Who is John Freddy Vega
John Freddy Vega was born in Colombia in 1986. He loves, lives, and breathes the Internet. Today, he divides his time between San Francisco, Miami, Mexico City, and Bogotá.
In 2024, Forbes named him entrepreneur of the year and he won the Latin American Education Medal.
In 2023 his company launched a satellite to space.
In 2022, he won the One Young World Entrepreneur of the Year award.
In 2021, he raised a $62M Series B.
In 2020, he was named one of MIT’s Innovators under 35.
In 2019 he received Endeavor’s prize as the top high-impact founder in Colombia and raised a Series A.
In 2018 Matthew McConaughey awarded Freddy’s company as the Best Education Startup at ASU+GSV.
In 2016 CNET named him one of the 20 most influential Latinos in technology.
In 2015, he was the first founder with a Latin American market to be funded by Y Combinator.
At 12 he launched his first company: a Pokémon trading-card board game he and his friends manufactured themselves. It wasn’t Nintendo that shut down his (very profitable) venture—it was the kids’ mothers, who deemed the wicked business model far too addictive.
At 13 he couldn’t afford a computer, but he taught himself to program on a classmate’s borrowed CASIO calculator. His first language: BASIC.
At 15 he produced a Flash-based CD-ROM multimedia for the Inter-American Development Bank and Bank Boston, training bankers and NGOs to spot money-laundering and keep proper books. Thousands of discs went into circulation.
At 16 he locked himself away for an entire December and built Cristalab, which between 2004 and 2012 became the largest Spanish-language web design community online.
At 20, he founded an online video game called dotGaia, which went bankrupt.
At 23 he launched a photo sharing site that failed and a dark-humor and love-advice magazine that no longer exists—probably for the best. Freddy's stories of business failures are legendary.
Around 2010 to 2013 he ran in-person courses in 20 cities across 12 countries alongside Guatemalan entrepreneur Christian Van Der Henst, founder of Maestros del Web.
At that same age of 23, with that same Guatemalan, he decided to start a weekly live show every Tuesday called "Mejorando la Web" that evolved into what is now Platzi.
That same year, with the same Guatemalan partner, he started a live Tuesday show called Mejorando la Web, which evolved into what is now Platzi.
Every Thursday he hosts Platzi LIVE, streamed live and later posted to its popular YouTube channel.
With their combined savings—and working for two years out of a small apartment—they built Platzi. Today it has millions of students, hundreds of employees, and offices in various places around the globe.
Platzi is—and remains—Freddy’s top priority.
You should follow him on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. But you probably do already.
Education
Freddy was kicked out of two universities in Colombia (he deserved it). He completed Y Combinator’s W15 batch in 2015 and went to executive programs at Harvard Business School, INSEAD Singapore and Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Places lived
Bogotá, Lima; Mexico City; Mountain View; San Francisco; New York and Miami. But he has been in every continent.
Some odd things Freddy has done
He has flown an R44 helicopter, a Cessna 172, a 182 and a Cirrus SR20 whose electrical system failed two minutes after take off.
He once flew inside a cumulonimbus storm, at night, in a Cessna 182, for 20 minutes. It was scary.
He’s been inside an actual military submarine and is, in fact, an honorary crew member.
He went to Antartica once.
He wrote one and a half science fiction books, and two short stories.
He has organized an event for 6,000 people in tech, twice a year, in Mexico City and Bogota, for the past 10 years.
He has a Youtube golden button.
He has shot many types of weapons.