Nicolas Girard, Oxio: Simple and Programmable Access to Global 4G and 5G Infrastructure, Ep 187

Twenty years ago, if you wanted to start a mobile telecom company, you had to either buy an existing company or build out extremely expensive infrastructure. Now, Oxio allows you to spin up your personalized, cloud-based mobile service in minutes using a simple API.
In this episode, I sat down with Nicolas Girard, founder and CEO of Oxio, the first telecom as-a-service platform that allows companies to offer their own telecom service about the platform as a service revolution that Oxio is leading.
Lessons learned working in government and starting startups

Nicolas’ first work experience was with the French government doing network security. After that he transitioned to research and fell in love with the telecom and wireless networks, where one of the byproducts of his research became his first company.

In this episode of Crossing Borders, Nicolas walks us through his journey from working for the French government to becoming an entrepreneur. He also shares his motivation for starting Oxio and some of the lessons learned dealing with the first tech bubble and the 2008 financial crisis.

Communication without cables

It might sound strange now, but 20 years ago people used Ethernet cables to connect to the Internet. When Nicolast first saw wireless communication, he was fascinated, which led him to dig deeper into the telecommunications industry.

Nicolas thought mobile connectivity was too expensive. In some markets one gigabyte of data costs the average wages of a full week’s work, making many people unable to be digital participants in the economy. In order to solve this problem, Nicolas’ idea was to build a global platform that became Oxio.

In this episode, Nicolas shares his vision on building Oxio and the importance of understanding your customer and the market by collecting data to create a personalized experience.

Bringing connectivity in Latin America

Nicolas’ business experience in LatAm made him realize the disparity of mobile operators in the region, and chose it as the best place to launch Oxio to improve connectivity in Latin America and create an experience that users want.

Listen to this episode of Crossing Borders to learn more about why Nicolas chose Latin America to launch Oxio, how crypto and web3 decentralized technology apply to telecom, and the importance of diversity in the workplace.

Outline of this episode:

[00:01] - Introduction to this episode
[01:20] - About Oxio
[03:23] - From working for the government to entrepreneurship
[05:51] - Wireless communication
[07:43] - Biggest lessons from working for the government
[10:49] - Biggest lessons learned from the financial crisis
[14:37] - How Oxio came to be
[16:22] - The affordability of mobile connectivity
[19:07] - About Brand IQ
[22:29] - Why is Latinamerica a great place to invest?
[26:43] - How crypto and Web3 apply to telecom
[33:15] - Advice to a young Nicolas

Resources and people mentioned:

Nicolas Girard
Oxio
Book: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Reid Hoffman podcast: Masters of Scale
Andreessen Horowitz Articles