CEO at Yáneken (160+ stores, 10+ brands — Bold, Drops, Hoka, Belsport — 1,500 people), third generation. Founder of Andrea and AgentPay. More of an introvert than I probably look — writing comes easier than talking. Here I publish what I'm thinking while operating, building, and observing.
A living page. Updated every couple of weeks with what I'm actually doing, reading, and thinking.
AgentPay — closing the first real card payments. Stripe Issuing in test mode while the legal entity activates; integration with a local Chilean bank-transfer provider weeks away from production credentials.
Yáneken — designing the 2026 operating plan: how we keep growing inorganically while consolidating the omnichannel operation and shaving another point off cost-to-serve.
The next Retail Brief edition — succession and Chilean family businesses: why so many third generations destroy what their grandfather built, and how to do it differently.
Last Man Standing — Duff McDonald. The Jamie Dimon biography. The part on how he rebuilt JPMorgan post-crisis is a management-under-pressure manual I'm underlining whole.
Acquired — the Costco episode. Four hours. Ten times more useful than any MBA on retail strategy. I re-listen every time I'm about to make a big pricing decision.
Coming back to triathlon base after a couple of months off for travel. Aiming for Ironman 70.3 Pucón in January.
Bold Vespucio is our most profitable store. Drops grew 2x in sales when we put real design behind it. The data proves it over and over.
Five of the largest retailers on the planet failed here. Not for lack of resources — for underestimating the person who lives inside the market. The real advantage isn't scale — it's context.
Third generation. My grandfather Pedro Rishmague opened the first store in 1985 on Paseo Ahumada. I didn't come to destroy what was built — I came to take it to another scale.
The answer is in the customer and in the data — never in intuition. Experimentation wins.
Not consultants. Not evangelists. Operators who have managed a P&L and deployed AI inside a real company.
From Santiago. It all comes back to one question: how do we build world-class businesses from Chile?
I co-founded Menlo & Oak with Andrea De Vivo to take operator-grade advisory work outside Yáneken. That's where the offering, the team, and the way to work with me live.
This is Drops — a store we designed from zero. I narrated it because part of how I operate is telling the story of what we're building. Experience isn't decoration: it's the most underestimated lever in retail.
See YánekenAsk Claude to pay your electric bill. It'll write a beautiful plan. It won't move a peso. The problem isn't the model: it's the layer underneath. That's what I'm building.
Models can advise. They can't execute payments. For an AI agent to actually pay something — in LatAm, in production, today — someone has to build five pieces. And no global player has all of them.
AP2 — the standard Google launched with Mastercard, Stripe, Adyen and 60+ partners. AgentPay already issues those permissions.
Each agent with its human owner, its budget, its approval chain. Designed for companies and families, not patched on top of the per-employee card model.
Who authorized, what was asked, what model decided, what info it reviewed. The traceability the CMF, the BCRA, and the CNBV will demand.
Pix in Brazil, SPEI in Mexico, Chilean transfers, installments, OXXO, Nequi, Mercado Pago. Not afterthoughts — the actual paths where regional commerce runs.
AgentPay doesn't custody funds. Money moves over the balance sheet, not through it. That lets us operate under Chile's Law 21.521 without CMF authorization — and replicates across five more countries.
Raw ideas, unpolished. Notes I'm working through, projects I'm exploring. Some become letters. Others stay here. Synced from my Obsidian vault.
One operator's question, one answer grounded in data and real deployment. Bilingual — published on LinkedIn and Substack.
How I built a system that does to marketing what engineering already did to factories. A 100,000-person synthetic society, a creative auditor, focus groups with real group physics, Bayesian attribution. One creative jumped from 42 to 72 in a single iteration. Eight brands in production.
ReadAsk Claude to pay your electric bill. It'll write a beautiful plan — and move zero pesos. The problem isn't the model: it's the layer underneath. The missing piece for AI agents to pay something in LatAm, and why no global provider has it. The AgentPay manifesto.
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If you're between 25 and 40 in Chile, you're going to live in a country where half the population doesn't work, taxes double to sustain it, and your pension doesn't exist because nobody's left to fund it. The lowest fertility rate in our history — lower than Japan, lower than South Korea. Why the demographic crisis is an argument for AI agent payment infrastructure.
ReadWhile everyone cuts the human layer, real pricing power gets built with presence. In retail, warmth is the most underestimated premium — and the hardest to operationalize.
