How UTEC became Hashi's investor

Hello! I am Gonzalo Waisman and I am writing to you from Peru. Maybe you think I'm eating ceviche or touring Machu Picchu, but no. Let me tell you how the Hashi market ended up expanding to Peru.

How did it all start?

It was a February afternoon in my room in Miami. I wanted to sell my car through Marketplace on Facebook. Until I saw an announcement in which a fund from Peru, called UTEC, was launching a call for investment giving $100,000 to start-ups.

→Whenever I see these opportunities, I apply because I am a big fan and I recommend applying to two or three contests a week to put together a portfolio of documents with typical answers to these surveys.

What happened after I signed up?

A week after I signed up, they asked me to pitch a call that lasted 8 minutes.

The problem was that there were 500 start-ups, they selected 25 and finally only 11 to give them the money. So we had a month of hard work competing against 25 start-ups to show UTEC that we deserved to be chosen from those 11.

The month of May arrived...

They had confirmed that on May 1st they confirmed the selected start-ups, but that day, I also had my flight back to Argentina. While flying, UTEC had sent me an email confirming that we had been selected.

Being on a flight for eight hours without internet, I hadn't read it. So as soon as I arrived in Argentina, instead of writing to my parents, the first thing I did was go to the email and read “Hello Gonzalo, thank you very much for participating this month...” I began to overthink what we hadn't left because it seemed like typical negative news.

Until I read “we would be interested in investing in Hashi.” But there was one requirement and that was to spend the next three months in Peru. At first it was a bit shocking since I was just returning to Argentina and I had to settle for another three months in Peru.

→It's important that in those moments, as an entrepreneur, you live in a light way to be able to make those sudden life changes.

How were those three months in Peru?

The results that Hashi obtained were INCREDIBLE:

• We grew by 120%.
• In Hashi we started out as 7 and today we are 21.
• We quadrupled customers and revenues.
• Today we have 5 Peruvian investors including 2 funds.
• We obtained the first 10 customers in Peru, it was a lifechanging program.

In this great year, UTEC chose 7 out of 11 companies to invest in and we were one of them. Today we have the excellent news that at the beginning of November they would choose one of these 11 companies to double your investment.

Guess who they chose? to Hashi again.

Until now, there are 7 months in Peru not only of Hashi's growth, but also of personal growth. I stress the idea of live in a light way because the life of an entrepreneur can change a lot very quickly.

Honestly, I don't know how much longer I'll be in Peru but I definitely don't regret clicking on that advertisement, I think I'm going to have to republish something else on Marketplace.

I greet you from Peru, a big hug.