Citiskope: Hillman Alumni Small Business
By: Connor Woodside
Karina and her sister Kathy are indeed the embodiment of
what it means to be an entrepreneur. Together, they created the company
Citiskopes, a business that offers travelers the opportunity to discover
personal fulfilling experiences like none else. Their personal failures,
successes, and ability to overcome any obstacle has given each of them the
entrepreneurship title, as it is well deserved. Recently, I was lucky enough to
sit down with the Citiskope pioneers, and talk about their business, and more
importantly, personal outlook.
Karina, a Hillman alumina, always knew the entrepreneur
lifestyle was for her after experiencing a highly demanding marketing job in
New York City. “I was working for someone else, giving so much of my time and
the money was great for a recent grad but, did I want to do this the rest of my
life?”. Karina saw the effort her boss had been putting into the company, as she
sometimes received calls near 3:00 am talking about projects that were due the
next day. “It made a lot of sense because it was her company!” She went on to
explain she enjoyed her position and how she had an overall fantastic
experience, but deep down she knew it couldn’t last. On top of this, Karina was
commuting to New York City every week and coming back to the Washington area on
the weekend. She explained her work-life balance to me in detail, and I could
hardly believe just how incredibly packed her schedule was.
It was a few unique experiences Karina had while traveling
with Kathy that she began to realize that Citiskopes was a project she wanted
to focus on. The first of precisely three trips she had was to Puerto Rico to
see a colossal festival which attracts some of the most significant names in
Central and South America. The idea of traversing to the concert came from
their cousin who suggested many of the events/locations they should go to while
visiting. Karina went to explain, “She told us everything to do, ‘you need to
go here and here and here’ and we were just lost!” I could tell this was the
good type of lost many people dream of. From her experience with her cousin,
the sisters knew they had to let others know of the amazing sights they only
got to see because of a cousin who knew the area well. Another trip, to Mexico,
increased their drive to start Citiskope after having an unusual run-in with a
taxi driver. As they were leaving a small coffee shop, the sisters hauled a
local cab and were greeted with a friendly driver. Kathy told me the story, “He
(taxi driver) actually showed us a lot of things to do that weren’t on the
internet, so it was a much better experience than what we could find online!”.
Having witnessed first-hand how personal guides were significantly better than
generic online forums, they knew Citiskopes had to become a top priority.
As any entrepreneur can understand, starting the process of
creating a business is one of the hardest parts. Forming a solid foundation can
be tedious, tiresome, and overall unpleasant in some cases. As we talked about
some of the first hurdles that Citiskopes went through when forming, Karina
explained that the process had been a little more laborious than planned. For
starters, “There’s not really a start-up 101. Like if you should have your
company registered or if you should wait. Should you seek funding during this
certain time or that. I learned a lot from a book which really helped us a
lot”. When learning to swim, not many people would recommend jumping straight
into the deep end, but for innovators like Karina and Kathy, it was the only
way to get moving. Determination, persistence, and a little luck were key in
building Citiskopes according to the owners, as they found bigger challenges
around every corner. Another issue faced was a hired programmer taking payment
without delivering any product. At a certain point, Karina noticed, “Why are
our funds going down and we don’t have anything?... It got to a point where we
put everything on hold to figure it out, but it was worth it.” Though a serious
issue that required large amounts of time and energy, the sisters said they
wouldn’t have it any other way. They explained to me that hurtles such as these
helped sharpen their own minds and taught them valuable lessons the classroom
couldn’t supply.
Through their constant motivation to make their dream a
reality, Karina and Kathy have pursued every opportunity they can find.
Recently, they won the Latino Innovators Pitch competition for their business
which has helped inspire/fund them to keep moving forward with their plans to
expand Citiskopes. I asked them how the Hillman Entrepreneurship program has
impacted them and their mindset toward becoming a business owner. Karina, who
was one of the first Montgomery College cohort members, talked about being
valued as an individual. She went on to say, “I like the fact Mrs. Branco
pushed us always to own a business. Every speaker who was brought in spoke to
us about entrepreneurship. They never spoke to us about working for someone
else.” I could tell through her demeanor she truly valued her experience with
the Hillman program and what it taught her about creating her own path.
Citiskope is still the main focus of the sisters as they
keep working toward making their company more valuable to customers. With
recent plans to expand the AR technology for the Citiskope app, they hope to
engage people in not just travel but history and culture. Though each step is
always uncertain or holds doubt, this hasn’t and doesn’t plan to stop them from
achieving their goals. Young entrepreneurs such as Karina and Kathy are
genuinely inspirational figures to aspiring business owners no matter the
circumstances. Even though this brief meeting, I could feel their spirit speak
not through words, but the experiences they have gone through to get to this
point. As we wrapped up our conversation, they both agreed that becoming an
entrepreneur has been their best decision yet.
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