Uriel Benítez

I have a degree in Civil Engineering. I loved the precision of it — the math, the logic, the way systems either work or they don't. You build something, it stands. You get it wrong, it falls. No ambiguity. I spent 7 years in construction doing structural analysis and materials procurement, working alongside private firms that contracted directly with local governments — mayors, municipal projects, the whole thing.

What I couldn't stomach was the industry itself: the corruption, the bureaucracy, the slow realization that the ceiling on what you could build for yourself was basically zero. I wasn't going to spend thirty years inside a system that rewarded connections over competence.

So when I started teaching Spanish on the side and realized I was good at it — genuinely good, not just "native speaker" good — I didn't treat it as a backup plan. I treated it as a signal. I'd always wanted to build a company. I just needed the right vehicle.

Traveling through North America also changed how I see this. Being the foreigner in the room, navigating a language that's not yours, feeling the gap between what you want to say and what actually comes out — that's humbling. It made me a better teacher, because I've been the student too.

I quit engineering, went all in, and built ChidoLingo from zero. Six years, 10,000+ classes, students from every corner of the world, a team of teachers, and now an AI tutor that keeps students practicing between classes. The engineering brain never left — it just found a better problem to work on.

That's the version of this story I'm proud of.