Mercado Libre CEO Marcos Galperin: Why You Should Not Start A Business Just For The Money

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Marcos Galperin, founder and CEO of Mercado Libre and the richest person in Argentina, with a personal fortune of USD 5.2m, recommended young Argentines not to start a business just because they want to make money or not have bosses because it is not going to happen, at least in the beginning. “And you don’t work little, the entrepreneur works all day long”, he assured.

Galperin spoke at Experiencia Endeavor Sub20, an event organized by the network of entrepreneurs at Luna Park, which brought together some 8,000 teenagers from Buenos Aires high schools.

Galperin stated that entrepreneurship must arise from a clear idea. “Behind every successful entrepreneurship I know is the search to solve something, there are concrete convictions that some aspect of society can be improved, that something can be changed, in short, that the idea will add value,” he said.

“Many times there are people who start a business because they want to be boss-free, or because they don’t want to work 8 hours for five days a week, or just because they want to get rich; all these are the wrong reasons, because if you start a business, you will have to work much more and on top of that you will have a lot of new problems that you wouldn’t have as an employee”, he said.

“That is why for me one of the most important aspects of an entrepreneur is passion; that gives you an enormous resilience to overcome the inconveniences and frustrations of the entrepreneurial path, without that passion it is very difficult to overcome adverse situations”, said Galperin, who also said that the beginnings of Mercado Libre were difficult.

Meli’s beginnings were very complicated, at one point we suffered a financial crisis that threatened to leave us without capital; at that time I already had 60 employees and inside I thought that if we had to close, I was going to leave them all without work,” he said.

“But the most incredible thing, and what shows that we did have a passion for entrepreneurship, is that many of them told me ‘we will support you, this is incredible what we are doing, even if things go wrong, we are grateful for the opportunity’, well, many of them are still working alongside me today,” he said.

“Personally, what frustrated me the most were the times, I am a very anxious person, and when we launched Meli I could not understand why people did not use it more, since it was an easier way to buy and sell, and from our perspective better; but over time I learned that people’s habits take a long time to change and that patience must be an important tool when it comes to entrepreneurship, because results are never immediate”, said Galperin.

When asked about the successes in his life, Galperin said that for him “success is linked to effort, it is not related to money or satisfaction; for me it is a success to see my children grow up and to have a good relationship with my wife”.

“Of course Meli is also a success, but it is related to the effort and the time I put into it; after so many years, when you see the fruits, that’s where the success is and that’s why you enjoy it,” he said.

Toward the end of the interview, Galperin was asked about Mercado Libre’s current situation and future.

“We currently have 40,000 employees and I think we still have a lot, very much to grow”, he said and explained that in Argentina and Latin America people make an average of 8 online purchases per year, while in the United States that number reaches 50 and in China more than 100.

He also mentioned his star tool, Mercado Pago, which according to him still has “infinite to grow, you have to think that when we launched it about 5 years ago people told us that it was not going to work, today you can pay with QR through our app in hundreds of different places, for example in fairs in the north of the country, street vendors and much more”.

“It’s exciting, and I firmly believe that Mercado Libre will continue to grow, 10 or 20 years from now we will be much bigger than we are today,” he said.

Finally, Galperin was asked about the “Mercado Libre DNA” and how they manage to transmit it at all levels of the company.

“We give our employees the opportunity to grow, to learn new skills, to rotate between positions and not always perform the same task in a monotonous way, for example we give them the possibility to learn new languages. The main thing is that they feel useful while they are growing, so that our employees are happy and committed. If they are happy, so are we,” concluded Galperin.

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Author and serial entrepreneur. I contribute to Forbes about finance, business and entrepreneurial stories.

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