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Meet Laura González-Estéfani founder and CEO of TheVenture.City, before founding and becoming the CEO of TheVentureCity, Laura spent 8+ years at Facebook. First three years she worked as Country Manager for Spain & Portugal, becoming the 1st employee in the country reporting to the HQ Growth team. She moved to Silicon Valley to lead the Growth, Mobile & Partnerships team for LATAM, leading the Internet.org & connectivity initiatives. After 4 years, she moved to Miami to lead among other strategic projects, the strategy of Facebook in Cuba, the less connected country in the world. Prior to Facebook, Laura has management roles at eBay, Siemens and Ogilvy Group. Back in 2000 she co-founded Esplaya.com, the first international beach tourism digital platform.
Laura González-Estéfani, Endeavor Mentor
Why did you decide to become a mentor with Endeavor Miami?
I fell in love with the mission of the organization and realized that I would love to work with the entrepreneurs of the Endeavor network and the staff. There are many entrepreneur organizations around the world, but Endeavor feels like a family; where entrepreneurs can be themselves and where mentors, board advisors and board members contribute to something bigger. And also, being a bit selfish now, because I wanted to learn from the community!”
What is the best advice you would give to a company looking to scale?
“Understand the markets first, not only by the financial numbers or your intuition, but by the customer data available. Focusing on what the customer needs is key to succeed in new markets.”
What are the right economic incentives needed to attract and retain talent in Miami, especially in this depressionary environment?
Thanks to what I call the ‘boomerang effect’ of Endeavor: Endeavor helps you, you help them. As a Mentor, I help you and I belong to the community, but the community/you help me. So, it is a wonderful kind of effect. We are very lucky to have Endeavor in Miami, not every city in the United States is so lucky to have it.
I really think that Miami is taking a mature step lately, still there is so much that we have to work on. The first thing that we need to fight is that ‘talent is costly’, meaning that you cannot pretend to pay, I don’t know, 50,000 USD or 65,000 USD to someone super well prepared and willing to grow. We have to balance the fact that Miami is a “cheaper” state to live in and then the talent is cheaper, no. The talent – for different types of positions, especially in the industry that I work with is very, it’s not cheap, rather expensive. But, at the same time, the scalability that they bring to the company is much higher than any other type of businesses. We are in the middle of all this and we are willing to help everyone.