tooling and machinery needed to make ideas come true.
Mike made sure I had the best experience during my stay in Chicago. He gave me a lot of independence, letting me choose the activities I preferred. He was always there to support me with advice regarding my project, and he invited me to really interesting events related to the manufacturing industry. Most importantly, however, he became a friend who believed in and supported my idea.
Mhub was everything I dreamed of and more than I could have ever imagined a few years ago when I was building competitive cars at a Baja SAE team garage in Venezuela. To give you a better idea of how great my workplace was, just imagine a place where you have access to all the tools, machinery, and talent to prototype your own Ironman or Stormtrooper suit. Awesome, isn’t it?
Working at Mhub was a dream come true, but my time in Chicago was limited and I had to make difficult but necessary choices. Despite my desire to use the machines in my workplace to build a project, I decided to look for mentoring in business and create a broader vision for the 3D printing industry. It may sound silly, but during my studies as an engineer in my country, I never had the opportunity to work with a 3D printer, and my only familiarity with them was through Google, YouTube, and a previous trip to Canada. Mhub was perfect for business mentoring because they have a roster of professionals from a variety of fields of expertise, including finance, marketing, corporate law, entrepreneurship, investment, and engineering, and all of them have brilliant professional careers. They dedicated at least one hour of their time with me in exchange for nothing more than improving my chances of success. I wasted no time, booked appointments with all the mentors I could, and attended as many networking and technology events possible. I was hungry for knowledge and foolish enough to surprise myself with even the smallest details. I was there to learn from the best, without fear of listening to new ideas, with a positive attitude and always moving forward.
I am thankful for and admire the ecosystem of innovation in the US, and I learned so much from it. I would like to share the simplest and most meaningful lessons I learned:
Don’t underestimate yourself.
I was kind of afraid of working with an engineer from MIT. Initially, I thought that my idea was insignificant in the face of US progress, but as I began to tell my story and idea, people became interested and surprised. They admired my courage because it is not just the idea, but the circumstances you are facing and the potential to create a positive change that makes a project a meaningful venture.
“There is no passion to be found playing small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” Nelson Mandela
Time and trust
Time is your most valuable asset. People in the US take time really seriously. You book an appointment, receive a notification in your Google Calendar, and when the time arrives, the meeting begins immediately. The conversation begins with formal greetings and then goes straight to the point:
-Nice to meet you, Alber. We have one hour. What would you like to discuss?
-We have 10 more minutes, how do you want to close the meeting?
-It has been a pleasure. Grab my card and email me if there’s anything else I can help you with.
I must confess that in the beginning, I thought it was ruthless and soulless. However, when I thought about it, I came to an important conclusion: Americans (people from the States) know very well how valuable their time is and they structure their meetings efficiently, with the goal of getting things done. If you arrive late, you are subtracting time from your own meeting.
In Latin America, things are different. We usually arrive late to every meeting, and when we finally show up, we start by talking about the family, the weather, how bad the political situation is, and so on. We care about being friends and being likable before doing business.
Dare I say that Americans are pragmatic and Latinos are poets? There is nothing wrong in being one way or another. Americans are focused on achieving objectives in the short term while we (Latinos) focus on building relationships in the long term. I confess that I’m struggling to manage my business meetings as Americans do, but it is not an easy task for a huge cultural reason: Americans have strong institutions, with low indicators of corruption, so they can trust in doing business because the law is there to protect commercial operations. In the case of Latin America, weak institutions and corruption are the norm, so before doing business, citizens have to know their counterparts very well, and trust is built through social guarantees based on where you live, where you studied, the people that surround you, and so on.
Do your best, always your best, especially when nobody is watching.
By the time my last week in Chicago rolled around, most of my efforts were focused on finding equipment that could recycle plastic waste and produce the filament for 3D printing in Venezuela. I got a really good discount with a company, but I did not have enough money to buy the necessary machines. My project was at an early stage and was thought to be developed in one of the craziest economic scenarios in the world, so it was risky for investors. But suddenly, something magical happened. While I was summarizing with my mentor Mike the result of my weeks working at Mhub, I told him that from an economic perspective, my project was too risky and would probably become a failure, but that I decided I still wanted to try, as many people had confidence in me and told me going back and doing nothing was not an option. He then said this to me: “You already have your hands dirty. I saw you working during these weeks. I saw your enthusiasm and your mood, and I do believe you have the right attitude for making this project or another one successful. For this reason, I want to do something for you. I am going to get you the machine you need.” You guys have no idea how moved I felt. I have no words to describe the mix of happiness and hope I experienced at that moment.
It’s been around nine months since that day. Now the idea of recycling plastic to produce raw material for 3D printing is a reality, and its name is Nedraki. The machine donated by my mentor made Nedraki become a startup by using technology as a means to build a sustainable future. Many people around the globe know about our work in Venezuela, thanks to a press release recently made by Reuters that in a surprising turn of events has become a news story translated into several languages, even Vietnamese. I have to say, I love it! I am a world citizen and this offers me the opportunity to share how we can work to solve worldwide challenges through local solutions. Now I feel a little scared and more responsible for creating progress, but the meaningful people who support me motivate me to keep up the good work.
“And so the Fates are seldom wrong
No matter how they twist and wind
It is you and I who make our fates
We open up or close the gates
On the road ahead or the road behind” George Joseph Moriarty.
Albermar Dominguez. YLAI Fellow 2017. Venezuela
