Juan Ignacio Kurtzemann
I'm 20. I study business and technology across seven countries. I've built companies that worked and companies that lost money. In 2026 I crossed all 23 provinces of Argentina in 23 days to raise food and hand a flag to the national team.
- 23
- +16,000
- 7
- 115/90.000
MIND FIRST, THEN THE WORLD
I was never a normal kid. At 13 I launched a digital marketing agency. At 14 I made my first 200 dollars from TikTok. By 15, in 2021, I was deep into personal development: meditation, visualisation, cold showers, courses, books. And I had a strange certainty for that age: I didn't want to go to university.
Three years later that got tested. At 18 I left to study abroad and everything I knew ended overnight: home, friends, language, food. I landed in Dubai not knowing how to use a washing machine.
What came after didn't come from being brave. It came from doing the inner work first and only then going out into the world.
And I still get it wrong a lot, and leaving still hurts. I lost money on 1,000 chocolates nobody wanted. I made 130 dollars in three months with my first business. And when I came back to Argentina after eight months away, I sat down to my mum's milanesas and burst into tears at the table.
- 2019
I launch my first digital marketing agency. I didn't know it had a name; I knew brands needed someone who understood social media.
- 2020
I make my first 200 dollars from TikTok. Little money, big idea: you can earn from your bedroom, at any age.
- 2021
I go all in on personal development: meditation, visualisation, cold showers, courses, books. Twenty-one days straight, two hours a day, while my friends were doing anything else.
- 2023
I win the UNR Accounting Olympiad. I get the Cambridge Proficiency, the first in my school to do it before graduating. I start a podcast with 100 followers.
- 2024
I end up going to university after all, but to one that looks like no other: first Argentine admitted to Tetr, one of ~115 out of 90,000. I move to Dubai and leave home and my friends behind. My first business makes 130 dollars in three months.
- 2025
India, Singapore, Malaysia, Ghana. I make chocolates that don't sell and sell cards that do. In San Francisco I build Amia in nine days.
- 2026
I cross all 23 provinces of Argentina in 23 days, raise 16,000+ meals for five food banks and hand a signed flag to the national team.
23 PROVINCES IN 23 DAYS
I crossed all of Argentina, from Ushuaia to Rosario, without skipping a single province. In each one I collected a signature for a flag. I raised food for five food banks. At the end I handed the flag to the Argentine national team and came back with a jersey signed by the squad.
- One signature per province, no exceptions.
- Eat or do something local to each place.
- Close the day before 23:59.
- Tierra del Fuego
- Santa Cruz
- Chubut
- Río Negro
- Neuquén
- La Pampa
- San Luis
- Mendoza
- San Juan
- La Rioja
- Catamarca
- Santiago del Estero
- Tucumán
- Salta
- Jujuy
- Formosa
- Chaco
- Corrientes
- Misiones
- Entre Ríos
- Córdoba
- Buenos Aires
- Santa Fe
- +10,000
- +16,000
- 5
- 8
- +250
- 3.1M
—The goal was 100,000 meals. I got to just over 16,000. I'm putting it here because the real number is the one that counts: it fell well short of what I announced and it still fed a lot of people.
An Argentine flag signed by a public figure from each of the 23 provinces. I handed it to the national team in June 2026. They gave me back a jersey signed by the whole squad. AFA president Claudio Tapia backed the project in person.
WHAT THEY SAID OUT THERE
National and regional coverage of Mission 23. The 14 June Infobae piece named all three sponsors. TV and radio figures are estimates of potential audience per appearance, not measurements.
TV & RADIO
- TELEFE
- CADENA 3
- TNT SPORTS
- DIRECTV
- CANAL 5 ROSARIO
- RADIO 10
- RADIO 2 ROSARIO
- VORTERIX BAHÍA
- VIVE TV FUNES
- CANAL 4 JUJUY
SEVEN COUNTRIES, ONE DEGREE
TETR COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
BSc (Hons) Management & Technology
- /First Argentine admitted. One of ~115 out of 90,000 applicants.
- /Scholarship earned by winning the UNR Accounting Olympiad.
- /A real business built in each country of the programme.
- /Gold Award for Innovation in Business Education, QS Reimagine Education Awards 2025: No. 1 in category out of 1,600+ submissions.
CORNELL TECH
Venture semester — AI
- /Building an AI startup as part of the Tetr programme.
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE
Academic term abroad
- /No. 8 in the world, QS World University Rankings 2025.
IIT DELHI
Academic term abroad
- /India's top-ranked institution according to QS.
COLEGIO SAN PATRICIO
Secondary school · 85% average
- /First student in the school's history to obtain the Cambridge Proficiency before graduating.
WHAT WORKED AND WHAT DIDN'T
Every project with the number it actually returned, not the one I'd have liked.
An AI therapist available 24/7. We built it in 9 days at Founders Inc, inside the Cold Start / Ship It programme. The idea came from two places: my mum is a therapist, and I was very lonely in Dubai.
Launched January 2025.
GLOW-IN-THE-DARK CARDS
A deck of phosphorescent cards sold through Kickstarter, from zero to funded campaign.
~US$10,000 raised. The highest-raising team in the entire cohort.
BELURE CHOCOLATES
A direct-to-consumer chocolate brand built from scratch: product, packaging, sales. Five of us, and we felt like Willy Wonka.
We made 1,000 units, double what we could sell. Half expired. We lost money. Lesson: ask first, produce second.
SLEEP PRODUCTS
My first real business. Dropshipping sleep products, five people.
US$130 split five ways, over three months. The market said no and we had to listen.
SHEA NUT ROLLER · GHANA
Work with an NGO and the design of a tool for the women who harvest shea nuts by hand.
Field project from Tetr's Ghana term.
Content creation for a San Francisco startup building AI necklaces that transcribe conversations.
VOZ DEL ÉXITO
An interview podcast with entrepreneurs, made before getting into Tetr.
10 reels, 3 guests, 100 followers. In the admissions interview Tetr's founder told me he'd listened to it. None of it was big; what mattered was that I was already doing something.
WHAT I LEARNED PUBLISHING
I make content about what happens to me while studying and building abroad. My furthest-reaching video isn't about an achievement: it's one explaining why I don't drink.
The same video did 1.6 million views on Instagram and 2,900 on YouTube. Instagram rewards who you are; YouTube rewards where you are. Once I understood that I stopped posting the same thing everywhere.
- +1.6M
- +4.4M
- +45M
- +60M
- A university where AI runs your exam445,000
- What it's like to study while travelling228,800
- What I HATE about the countries I've lived in219,783
- I'm the first Argentine on scholarship at Tetr202,000
- The PROBLEM with EATING in GHANA154,078
- This is how I live studying in Malaysia130,000
BEFORE ALL OF THIS
ACCOUNTING OLYMPIAD · UNR
First place. The year before I came third competing against older students. This is what got me the Tetr scholarship.
TED-ED TALK
“External Discomfort, Internal Peace.”
CAMBRIDGE PROFICIENCY
First student in the school's history to obtain it before finishing secondary school.
ROSARIO RUGBY TOURNAMENT
Champion with Jockey Club in the U15 category.
“BROWN” SPORTS TEAM
Elected leader by a vote of the whole school.
