Reflections on Argentina

It has been more than two weeks since we came back from Argentina. I spent 10 days in New York, packing up my life and getting ready to return to…

Since coming back to LA on Tuesday, April 29th I have been overcome by an uneasy calm. Neither Jaspar nor I know what’s next. He’s got graduation and trip to Israel to at least delay the inevitable nothingness. But I am smack dab in the middle of it now. I keep hoping that another idea will hit me. I’ll be walking down the street and see a women crossing the road hands filled with 8 different shopping bags, hurrying to make it to the other side before the light turns green and I’ll say, “Ahaa! That’s it...A bag carrying machine!”

What we found in Argentina was not what we were expecting. It’s not that we were surprised. You venture into the unknown knowing that it will not be as you have imagined it, so it’s pretty difficult to be surprised. But I was disappointed. Even after a month of research, a 40-page business plan, and 12 sheets of financial projections we found that we were wrong. There are a number of reasons for this and I won’t go into boring specifics, only to say our greatest challenges were pre-existing competition, Argentine’s resistance to change, and most importantly the precarious nature of the country’s economy. Ours was a retail concept which meant we would be earning pesos, and the peso sunk to it’s lowest level against the dollar in five years last week. Meanwhile the dollar itself is at its lowest level in recent memory against nearly every other major currency. With unofficial in inflation in Argentina at about 25% the peso is likely to continue to depreciate until the government gets its economic house in order. Which doesn’t appear likely anytime soon. Anyhow, this is all a long way of saying a retail business is about the worst business you could start in Argentina at the moment.

What is surprising is that we were completely aware of all these difficulties before we went to Argentina. Perhaps our fearless adolescent natures endowed us with attitudes of invulnerability, so we thought ourselves capable of easily surmounting all obstacles. In any case, after many conversations with Argentine locals and American’s who do business in the country we realized we had vastly underestimated the severity of these challenges. “Go into software!” We were told. Nearly everyone advised us to find a way to make dollars, euros, or pounds, while paying our workers in pesos. “That’s where the real money is!” Well there is only one slight problem with that – I don’t know the first thing about software and Jaspar knows even less.

So there you have it. We are now two young idealess entrepreneurs. On a mission to avoid a life of neck ties, twice-monthly paychecks, and performance reviews on the long road to a place called middle management, where people wait out the last two decades of their working lives dreaming of the day they arrive at retirement. Oh how glorious it will be when my 401K kicks in and I can sit on a beach or a golf course and…

I talked to my uncle over the weekend, and he had some strong words of advice. He said that my problem was I didn’t have a goal. In his opinion unless I picked a monetary figure that I was aiming for, my goal would just get larger and larger with every bit of success. Pick a number, get there and then enjoy it. But I am not after a number and I certainly am not after a life on a golf course or at a beach. I want to work! I want to work until the day I die. Of course I want to be rich too, but for reasons of security and ego not so I can spoil myself.

Which of course brings us back to the real problem. We don’t have a viable business idea. Any suggestions? Really, please post a comment or email me with any business ideas you have. The sooner I can get to work, the better it will be for everyone involved…