Love in the Times of Entrepreneurship
Juan F. Cardona is the Managing Director of ARAL GROUP and the CEO and Co-founder of SyncMynd, a platform to connect entrepreneurs, freelancers, and investors to create powerful synergies to leverage the entrepreneurial processes. Juan has been envisioning his dream to become an entrepreneur since the beginning and has been starting to build the company during his study at the Master of Engineering Management program.
It is our pleasure to have Juan share his experience during the MEM program, the challenges along the way, and how he overcame the difficult times.
“When I think about how I ended up being an entrepreneur, I probably can track the story back to the 2000s, when I was finishing my bachelor’s degree in Colombia. At that time, I started dreaming of starting my own company and the word start-up was not as popular as now. I recall trying to get a couple of different ideas off the ground, but soon I realized that starting a business was highly challenging, not a surprise, I suppose. Soon after these attempts, I started working in the industry as a professional, with a gratifying career where I learnt to enjoy my work and the corporate calling. The part of me having the itch to create my own business that had been dormant for a long time.
In 2014, many years later, I had the opportunity to move to Australia with my wife, where I continued working on my career working for a couple of renowned multinational companies. Then, in 2018, even though my career was going well and I had prestige in my field, I decided that was the right time to try again, but this time in Australia. So in September of that year, I came up with the inspiration to name my company ARAL GROUP using my son’s initials, Arthur Alexander.
At the end of 2018, almost immediately after forming ARAL, I started working on the development of our first product, a platform that, at the moment, I envisioned as a way to make the entrepreneurial process easier and more accessible to everyone. During the following years, from 2019 to 2021, I managed to bootstrap my company while completing my Master of Engineering Management at the University of Melbourne and working for my former employer. This period of my life was hectic, full of adrenaline all the time, and charged with emotions, disappointments and incredible milestones. I often wonder if I would do it again, but despite the challenges I find, it was fun and rewarding, and when I compare the professional and the person I was before with the one now, I feel great satisfaction with my growth.
From the whole process, I can say that one of the biggest challenges has been having enough grit to continue despite all the roadblocks. For example, I had to change my co-founders twice. The first time my co-founder had a personal problem and had to quit the project; the second, things didn’t work out. Another one, I recall, was on February 2020. After closing a good deal with one of the world’s fastest-growing start-ups, I was ready to quit my job, but guess what happened? The biggest pandemic in a hundred years hit. So I decided to put everything on hold, reject the deal I had, and wait until the beginning of this year when I finally gathered all my strengths and decided to quit my job and focus solely on my company.
My biggest recommendation for everyone thinking of making the leap to entrepreneurship is to surround yourselves with the people who love you the most. You will need all the support to embrace the stress and the difficult moments. Also, find a good reason to start a company. My reason to push myself daily is my wife, my son and my yet to born baby. If I do a simile with the style of the famous Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian Nobel, I would say that entrepreneurship is like love, colourful, full of emotions, passion and ugly moments. However, it is rewarding in the end, and if you are patient enough, you can achieve what you desire.
And by the way, my start-up is still alive; we just finished building the platform I envisioned in 2018 to help entrepreneurs. So, if you are an entrepreneur and want help, come and speak with us. You can find our platform at https://syncmynd.com/.”