Why I came back.

At twenty, I didn't want to be CEO of Yáneken.

I wanted to work at BCG. I applied and didn't get in — and that was my first reminder, probably the most useful one I got, that the life I'd imagined wasn't necessarily the one I was going to get.

I wanted to be the executive at some giant multinational — someone who lands in Madrid on Monday and Singapore on Thursday, corporate card, office with a view. I wanted a bigger world than the one I'd been handed.

The family business was the backdrop I grew up in, not the plan. My mom took me to the office as a kid. In December, while my classmates were on vacation, I worked Christmas support at the stores — I inflated soccer balls, packed Christmas gift sets, set up window displays, learned to sell. I knew how the business worked before I knew what I wanted to do with my life. And that, paradoxically, was exactly what made me want to leave.

My grandfather Pedro Rishmague opened the first store in 1985, on Paseo Ahumada in downtown Santiago. One store. He built something from nothing with the patient discipline of an immigrant who understood that every single customer walking through the door mattered. By the time I was finishing engineering at PUC, the family business — then called Artículos Deportivos Belsport — was a serious operation, but still local, still traditional. And I, honestly, couldn't see how my ambition was going to fit inside it.

Inside, almost by accident

I did Civil Engineering. Then an MSc in operations — I got obsessed with the complexity of how planes move around the world, and ended up writing my thesis with LATAM Airlines on robust schedule design for a freighter fleet.

And then BCG said no.

Without the multinational route I'd mapped out, without a clear plan B, I joined Belsport while I figured out what I actually wanted to do. In parallel I started training seriously in triathlon — I needed something to clear my head outside work, something that forced me to be present for four or five straight hours with no screen. Both ended up doing the same thing: they shifted my center of gravity.

The business I'd grown up watching, and had decided I didn't want, started to feel more interesting than I'd expected. It wasn't a finished company — it was a company that could be taken to another level. That's a different invitation. That's where ego goes quiet.

I stayed. I started as head of Bold, a brand we built from zero. In 2018 I moved into the CRO role. Four years there (2018–2022) — the years I learned the most and got the most wrong.

In that period I led the projects that started turning Artículos Deportivos Belsport into a professional company: we changed the ERP, stood up ecommerce, built the planning and marketing departments from scratch, set up real corporate governance, and opened store formats that didn't exist in Chile. I didn't always get it right. I made a lot of mistakes. But we had a hell of a lot of fun along the way.

In 2020, just before the pandemic, we closed our first major acquisition — and Yáneken was born. The renaming wasn't cosmetic: it was a statement. We wanted to be a group, not a brand; an aggregator of Chilean retail, not just another player. Yáneken represents what we want to be, not only what we are.

In those years I came to understand that the real advantage wasn't capital or brand or technology — it was understanding this place better than anyone outside will in the next twenty years. Five of the largest retailers on the planet failed in Chile in the last three decades — not for lack of resources, but for underestimating the local operator.

Stanford

After six years inside I started to feel something I hadn't expected: I needed to step out of the operation to come back with perspective. It wasn't about academics. It wasn't about a curriculum. It was a personal challenge — I wanted to put myself in front of people who would shake me, in a context where I wasn't the one in charge.

I applied to Stanford GSB. Got in. And what happened over those two years went deeper than I'd expected.

My wife and I arrived on campus as newlyweds. Those two years were, at the same time, the most demanding professionally and the happiest personally. We made lifelong friends. We lived adventures we still tell. And the biggest of all: we became parents for the first time — our son Alexander was born in California.

Academically, I sat there listening to the best in the world — from Nobel laureates to CEOs of companies I'd studied for years. A universe of possibilities was opening in front of me, and I had two years to soak it all in.

I spent two years surrounded by people with spectacular résumés, the most impressive founders in the world. And instead of leaving intimidated, I left with the opposite conviction: we can do this too. They weren't smarter than my friends in Chile. They weren't harder working than the people I knew at Yáneken. They had one simpler thing — conviction that what they were building mattered, and a specific place they understood better than anyone.

Stanford didn't make me want to leave. It made me want to come back with more clarity. That's different. That changes the decisions you make after.

Coming back

I came back to Yáneken with more conviction than I'd left with. I came back as CRO for a transition period, and then as CEO.

But there's a less pragmatic reason I came back, and it's the truth: I love this country. Chile has a talent the world doesn't imagine — people who operate with discipline, who create from scarcity, who get up when everything is against them. But that talent needs people who choose to stay. When I read Jamie Dimon talking about the United States — that operator-patriot conviction that the private sector has a duty to the country — I feel exactly the same, but for Chile. I'm one small piece of something bigger. But every piece counts. If those of us who have the option to stay don't stay, nobody is left building from the inside.

Third generation

There's a phrase that's followed me: "The grandson is sinking the family business." I wrote it on LinkedIn and it exploded — the most-commented post I've published. It hit a nerve.

The statistic is real: most family businesses don't make it to the third generation. The question isn't why so many fail. It's why some manage to transform. The answer isn't talent. It's willingness to break with what worked before so it can keep working.

My grandfather built the company for 1980s Chile. My mother consolidated it through the '90s and 2000s. My job is to rebuild it for the Chile of 2030 — without destroying what was built, but without staying inside a model that no longer serves.

Third generation done right is a superpower. Done wrong, it's the phrase this paragraph opens with.

What I'm building today

Sitting still isn't something I know how to do. Today I spend my time on four things — all of them coming back to the same question of how we build something world-class from Chile:

Yáneken. I'm CEO. 160+ stores, 10+ brands, 1,500 people. My job is to prove the Chilean retail experience can compete with anyone in the world. Bold Vespucio is the most profitable store in the group. Drops grew 2x when we put real design behind it. Experience isn't a cost: it's the most underestimated profitability lever in the sector.

Andrea. It's my technical project. I started coding after the MBA and haven't stopped. Andrea does to marketing what engineering already did to factories: simulate before spending, audit creative, attribute honestly, execute with autonomous agents. Today running in production across eight brands.

AgentPay. The payment layer that lets AI agents actually transact in LatAm — on local rails, not a copy-paste of the US model. Infrastructure for the next decade.

Menlo & Oak. With Andrea De Vivo we built a boutique advisory. Operators advising operators — not consultants with a deck. If anything I write here resonated and you think we could work together, that's the place to start the conversation. menloandoak.com →

My parents

Before closing, something that matters to say.

I had the enormous luck of growing up with two parents who were, at the same time, the best parents and exceptional professionals in their own work. Big careers, both of them, no ego in either. They never made me feel I was in anyone's shadow. They just wanted what was best for me — even when that best didn't match theirs, and even when it cost more.

If today I can write from this position — with the freedom to say what I think, with the confidence to make the hard calls — it's because they built that freedom for me first. Thank you.

Why I write

I'm more of an introvert than I probably look. I'd rather listen than talk. I'd rather observe than opine. It's not shyness — it's preference. I learn more when other people are doing the talking.

But some things matter too much to keep to yourself. And writing — alone, without the pressure of sounding smart in real time — is where I can actually say them. This site is that space. Where I can go deeper, let ideas sit, and open up about what I'm obsessed with: retail, AI, family businesses, what it means to build from Chile.

I also write for the ones who come after — the heirs finishing their MBAs and going back to their family businesses, the founders coming out of Stanford asking if it's worth going home. If someone had told me honestly what I was about to live, I'd have had more map than I had.

If you got this far: thank you. Attention is the scarcest thing. You spent it on me.

— SGR