Lunes, 14 de Abril

Monday it was back to work. Monica, Santiago’s assistant, took Jaspar and I around in a taxi to see different locations. Somehow we ended up hailing the only female taxi driver in all of Buenos Aires and she and Monica went on to gossip and chat for most of the ride. We went through Las Canitas, Imprenta, Belgrano and Palermo. We stopped at a number of different real estate offices. Given the number of “For Rent” signs we had seen that weekend, I was surprised to find very little available at the offices themselves. Those that were open (many closed from noon to 3 p.m.) generally had an unhappy, older man sitting behind a desk who would say, without fail, “no tenemos,” or we don’t have. We did see a number of promising locations with “For Rent” signs out front and Monica promised to inquire about them when she got back to the office. I got the feeling that much of this business was done between friends. If the real estate agents did not know you they weren’t interested in talking. Argentine’s seemed very prideful, and unusually uninterested in making a sale for monies sake.

Monday afternoon we met with one of our potential investors. We talked for two and a half hours about the business and what we had accomplished since being in Argentina. He quizzed us on the concept, the competition and the figures. We showed him our 40-page business plan, investor presentation and full financial projections. When it came time to ask for the money, however, he hesitated. “I’m interested only in investing in a business…not an idea,” he said. The investor explained in order for this to go from idea to business form we needed to test the concept in the Argentine market. He wanted to be sure of its potential popularity before committing. He referred us to a group of consultants that he had used to conduct marketing studies for his business and said once we completed those studies he would consider the investment. Somewhat more disappointingly, he was not willing to pay for any part of the study.

A market study – what an obvious step? One that we had completely overlooked. This was the kind of amateurish business mistake that we could not afford to make. However, the meeting with this investor also left me with the feeling that he would not invest in this business, regardless of the market study results. There was something he was more fundamentally uncomfortable with. This was really disappointing as he was the only investor we had yet to approach.

After a workout, Jaspar and I went to meet up with Tyler - a friend of ours from high school who had been living in Buenos Aires for the last year and a half. We met him at La Bomba De Tiempo, a live drum show featuring an orchestra of percussion, dancing conductor, and hundreds of people, all bobbing to the beat in a giant outdoor industrial space called Ciudad Cultural Konex.

Fortunately the show was over by 10 as that night was Jack and Babette’s last. At 10:30 Jaspar and I met them for an incredible dinner at Sottovoce, one of Buenos Aires’s finest Italian restaurants. Penny, a close friend of Jaspar’s entire family who had been in Argentina for the past month, joined us for dinner. She told us stories about her recent travels to the north of the country. She was staying in a mansion a friend of hers owned in San Telmo and insisted that Jaspar and I go see it that week.

Jaspar and I made sure to grab time with Jack to discuss our meeting with the investor. I told him I was disappointed and that my feeling was that this investor was never going to make an investment in this idea. Always resourceful, Jack already had another investor in mind and told us to go seem him the next day.