Ultrabot

Ultrabot grew out of Kaiwa-Tech: bit by bit we shifted from building and selling kits to teaching people, professionals and school kids how to program and build things.

A neighbor of mine, the principal of a well-known private school in Quilmes, saw all the foot traffic in our garage and asked what we were doing. I explained, and he said: want to come teach a class at my school? That's how we started: 6 students the first year, 18 the second, then 80 across 3 schools, and by the last year we had 300 students of every grade level across 4 schools in Quilmes.

The model worked for everyone involved. We manufactured the robotics kit ourselves, so we could sell it to students at an accessible price and charge a monthly fee. The school kept a percentage of those fees, and parents got photos every month of their kids building things and having a blast in the workshops while learning tech.

• 300+ students trained across three years of the academy
• K → 12 all school levels covered, from kindergarten to high school

In three years we grew 1,000% (unheard of for most businesses) and since it was almost entirely a services model, the margins were huge.

In year two my partner Victoria joined, taking over the whole early-childhood and primary track: a child coach and primary school teacher who'd spent years running her own kids' birthday-party entertainment company. It was the perfect match.

Eventually I hit a personal and emotional breaking point, and decided to backpack around Europe for a year. Vicky, who'd already sold a company of her own, made the call to buy Ultrabot from me: my only successful exit so far in my career as an entrepreneur.

Before selling to Victoria, I had to make sure the business could run without me: these were clients who were loyal to me personally, and I needed the experience to hold up. I brought in an accountant to handle the numbers (never trivial in Argentina) and an advanced engineering student for the technical side. Vicky, who already owned the relationship with the teachers, took over the pedagogical side and team leadership. And that's how I left, thanks to Ultrabot, to go travel the world.

Sometimes the best decision is to step aside when you're not doing well emotionally or mentally. That breaking point also forced me to think about building a delegable company: taking myself out of the central role and documenting everything in proper procedure manuals, so the business could hold up without depending on one person.