Formula for Success Shared at FIU Business Workshop

Digital advertising guru Gaston Taratuta shared his formula for success with entrepreneurial hopefuls at an FIU Business workshop aimed at helping entrepreneurs develop highpotential ventures in early 2024.

In 2005, he founded Miami-based Internet Media Services, seizing on the explosion of internet access via mobile phones. It grew from a $5,000 startup to becoming a global giant.

"I was a beginner on a trend," said Taratuta. "Digital marketing was a very early trend back in the year 2000. I tell people to be part of a trend when it seems to be that thing that you're salivating and sharing."

Internet Media Services quickly became Latin America's largest digital ad sales and media buying firm. The business, which has continued to expand and transformed into advertising giant Aleph Group, provides marketing and digital media services to businesses in 90 countries, earning Taratuta the title of 2022 Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst and Young.

"Success is equal to satisfaction. Looking at what you have, instead of focusing on what you do not. And understand it's 50% attitude 50% aptitude."

– Gaston Taratuta

Taratuta joined Dileep Rao, clinical professor of international business at FIU Business, to kick off a series of five workshops designed by Rao to train entrepreneurs to develop growth ventures without venture capital by building their skill sets and using the tactics of billiondollar entrepreneurs.

Taratuta reflected on the power of networking and building community, especially on a university campus.

"For those who are foreign and come to the university, academia gives your first feeling of belonging to something, to a community where people come to learn, and then that knowledge is materializing into productivity," he said.

Aside from sharing the history of Internet Media Services, his triumphs and challenges, Taratuta hopes to inspire a new mindset for his audience as well as explain what success means to him.

"Success is equal to satisfaction," said Taratuta. "Looking at what you have, instead of focusing on what you do not. And understand it's 50% attitude 50% aptitude."