Insights from Local Experts: Lorenzo Gomez III 

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Introduction 

We Civic Tech Scholars are all students, whether just starting our undergraduate journey or about to finish our master's degrees. We often feel so attached to the academic and quantitative parts of our fields that we forget how much of our careers are about relationships. With our series of conversations with experts in urban development in San Antonio and the rest of South Texas, we are looking for the stories that help paint a picture of the challenges, triumphs, practices, and developments in the area. Today, San Antonio local Lorenzo Gomez III gave us a refreshing and touching reminder that storytelling is just as important as data and facts.

Gomez, having co-founded Geekdom and the 80/20 Foundation, has been closely tied to our internship experience. He has worked in the same spaces with the same people and is a core reason we have access to this amazing internship experience. He met with us so that we could learn about his career and his journey uplifting San Antonio startups and innovation.

This post will delve into the key takeaways from our conversation with Lorenzo Gomez III, recognizing the conversation as a personal learning experience and a career-building one, enhancing our understanding of startup growth in San Antonio.

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Background on the Expert

Lorenzo Gomez III has published four books, is the co-founder and chairman of Geekdom, a former director of Rackspace, and works in real estate with the goal of creating “microdistricts.” He has inspired and uplifted the young community of San Antonio through the 80/20 Foundation and more. He introduced himself with humility, explaining he’s made a name for himself as an “eclectic tech guy who always wears shorts.” His books have tackled themes of entrepreneurship, mental health, upbringing, cyberbullying, and more. His career has been dedicated to uplifting San Antonio by helping startups, sharing stories, urban planning, and more.

As Civic Tech Scholars, we work with Better Futures Institute through an organization called Students + Startups, which has a large cohort of interns working for several different companies. There are interns from various schools, mostly in San Antonio but not exclusively. The program is dedicated to inspiring young people and engaging them in the San Antonio startups that are innovating the city.

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Key Insights and Takeaways

1. Storytelling

We STEM students often see storytelling as irrelevant. Everything is formulaic and objective. Success is attainable by a series of laid-out steps. So, when we heard Lorenzo Gomez III tell his successful and admirable career story interlaced with emotions, experiences, and creativity, it immediately raised questions. Why do you write about mental health? Why do you tell stories? How are these compatible with being in tech and business?

2. Gomez explained several important things to us:

• Mental health reflection is important in careers, especially for entrepreneurs like the ones we have the opportunity to work with this summer through Students Plus Startups. After growing up in fear of gang violence, Gomez eventually learned how to cope with this anxiety. He says that this is a toolkit that all entrepreneurs in the United States need, as startups risk all the benefits and security that typical jobs have.
• To sell a product or a company, you need to sell the product, but you also need to sell yourself. The way to bridge the gap between the product and the individual is through storytelling.
• People only remember stories. Data, facts, and ideas are difficult to remember. Storytelling is a skill and a strength, he says. It brings out emotions, relatability, and understanding. Sometimes as students, everything we learn feels so abstract and distant from us, which is due to the absence of connections and stories in the classroom.
• When Gomez worked with Graham Weston for Rackspace, he was tasked with traveling around the United States and finding the “ecosystem brand” for various cities. He partnered with Venture for America, who helped him locate the second and third-tier cities around the United States and engage with people there. Through storytelling and connections, he was able to grasp the cultural, physical, and economic ecosystems that determine a city’s innovation. He told us the four things he believes determine the San Antonio ecosystem brand:some text
  • Great potential vs. Old school thinking
  • Historic downtown vs. American suburban sprawl
  • Family city

This made us reflect on the cultural pushes and pulls in San Antonio. While reflecting, we realized all of these things are very prevalent and obvious, and we can understand how that affects the business landscape of San Antonio. While San Antonio is filled with contagious ambitious energy and dedication to improving the city, it is met with resistance to change and frustration with population growth and concern for cultural preservation, making it hard for innovation to gain support and match everyone’s needs. It also faces a dilemma in the way it has so many pockets and neighborhoods that are too separate to be cohesive, yet not independent enough to be self-sufficient. The sprawling city makes it hard to implement sustainable infrastructure, and the dependency on cars is met with both frustration and resistance to change.

Moreover, the changemakers have little reason to stay in San Antonio. The young people who are looking for jobs and are also passionate forward-thinkers with a large future ahead of them often leave San Antonio. This is not just because of the resistance to change, but also because San Antonio is a city designed for families. Unlike other big cities, San Antonio lacks places catered toward the young and single population, so we lose the people most likely to create change.

• Putting the two together, we can reflect on what draws someone to stay in a city. Through storytelling, we can get a grasp of what it is like for someone to live and work in a city, which helps pinpoint the cultural, physical, and economic environment of a city. Gomez says that realistically, it’s places that pull people in, not the jobs. If people can live somewhere with a good quality of life, it is much more realistic to expect them to stay.

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      4.  Challenges and Opportunities

Through hearing Gomez’s story and perspective, we are able to pinpoint some critical San Antonio issues. One of which is, as I just mentioned, the lack of catering toward young people, as well as urban sprawl. Gomez is currently working in real estate, looking to develop more “microdistricts” to create walkable pockets with their own culture and character and more population density. With a city-wide effort, it is possible to help create spaces for cultural change that cater to young people. This could solve issues in both the retention of young talent and urban sprawl.

Gomez also believes that San Antonio lacks the feature that made Silicon Valley so powerful: the serendipitous collision of ideas. Intentional placemaking for innovation, density, and young people full of passion and ideas makes this goal more achievable.

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Conclusion

Throughout the summer, I have been repeatedly shocked at the complexity and diversity of skills required for startup success. We STEM majors discard the importance of humanities, but realistically, storytelling and creativity are the things that carry the startup scene. Realizing that our academic studies lead to meaningful connections with others is a great realization, and it is inspiring to see that Gomez’s passion for entrepreneurship and tech was enhanced by his passion for literature and reflection.

Going forward, it is important to remember that storytelling is essential to connections, which are essential to sales and teamwork. We need to care about the quality of life to maintain the talent retention of young people, and we need to analyze culture and connect with people to understand where the problems in a city lie. Finally, we ambitious STEM majors need to remember that success is made from ambition and concrete steps and actions, but also from introspection, reflection, and connections with people.

Gaining perspective from a local who was raised in hardships here is very valuable to us. It is inspiring to see such commitment to San Antonio despite having faced challenges growing up in the city. Hearing Lorenzo’s story, his perspective on the importance of storytelling, and his insight into the ecosystem brand of San Antonio helps us paint a dedicated picture of the complexities of San Antonio. We thank Lorenzo Gomez III for sharing his story.

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Additional Resources

Book Recommendations from Lorenzo Gomez III:

• Cilantro Diaries by Lorenzo Gomez III
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie 
• Stand Like Lincoln, Speak Like Churchill by James Humes 
• The Microscript Rules, 2nd Edition by Bill Schley
• Reality in Advertising by Rosser Reeves 
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz 
• The Power of Two: Making the Most of Work Relationships by Rodd Wagner
• The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch
• The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
• The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Bafman 
• Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell 

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