VOA常速英语:Want a Successful Startup? Adopt Silicon Valley Culture(翻译)

Columbia native Tania Zapata is one of the successful story in Silicon Valley.

But the road to running her own tech company has been an unusual one.

“I used to work in radio and I decided to launch, you know, to start my own business as a voice actress, and what I found was that the industry offline was very cumbersome. It was very difficult for me to connect directly with somebody that needed my voice.”

Zapata felt the process was broken. With her husband, they created the business online that connected voice actors with clients. That was 13 years ago.

The business evolved over time to what it is today: a creative services website called Torre. It goes beyond voiceovers, to helping clients find writers and translators in many different languages. Her company is profitable.

“They building a company is not something that they can do on your own. We tried when we started, and I think that we also fell into a lot of mistakes just because we weren’t asking for help. We weren’t reaching, you know, people. And so it’s very difficult. So it’s much better to do it, you know, as a group.”

Silicon Valley has unique culture of sharing, networking and cooperating among people and startups. This type of openness has helped many companies become better and succeed. But according to Zapata, this mentality is rare in her native Columbia and other Latin American countries.

“We don’t ask for help. We think, we always, you know like, think that people are going to say ‘no’ immediately so we don’t even ask. We don’t try, because, you know, why would this person help me? And I think that’s very problematic.”

Zapata tries to mentor some of the entrepreneurs. She even created an incubator that provides seed funding for startups from developing countries.

“What we want to make sure is that we help the companies with, you know, experience, with knowledge, connecting them with people that we had already met, that have helped us,and [that] can also help these companies not fall into the same mistakes that we fell.”

Zapata says life is only meaningful when she can give back to others and help make a positive impact in their lives.

Elizabeth Lee for VOANEWS San Francisco.