TechBA teaches Mexican companies how to do business Silicon Valley-style
Ralph Aceves had already made it big in Silicon Valley, with three technology start-ups under his belt and a nice bank account.
What more could a successful Mexican immigrant do?
“I had another idea for a new business in social networking,” the Guadalajara-born entrepreneur said. “I thought, ‘Why can’t I start the business in Mexico and expand into the United States?’ ”
That sort of talk is what Mexican officials want to hear. After years of free trade in North America, Mexico’s high-tech industry wasn’t growing fast enough at home and wasn’t breaking into the lucrative American or global markets.
That’s where TechBA comes in. Aceves discovered the program, which teaches young, ambitious Mexican companies how to break into the global market, when he took his U.S.-born children to Mexico to visit and to learn Spanish.
Short for Technology Business Accelerator, the program was launched in 2004 and has since had about 1,500 Mexican companies take its workshops worldwide, generating $100 million in direct U.S. sales and $600 million in indirect sales.
Funded by the Mexican government but run by the U.S.-Mexico Foundation for Science, TechBA has five other programs in Texas, Michigan, Arizona, Spain and Canada outside its San Jose location.
Ovalpath, the company that Aceves started in Mexico and expanded to San Jose, recently scored its first American contract for applications that allow people to share photos, video, voice and text from their mobile devices.
Last year, 3,000 Mexican companies applied for TechBA training, said Jorge Zavala, who heads the program in Silicon Valley. Only Mexican companies with at least $1 million in sales and a senior director fluent in English are eligible.
TechBA accepted just 250 companies and divvied them up among its offices.
The San Jose trainees must trek from Mexico regularly for as many as three years. In the first four months, they learn Silicon Valley business culture — how to network, pitch ideas on the fly, write and present convincing business plans.
Aceves, who has become a motivational speaker for the program, tells the newcomers to forget the paternalistic style of doing business in Mexico, which puts a premium on personal and family relationships, political connections and drawn-out negotiations. Speed is crucial here.
“The [business] culture is different here,” said Eugenio Chavez, 31, a manager for lightning rod manufacturer Total Ground. “It was a shock to us.”
The company makes products for high-rises and communication towers and has grown from four to 100 employees in only three years, boasting $4 million in sales last year in Mexico and Latin American. But it has struck out in the U.S.
In another room at San Jose TechBA, Margarita Rodriguez was working the phones in English, trying to nail her first American contract for her call-center company, Next Contact.
“I’ve never learned more about business than I have here in six months,” she said.
Rodriguez writes for the San Jose Mercury News/McClatchy.
