Son of Harvard and founding member of the generation of national entrepreneurs "1.0" (who fought against the jaws of the dotcom bubble and managed to survive but not without the occasional scrape), Alejandro Oxenford, better known as Alec, is the founder of OLX , one of the five unicorns that Argentina boasts.
Twenty years after starting his entrepreneurial career, today he remains away from his company and dedicated to Letgo, oriented to the sale of used items with which he wants to dethrone Craigslist in the US market and, like his online classifieds platform , already exceeded the $ 1 billion valuation.
Much of his life was spent abroad. Although he was born and raised in Palermo, trips around the world were common currency in his family. He attended primary school in Brazil, where he had to move after the abduction of his maternal grandfather.
He returned to the country to study at San Andrés School. Later, he studied Business Administration at the UCA and celebrated the degree. Of his 5 years at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), three were in Spain and one in San Pablo. To that we must add the two years in Massachusetts for his MBA.
Success in business found him outside. He says the Harvard experience opened his mind: "It made me realize that I could create things. I saw companies that got big and very fast. They didn't have capital behind, but they really wanted to go for more," he says.
Although he had a commitment with BCG to stay another two years (since he had financed part of his experience in the Ivy League), for months he worked piece by piece planning his launch to entrepreneurship.
Finally, in 1999 he raised the blind of DeRemate.com along with 10 partners: 90% of the capital was own and the remaining, of the French Aucland. The auction company launched with 3,000 products available on its platform and in May 2000 already accumulated 3.6 million visits and sales of more than $ 25 million.
At that time, Internet business was very incipient and the "stick" firms had everything to gain. However, the dotcom bubble forced everyone to adjust their belts. Also the Oxenford company had to shrink and 300 employees went to have 150.
But DeRemate.com insisted on the course: in 2003 it accounted for 2 million registered users and planned to close the year with US $ 300 million in specific operations. Even so, Oxenford didn't have a good time. Its competitor was nothing less than Mercado Libre and the rivalry was intense.
To the point that one lived like a Superclassic that, instead of a soccer field, was disputed in the online field of auction sites. Also, within the framework of a strong academic antagonism: Harvard versus Stanford.
"I took what was happening very seriously, it was all life or death. I did not understand the game and I got stressed, I lost my hair, I got an ulcer," he says. The Oxenford-Galperín competition was resolved in 2005 after years of tug-of-war and copying strategies. Finally, Mercado Libre bought DeRemate for "barely" $ 40 million.
The company's investors included Merril Lynch Global Emerging Markets, Newbridge Technology Ventures, eQuest Partners, DLJ Fund Investment Partners and La Nación SA, which had acquired 20% of the shares.
A year passed until he launched OLX - Online Exchange. To define what he wanted to do with his life, he coined the concept of ‘martian approach’ together with his partner, the French economist Fabrice Grinda. "If an alien arrived on Earth and wanted to start an online company, where would he install it?" They asked. Both traveled south to isolate and reflect.
Argentina and France were discarded, not seeing them as good markets to kick off. Analyzing the potential of the BRIC block (Brazil, Russia, India, China), the third of them presented itself as the most attractive. Thus began operations in the Asian country prior investment of US $ 500,000, but managing everything from Argentine territory.
"If we look back, our plan to stand in India was unconscious, but it had more to do with cheering," he says. But the truth is that the classified company made its way into emerging markets with a business model that generated revenue only from the sale of advertising. No commission was charged to those who used the platform.
According to Oxenford, one of the company's strengths was to have developed cell phone technology before others. OLX implemented it in 2008, just one year after the launch of the iPhone. "We had apps and mobile version several years before Craigslist and even eBay," he says.