ReadThe real AI risk isn't that it doesn't work — it's that it works too well at creating things that look ready but are ticking time bombs underneath. How I built Yáneken's AI governance committee.
ReadLast Thursday I was at Think with Google Chile. I left with one fixed idea: Meridian — Google's open-source MMM — is now available to anyone, and that changes everything. Why a CEO should be shipping code.
ReadAt Yáneken we held 5 beliefs that seemed obvious. Until the data told us we were wrong. The myths that cost us — and what we learned when we started measuring instead of assuming.
ReadAs a kid I'd go with my mom to the office. In December, while my classmates were on vacation, I worked Christmas support. Third generation. Retail isn't my career — it's my native language. The newsletter launch post.
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I grew up inside a family business. My grandfather Pedro Rishmague opened the first store in 1985 on Paseo Ahumada in downtown Santiago. Three generations later I'm CEO at Yáneken — Chile's #2 multi-brand retail group: 160+ stores, 10+ brands, 1,500 people. We're competing to make the Chilean retail experience rival the best in the world.
Before becoming CEO I spent four years as CRO (2018–2022). I led the projects that professionalized Artículos Deportivos Belsport: changed the ERP, stood up ecommerce, built planning and marketing departments from scratch, set up real corporate governance. In 2020, after the first major acquisition, Yáneken was born. We grew EBITDA by 300% and launched store formats recognized as references across Latin America.
I hold an Industrial Engineering degree from PUC and an MBA from Stanford GSB, where I graduated as an Arjay Miller Scholar (top 10%). That combination — engineering, business, and real operations — is the foundation of how I think about retail, AI, and data.
Today, beyond running Yáneken, I'm building Andrea (the simulation marketing was missing) and AgentPay (payment rails for AI agents in LatAm), and advising companies through AI transformation from Menlo & Oak.
Leading strategic vision and P&L for the full portfolio. Efficiency program + inorganic growth + AI integration across operations.
Top 10% of the class. Certificate in Public Management & Social Innovation. Electives in AI, design thinking, and organizational design.
Grew EBITDA by 300%. Led the projects that professionalized the company: ERP, ecommerce, planning, marketing, corporate governance. In 2020, after the first major acquisition, Yáneken was born. Launched 4 store formats recognized as references across Latin America.
Created Bold from zero — naming, logo, store design, launch. Today Bold Vespucio is the group's most profitable store.
Top 7% of the class. Winner of the Bain Case Competition 2016 — first Chilean team to win in 10 years. Thesis with LATAM Airlines on operational robustness.
Without triathlon I wouldn't have the discipline for everything else. The bike is where my ideas sort themselves out and where I make the hardest decisions of the year. Disney is the obsession that keeps reminding me experience matters — every time I go back I understand something new about building a place people want to return to. My wife Andrea, my mom, my triathlon friends, my Stanford classmates — they're the network without which none of the other things mean anything. The stuff below isn't a distraction. It's the source of how I operate, decide, and write.
Goodreads live. Audible in my ears. Podcasts in rotation. What's shaping how I think this month — from business and operating to neuroscience, longevity, and endurance.
See everything on Goodreads
Historias profundas de las empresas que construyeron el mundo. Cuatro horas por episodio. Sin atajos.
Las mejores conversaciones largas sobre IA y economía. Cada entrevista preparada como tesis doctoral.
Las historias de origen de los founders que dieron forma a la industria moderna.
Las mejores historias y consejos de los founders chilenos. Fui invitado en el episodio de Bold.
Economía, mercados y dinero, en chileno y al grano. Producido por La Tercera.
Inversiones y mercados explicados en español, con perspectiva LatAm.
Análisis político chileno con la profundidad histórica que el debate público no tiene.
Conversaciones reales sobre negociación: lo que funciona, lo que no, y por qué la mayoría lo está haciendo mal.
Conversaciones largas con founders y operadores LatAm con ambición global. Curado por hi.vc, los inversionistas detrás de Cornershop.
Conversaciones largas con líderes chilenos sobre lo que de verdad mueve sus decisiones.
Neurociencia aplicada al sueño, foco, ejercicio y rendimiento. Protocolos basados en evidencia.
Longevidad, salud metabólica y entrenamiento. El podcast que acompaña a Outlive en mi librero.
Conversaciones con atletas de resistencia, fundadores y outliers. Resonancia personal: Ironman.
I talk with operators, founders, family-business heirs, and teams trying to raise the bar in their industry.
