Sol Trujillo, Chairman, Trujillo Group, LLC 
Steven Wolfe Pereira, Encantos
Moderator: Terri Burns, GV


Brainstorm Tech 2022: Tech And The Latino Market 

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Sol Trujillo, Chairman, Trujillo Group, LLC 
Steven Wolfe Pereira, Encantos
Moderator: Terri Burns, GV

Brainstorm Tech 2022: Tech And The Latino Market 


steven. So good morning, How are you both doing today? Yes, very excited to be chatting with you both. Um, let's go ahead and just jump straight in. I want to start by backing up a little bit and really digging into how we got to this moment, sitting here on stage talking about tech and the latino market. So Steven, you just announced your new role um, as chief business officer of arepas. I want to dig into that a little bit. Uh, and soul, you've been an international business executive. Michael mentioned this before. Um, you've served as ceo of multiple large caps, international businesses, Fortune 500 companies. You're also a seasoned innovator, the first to deploy broadband, for example, amongst many other accomplishments. So, so let's start with you. Um, can you tell us a little bit more about your background and what has brought, what brought us here to this moment today? Okay. You know, I've been in the business for a long time, so I've been involved in the digitization of everything starting in the 70s. So I am uh, let's call it a historian of what's been happening innovating with broadband back back in those days with the, the evolution of what we thought could be done with cable companies and telcos and others. And in terms of enabling most of what all of you have been talking about, uh, today and yesterday and, and on into the future. The second thing though, has been about innovating around services because the thematic that I would want to leave with everybody today is we can talk about technology, but at the end of the day, who's gonna use it, Who's going to watch it? Who's gonna consume it in whatever the various forms and fashions are and ultimately who pays for it. So the consumer has always been my mantra, has always been my driver which enabled the first deployment of broadband, which enabled the first real smartphone when I was running orange over in London or in Australia, where we innovated around these ultra high speed wireless broadband networks coming to market with the applications and the enablement of a lot of what we're talking about today and on into the future Stephen. So this has been a long, strange journey because I started my career actually in finance thanks to a program called sponsors for educational opportunity. And they were trying to diversify Wall Street back in 1994 and I was an internet, This little company called the Blackstone Group and there definitely was no black at Blackstone back then. Um, but 25 years, we're still having this conversation about, you know, where are, you know, kind of the people of color in tech, especially in this new mainstream american. I love that focuses on the consumer because the growth engine of America is truly the latino market. And so I'm excited that, you know, we're here talking about this because terry just needs to, you know, this needs to be discussed. We talked about and and to that point, so 94% of Latinos, these mobile devices to access the internet. And the purchasing power of the latino market is growing 70% faster than the non latino market. And so there's a huge sort of opportunity here. I'm curious to hear from from both of you, if there was a moment or or over time in both your lives and or careers where you began to really realize the true power and influence of the latino market in tech and entrepreneurship in business. There are moments of time. How did that show up for both of you? Well, I'll start by saying the first moment in time was when I was born as a uh and that's simply because as I was growing up, I grew up in the state of Wyoming. So think about that through hell in Wyoming and what I found was was that there were a lot of people that didn't understand what a true hero was etcetera etcetera. So it played into my career as I as I started running companies and I still always think about customers and who are the customers. So my first moment about the importance of the latino cohort was when I was running one of the baby bells and I found that the most consumptive cohort we had in our base of customers was the latino Latina consumer because they consume communications products and services is at a higher rate than any other cohort that we had and our average revenue per customer was higher than the other cohorts. And I was looking at the data and trying to help people understand that. And it carried through in terms of all the things that we've now seen in terms of smart smartphone introductions. You know, the penetration of technology in this cohort in the United States has been way above every other cohort because they're consumptive for many different social purposes and business purposes. I mean, what do you think about what I was talking about? And you know, I think he's being very humble as ceo of us west or orange or Telstra. But he also served on the boards of Pepsico and Target and WPP and Bank of America. Again, the growth driver has always been the latino market and then you know, larger, you know, the multicultural market if you will. And so I've been working tech for over 20 years and when I was working with walmart, I was running all of their media business. And it was fascinating that here you have Fortune one company and all the growth was coming from multicultural consumers, but specifically the latino cohort was the driver. And so when you just look at the math, you know here you have a company where they have, I think 11% of all Walmarts are in texas, 7% in California, You know, 6% in places like, you know, Ohio and other states. These are all multicultural majorities. And so literally you can't make the math work. And so how are you investing your dollars? How are you truly following the consumer? And then you think about culture, the largest, you know, kind of most streamed musician on the planet last year was bad bunny. And so when you start to see all these things, I mean you've heard all these stats you know that you know catch up like all these kind of things, you know, but for some reason there is a lack of investment in capital but we're all talking about where are consumers going and the growth is