Max Faingezicht’s Costa Rican background has helped him build a successful business connecting United States companies with remote software engineers in Latin America. His work has helped foster entrepreneurship in Costa Rica, bring valuable talent to U.S.-based companies and reshape the future of work at a time when remote work is booming. Learn what inspired his journey! We also have a full-length video interview here.
Transcript
Denzil Mohammed: I’m Denzil Mohammed and this is JobMakers. JobMakers launched in March in a time that mixed open vaccines to counter COVID-19, a new federal administration and a continuation of one of the most difficult years for businesses. It is a weekly podcast produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston, and The Immigrant Learning Center, a not-for-profit that gives immigrants a voice. I’m Denzil Mohammed, and every Thursday at noon I talk with risk takers. Immigrants who create new jobs, products and services in Massachusetts and across the United States, building on the entrepreneurial spirit that led them to America in the first place. When we return, we’ll meet this week’s outstanding immigrant entrepreneur. As uncertain as these times have been, certain concepts are becoming clear, that remote working is a viable option for some, that place-based collaboration is no longer always needed, that ideas can thrive even in the most dire of circumstances, and America’s a place where those ideas can be brought to life. For Max Faingezicht, an immigrant who founded ThriveHive, a marketing software company for small businesses, and Telescoped, which uses remote software engineering to connect Latin American engineers with U.S. companies in need of their skills, the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Boston and Cambridge allowed him to achieve dreams he didn’t even know he had when he arrived. In so doing, he can now foster entrepreneurship in his home country of Costa Rica by bringing much needed talent to U.S. companies, all the while determining what the future for it will look like. His fascinating immigration story that extends from Poland and Germany to Bolivia and Costa Rica, as well as his ideas on where workers go next, on this week’s JobMakers podcast. So Max, who are you and what are you doing here?
Max Faingezicht: Alright, well, my name is Max Faingezicht, which probably doesn’t give away the fact that I come from Costa Rica and I’m an entrepreneur who lives in Boston, immigrant and son of immigrants. And I love innovating and I love using technology to help positively impact people’s lives. And I’m here to hopefully tell some of my story and inspire your audience.
Denzil Mohammed: What kind of technology do you generally play with as an entrepreneur?
Max Faingezicht: Yeah, so for the last 10 years or so I’ve been very focused on software and software engineering. I built my first company in the marketing automation space so we had a subscription product to help small business owners. And now I’m working with remote software engineers in Latin America and helping them match with U.S. technology startups and companies that are building all of the tools that we use online, especially now in the new COVID world.
Denzil Mohammed: So you talk about engineers in Latin America, and I want to dive into that a lot more. But that idea of across the continent reach, your journey to the U.S. actually started in Poland, right?
Max Faingezicht: Now that’s right, yeah. So my grandparents (I mentioned I’m a family of immigrants), they came from Poland on one side and Poland and Germany on the other side and some of them came before the war kind of exploded, the Second World War, into Latin America seeking opportunities, finding a better situation for them and their families. And in one of the other sides they actually came escaping the war, and so both of my grandparents, they were both entrepreneurs. And they started companies in small businesses, which they grew through a lot of hard work and trying to be creative and innovative. And that was the example that they set for my father, who was also an entrepreneur. And that was kind of my family. You know dinner table conversation was all about the business, and what they were doing. And I got involved with that business early on as well.
Denzil Mohammed: So one side of the family was seeking opportunity, the other one had to flee.
Max Faingezicht: Yeah, that’s right. So the one that was seeking opportunity came to Costa Rica. Costa Rica still had their borders open back then so they could actually come in, become residents, and establish a small Jewish community there. They were there in the ’30s and brought a lot of people over the years and actually through the war time. And then on the other side, from the Germany side, my grandmother left right as Kristallnacht … she was in Berlin with the German side and she kind of escaped and ended up in Bolivia actually. So my grandparents on my mother’s side emigrated first through Bolivia, where they established themselves, and were there for maybe 20 years, and then they moved to Costa Rica at a very old age and started all over again, started from scratch. So very resilient people, very much thinking about hard work and education as the core of progress and just succeeding in life. So that’s the background.
