About
Most companies do not stall because they lack technology, talent, or attractive markets. They stall because the organization never evolves as quickly as its opportunity. I have spent thirty five years leading companies through precisely those moments.
Scaled the international business before assuming worldwide leadership of the Solution Provider Program, a channel generating roughly $1B in revenue across 54 countries. The lesson that has held for three decades: growth is not a heroic act. It is a system, and systems can be built anywhere. I left for an Executive MBA at the UW Foster School of Business. A deliberate retooling.
ON STAGE WITH BILL GATES · MICROSOFT EXECUTIVE RELATIONS, LONDON
Founded, financed, and governed a public company (TSX: VEM). $500K seed to a $160M market cap. No geology degree. What I built instead was the institution around the asset: capital discipline, public-company governance, and investors across Peru, Chile, the US, Canada, England, Switzerland, Germany, and the Gulf region.
GRADUATION DAY · VENA MOVES FROM THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE TO THE MAIN BOARD
Investor, board member, and advisor across FinTech, telecom, real estate, entertainment, and cybersecurity. Exits include a Peruvian FinTech sold to Experian and an Andean broadband network backed at seed and board-guided through its sale to a large foreign industrial group. The model transferred. That was the point.
BRIEFING INVESTORS · ZURICH
Chief Revenue Officer, integrating capital strategy, commercialization, finance, and partnerships to bring the hardware-enabled AI platform for interventional imaging to institutional scale. The connection is personal. My father's bypass surgery taught me what cardiovascular medicine means to a family.
THE CURRENT CHAPTER · VERAVANTI ON THE CONFERENCE FLOOR
Insiders inherit their industry's assumptions. Outsiders get to question them. Every company I have built started with a question the incumbents stopped asking years ago.
Nobody buys a spec sheet. They buy what changes for them. If your differentiation cannot be stated as a customer outcome in one sentence, you do not have differentiation yet.
Raising money is not an interruption to building the company. It is part of building the company. The story, the model, and the investor deserve the same rigor as the product.
Companies do not become larger by optimizing yesterday's operating model. They become a different organization first. Strengthen the enterprise, then accelerate growth.
Born in Lima. In the United States since 1980, when I came for school and stayed to build. Married to Sarah, the best decision I have made for the rest of my life, and bonus dad to her twins. Four children, two sons-in-law, one granddaughter, and a standing tennis game. For the past three years I have mentored CEOs of minority owned businesses through Ascend, sponsored by JPMorgan Chase and anchored at my alma mater, the UW Foster School of Business. Scaling advice should not require seven figure consulting fees. After 35 years of learning, this is how I give back.
OUR WEDDING DAY · THE BEST DECISION I EVER MADE
THE WHOLE CREW · SIX KIDS, ONE FULL HOUSE
MICROSOFT EXECUTIVE RELATIONS · LONDON, 1990s
PROCESSING PLANT UNDER CONSTRUCTION · VENA RESOURCES
UNDERGROUND PORTAL, LEVEL 40 · COMPANIES ARE BUILT IN PLACES LIKE THIS
COMMUNITY PROGRAM, PERUVIAN ANDES · WORK THAT EARNED VENA AWARDS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERSHIP
PERÚ PAVILION · RAISING CAPITAL FOR THE COUNTRY I WAS BORN IN
WITH MY SENIOR GEOLOGIST · PERUVIAN ANDES, VENA YEARS
INVESTOR ADDRESS · THE VENA YEARS
ON THE ROAD · BUILDING, STILL
WITH BILL GATES · THE QUESTION WAS: WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO TODAY?
The industries changed.
The questions never did.