CEO of Slate NYCSlatenyc is an ec0-luxury laundry and dry cleaning company in New York City.
What do you need to be an entrepreneur?
Money, or the ability to raise or attract it.
What inspired you to start your business?
A dissatisfaction with the product I was buying, combined with a profound change in my life (breaking up with a long-time girl friend), supported by the appearance in my life of someone who pushed me to accomplish my dreams.
How did you finance it?
Sold my car, invested my bar mitzvah savings, asked family and friends for the rest.
Being Hispanic…Does it have any influence on your business?
Yes. In everything from contact with employees, with customers, with suppliers, with the community to how long you take to pay your bills.
In the face of adversity, how do you decide to keep going?
It’s 90% inertia, 10% that the idea that the worst day as an entrepreneur is still better than the best day doing anything else.
What is the biggest challenge your business has faced?
Finding the right product/market fit.
If you could change one thing about your business, what would it be?
The learning curve rate. We should be constantly learning faster.
What was your childhood ambition?
To be the owner of my own company that had its headquarters in a glass building along Reforma (the main avenue in Mexico City)
Tell us about three entrepreneurs that you admire?
Steve Jobs, Ferdinand de Lesseps (builder of the Suez and Panama canals), and my dad.
For business meetings: breakfast, lunch, or dinner?
Coffee actually. I’d rather not do business when I eat.
What sacrifices on your personal life did you have to make in order to become a business success?
Less time with family. Less time for myself. Less time with my girlfriend. On the other hand, having little spare time makes you more efficient in the way you spend it.
What is your favorite quote?
It doesn’t matter what color is the cat as long as it catches the mouse.
Is it difficult to be unconventional?
Only if you care about the status quo.
Biggest mistake made?
I’ll give you three. Thinking small. Not being thorough enough with my own ideas and projections. Not minding the details. I can keep going for two more pages…
Do you consider yourself an innovator? Why?
Absolutely. Because we transformed an insight into the relationship between people and their clothes and turned it into a business within an industry that had been doing the same thing for 50 years.
Contact Miguel at http://www.slatenyc.com/
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