Denzil Mohammed: And what kind of businesses did they start?
Max Faingezicht: Very traditional businesses. So on one side, my grandfather who came to Costa Rica, he went to the United States and actually in New York and other places, where he connected with other Jewish immigrants and he was able to import fabrics and set up a small fabric distribution shop, which supplied most of the different retailers. And he was a prime supplier for fabrics, and that was a company that he started from nothing and ultimately built into a very large small business. And then on my mom’s side, my grandfather was actually importing carpets, so similar story, very traditional businesses and all kind of based on this network of immigrants that they could help each other out.
Denzil Mohammed: It’s fascinating that it was such a long time ago yet they were able to find these connections and networks outside of the country, thousands of miles away in New York. That’s pretty incredible. I’m trying to picture what it was like for you, for them, and for you growing up in Costa Rica. How were you all as immigrants (you said that Costa Rica had a sort of open border policy at the time), were they received and welcomed?
Max Faingezicht: Yeah, I mean they were received, and welcomed to a certain extent. I think the country realized that immigrants bring some positive economic impact, but they were still outsiders, right? They didn’t speak the language, they looked different. It was a different tradition ’cause they were Jewish and obviously the country, it’s a very Catholic-Spanish influenced country, and so there was a little bit of a culture clash I think on both sides. But ultimately I think that they recognized that they came with good intentions, trying to do good work and to improve everyone’s livelihood around them, and so they stayed pretty close as a community, and I think that’s kind of what has happened even to today. So it’s a pretty close knit community.
Denzil Mohammed: So I’m wondering if you’ve ever felt like an outsider growing up.
Max Faingezicht: That’s a great question and I have, I will admit that I have. I feel like, well, first just the background being, feeling like an immigrant regardless of whether I was born in Costa Rica or not. But also just the idea of your heritage and being a small community inside a larger place. But also when I came to the U.S. and I came for school. So I mean I was as blessed as you can be in a program at M.I.T. with 50 percent international students. But the Mexicans had 10, 12 people, the Venezuelans had six, eight people. I was the one Costa Rican. So it’s, there’s always, you’re always a minority in a strange way. And then you got this strange last name growing up in a country like Costa Rica, so it’s not a very Latin American name. So yeah, I definitely feel like an outsider even to today, but I think it might all be more mental than anything else.
Denzil Mohammed: Yeah, I’m surprised you didn’t change your last name to Garcia or something.
Max Faingezicht: Yeah, that’s funny. I thought of it. Never actually did it, but I definitely thought of it.
Denzil Mohammed: At least we can all pronounce it.
Max Faingezicht: Yes, well, we were going to shorten it to like Fain, f-a-i-n. So a little easier.
Denzil Mohammed: So even before you got to the United States, you said entrepreneurship ran in your family. It is obviously not uncommon for people who move to another country to start a business. For various reasons, your grandparents are probably, in a sense, forced to, because language barriers, not tied into networks there. But they really use their ingenuity well to build up a small business into larger ones. And you were bitten with that bug early on, and actually started a spinoff business from your father’s company, right? And it, that started in China.
Max Faingezicht: That’s right, yeah.
Denzil Mohammed: Talk about making connections.
Max Faingezicht: Yeah, I mentioned my parents were both entrepreneurs so my mom actually started a small programming school at home. So we had like my room was no longer my room. I went to sleep with my brother and there was six computers and she was teaching young people in the 80s, and, first time into programming and spreadsheets. So I really knew I wanted to start something since very, very young. I think that was the example they set for me, but then I had joined my family’s business and we were in a … you know we did a bunch of trips to trade shows in China, Shanghai, and Guangzhou and some other places. And this is before China really exploded, so it was still like a pretty interesting place. And one of the suppliers told us that the product we were using for sign-making was actually mostly used for construction and for renovating commercial spaces. And so we started learning a little bit more and I decided to jump into a completely new industry, learn everything from the ground up. And I think that’s what really makes an entrepreneur, somebody who’s not afraid to learn and who sees these challenges as not only opportunities but also like an interesting problem to solve. I’m not a problem solver at heart, and so I think that that’s kind of what drew me to it. And so I started this company in the construction industry, which is actually still running. My brother oversees the operation back at home. And from nothing we became a pretty large company that ended up doing some large government bids and work. And you know every time I go back, I still see some of the buildings.
