Editor’s note: The San Antonio Report is pleased to feature the weekly bigcitysmalltown podcast hosted by Robert Rivard, co-founder of the Report. We’ll be publishing a brief synopsis of the podcast each Tuesday.
When it comes to tech, San Antonio startups work in silos.
“If you have a screw and I already have the tire, why don’t we put it together and make a car?” said Tech Bloc’s CEO Ileana Gonzalez in the “bigcitysmalltown” podcast episode with Robert Rivard.
Gonzalez, a Guadalajara-born millennial who came to San Antonio to attend UTSA, said she believes San Antonio’s technology ecosystem is learning to collaborate better instead of “recreating the wheel from zero.”
A recent Tech Bloc delegation traveled to the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Nuevo León, Mexico, to learn about what’s happening in the tech giant city. The Tec, a non-profit private university in Monterrey, is known for boosting entrepreneurship from business incubation to business consolidation to encourage an entrepreneurial-innovative ecosystem.
“They’re constantly looking for innovation outside of their own corporations, so they’re constantly asking … ‘Who else should we meet for XYZ?’” Gonzalez said. “That was a very interesting structure we have not seen here in San Antonio.”
But Tech Bloc has grown, Gonzalez said she’s reaching out to different groups, modules and clusters to be on the same mission and vision for San Antonio.
San Antonio’s “ambiente familiar” could be a way the city ropes in a Tecnológico de Monterrey campus to come here, Rivard said.
“We have a comfort level, culturally, that I think is so important to building trust. My own experience in Mexico is that you build strong personal relationships before you build strong business relationships. We get that and that’s how we operate here,” he said.
Gonzalez said San Antonio’s tech scene will become a blend of culture with the “American mindset” as it attracts young entrepreneurs from Mexico seeking venture capital and support for startup ideas. It will also be an alternative to people with families building startups, she said.
Gonzalez added she believes San Antonio’s tech ecosystem will attract “another wave of Mexican kids and children of the entrepreneurs,” but San Antonians will have to learn to embrace transplants.
Visit “bigcitysmalltown” to listen to Episode 47 with Tech Bloc CEO Ileana Gonzalez, or listen at the link below.
