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A special piece

In this week’s article, I wanted to get personal and share the story of how one Colombian ed-tech startup changed my life. Even though I never took one of their courses. Let me explain: in 2020, bored and quarantined, I decided that my goal would be to speak Spanish when we could go outside again. I figured I had to consume a ton of content, but I couldn’t stand two minutes of “me llamo Tim y tú, cómo te llamas” videos. I needed to find interesting, Spanish content I would actually enjoy watching. That’s when I found Platzi’s Youtube channel.

Platzi, the brainchild of Freddy Vega and Christian Van Der Henst, is a Colombian ed-tech startup offering a plethora of online courses, in Spanish, related to the digital economy (coding, digital marketing, etc…). It was born out of the two founders’ passion for technology (they both ran some successful Hispanic tech online forums in the early 2010s) combined with their shared frustration with online courses’ low completion rates. Both teachers at heart, they wanted to scale their knowledge-sharing by using the internet while simultaneously maintaining a strong community aspect.

In 2012, they created mejorando.la, which eventually morphed into Platzi following the startup’s acceptance into the famed Y-Combinator accelerator, becoming the first Latin American startup to do so. Following YC, the startup has continuously posted impressive growth numbers, raising a $62 million Series B in December 2021 while serving approximately 3 million users. Platzi is renowned for the quality and utility of its courses, especially their “English” and “Intro to programming” courses which have become staples in the company’s marketing strategy.

However, this article isn’t a deep dive into Platzi itself. Rather, it is about the lessons and the changes of mindsets that Platzi has operated on me. These reflections were elicited by the (free) Platzi content, but are fundamentally detached from the company itself. Therefore, prior knowledge of Platzi isn’t required to understand what I’m going to talk about.

Realistic Optimism

I’m not an optimist per se. Rather, I am a hyper-realist, that is well aware that everything is technically possible. This goes for both good and bad scenarios. Following that reasoning, there are potential solutions to every problem on earth. There is also an unlimited number of possibilities for things to go wrong. In my mind, however, I’ve chosen to focus and spend energy on the limitless amounts of solutions we can find to today’s problems, using pragmatism, data, realism, and the still undefined limits of human creativity. This stance stands in sharp contrast to ideology, akin to intellectual laziness, which often refuses to consider contrarian valid data points for fear of challenging a carefully crafted utopia (or dystopia).

Granted, it is easier for me to adopt this view. I haven’t lost my family in Gaza bombardments, nor has my family tree been decimated by Belgian colonialism in the Congo. I feel like the fortunate circumstances in which I came to the world oblige me to find solutions and act as a realistic optimist.

While the seeds of this reasoning were born during the core of the pandemic, when I needed to mentally accept that both the best and the worst could happen, Platzi’s videos showed me what realistic optimism looked like in practice.

The Platzi rationale is very simple. Careers in tech can earn someone up to 10x times LATAM’s average salary. Not only that, the learning curve to access those jobs can be overcome with 2 years of assiduous, daily studying. The boom in remote jobs also makes tech jobs available from anywhere in the world. The conclusion? Sell online courses, teaching tech skills, to help people triple, quadruple, or 10x their current salary in 2 years. The problem is clear, the solution is actionable. Spice it up with some healthy regional pride (Platzi tirelessly proselytizes about turning LATAM into a tech powerhouse), and you have the recipe for changing the lives of millions of Latinos.

This elegance, both in the definition of the problem and the clarity of the solution, is what I admire about Platzi. No need to dive into complicated economic development theories. Create a product that provides your users with bankable skills, and you can truly break cycles of poverty from a laptop.

Although it is in Spanish, you can turn on auto-translate

Empower, don’t help

Platzi is built on the concept of empowering its users to learn new skills, and take control of their own destinies. The goal isn’t to help users but provide them with the tools needed to thrive in the lucrative digital economy. This concept heavily impacted my decision to found GrowHome, a platform connecting Palestinian startups to investors and mentors in the diaspora, alongside my friend Marwan Abdelhamid. GrowHome didn’t work this time but mark my words, it will one day :)

While help is needed in times of dire, extreme conflict, other international development efforts should be focused on empowering people, and giving them the tools to build their own future. In many aspects, it just means standing out of the way, something Europeans apparently can’t figure out how to do, especially in Africa.