Denzil Mohammed: So even when you moved to the U.S. to study at M.I.T. you had this idea of being an entrepreneur. But you didn’t know about networking. You didn’t know about the systems in the U.S. You didn’t know about raising millions of dollars, did you?
Max Faingezicht: Oh no, absolutely not. I feel like all of the education that I’ve had has really taught me how to learn. Obviously, you know there’s the foundations and some important things that you learn along the way, but you really learn how to learn. And I came to the U.S., I had no idea what venture capital meant. I remember having to take a note and look it up after the first time I heard it and the same goes for private equity. I had no idea. I was completely blown away by the ecosystem in Boston and everything around M.I.T., and lucky in a way, right? ‘Cause you mentioned networks and definitely the program started that process. You know it jump started a lot of my career into the high-tech space. Otherwise it would have been a little bit of a different story. But I definitely think that learning and being willing to tackle new challenges … At the moment you think you know it all, you’re probably already losing ground to a new innovator who’s somewhere else doing interesting stuff.
Denzil Mohammed: Entrepreneurship sort of found you, right? You didn’t, you weren’t in your basement trying to start a hedge fund or start a new business. How did ThriveHive, your first business in the U.S., come about?
Max Faingezicht: I started with an idea at M.I.T. and that idea failed. And that’s another thing I learned, by the way. I should mention that failing is part of the process and it’s a healthy part of the process. So when that idea failed, I was still in school, and I had learned to tell all my friends what I wanted and to share my ideas and what my interests were. And so a classmate from M.I.T. connected me with an M.I.T. alum by the name of Sundar Subramaniam. And him and his partner, business partner [inaudible] had started a very successful company in the 90s. They IPOed that company and I got in a meeting with them. They were literally across the street from M.I.T. at 1 Main St. So we met and they pitched me this idea of a company that wasn’t doing very well and they wanted to kind of re-factor that company and rethink what it could become. And they had an analytics engine, and so that’s the core and the basis of what became ThriveHive, this marketing automation company. So it really came through networking, working with other immigrant entrepreneurs, and really being open to sharing your ideas and letting the world know what you’re looking for. Because I always thought if I want to be an entrepreneur, I have to have to come up with an idea and then start it. But actually a lot of ideas don’t start from just that. Sometimes you join another team, sometimes there’s two teams that join and end up building a third idea. So there’s a million different ways in which you can get into the entrepreneurial ecosystem. I think there isn’t just one recipe.
Denzil Mohammed: So at least 30 people have to thank you for giving them jobs at ThriveHive. Tell us about running that business in the U.S. What was that experience like?
Max Faingezicht: Yeah, I mean I think it was the time of my life. Back then, like I said, I came in 2009 not knowing what venture capital was and there I was in 2012, just a few years later, raising multimillion dollar rounds, hiring people, growing a business. We went to an accelerator in Techstars, which was also pretty critical in our history. And another immigrant, Semyon Dukach, who was the managing director, had a pretty big influence on me, and in what we were doing at ThriveHive. Just setting the right values, making sure that we were managing the business around the right metrics, but also caring for our people. And that’s also something that we always put front and center, people, meaning our customers, our team, our investors. In the end you can build the coolest technology, but if you don’t put the customer first, if you don’t care for your team, if you don’t keep your investors happy, then things don’t click. So it was just a wonderful time. We were really innovating and building what I think back then was one of the most powerful solutions to help small business owners like what my family had back at home. And I was just thinking of the thousands of people that we could help by putting these powerful tools in their hands. So that was the real driver behind that, the mission that we were after.
