From Fax to TikTok: Alejandro Betancourt López on Speed

A quarter century ago, a contract arriving by fax counted as quick service. Alejandro Betancourt López reached for that memory in early 2022 to show how fast business habits now turn over.

“About 25 years ago, it was normal to receive a fax. The new generations don’t understand what even is a fax machine,” he said. He meant how short the shelf life of any habit has become.

Three Years to Rewire an Audience

“Something like TikTok changed the world in three years,” he said. “When I say changed the world is that people are now expressing themselves through videos, applications.” Before that, he noted, people shared pictures on Instagram. Before Instagram they posted on Facebook.

TikTok announced on Sept. 27, 2021, that more than 1 billion people were coming to the app every month “to be entertained as they learn, laugh, or discover something new.” Reuters reported in February 2023 that the app took about nine months after its global launch to reach 100 million users. Instagram needed about two and a half years to hit the same mark, according to data from Sensor Tower.

Alejandro Betancourt López said he was drawn to Uber because of how a newcomer could “disrupt completely the order of how the value is distributed between the different participants” in a traditional sector. Such shifts, he said, were happening “impressively in many sectors.”

Why Alejandro Betancourt López Treats Adaptation as a Job

“We need to be prepared that everything is changing constantly, and we need to adapt into that,” Alejandro Betancourt said.

Anyone hoping “to create an impact into the market and invest and make sure we are adding something” has to keep adjusting to how people behave and communicate, he said in the same conversation. Fax machines to Facebook to short video took about two decades. The next turn may take far less.

Hawkers grew through social media advertising. Playtomic put padel court reservations into an app, and Auro added its own ride-hailing app to a portfolio of licenses. Each company’s timing depended on catching one of those turns in customer habits early.

Turns run out, too. Paid social ads were cheap when Hawkers started, he said in another interview, and prices climbed once every brand did the same thing. “So you have to reinvent yourself, create and evolve into a different kind of company that doesn’t depend on social media or paid media marketing,” he said.

A quarter century ago, a contract arriving by fax counted as quick service. Alejandro Betancourt López reached for that memory in early 2022 to show how fast business habits now turn over. “About 25 years ago, it was normal to receive a fax. The new generations don’t understand what even is a fax machine,” he…

A quarter century ago, a contract arriving by fax counted as quick service. Alejandro Betancourt López reached for that memory in early 2022 to show how fast business habits now turn over. “About 25 years ago, it was normal to receive a fax. The new generations don’t understand what even is a fax machine,” he…