Ángel and Jesús Cisneros, Quiubas | Selling Millions With a Handful of Employees

The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.

Quiubas’s technology came to process more than 90% of SMS messages in Mexico with a team of just 20 people, while its main competitor had (incredibly) more than 1000 employees! Quiubas did not raise a single dollar of investment and in 2020 it was acquired by Twilio.

Today I talked with its founders, the brothers Ángel and Jesús Cisneros, two founders who are experts at doing more with less.

In this episode we talk about:

How they built a company with a global mindset from a small city like León, Guanajuato
What the culture and the processes were that allowed them to be so productive with few employees
And why they decided not to raise capital to scale Quiubas, going so far as to turn down an investment offer for more than 100 million dollars

Angel and Jesus created one of the first B2B software successes for Latin America, without raising capital and with a highly technological product. I hope you enjoy their story!

Youtube Timestamps*

[01:35] - Arrival in Silicon Valley

How did they get into the fascinating world of startups?

Ángel and Jesús’s dad was a private plane pilot and, because of that, they grew up surrounded by people with money in Leon, Guanajuato.

How did this experience shape them?

Pepe Bolaños commented that something that surprised him about the brothers was how well connected they were despite coming from a small city like León and running a bootstrapped business, and how they drew inspiration from Silicon Valley mental models to apply them to their business.

What was the idea behind starting to travel to Silicon Valley and the Mobile World Congress? Where does that curiosity come from?
What did they learn? What lessons did they take from those trips that were important for building Quiubas?
What should a Latin American founder do to look for those special things that Silicon Valley has?

At some point in their journey they did not even have enough to buy some quesadillas, and in those days a person offered to buy the business from them for millions of pesos.

Why did they decide not to do it?

[18:23] - How to Do More with Less

When they sold Quiubas to Twilio, they had 27 employees and they must have been doing close to ten million dollars in revenue. Few startups reach sales-per-employee ratios at that level.

At the level of team organization, operations, culture, etc., what were the operating principles that allowed them to be so productive with so few people?
Could they share an example of something they changed in the way they built product or operated, that had a big impact on their speed of execution?

Today they are more involved in the startup ecosystem and they have invested in startups. As a result of that, they have had the chance to advise early-stage founders.

What mistakes do they see other founders make in the process of dominating a niche?

Jesús comments that Ángel was visionary in pushing them to develop an API for Quiubas, because he felt the market was going to move in that direction.

Where did that insight about APIs come from?

Their main competitor had 1,600 employees. If with a very small team they could beat such large competitors, it was because they were doing something special.

What was unique about their work methodology and task automation that gave them an advantage over their competitors?
What comes to mind as the most creative solutions they had to come up with? Maybe they can tell one of those stories where they pulled off something everyone told them could not be done.

[49:26] - Bootstrapping: Culture and Innovation

Many businesses in Latin America reach millions in sales by bootstrapping and then raise venture capital when the size of their markets really does not justify it.

Can they tell the story of the investment offer of more than 100 million at a unicorn valuation that they received, and why they decided to turn it down?

In recent years, “big tech” cultures were heavily criticized because of the excess of resources and hiring. By contrast, building a bootstrapped technology company requires a very particular culture.

What were the most standout values of Quiubas’s culture that they believe were key to its success?

Connecting the topic of product creation with the topic of bootstrapping:

Can they talk about their experience with the relationship between innovation and limitations? Do they believe it is a powerful tool and that founders should look for how to create more limitations in order to produce more innovation?

[01:01:35] - Quick Questions

They said they are exploring their next steps and that they want to start a company again. They have a fairly specific expertise. What is next for Ángel and Jesús Cisneros? How do they use that understanding for a new purpose?
If they had to leave those beginnings as founders and become investors in startups in Latin America, what would they look for in the market and in the founding team?