coming from the latino cohort. I really want to dig into this idea of the multicultural, expansive demographic within the latino culture. We were just talking about this backstage. My grandparents were Panamanian immigrants. And so when I think about my identity as an afro Latina woman, I am one segment of many within you know the latino community. I'm curious how you both think about that from the innovative entrepreneurial and consumer standpoint. Just a multicultural dynamics within the latino market. Well, I want to put an exclamation mark for everybody here to understand that in the United States, The us Latino Cohort is generating $2.7 trillion dollars worth of GDP. So what does that mean? It means it's the equivalent size of France, very close to the U. K. There will be a new study done by economists this year. That will show that it's probably gonna pass France UK as the size of a market within the borders of the United States. Okay. It's growing our GDP within the economy today at nearly 30% of the total volume of GDP growth in the country. So what does that mean? It means that they're buying more, consuming more 52% of all new home sales in the United States, new mortgages taken out to the latino cohort. Last time I checked, that's not a niche. You know, 50% generally teams seems to be the most or majority of all of that. And then when you look at other automotive sales, almost everything every consumer Based product and now soon to be B2B product is going to be consumed by these entrepreneurs, by these people that are younger. The most common age of a Latino or Latina in the country is 11 To put it in context, the most common age of the Anglo American Cohort is 58. So if you're building a business for the next few decades and thinking strategically and you're thinking about one million Latinos, Latinas turn 18 every year there's a huge wave. We have a tsunami And I'm gonna say one last thing not to take too long here. There's a person um that is a well known business publisher and economist and he talked about the latino cohort is like the cohort is the calvary that's coming over the hill to save the U. S. Economy back to what Stephen said about inflation and what the Fed chairs and other people are talking about. I think they're talking in the 20th century context As opposed to the 21st century context. I want to give the audience an opportunity to ask any questions if you have them to start thinking about them. Um before we get to that first, I want to dig into some of the work that you both are doing today. So maybe we can start with you steven. Um you just announced your your news with and and previously were working at, can you share a little bit more when you think about the latino market and tech and entrepreneurship, what are you most excited about with with the work you're doing now? Absolutely. Well as a proud father of, you know, two young kids. Um, I think Saul's insight about understanding the power of gen alpha, you know, this is, you know, kind of kids born after 2010, certainly kids that are growing up with, you know, Alexa, you know, google Siri in the house. Um, but this is now over 50 plus percent of this market of kids is actually diverse and it's being led by the latino covert once again. And so we started a kids entertainment company that was really grounded in tech, you know, digital and physical products. Um but the whole idea was to tap into this because their stories aren't being told, they're not seen. I mean great that, you know, you have maybe some folks talking about it, but literally there are more animals and kind of Children's books and content than there are Latinos. Um so this is the problem that we set out to solve and fast forward, you know, with Saul as an investor and you know, some other great folks um like Jeff Weiner, who is, you know the ceo of linkedin, um, Charles Hudson, you know, we actually have this incredible company doing kids and family, you know, I. P. And we just actually merged with a larger company called, which if you're familiar with what Reese Witherspoon is, Hello Sunshine or what Lebron is in Spring Hill, the biggest latino actor on the planet he's building that company at, and now we're gonna be the kids division of it and I'm now the chief business officer of that company. Amazing at the point around um in Children's books, more animals than Latinos, it really rings true. It kind of reminds me of that the anecdote around team pages, I don't know if you all have heard this before, but sometimes you're more likely to see the photo of the team dog than you are of a person of color on the team page um rings true. Thanks. Thanks for mentioning that salt. Um curious to hear when it comes to some of the things that you're focused on today. Lots of things latitude, You have latitude ventures, curious to hear about what you're really focused on as you think about the latino market. Well, I'm focused about on our economy in the United States and around the world. In terms of how we think about it and all of you that you know everything I've heard so far on stage, nobody's just limited to a geography. But the biggest and most profitable geography in the world is the United States and I know that other countries have volume but profitability is, is still the challenge for any ceo or any investor to to be thinking about. So I've been thinking about, so in our economy today as we age with the baby boomers, I'm a baby boomer as we age. You know, our throw weight changes. And the question is, how do we replace it? Like any business? As you think about wave one of the technology versus Wave two or Wave three, we have to be thinking about our succession as a nation. Well, guess what? We have a, we have a unique differentiator in our country called the Latino cohort because they're so young and also the most entrepreneurial cohort in America. They generate about 80% of all net new businesses in the last decade and a half, 50% of all net new employer based businesses in the United States And they're supplying 80% of all net new workplace entrants and the consumption numbers that you've talked about. So I'm spending my time thinking about, Does everybody understand this? So I've been involved in creating a new platform, an event called latitude where we bring in C E O s and I won't name all of them that were gonna be there this year. Political leaders and and economists and others and tech people to come in and talk about this cohort because