Peruvian Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Belisario Rosas, CEO of WEI (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Did you have that tendency of trying to do it all before this change happened?

Belisario Rosas: Very much. I was buying. I was selling. I was doing everything.

Sramana Mitra: You were running a substantial revenue company but you did not have any executive team?

Belisario Rosas: That is correct.

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. The next thing that you did was to introduce a layer of executive teams.

Belisario Rosas: That is correct. I was also delegating. Like I said earlier, I was pretty much into micro-managing. I was learning how to make others do it and concentrating on more of a strategic view of where we wanted to take the company and how we wanted to grow. I would say that was the most important aside from also thinking in a more strategic way. You asked me what specifically. It was thinking where we wanted to take the company, how we wanted to grow it, which type of segment or where do we fit best in the value chain.

Sramana Mitra: What were the nuggets that came out of that strategic thinking? What did you decide?

Belisario Rosas: Where did we do the best? Where did we want to invest? Which segments did we want to invest into? At that time, we were doing all types of products. We wanted to concentrate on the ones that were going to give us the best bang for our dollar.

Sramana Mitra: What were those?

Belisario Rosas: We wanted to invest in virtualization and infrastructure.

Sramana Mitra: What do you mean by infrastructure?

Belisario Rosas: Infrastructure products in to data centers. The racks into PBUs. Anything that encompasses the whole solution aside from the core ones that we were already doing. We were already reselling computers but there was more to just doing computers. We wanted to do the full solution stack. Aside from the computers, we also did storage and networking.

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like that was around 2009 to 2010?

Belisario Rosas: That is correct. In 2011, we did $70 million. In 2012, we did $106 million. Then, we did $150 million in 2013 and $175 million in 2014. We’re on track for $220 million this year.

Sramana Mitra: Are you still private?

Belisario Rosas: Yes, we are.

Sramana Mitra: Is this a high margin business?

Belisario Rosas: It used to be.

Sramana Mitra: What has changed?

Belisario Rosas: Technology, more people, and larger resellers. We’re pretty niche on solutions. It’s just because of the requirements of people to come up with the right architecture and the right solution for our customers.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Peruvian Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Belisario Rosas, CEO of WEI
1 2 3 4 5