Taking a different direction
FAR-AWAY EYES: Jorge Giroud, PR 2002, takes students on tours of Morocco as part of his Spain-based Discover Sevilla operation.
Alum discovers his professional destiny
in Spain
When Jorge Giroud, PR 2002, started his company soon after graduation, he didn’t sacrifice his daily nap and nights out with friends for corporate America. That’s because he moved to Sevilla, Spain, to launch Discover Sevilla (DS). DS takes young travelers on excursions in Andalucia, Portugal and Morocco, helping American students maximize their time abroad by offering day trips on weekends and extended outings during holidays. It also offers tips for navigating Sevilla’s narrow cobblestone streets, finding the best tapas and exploring the modern city among the Roman ruins.
During her exchange program in Sevilla, public relations senior Glenda Camacho went on DS’ Lagos, Portugal, trip with Giroud.
“Anything I would ever want, they offered,” Camacho said. “From the little things like the types of movies they played on the bus to the sailboat ride with tons of Sangria through the caves of Lagos, they do everything to make sure you’re having a good time. Their success has a lot to do with the fact that Jorge is so young.”
Giroud believes he executed his business idea at the right time.
“There’s no better time to do it than right after you graduate,” he said. “There was also no one doing what we were doing at the time.”
UF Entrepreneurship Prof. William Rossi, who founded several businesses abroad, sees Giroud’s business logic.
“When you’re young, you have less, so you have less to lose,” Rossi said. “I spent a career running businesses all over the world, and the world has become a very small place. It doesn’t matter where you go; there are people all over and they’re all just like you and me.”
Giroud’s success is most likely due to providing value for a targeted and consistent consumer base, Rossi said. “Students who go abroad want to do more than just go to class. He shows them how.”
Giroud appears on ‘Today Show’
TOUR DE FORCE: Giroud, with one of his Discover Sevilla customers, public relations senior Glenda Camacho.
Word of Giroud’s entrepreneurial innovation is spreading. He recently spoke about DS on NBC’s “The Today Show.”
He decided to launch the company while working in Sevilla for the Austin-based International Studies Abroad (ISA) in 2002. He applied for the position after interviewing a company representative while covering a study-abroad fair for his Reporting class.
As ISA’s resident director, Giroud organized excursions in southern Spain. The experience helped shape the way he runs his company. DS takes students horseback riding on the beach trip he pioneered at ISA.
In 2003, his best friend, Erik Shamas, joined him in Sevilla to escape Venezuela’s poor economy.
They pooled together money from their savings and families and opened DS with $40,000. They bought the name DiscoverSevilla.com for $8 from GoDaddy.com. A few months later, their 16-hour workdays paid off when they opened their Web site. The first two trips they offered sold out.
Giroud uses the Adobe Photoshop program he learned in his Visual Communications course to update the Web site and create other promotional materials.
Giroud and Shamas develop the company’s trip destinations from their travel experience. After they fought for a bus seat to Carnaval – an annual masquerade party in the streets of Cadiz, Spain, that draws more than 100,000 people – they added the February festival to their excursion list.
“I thought, ‘We’ll just rent buses and everyone can get a seat,’ ” Giroud said.
They recently took six buses with 200 people to the event. They also added trips to the Rock of Gibraltar, Portugal, Morocco and the Sahara desert.
“A lot of this job,” Giroud said, “is just experience and knowing what tours people will want to do while they’re here.”
‘Idea into motion’
Giroud and Shamas recently added two study-abroad programs in Spain: Sevilla and Salamanca.
While in high school, they studied in Salamanca. The programs take student travelers on month-long experiences that couple classroom education with excursions and events in Andalucia and Castilla y Leon.
Giroud grew up speaking Spanish with his Cuban parents, but it wasn’t until he studied in Sevilla that he learned to speak like a Sevillano. “Everyone we do business with doesn’t speak English,” he said.
He plans to one day operate the company from Tampa. He’d visit a couple of times a year.
“A lot of people said I couldn’t do it,” he recalled. “But you can pretty much do anything you want to. I think the problem with most people is that they just don’t put their idea into motion.”