A 19 year old boy was resting in his Harvard University dormitory, when he decided to create the biggest social media phenomenon of the 21 century. Mark Zuckerberg, launched Facebook on February 4th, 2004. Six years later he was named by Forbes Magazine among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world. According to the 2016 BNP Paribas Global Entrepreneur Report, millennials are starting businesses at younger ages than their counterparts in previous generations.

Gano Excel is a Network Marketing company that arrived to Colombia in 2009. Gano Excel’s main vision and goal is to be a global leader in invention, to have a strong market presence, and provide the best business opportunities in the Network Marketing Industry. Since then, it has gained strength and many young entrepreneurs have decided to join the Gano Excel bandwagon. Gano Excel has created immense controversy since people state that the company is a type of pyramid system which rewards those on top and punishes the ones on the bottom . However, sources inside the company deny it. As of now, in The Columbus School community, more than 10 students have paid the  membership that can be as expensive as two million 8 hundred thousand pesos. However, none of them now what they are getting their hands into. Will it be a curse or a miracle?

Insiders perspective

“Of course, as everyone, I was extremely skeptical about it, but when I listened I loved it,” Tomas Mejia, 17 year old Junior TCS student said.

Mejia has been a part of Gano Excel for more than four months and he has gained more than  one million pesos. He stated that he had heard horrible things about the business but he was determined to give it a chance.

“Gano Excel is all about expanding an idea and expanding a market; it’s not just about the money, it is about expressing an idea and introducing it to people to change the reality with the products,” Davide Sangiovanni, another 11 grader at the TCS community, said.

Sangiovanni got introduced to Gano Excel by his good friend Tomas Mejia, since then, he has gone to more than four training sessions and meetings in order to become a better spokesperson and leader.

“Gano Excel is a good idea because it is a good way to have a plan b for the future, it is a way for people to create a market, it is a way that people can have their own passive income and it has a big cost benefit,” Mejia said.

Outsider’s perspective  

When asked if they try to persuade people, Mejia said “We never sell and we never try to persuade, we just tell what we are doing and what the product is about”.

People outside the company have complains about the intensity that Gano Excel workers have to convince people to become a part of the company.

When asked about his opinion on Gano Excel, Pablo Monsalve, The Columbus School’s personero said, “I personally don’t like it because there has to be someone in the bottom that at the end loses”.

Pablo Monsalve has been to one of Gano Excel’s meetings and he said that they make it seem really cool, and they have great persuasive skills,”your own friends look like businessmen,” said Monsalve.  

“I think it is a bad investment because the company keeps piling up a huge amount of doubts, and they keep promising money to people, and it gets to a point where they have no money to pay their employees and the whole company falls down,” said TCS senior Emilio Pelaez.

Samuel Vieira is a TCS junior who was involved with the company, however, he left the company after two months as he stated “it wasn’t as they made it seem”.

Why it creates so much controversy

When Monsalve; the TCS personero was asked why he thought Gano Excel created so much controversy he said “it creates so much controversy because of the fact it is a pyramid,which means that people on the top have people working for them and then these people have other people working for them… but at the end of the day it is legal”.

On the other hand, Mejia explained how Gano Excel is not only a way for people to have their own passive income, it is a way to become an entrepreneur.

“It has changed a lot of people’s lives, we form ourselves and we train ourselves to become better; we let all of our fears of talking in public, and we are becoming bigger leaders,” said Mejia.

Outsiders state that the company is extremely sketchy, however Gano Excel’s lema states:“WE ARE A FAMILY” and we shall grow together collectively in achieving our dreams”.