Coming back to Platzi, the fact that they have managed to change millions of lives by providing tools for empowerment has consolidated my belief that empowering startups worldwide is arguably the greatest lever for international progress this century has at its disposal.

A last, telling stat about Platzi. Students from the platform have launched more than 40 startups that have raised more than $1 million, with 20 of them being accepted into YC. The beauty of empowering people is that the results are exponential, and when applied to a cross-pollinating sector such as startups, can be truly generation-altering.

Startups are politically neutral - innovation brings us forward

After analyzing dozens of startup ecosystems around the world, I’ve come to realize that support for the national startup ecosystem is often a multi-partisan cause. Indeed, the development of a startup ecosystem creates jobs, economic growth, and more importantly innovative solutions to problems society faces. The goal in my opinion would be for startup ecosystems to become akin to the healthcare system in my native France: unequivocally supported by all sides of the political spectrum. To get there, two challenges remain.

The first is the wealth inequality created by startups’ exponential growth models, which highly reward the (few) winners of the game. Today, many gasp at the unimaginable wealth of Bezos or Musk, being unable to rationalize the ludicrous levels of wealth monopolized by such individuals. I believe part of the solution to reconciling the startup world with the general population holds in a simple sentence: pay your taxes. It is important to show that startups aren’t a zero-sum game and that the creation of successful startup founders can have a clear, positive impact on a country’s fiscal revenue, subsequently funding more social programs. Founders recognizing that large parts of their success are due to infrastructure built by the state, with tax money (see my article on the topic) would also be welcome. Granted, it’s also easier to say this from a country where I see a clear ROI on my taxes (France).

The second is fast-growing startup’s environmental impact . In order to be accepted by the general population, startups have to take the lead on new, sustainable economic models. Supply chains should be irreproachable and a company’s environmental impact should be closely monitored. While drastic changes in our habits are necessary to fight climate change, I believe that most solutions to this issue lie in the hands of innovative tech startups. They should start acting like it.

Freddy Vega - the importance of leaders

A constant in Platzi’s content is the man you see in the linked videos, Freddy Vega, one of the founders. Freddy is the embodiment of the realistic optimism pushed by Platzi. Considered brash by some, visionary by others, what’s undeniable is that Freddy became the immutable face of the company. Videos he puts out motivate an entire generation of existing and future Platzi students to take control of their own destinies (by using his product, unsurprisingly).

Platzi’s success and Freddy’s omnipresence in the LATAM tech ecosystem exemplify that while radical progress is enabled by technology, humans still embody it. All of the startup ecosystems I’ve studied have been kickstarted by a few daring, pioneering figures, such as the Skype founders in Estonia or the MercadoLibre founders in Argentina. At the end of the day, humans still need other human role models to follow and inspire.

However, following human leaders blindly has also led to the worst horrors the world has ever known. Role models we have should be critically analyzed, and we should let ourselves be inspired by the best in them, not replicate the entirety of their persona. More importantly, we should have multiple role models, in different fields.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to change the world

The last point Platzi changed my mind on was the concept of “innovation”. Platzi combined two things that already existed: online courses and online forums. They didn't reinvent the wheel but are changing the lives of millions of people by making an existing product incrementally better. Steve Jobs didn’t invent the phone but made a better one.

This realization forces humility: great innovators use what was built before them, and make it better. You can achieve dizzying success by iterating on and improving an existing process or product, and making it accessible to a new market. One has to leave their ego aside, observe the greats that came before them, and make what exists better. While not sexy, that is my true definition of innovation.

Conclusion

This article isn’t meant to be a critical analysis of Platzi, which I assume is far from flawless in many aspects. Rather, Platzi is a perfect example of what I believe is the start of a brave new era, whereby innovative startups can grow, raise and thrive no matter where they are. Work remains to be done in many geographies, but the constant globalization of the startup world is pushing things in the right direction.

I am optimistic for the future. Not because of a blind and naive belief that ‘things will get better’. There are endless possibilities for things to go wrong. However, the proliferation of startups worldwide means that new solutions to a variety of complex problems are designed to have an exponential growth curve. That’s what makes me optimistic.

The Realistic Optimist provides weekly, in-depth analyses of some of the hottest stories from our now globalized startup world. Subscribe below to receive it directly to your inbox and don’t hesitate to share it with colleagues :)