Denzil Mohammed: And you describe that this relationship that you have continuing with Costa Rica. I see a sort of humanitarian angle to this. But in terms of a business, tell us about Telescoped and what makes it so interesting?
Max Faingezicht: Absolutely, yeah. So after I left ThriveHive … I stayed with the company that acquired us for about three years and then I took some time off to think about what came next. And one of the things that really resonated with me is that with ThriveHive our mission was the most important thing. I knew that we were having positive impact in the world through small business owners. And I wanted my next thing to have as much if not more impact. And so we saw the movement of remote work, and that’s kind of where we saw an opportunity and our mission, our core purpose, that Telescoped is the pursuit of autonomy, opportunity and purpose for the talented people of the world. So we’re really thinking of, I think you were saying this earlier, but the people that I hired, the people that were our customers, however many people you can impact in your lifetime, I think that’s a good measure of success in my book. It’s not about dollars, it’s about who you can help. And so with Telescoped, we’re connecting software engineers in Latin America with companies in the U.S., but our model is pretty unique in the sense that we think about it as a new model of employment. So this is not outsourcing, it’s actually something different.
Denzil Mohammed: Tell us about this distinction. This audience really wants to make sure that it’s not outsourcing.
Max Faingezicht: Absolutely, yeah. So I think that the biggest insight we had is that outsourcing, while it has been great for many countries, Costa Rica included, it definitely limits the growth of the most talented people in the country. You’ve got amazing engineers who go from one outsourcing firm to the next. And basically, all of their work is, there’s always an intermediary that blocks them from continuing to grow their careers and their paths. And the reason for that is that the model is based on an arbitrage model. If I can pay an engineer like a mid-level job, but then someone as a major or senior then I make X amounts of dollars per engineer. And then that career path is dictated by the outsourcing firm. People that go to outsourcing companies, they’re looking to cut costs, ’cause obviously you would think that abroad the costs are lower. And some of the worst projects get outsourced, right? It’s the ones nobody wants, nobody wants to do them here. And so what we realized is that remote work breaks through that model, and it allows for the engineers in countries like Costa Rica or Latin America or anywhere in the world to be first-class citizens within their companies for the first time. And the growth of that person is going to be managed by the company that is dictating the work and everything in between, whether that’s the type of business, the technology, the learning, the mentoring, which goes both ways, it’s going to be directed directly between the engineer and the company. And Telescoped does not act as a barrier between the two, but actually it’s an enabler. So we’re doing the matching. So we find the people, we certify them, and then we also understand where they want to go with their careers. Do they wanna really go deep into the tech and become an R&D expert for machine learning, or do they want to grow as a tech leader, eventually a CTO? They never have that opportunity with an outsourcing firm. They just get a project handed and this is what you have to work on. With us we look at their profile and then we match them with the opportunity that makes the most sense for them. So in a way we are kind of like a sports agent would be for a superstar. We’re doing that for engineers abroad and then companies here benefit from the fact that we are able to find some of the most talented people that will be obviously very loyal ’cause they’re getting incredible opportunities to grow. They’re working on the most interesting challenges side by side with the smartest and most [experienced] people, and so they’re super loyal, super pumped about what they’re building. And that’s where we want to enable 100,000 times over.
Denzil Mohammed: And they’re getting benefits too, right?
Max Faingezicht: Oh, of course. I mean, but part of what we offer, and this is kind of this new model of employment, is we take care of all of the payroll stuff, but we also not only offer like the standard benefits, we also realized that for this to work we need to add some new things, which might not have existed before in the model of just straight-up contract work. We give them unemployment insurance and other things that we can pool by having more people in as part of the network.
Denzil Mohammed: But now tell me, what was it like launching this business just before a global health crisis?
