Inaki Orozco '05
Building a tequila company Iñaki Orozco is founder, president, and CEO of Riazul Imports, a tequila company that is two hundred years in the making. He inherited from his great-great-grandmother 620 acres of land in Mexico’s exclusive Jalisco highlands, officially recognized as the region where tequila was born. Thus grew his vision for harvesting agave and eventually creating a suite of premium tequila. Only a year after Riazul has hit the market, Iñaki has secured $2.1 million in funding and plans to expand the Texas-marketed product nationally.
Jones Journal: Iñaki, how important is education and experience in being a successful entrepreneur? Orozco: In the 1990s, I told my father I wanted to follow in his footsteps and own my business. He said, ‘That’s great, but I strongly suggest that you get some formation in the corporate world so you can give your business a solid structural foundation, as this is something that has lacked in my company.’ So, I put my entrepreneurial dream aside and looked for a job. I’m thankful that I didn’t pursue my own business first. Corporate experience and operational sensibility have been key pieces to my company’s early success. Jones Journal: What do you enjoy most about the business? My favorite aspect is seeing people’s reaction to our product. If they respond well, it means we did our homework. As an entrepreneur, you feel you must invent something out of scratch. It’s tough to, say find the fifth leg on the cat, but improvements can be found anywhere even in the most saturated industries. Key is hitting differentiating competitive advantages that turn people on to your product. Jones Journal: What advice would you give aspiring entrepreneurs?
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If you choose to have a business partner, finding the right one across the board is crucial, especially one that complements your skills. Human capital is the most important asset to any company. If you don’t have quality people, it will impact your product, the efficiency of your business model, and ultimately, it will be reflected in your bottom line.
On that note, keep listening to everyone and everything around you. Entrepreneurs have to understand that they don’t know everything. It’s a constant learning process, and the world moves so fast; you never know when someone might say something that you’ll end up implementing in your business.
Paul Campbell '03
Scientist turned entrepreneur Paul Campbell didn’t always appear destined to be an entrepreneur. He spent his formative years working in a museum and, frankly, has spent more years in school and as an academic than he has working. But as fate would have it, the scientist, who earned a PhD in biochemistry and cell biology at Rice, has co-founded two biotech companies, Aster Bio and Glycos Biotechnologies, and is a director at Houston-based venture capital firm, DFJ Mercury.
Jones Journal: Paul, it seems you took an unusual path to entrepreneurship. What inspired you? Campbell: I actually come from a very entrepreneurial family. My grandfather started companies in construction and life insurance. My father wanted to be a scientist, but because of family expectations, he went into business, starting his own real estate property management company. While I was in school, I saw a lot of really interesting business-related decisions happening around science. I realized that there was no common vocabulary. Some people understood the science but not business, or understood business but not the science. That’s when I started thinking about science as a business. I said to myself, I know the science, maybe I can learn the business. Jones Journal: It sounds like a start-up was a good fit for you. I was looking for a smaller environment where I would have a broader range of daily activities, so I figured I’d create a company or work for a start-up. I started my companies to