María Fernández: a combination of illusion and passion

Our protagonist of the day lives in Sopuerta, a small town of Biscay. She is a young woman, mother of two, who has been strating up business since 2006. For me, without any doubt, she is an entrepreneurial woman but, as she says, working with “picks and shovels” (a Spanish expression). A woman who has experienced in first person the ups and downs like the ones from a Ferris wheel, which is how we identify the entrepreneurial adventure.

Do you want to know her?

I met María Fernández some years ago, in 2014, when she participated as a mentee in the first edition of the program for entrepreneurial women of METcommunity. Then she was CEO, she’ll always be, of Buscolook, a “social” fashion web and app that geo-locates items of clothing and shops close to where we are at that moment. It’s kind of a meeting place between clients and shops that in 2015 came to be a finalist of the TV show “El gran salto”. Buscolook was created by María and her partner from the heart, as it wouldn’t be in any other way.

Here you have a video where you can see María live:

http://www.eitb.eus/es/television/programas/el-gran-salto/videos/detalle/3589136/video-perfil-maria-fernandez–buscolook/

Today, life has taken María to co-found another project with a name that doesn’t leave you indifferent, at least to me. It’s Kasitokoa free platform and a white mark that allows you to manage and publish campaigns on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for influencer networks.

María IS a fashion and publicity enthusiast, tireless dreamer, worker, suffering, brave, restless, constant, perseverant, admirable fighter, innovative, always alert, with a huge slaughter capacity, committed to, creative, with many ideas, emotional, communicative, very familiar, friend of, generous, who has lived during many years in a constant uncertainty and who has many people who believe in her and in her way of doing things. You know that, María, the important thing is to count on that support.

And it’s that María is an entrepreneur by nature and heritage. Not in vain, her father, grandfather and great-grandfather were entrepreneurs before her. Entrepreneurship runs in her veins and ideas flow through every pore of her skin. She finds ideas in every corner of her house and in every step. Following María is a spectacle for the mark she leaves behind her!

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of hearing from her own hand her experience at the front of Buscolook.

¿What happened to this project Maria designed and launched with such love, enthusiasm and effort?

In Maria’s words, when she started with Buscolook, she took a risk with a technological project which she didn’t know much about. María didn’t know the rules of the game (“and that’s crucial”, María admits). That was, according to her, her first mistake. The second was to present Buscolook to small businesses, because, as she recognized years later, it was a product too big for them; after all, what happened to María is that she was ahead of her time. Buscolook was something very advanced. Another of her mistakes was that she plunged into a world where there are many people who have to make decisions. Moreover, there was a significant reduction in the budget dedicated to marketing. The stars didn’t seem to be on her side.

Buscolook was born in a midst of a crisis, in an immature market. They wanted to be perfect and they did not habe enough money, so to make the technological changes their customers requested took a long time. Now she recognizes it: the best thing to do is to start little by little (following the lean start up model), checking, testing, investing and recovering, not wanting to get the perfect product and going step by step. And, of course, learning before taking false steps.

Can you imagine that María, who has achieved, among others, 4 entrepreneurship and innovation awards, looked herself very tiny when she started Buscolook?

If you want to get in touch with María, here is her e-mail: Maria@buscolook.com. I know that she will be happy to talk to you.

María, please, never lose your illusion, your light and your energy. You have accomplished a lot and you still have a lot to achieve. Oh, and as you say, do not ever forget that:

“Being an entrepreneur is being free to decide what life you want for yourself.”

Enjoy this cold and first week of December.

Translated by María Ubierna Quintanilla and supervised by Arantza Arruti.

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