this is if you want to make money, I mean, it's nice to have ideas, but it's even better to have the ideas make some money for those who invest. And so we're we're focused on getting this conversation, helping it understood and also looking at what our driver variables. Driver variables are always youth of a population and their adaptability. two is, is the notion of income growth which is happening with this cohort and then three is how you think about leveraging it within an economy. And so there's a lot of things I've been working on, I could stay here for about three months talking about all of it, but building platforms, communicating it, investing. And the last point I'll just make is and Stephen made it earlier, I had a bain consulting to a study last year. Less than 1% of all invested capital by VCS and pe have gone into this cohort, who is the most prolific business formation covert in the country. I'm a capitalist. I believe capital should flow to where the growth is. So we've got to fix some clog in the system, Part of its knowledge and awareness part of it is how you find it like those of you that look for talent. And I heard, I think it was Stewart talking earlier about, you know, where their employees are coming from, they're coming from everywhere now, not just the same places. So think about, don't look in the same places for innovation, don't look in the same places for talent and don't look in the same places either where you're going to access capital or find capital. I mean, I was being, you know, way too nice and you know, extremely humble about it. Saul now has one of the preeminent venture firms called latitude VC investing, latino back startups and you know, the fact that that 1% number given all the growth that we're talking about, given that literally look at millennials, everyone wants to reach millennials gen z the majority of those consumers, those cohorts are led by multicultural consumers and again led by the latino cohort. So there's a disconnect where you have these bubbles of Silicon Valley product. People, engineers trying to build for the customer, the audience, but it's all kind of, you know, depersonalized, they don't understand that, that consumer is actually gonna be driven probably by a Latina mom, which is, you know, the kind of main consumer focus of any retailer, um just understanding the household formations and so I feel like, you know, these bubbles, whether it's Silicon valley or you know, kind of Fintech or whatever it is, no one's really looking at this cohort and again, hopefully folks like G. B. And others are really going to make that investment to really invest in the latino community and and to both of your points, I really like this idea of, we can talk about diversity, inclusion, equity. I personally believe, you know, that's good to do good for the world, but this is also just a really big business opportunity. There's money to be made here. There's a cohort that um, can really be and will be the future consumers business growth driver. You know, you're exactly right and At latitude where I will have a lineup of 10 or 12 major global ceo I always tell them before they come. We don't talk about diversity, we don't talk about inclusion, we don't business and I want you to understand when we talk about what we've just been referring to. It's all about business and if you focus on how you make money, who your customers are etcetera, all the other things happen because you need people on your board, you need people in your sweet sweets and you need people in your investing portfolios to understand where this growth is when we think about in our last couple of minutes here, this market continuing to grow. Um, I'm curious to hear from, from each of you, what is your ask of the broader tech industry business world, the non latino market. I think we've alluded to this a little bit, but what is it that the industry really needs to do um to ensure that we are moving and serving this, this really large cohort in in the world? Well, I'll be the appetizer that's all. So he could actually, you know, put the exclamation point, I mean for me it's reforms like this, right? How do you actually get on the big stage? Not like, you know, kind of the ghetto ized version if you will the little latino, you know, kind of cohort in the corner. No, on the main stage at fortune brainstorm tech talking about this, that is super helpful, but we need more, you know, the reality is I'm super excited about web three, I'm super excited about the creator economy because now you're actually giving the ability for creators to have ownership and you know, kind of connect directly with their communities with their customers. And the majority of those creators are people of color, lead again by the latino cohort. I'll be a broken record about this, every single company that's been here from Stewart slack today too. You know, you name it, they are looking for growth and growth is only gonna happen with this Latino cohort. So the more that we talk about it from a business driver perspective, not from a charity, not from a diversity perspective, an HR perspective from a business growth perspective, this is the growth engine and as goes the Latino market again, 18% today, going to 30% a third of the country by 2040. But you don't have to wait for the future. The future is now because in every majority market, every top 20 D. M. A. It is a multicultural majority today. Led by Latinos. Absolutely. So last 20 seconds here. Well, I want to ask a question of all of you, how many of you are even aware of what we talked about today? It's hard to see from here. Good number, not everyone, but a good number. The question is is is the media writing about it. So that, and I don't mean just traditional media, but all all forms of media, are they talking about it so that people become more aware, are people really hiring people and investing in these kinds of companies. And so the exclamation mark for me is look, I'm a capitalist. I've made my shareholders tens of billions of dollars of value. And I want to encourage all of you that are innovating that are running companies, building companies to think about this as you're building your teams, as you're thinking about allocating capital. And as you think about what are the platforms that are gonna be most interesting to the cohorts that are of high volume the business growth standpoint. Amazing steven, thank you so much for coming today