Jose Medina

Jose Medina

2019 Ricardo Salinas Scholar, Ricardo Salinas Scholarship

Jose Medina, Co-founder and VP of Acceleration, Unreasonable Mexico.

Jose Medina, Co-founder and VP of Acceleration, Unreasonable Mexico. Jose was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico in May of 1985 and was exposed to the diverse Mexico’s early on in his life. He went, since age 13, to different parts of his country over several Holy Weeks with a group of catholic missionaries. There he experienced both the happiness of the simple life of the rural contexts as well as the inmense inequalities of his country. These experiences led him to experience a year as a voluntary helping these catholic movement after finishing high school.

We went on to study a Bachelor in Finance at Tec de Monterrey. He found Finance to be double-exciting as he started studying the Microfinance movement led by Yunus. At the moment some tech platforms, such as Kiva were starting to arise. His curiosity led him to continue studying different business cases that both purpose/impact and a business model. With this in mind, he got his first job at the Social Incubator of Tec de Monterrey, where he implemented a program where students doing social service trained microentrepreneurs (owners of little “tiendas de abarrotes” and such) on capabilities so they could receive a micro loan.

After this experience, Jose decided to dabble on his other big passion in life: music. He got a job at San Sebastian (Spain) working for a small company that set up music concerts. He ran the administration of the business and also learned how to set up a music stage concert. There he learned the value of hard physical work as well as the importance of being empathic with different cultures.

As he returned to Mexico, he worked for an NGO called “Desarrollo de Emprendedores” (Entrepreneur Development) where he got the chance on coordinating a group of local businessmen on setting up a small 800K discovery fund to invest on traditional regional companies. He also worked to develop the local entrepreneurial ecosystem running the first Startup Weekends in his home state. At the moment he coincided at that same NGO with Raul (his current partner) and started talking about returning to social entrepreneurship and decided to cofound Unreasonable Mexico, an organization whose sole mission is to provide entrepreneurs tackling Mexico’s Biggest Fu$%&g Problems (BFP’s) an “unfair advantage” so they can scale up their solutions to thousands or millions of Mexicans. Selected to participate in 2019 ANDE annual conference.

Today Unreasonable Mexico has served 50 plus ventures tackling these pressing social or environmental issues throughout Mexico. He currently serves as VP of Acceleration and after five years, the organization has developed a strong mentor network of around 100. Aside from “The Institute”, Jose and his team have worked with different stakeholders solving BFP’s, such as scientific researchers from Universities or inspiring young high school students on becoming entrepreneurs with a purpose. Selected to participate in 2019 ANDE annual conference.