Federico Saiz and Vicente Estevez, both UCLA Anderson School of Management MBA ’14, are classics example of how MBAs can leverage both their time and passion at business school to build a successful start-up model.
The two students and friends founded Aquívino, a wine-of-the-month club serving Mexico, as part of a project for their Entrepreneurial Venture Initiation class. The club offers subscriptions ranging from $37 to $63 USD per month and gives subscribers the opportunity to try hand-selected wines from across the globe. In addition to the tastings, members receive a newsletter with related articles, wine pairings, wine tasting invitations and more.
Saiz and Esteves, who are originally from Mexico, saw California’s southern neighbor as a natural target market for their business. The MBAs’ initial research revealed that wine is the fastest-growing alcoholic beverage category in the region, so Saiz and Esteves crafted their business plan with various faculty to create their go-to-market strategy— from designing their packaging to developing a learning curriculum, the partners have tried to incorporate every aspect of building their company into their Anderson curriculum.
“We juggle, but we also take advantage of being here in classes,” says Saiz. “We try to make every project from every class relate to our business. It’s very helpful to be able to apply the learning from classes so quickly and to see the results.”
Saiz and Estevez are working to expand their customer base as much as they can by the end of their Business Creation Option project and are currently working on marketing and collaborating with industry bloggers and potential partnerships with major companies in Mexico.
“It’s a challenge because we’re managing it from here,” Saiz says of Aquívino, which has its main warehouse in Mexico. “Everything is twice as long and twice as hard when you’re running the business from abroad.”
For now, Estevez is taking a course through the North American Sommelier Association to become a certified sommelier—the fancy word for a licensed wine connoisseur. Both students to return to their native country after earning their MBAs.