Flying High
The sensation of flying, even at low altitude, is like anything else. But the true challenge (and pleasure) is to be able to fly high.
The next morning after my first take-off, we went to a much higher mountain. It was no longer time for preparation or test take-offs: the time had come to really fly.
Taking off
Along the lines of comparing the learnings from paragliding with becoming an Entrepreneur, the first post covered the stage of preparation. Now is the time to focus on the start-up phase. And as Wes Harman, the author of this photo, graciously reminds us, no start-up is ever the first or last to die! 
So back to Tucuman and my paragliding course. After two hours of suffering and being blown by the wind on the flat, the instructor said it was time to move on to the next stage: the first take off. We moved to a different location, where we could walk up a hill about 100 feet high. Naive, I asked: “We are going to fly in tandem, right?”. The professor laughed. With only two hours of practice, it was time for my first flight alone.
Learning to fly
Very few things in my life took me out of my comfort zone so much as when a few years back I traveled with a group of friends to learn to fly a paraglider. Trips with my friends are chosen by voting, and, needless to say, that year I lost.
So I travelled to Tafí del Valle in Tucuman, Argentina, pretty scared, but determined to start the course, which I knew started on a totally flat place. I thought the next step was to fly in tandem with a professor and that I was willing to try. Then when the time came to fly on my own, I would see what I did.
The experience was very interesting and what I will do now is write a series of four posts connecting what I lived while learning to fly with the stages of founding and starting up a company.
Free falling
Given what has been happening in the last few days, the title might lead you to believe I am writing about Lehman Brothers or AIG. But I am not. Today I will tell you about an idea I had many years ago for Officenet that I always loved and failed miserably.
The history of Officenet
A few days ago Martina Rua asked me if I had ever considered writing a book. You know… I had children, I planted a tree, but I don’t know who it was who said that to live a complete life you also have to write a book. It must have been the owner of a Book Publishing company, who even made you plant the trees to get him the paper supply (now with the Kindle will it change to “have a child, make a chip, write a pdf”?).
On the internet no battle is ever lost
I remember several years ago, when Yahoo had emerged as the clear cut winner from the many search engines available early on. Left behind were others such as Altavista, Infoseek and many others. I also remember the day when I read about this new start up called Google, which had just launched another search engine . Yahoo was already publicly traded at the Nasdaq, had tons of money, the best engineers and an extremely high share of all the searches in the planet. At that time I thought: “It’s absurd. No one can challenge the Yahoo supremacy among search engines”.
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The First Million is Always the Hardest
There is a phrase that states the first Million is the hardest to get. Well, here I will give you a different way to win it!
The recipe for economic growth
When the goal is to promote the economic growth of a country there is abundant research that shows that very few factors weigh as heavily as the birth of new businesses founded by entrepreneurs.
That is why in the last 10 years I worked with Endeavor to promote entrepreneurship and that way improve the Economy of my country.
Recently we have been having a debate inside Endeavor that I would like to share with you to promote a discussion.
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Random Notes on the Endeavor Uruguay Conference
Yesterday I came back from two days in Montevideo for the Endeavor Uruguay Conference and Gala Dinner.
I have a special feeling for Uruguay and its people, but beyond my “favoritism” I returned tremendously impressed.
South Africa is the Biggest Surprise!
After a little over two weeks of launching this blog, the biggest surprise is the amount of visits I am gettingto the English version from South Africa, ranking #3 behind expectables Argentina and the US.
Probably, the help I got from Greg Durst from Endeavor South Africa and this post by Fred Roed have a lot to do with it.
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Riesgo & Risk & Reward is Santiago Bilinkis' blog. Santiago is a serial entrepreneur, who created this blog to ignite a discussion and share his experiences, thoughts and anecdotes.
The main subject will be Entrepreneurship, but he plans to cover a broad range of topics. The common ground will be Risk. Welcome to this adventure!
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