About Me

My name is Rafael Espinoza. I am an Ecuadorian, living in Norway, married to a Spanish, with my mother living in Cambodia, my sister in Argentina and my brother in the US. Yeah…go figure…

This is a brief account from my relevant business experience and what I made out of it.  I have established 3 companies so far, some of them did good, and one of them failed monumentally.

The EC Travel days

Me and a booby. A blue footed booby.

EC Travel is a travel company that we founded on 2007. I was 24 at the time and loved to travel around Ecuador on the holidays.  Instead of going on beach holidays for parties, me and my two friends decided to travel around the country whenever we had the time.  We had an amazing time, we met a lot of people and saw incredible places.  However, the sad part was that a lot of tourists were missing out on some of these amazing places, mainly due to the lack of information.

We decided that we could build a company that showed people the true Ecuador, not only the touristic places but the local treasures that were rarely seen.

The concept was simple, to offer trips to Ecuador that were different from the standard “tour agency” around. We had no big groups, we made everything super personalized and we treated our clients like family. The great thing was we were bringing tourists to rural areas which were very undeveloped.

One year after we founded EC Travel, I already had to fire one of my best friends because we just didn’t seem to click. In the first month after opening our brand new offices, we were arm-robbed while I was working on a Saturday morning. We lost everything. The data, our original investment in computers and stuff, and most of our motivation.

We faced the hard choice of closing the company without even having started.  So I talked to my partner, and decided to continue.  He sold his old car and my family lent me $5000 USD to reinvest (I had already sold my car and sunk my savings for the first investment).

We began small, and our first customers came from Germany.  We tied some deals with local hotels and also with a major website for Ecuador information.  I still remember, one day, the manager from this website was coming to visit our offices and we didn’t have any chairs for him to sit on!  We had to borrow some chairs from a friend that had an office about 5 blocks away.  As the manager called me to say he was on his way, me and my friend were running through the city with chairs on our heads.

We had a long time before break even.  But eventually, by the time I left Ecuador and EC Travel’s management we were doing quite decently. I will refer to the challenges we had at EC Travel frequently throughout the blog.

It was the most stressful job I ever had. But also the greatest. I was outside, in nature, diving, going to Galapagos and living the dream at my 27 years of age.

The Travel Galapagos Islands and WUITTO days

When I was a kid, my dad had a print shop. So, I was the first one in my school to have a computer. I also had a Commodore64 where my dad tried to teach me how to program in Basic from time to time. By the time I was 16, me and my friend Alon used to program IRC scripts to download music which we distributed for free. We even used to play “Heretic” and “Quake” online before the internet came to Ecuador.

So tourism gave me a great opportunity to combine both. The idea was to build a website that was comprehensive about the Galapagos, that was up to date and that provided real information. We hired a great web designer, and 6 months later Travel Galapagos Islands was online.

At the beginning we were doing great, I was doing the SEO and things were really starting to kick in. That is when my designer and me realized that most companies in Ecuador were doing it all wrong. They had horrible websites, and basically did no SEO or social media marketing.

We decided to begin WUITTO. A web-design company that would actually be certified by Google and everything. We already had some clients and we were not even started.

Unfortunately, my partner in this company had to go back to Chile. We tried to set up the company in Chile and Ecuador, but eventually the idea lost its momentum. I split and continued with TGI and EC Travel.

The Hai-Ku days

In 2010, I met an awesome Spanish girl. And by 2011 we were engaged. The only problem was that she just got accepted for a Doctorate in Norway. Basically I decided to move to Norway by July 2011.

I needed some financial security to move to Norway besides my EC Travel income. I was going to start a MSc there and I was reading everywhere that it was one of the most expensive cities in the world.

So one day, I receive a phone call from a friend saying that he has a project that he wants me to join. Basically the idea was a high end Restaurant/Club inspired by the “Tao” in Las Vegas. In Ecuador, this type of businesses have a super fast break even period and they make big profits for a small time.

I was in with all my last savings, but later realized that the project was too pricey and that I was deep in something that was just not going to work. Hai-Ku made huge profits during the first 6 months, but was poorly managed by the “appointed” manager. With me half across the globe, all I could do was see my last savings go to hell. It taught me a valuable lesson about co-founders and their real value.

The iO days

This brings us up to our iO days.  A company that I hope will grow to create opportunities for all of us out there.  All of us, who are eager to show our talents to the world and build great things.