“Winning the Jóvenes Emprendiendo en la CDMX 3.0 (Young Entrepreneurs in Mexico City 3.0) contest did more than just teach me many lessons; it gave me a level of self-confidence I had never experienced before, as I succeeded in the program despite the odds being stacked against me.”

In 2017, Josmi Bautista was a student at the Centro de Estudios Científicos y Tecnológicos Número 5 “Benito Juárez” (CECyT 5) when he won the Jóvenes Emprendiendo en la CDMX (Young Entrepreneurs in Mexico City) competition, organized by the Ministry of Economic Development and Gallup.

Out of 15,000 high school students who took the EP10 assessment—a tool designed to identify entrepreneurial talent—Josmi was among the 60 students recognized by Gallup as having exceptional potential. This earned him the opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C. to pitch his business idea to Gallup CEO Jim Clifton. At the time, Josmi presented a mobile app called “Reparatodo,” described as the “Uber” for plumbers and general repair services.

After the competition, Josmi enrolled at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) to pursue a degree in Commercial Relations. At the same time, he launched his own tutoring and English school called Cursos IPN, which boasted a highly successful business model.

However, the arrival of COVID-19 and the shift to remote learning hit Josmi’s student body hard; enrollment plummeted by more than 80%, nearly wiping out his income and forcing him to let go of his teaching staff. But like a true entrepreneur, Josmi found an opportunity in the middle of the crisis. He had a few webcams he had previously purchased by mistake, so he decided to list them on Mercado Libre. He was stunned when two cameras sold in under 15 minutes, revealing a massive opening in e-commerce.

Capitalizing on the fact that everyone was stuck at home and in desperate need of webcams for work and school, Josmi opened his own trading company. He began sourcing cameras from Office Depot and reselling them through his Mercado Libre profile.

“Mercado Libre truly opens the doors to make digital entrepreneurship easy,” Josmi noted. “With the courses, I was making between $600 USD and $900 USD a month. With the cameras, I’ve made up to $1,000 USD in a single day. It’s incredible.”

From late March to September, his company, TECNOCURSOSS, sold nearly 1,500 cameras. Josmi leveraged this window of high demand during the pandemic to build his capital and personal assets—purchasing a home, a vehicle for city travel, and taking his parents on a trip to Washington, D.C. He returned as a successful entrepreneur to the very city that had given him his first international business experience.

Today, the demand for webcams has dropped drastically; however, Josmi has already established commercial agreements with Office Depot to sell products on Mercado Libre and Amazon that the tech giant has yet to move. He has also expanded his trading company’s inventory to include items like socks, clothing, and televisions, further strengthening his business operations. He sells over 1M USD through Mercado Libre and Amazon.

Additionally, he has revived “Cursos IPN” (www.cursosipn.com.mx), a language school offering English and Portuguese lessons by partnering with an extraordinary school operator who is passionate about education. Together, they have led “Cursos IPN” to reach a milestone turnover of $50K USD for the first time in the company’s history.

Josmi’s story perfectly illustrates the key ingredients for successful entrepreneurship: 1. Discipline, 2. Preparation, and 3. Luck. While it’s true that Josmi identified the need for webcams through a stroke of luck, as the saying goes, “luck favors the prepared mind.” Josmi possessed the business acumen to spot an opportunity where many others would have overlooked it—and, more importantly, the discipline to handle logistics and manage his operations. His journey is an inspiring testament to how entrepreneurs, even in the midst of uncertainty, can find a path to success through determination and vision.

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