learning without boundaries
The Nomad MBA
Business, AI & culture,
learned in the field.
A working notebook of companies built, mistakes made, and frameworks earned in the field. Across AI, media, food, sustainability, and culture. Mostly out of Lima.
The first market studies weren't done in classrooms. They were done by merchants crossing deserts to connect one continent to another, observing what was valued in one place and carrying it to the other side of the world, so often that their origin became irrelevant, as did their destination. They built globalization itself. They did all that without any kind of MBA. Learn along the way is the only history of mankind.
The Nomad MBA is a record of that kind of learning: what happens in a negotiation, a failed project, a new city, a client meeting, a cultural misunderstanding, a market visit, or while building something before you fully understand how it should work.
§ Projects · Field cases
Things I have built,
and why.
OndaAI An intelligence layer on top of public radio. Cerro de Pasco · 2024 →
Radio intelligence · Civic tech · Lima
Context A mining company in Cerro de Pasco needed to know what nearby communities were saying about them, days before unrest could turn into a road blockade that would shut their operation down. Strikes in the Peruvian Andes start as conversations on local radio. Press monitoring missed those stations. Formal reports lagged the airwaves by days. Nobody was listening at the layer where things actually start.
Built Real-time transcription and daily alerts on public radio across Peru. The first deployment caught villagers organising to block trucks coming out of the mine; municipal directors were brought in and the underlying grievance was resolved before the blockade went up. The same engine now serves regulators, news agencies, advertisers, business owners. And, through PeruAcuerda, the Peruvian public.
Learned Voice is the most under-indexed signal in any country. Once you can listen at scale, the work of operating in a fractured economy stops being guesswork.
Hey Hunters Culture as infrastructure, not decoration. Barranco · ongoing
Culture · Brand · Public space
Context Cities pay for ads. They rarely pay for culture. Public space sells but does not speak.
Built A creative platform connecting artists, brands, and cities through interventions in physical space.
Learned Culture is the cheapest brand-building infrastructure a city or company has. It is also the most undervalued.
Manya Leading a team in a language that isn't your first. Lima · since 2018
Leadership · Operations
Context Joining a Peruvian operation as a foreign partner. Different language, work rhythms, sense of urgency.
Built A team and an operating cadence that translated across two cultures without flattening either.
Learned Leadership in a second language strips you of what you usually hide behind. What's left is whether you actually listen.
Foodbox Introducing a product into a market that didn't ask for it yet. Peru · 2019 → 2022
Food · Go-to-market
Context A food category that worked elsewhere. No demand, no shelf, no vocabulary locally.
Built A go-to-market motion built on education, sampling, and patient distribution. Not paid acquisition.
Learned In new markets the work isn't selling the product. It's building the category.
Green Dreams Getting a village to collaborate on the land that feeds it. Tarapoto · 2021 →
Sustainability · Community
Context Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon. Solutions designed from capitals rarely survive contact with the village.
Built A permaculture-rooted project organised around the people already living and farming the land.
Learned Sustainability is a coordination problem before it is a technology problem.
currently advising → Founders & companies on AI strategy, product, and cross-market growth. Get in touch.
§ Essays · Long form
Field notes & longer reflections.
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2026 · 05 new
The Radio Knew First
How a mining company in Cerro de Pasco turned into OndaAI, and how OndaAI became the foundation for PeruAcuerda. A founding story about the gap between dialogue and outcome.
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2022 · 11
Travel and Learn
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2022 · 05
A new ISM is formed / NFTism
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2021 · 08
Una herida abierta (protejamos los árboles)
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2021 · 08
An open wound (let’s protect the trees)
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2021 · 05
El lugar más sagrado del mundo
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2021 · 05
The most sacred place in the world
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2021 · 02
The globalization of culture
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2021 · 02
The Nomad MBA
Roï Dov Pessis
Entrepreneur & strategist. Building and investing in companies across Latin America since 2015. In AI, media, food, sustainability, and culture. Working in English, Spanish, Hebrew. Partnering with founders, artists, clients, and institutions to turn ideas into real projects.
Eight years and more than ten companies later, I still believe the best business education happens in the field: in a negotiation, a market visit, a failed launch, a client meeting in a second language, a project built slightly before you're ready.
I write here to make sense of what I'm learning, and to be useful to other people building across markets, disciplines, and continents.
- Lima · 2026
- 10+ companies
- 3 languages
- Since 2015