Max Faingezicht: We never saw that coming, right? Well, I think we were lucky, right? First technology in general obviously to a certain extent got scared. But more than that, let’s just be 100 percent transparent here, when COVID started to become a real threat around March, April, everything stopped and hiring freezes everywhere. So all of our sales, all of the pipeline fell through and that was tough as a business. I mean, we were thankfully well funded so we could focus our energy on the other side of the network, which was recruiting engineers. So people were very uneasy and people were nervous and they were more than willing to put in the time to find opportunities to make sure they have a safety card up their sleeve in case something happened with their jobs. And so we were able to grow that side of the network quite extensively. And then as people moved from colocated to work from home, companies’ mindsets changed, and so all of our prospects and potential clients all of a sudden, that pool became much, much larger. So we’re kind of running with those tailwinds now and we’re seeing really, really interesting growth, and I think you know, in the long term it’s going to be the year that changed everything for remote work. We kind of had 10 years of change in a single year.
Denzil Mohammed: You say that, and even on your website you have a blog post saying that location will soon be irrelevant for companies that employ knowledgeable workers. What do you mean by that? Just a few years ago, admittedly pre-pandemic, there was a huge sweepstakes to determine a new home of Amazon and its second headquarters. Has COVID really changed that much about business decisions or is the idea that location will be irrelevant just reflective of long-term trends?
Max Faingezicht: It’s a great question and I think, well, first, let me tell you what I mean by location will be irrelevant. I think, and bear with me ’cause this is going to go like a little meta … So the first thing is I think there’s going to be a change towards giving more power to the person, to the employee, to the engineer, in my case. And this is going to come from the fact that the moment that you’ve broken the thinking and people are not constrained by how many people are in their city or in their state or in their country. But now you’re talking about a global pool of talent. All of a sudden you’re going to have marketplaces like what I’m building for software engineers, but I think that’s going to happen in many other industries. And the moment that you’ve got a marketplace with liquidity, so you’ve got enough companies, enough talent on the other side, then you can make those matches happen seamlessly. All of a sudden the power dynamics shift. So when you work for a company, the company calls the shots on everything. They dictate everything, and then you just abide. The companies are good. They give you good benefits and perks and whatnot. But many times people get stuck and they can’t leave that system. When you have a liquid marketplace, you can decide to work for the best company that best aligns to your interests, and that’s part of our core mission. If you remember being aligned with purpose, I’m really passionate about health care and making sure people live healthy lives. Or maybe I’m incredibly excited about finance. I mean, some people are like, there’s all sorts of passions, right? But now that you’ve got a liquid marketplace, you can choose to work where you want to work, and so when that happens you actually have people that can choose their destiny in a way. Now when you have people that are choosing where they work, and I might want to live in Costa Rica, ’cause that’s where I want to be and the company allows me to work remotely, instead of having to set up a second office in Costa Rica, Amazon can hire me directly from wherever they are located. So now all of that compensation, all of that benefit that I’m getting is going to get spent in my local economy because it’s coming directly to me instead of through an entity that has to be set up somewhere, and I think that’s going to change the dynamic of power, because now people will decide where they want to work. I don’t know if any of this made any sense. But I can …
Denzil Mohammed: It does. And I think everyone wants a sort of crystal ball to determine, well, exactly what is the future of work going to look like? I want to focus in a little bit more on this relationship you have with engineers in Costa Rica and your relationship with Costa Rica in general. I know that you said Techstars helped your company and now you are a mentor with Techstars as well. Are you also mentoring young budding entrepreneurs in Costa Rica?
Max Faingezicht: Yes, I mean I think a lot of what I’ve wanted to do is giving back. And that’s actually like Techstars. The core thing of Techstars is give back. And so I’ve been teaching a class at the local university where I studied, University of Costa Rica, around entrepreneurship but we open sourced it so it’s all available online so that anybody can learn from that. And I mean in reality my dream is to have a new wave of entrepreneurship spawn in Costa Rica. Part of that is through teaching, part of that is even through what I’m doing with Telescoped. I hope that some of these engineers are wildly successful in their jobs, and some of them are getting equity from these startups. Hopefully they’ll have a nice financial exit and they can become the next CEOs and CTOs for a new generation of companies that will thrive inside of Latin America.