And he adds: "We made the first developments in Croatia, because in Argentina that business didn't move much, there was no return on investment. We thought of discontinuing it several times (to the mobile project), but we didn't do it because it was a small team and we didn't It was expensive. It wasn't so much because we were geniuses but because we just didn't dare. "
Beyond his business side, he also flirted with the world of art and politics. From 2013 to this year he served as president of ArteBA. He was introduced to that world in 2001, when he was elected as head of the Association of Friends of Malba. A short time later, he began his collection of works by contemporary artists. He assures that he only buys this type of paintings because it is the best form of patronage. It even manages a travel scholarship program for artists that already has 10 editions.
In 2007 he was part of the small advisory table of Juan Carlos Blumberg, who was preparing his political leap. Seeing him cry on TV asking for justice for his son, Axel Blumberg, kidnapped and murdered in 2004, Oxenford wrote to him. Juan Carlos's story had touched him closely, not only because of the kidnapping of his grandfather but also because an uncle of his had suffered the same fate as Axel in the 70s. .
However, Blumberg's trajectory at the polls was short. He presented himself as a candidate for governor of the Province of Buenos Aires - the Vamos front joined Jorge Sobisch as a presidential candidate - but he obtained only 1.26% of the votes in the elections that Daniel Scioli would win.
His methodical and organized being, which diagrams until his leisure time, is complemented by his "playful" vision of business. The years under pressure on DeRemate.com, he points out, made him learn and change the fashion in which he faced every day.
"In the end, this is all a game and you have to take it that way. You have to laugh, have a good wave and have fun," he says. At the same time, he was always critical of the business, to the point that the managers of Argentine companies are "a tear." And he adds: "They look more to the past and do not prepare to compete in the future."
The takeoff
The South African group Naspers started their honeymoon with OLX in 2010, when they bought 95% of the company for $ 200 million. Meanwhile, the holding company, through its Brazilian subsidiary Buscapé Financial Services, was made of DineroMail, an online payment platform also co-founded by Oxenford in 2003.
In 2018, the "classified" segment - starring the OLX Group that operates in 41 countries and has 330 million users - reported Nasper US $ 628 million, 35% more than the previous year. And in the first financial half of 2019, this unit exceeded $ 405 million in turnover (40% increase compared to 2018).
Argentina occupies a smaller space among its business priorities. Several years passed before OLX landed in the country and even today the market continues to represent a very small portion of the turnover: according to Oxenford, about 2% of total sales.
For example, in India, where it holds 80% of the share in the "person-to-person online trade" industry, it reported revenues of Rs 1,790 million in 2018 (more than $ 25 million).
Meanwhile, in February of this year, OLX Argentina, focused mainly on software development, laid off 50 of its 320 employees when it decided to move some administrative and financial tasks to Colombia. Months before he had acquired the online platform of real estate offers -Properati- to expand its reach in the real estate market.
Letgo, your big bet
Since 2014, the entrepreneur remains away from the management of OLX and dedicated full time to his new jewel: Letgo. This marketplace, second-hand, actually from Argentina only has Oxenford, since its focus is on the United States. "It's a global company," he describes.
In September 2015, he received support from Naspers with an injection of US $ 100 million. Then it raised US $ 175 million and the South African holding company signed a financing commitment of US $ 500 million (January 2018) after valuing the startup at US $ 1.5 billion.
It was quickly adopted in the US market. and became the second fastest growing app (75 million downloads). Although it arrived in pilot test to the Argentine market, it did not have the expected results: Letgo closed its operations in April 2019 and lowered the blind to its subsidiaries in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia and Croatia.
"Argentina was one of the tests but we have concluded that it makes no sense to continue the experiment because of the insignificance of the local user base, less than 0.04% overall," they said from the firm.
Oxenford's true goal is to dethrone Craigslist, current king of the segment in the United States. For that, he added the category "accommodation" and, years before, merged with the Spanish Wallapop to boost its expansion. "What I enjoyed the most was the challenge of competing there," summarizes Oxenford.
With two unicorns in tow and the history of a pioneer of albiceleste ecommerce, the executive continues to work with a philosophy that, so far, has given him excellent results: simply, use fun as fuel.
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