David Castillo Zapata ’11Journal #1
This summer, I joined Endeavor as an MBA summer associate. I was very interested by Endeavor’s MBA Summer Associate Program, as I believe that such experience not only offers me opportunities that best match my career objectives, but also provides an environment where I will be able to make a strong contribution.
Each year, Endeavor recruits MBA students from leading US business schools to spend some weeks working on-site with the Endeavor entrepreneurs. The MBA projects include honed business plans, analysis of company growth options, and market feasibility studies. I was attracted not only by the possibility of working in a dynamic and challenging environment — where at the end I will be able to perceive and appreciate the impact of my work on the organization — but also by the opportunity of learning from a successful entrepreneur and contributing to the development of his/her company.
Endeavor scours a country looking for high impact entrepreneurs — entrepreneurs with bright ideas, ambitious plans, and high impact potential. Endeavor supports such entrepreneurs, helping them break down barriers to success, offering strategic advice, and opening doors to capital. Endeavor’s objective is to guide the entrepreneurs, and help them become role models that will in turn encourage others to innovate and take risks, creating sustainable economic growth in their economies and societies.
Three weeks of my summer internship have gone by thus far. I have joined Max Service, an organization in Temuco, Chile, a nearly 400,000 person city 700km to the south of Santiago de Chile, the country’s capital. Temuco is a small city, but so far I have been captivated not only by the beautiful landscapes that can be found nearby, but mainly by the warmness of its people. I had a very kind welcome by the entire team at Max Service, which quickly helped me feel comfortable and at home.
Max Service is a vertically integrated company in Chile that acts as manufacturer, importer, distributer, and retail operator for industrial safety goods such as gloves, safety boots, and rain jackets. The company was founded in 1994, and is now the leader in Southern Chile for the safety goods industry. Max Service has consistently exhibited high potential, with year-on-year growth rates above 30 percent across its history. The company has put the infrastructure in place and is ready to take the next step: scale its operations to the North of Chile. This is an important challenge as it represents the entrance to a more competitive, but much bigger, market.
I will be helping Max Service to scale up its operations, and contribute to the development of a strategic plan for the growth of the company in the following years. I will thus be participating in different initiatives related to these goals. So far, I have contributed to the analysis and selection of world-class, enterprise-resource planning software, a critical decision for the company that will help it incorporate best practices, and in turn attain a more competitive position to pursue its ambitious growth plans.
Journal #2
I have already been in Chile working for Max Service for seven weeks. Life and work as an entrepreneur is certainly quite different from my previous experience. As I mentioned in my previous entry, Max Service is a booming company in the industrial safety goods market and the entrepreneur is a very successful businessman, which is one of the reasons that motivated Endeavor to invite him to join its network in Chile in 2009.
One of the most rewarding things from my summer internship experience has been the opportunity to work and learn from the entrepreneur’s history of success. My interactions with the entrepreneur have given me a clearer view on how hard and constant work can turn a dream into a successful and promising company.
The entrepreneur is the son of a warehouse manager in a small town in Southern Chile. He is a serial entrepreneur, who started his first ventures at age twelve when he rented out bikes and sold berries. Determined to arm himself with the skills to run a business, the entrepreneur studied accounting at a technical high school and joined an accounting firm in 1985. Itching to start his own venture, he quit his job in 1989 and used his life savings to buy a machine that made leather work gloves. That was the start of Max Service.
Max Service has reached a point where it needs to adapt its current structure to support the company’s operations and ongoing, high-growth path. It has been a privilege to be witnessing, experiencing, and contributing to this stage of Max Service’s development. More specifically, the project I have been working on is crucial to the ongoing operations and growth of the company. The new ERP that Max Service has decided to incorporate will allow it be more competitive and better cope with the market.
