Issue link: http://endeavor.uberflip.com/i/414924
Throughout Endeavor Insight's inter- views with Bogotá tech entrepreneurs, one familiar name was frequently cited: that of Endeavor Entrepreneur Alex Torrenegra . Alex founded or co-founded ten different tech firms, inspired the founders of eight companies, mentored five entrepreneurs, invested in 10 ventures, and employed 10 people who went on to start their own companies. Alex's entrepreneurial ambitions started early: When he was 14, he launched a data entry business so that he could save up to buy a computer. Five years later, he dropped out of college in Bogotá and moved to Miami with dreams of starting his next company. He got a job at a McDonald's and worked on improving his English. In his free time he experimented with opportunities in online marketplaces. In 2002, Alex met his future wife, Tania Zapata , a voice actor and radio host. In the early 2000s, recruiting for voice acting still depended wholly on talent agents who represented voice actors and helped them to land and negotiate jobs. The process was rife with inefficiencies, and Tania frequently struggled to find work. Her frus- tration inspired the couple to think about how the industry could be improved. They decided that an online marketplace for voice actors could help solve her challenge — one that was shared by thousands of other actors around the world. Alex and Tania began building a team of highly-skilled web developers in Bogotá. Together with the team, they developed a tool called Voice123 that eased the process for both voice actors and casting agents: Voice actors pay a subscription fee to record auditions, while casting agents sift through the auditions and select the best talent for the job. The technology reduced the time needed to cast a 60-second video from 4 –5 weeks to as few as 10 minutes. Within six months the company was profitable and had 10,000 registered users. In 2005, Alex and Tania decided to hire a ceo to lead Voice123 so that they could focus on other projects. For the next few years, Tania concentrated on voice acting while Alex split his time amongst several other companies he had founded or co-founded, including Torrenegra Labs, an incubator for Bogotá tech startups. In 2011, the explosion of crowdsourcing convinced Alex to return to the company full-time. That same year, Alex and Diego Saez-Gil , the founder of a Torrenegra Labs portfolio company, met Endeavor Global's President Fernando Fabre . Alex was impressed by Endeavor's range of support services, and suspected that access to a network of sea- soned mentors could help him take Voice123 to the next level. He soon connected with Endeavor's team in Bogotá and joined the multi-step screening process to become an Endeavor Entrepreneur. Over the following months, 14 Endeavor mentors interviewed Alex, reviewing every aspect of Voice 123's business model as well as his presentation style. "You cannot hope to lift economies without promoting entrepreneurship. Endeavor has proven itself the most effective organization at building entrepreneurial ecosystems where none had existed before." JAMES WOLFENSOHN Chairman, Wolfensohn & Company LLC Former President, World Bank 9 THE NETWORK AT WORK