My Startup Portfolio- The year in review

A year ago I was a creative director. In advertising, to gauge my productivity at year’s end, I would take inventory of the crop of work I had produced that was worthy of a spot in my portfolio. I created dozens of ads a year, but just 3 or 4 portfolio pieces, was enough for a stellar year.

I have been an entrepreneur for a year now. I am trying to gauge my productivity:

I have developed four products.

I launched two iPhone apps, one Android App and a text messaging platform.

I signed a contract that entitles me to compensation every time a user clicks a button within one of those apps.

iPhone and Android App Developed for Puerto Rican Insurance Company. Visit:

I recruited a base of paid-users for each product developed in just eight months.

I did not develop a product that did not have a paying client waiting for it.

Since August, my startup has had the luxury of observing end users, providing real data to measure profitability of each product.

I spent more time in front of customers than building web sites and landing pages.

My products only have about 300 users. But I have emailed with, talked to or met about 65% of them in person.

I have users to learn from, but learning from them is not bogging me down.

They have taught me that certain upgrades that are still in the development pipeline add no value and can be scratched, while others that I invested to deploy were completely unnecessary.

I became a business development lead, one-man customer development lab, project manager, tech support specialist, mailman, beta tester, voice over talent, social media community manager, web master and consultant.

I have felt fearless, I have felt scared shitless; sometimes within the span of the same day.

I have met with more lawyers than I’d like to admit and confirmed my hatred of spreadsheets.

I have tried to bite off more than I can chew. I could’ve been leaner. I could have been faster.

There are plenty of things I did wrong, but plenty I did right.

I have swung for the fences.

After a year as an entrepreneur, I have a portfolio, similar to the crop I added to my web site each year as a Creative Director. But the bar is higher now. I am not looking for case studies or campaigns to add to the CV, I’m searching for a business model to add to the income statement.

This is my foundation. A year of interviews, proposals and spreadsheets has given me a clearer picture of the odds each product has of making it. I will invest my time in 2013 accordingly.

The Shortest Route to Cannes

New York-San Juan-Cannes

In May of 2007 I left New York City, where I had been an Associate Creative Director in advertising for several years, to come to join JWT in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

A colleague, who continues to be an invaluable advisor to me, warned me about the move: “Miguel, I believe in what you’re trying to do. I just think you’re trying to do it in the wrong market.”

He had every reason to doubt of Puerto Rico as the launching pad for the rest of my career. Why would anyone trade Manhattan for San Juan? At the time, Puerto Rico was in the 1^st year of a recession; an economic crisis that many believe has yet to bottom out. Smaller budgets, smaller clients, smaller agencies all seemed to translate to less opportunities for growth. Puerto Rico was no man’s land. Thousands flocked to the states to escape the island; I was heading into the storm.

Even though the cards were stacked against my success in Puerto Rico, JWT San Juan was exactly what my career needed. For five years, I worked as a creative director here in my hometown. I did what I loved, in a country I loved. The crisis, reminded me on a daily basis of how fortunate I was, leaving little room for the sense of entitlement that can be a by-product of the luxuries of big agency life.

Gone were the two-week film productions in Los Angeles, Buenos Aires and Vancouver. Gone where million dollar budgets. Gone where the big name directors. In their place, JWT San Juan offered a simple challenge: “do great work or you will not survive.”

Now I realize that all the rest was what people in the startup world call vanity metrics; perks that are easily mistaken for results. Perks that make you lose sight of the ultimate goal. In Puerto Rico, I was forced be scrappy. The only reward was the work.

Almost five years to the date of my departure, JWT San Juan received the Gran Prix Lion in the Public Relations category at the Cannes Advertising Festival, along with other Lions in the Radio, Media and Branded Entertainment categories for a campaign that I am proud to have been a part of. Winning at Cannes was a dream come true, it is the ultimate goal for any advertising creative.

BEFORE I forced my wife to stop at Cannes during out honeymoon in 2007, just to take this picture.

AFTER With Jaime Rosado, ECD JWT San Juan the only man in the world capable of moving an island in the Caribbean closer to the French Riviera.

Throughout Puerto Rico’s history, my people have migrated to New York to follow their dreams.

For the past five years JWT, San Juan has been living proof that it is possible to reverse the trend.

Returning home, was the shortest route to Cannes.

I have since moved on and for the past six months have been working to launch a tech startup in Puerto Rico. There is no doubt in my mind that my island is the wrong market for this kind of pursuit, yet somehow this doubt equips me with great confidence. There is only one option. No time for vanity metrics.

“Do great work or you will not survive.”

Here is the case study for “The Most Popular Song” the campaign awarded in Cannes. The most impressive part of the campaign is the fact that the agency that created the work, practices what it preaches.