Denzil Mohammed: Wow, that’s pretty incredible. What is next for you? Obviously you’re still in a startup, but what is next for you beyond Telescoped?
Max Faingezicht: Well, I think that …
Denzil Mohammed: My prediction, we’re back into construction.
Max Faingezicht: Yeah, I’m not sure about that. No, I really think that my dream, coming to Boston, I actually looked back at my application essay to M.I.T. and it’s to become a bridge between Latin America, my region, and the U.S. I also think using technology to impact people’s lives has always been important to me. So I definitely think teaching and mentoring will always be something that I spend some of my time on. I also think that through Telescoped hopefully we’ll be able to set up certain structures for teaching at scale, so not necessarily like me teaching everything, but also just bringing some of the the people that I’ve met running events in Costa Rica that are open I mean not just to the Telescoped network, but to anyone. So if you can have some of that cross pollination, I think that’s incredibly powerful. And then ultimately starting some sort of fund to help young entrepreneurs with ideas, with energy, with innovation develop those things into viable products that can help people. So that’s what it all comes down to for me … being a driving force of entrepreneurship around the world.
Denzil Mohammed: Ah, that is incredible. You clearly feel strongly, Max, and positively about your native Costa Rica. And your immigrant story extends to different continents, five countries: Poland, Germany, Bolivia, Costa Rica, the United States. Your children are growing up in the U.S. and I know you want them to know about and appreciate where their stories began. But we live in a country and a time where, for instance, it’s OK for flags or T shirts of certain origin countries to fly in front yards or be worn in public, certain festivals from origin countries, but not so for others, at least for some Americans. And that has been the case throughout U.S. history. What to you does an American’s identity really mean? Do we need to just shed our past identities once we land at Logan?
Max Faingezicht: No, of course not. I think that’s the beauty of it, right? You embrace the new culture. You bring what you have, your own heritage and you make it into a new thing that is more powerful than the sum of its parts. But that’s everyone, right? Like we’re all playing all these different roles in life, whether it’s as a spouse, as a patient if you’re in the hospital, as a boss, as an employee, some neighbor. You have all of these different roles and you know your identity kind of crosses through all of those. But each one of those relationships, each one of those interactions, also change and modify and make you evolve. But that’s what’s beautiful about life, right? Like you’re not a static thing. It’s not like you land and then you erase everything that happened before. I think it’s the opposite. You build upon it.
Denzil Mohammed: Thank you so much, Max. That was very, very beautifully said. I really appreciate taking the time to talk to us today on JobMakers. You’ve had, your families just had a fascinating journey, and it’s good to remind people that we can have a complex identity. We can embrace many different things, and it’s OK because America allows you to do that.
Max Faingezicht: Absolutely. I think if there’s one place in the world where you know you can be yourself and you can take where you come from and mesh it with your current reality and turn into something that has the potential of just becoming something unique, America is the place to do that. So I couldn’t agree more.
Denzil Mohammed: Last question. What food do you miss most from Costa Rica?
Max Faingezicht: Oh, that’s easy. So our national food is gallo pinto. It’s super straightforward. It’s basically rice and beans, but it’s, I don’t know, when you have your gallo pinto dish, which is rice and beans with some fried eggs and fresh plantain and cheese, that’s just wonderful. I wish we had that here.
Denzil Mohammed: I wish you luck in finding that.
Max Faingezicht: Thank you.
Denzil Mohammed: Alright, thank you so much, Max. I really appreciate it. If you know an outstanding immigrant entrepreneur we should talk to let us know by emailing Denzil, that’s d-e-n-z-i-l, denzil@jobmakerspodcast.org. So happy that you joined us with this week’s inspiring story of another immigrant entrepreneur. Join us again next Thursday at noon. I’m Denzil Mohammed, and thank you for joining us for JobMakers.