“Merging Tidart with Kimia was probably one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made. And now I’m the Group’s CINO and work with incredible people from all the companies in everything related to AI, machine learning, technology, and tool development.”
Meet Carlos – or Charly, as he likes to be called – Molina, Kimia’s CINO (Chief Innovation Officer). After joining the Group in 2018, when he merged his company, Tidart, created in 2010, with Kimia, he went from being the agency’s CEO to occupying one of the top chairs of the entire group in only eight years.
Get to know his journey
Where did it all begin?
I’ve created many companies in my life, Tidart was the last one, that I founded in 2010, before coming to Kimia, in 2018. But my story with Kimia didn’t begin there.
The whole media buying thing was new, Kimia was thriving, growing at such a fast rate they didn’t have time to find people who knew about online marketing. They would hire physicists and mathematicians and someone had to train them. So around 2015, 2016 they hired me as a freelance to teach those new potential candidates for two weeks about everything related to media buying and performance marketing. At the end of those two weeks, they’d ask me who I thought was actually cut for the job – not only in terms of knowledge but also in terms of teamwork and things like that. So, since I would counsel them on who I thought they should hire, I ended up becoming good friends with Daniel [Gómez-Rey, CEO] and Iván [Carrillo, Managing Partner].
At the end of 2017, years after I had already stopped teaching Kimia’s potential hires, I met up with both of them for lunch. I told them all about my agency, how well it was doing, but also the difficulties of me managing everything, and they suggested that we merged. The merger happened two or three months after that.
Was it an easy decision?
For sure, because I already knew Kimia.
Also, Tidart was at a point where it had to become more efficient. And the only way to achieve that was if I had more people on my team, not only to develop technology but also to allow me to focus only on the business. At that time I only had one programmer and a small team. On top of being CEO, I was also a recruiter, an accountant… and Kimia had a team of almost 30 developers, on top of a Human Resources department, a Finance department, and a PR department. It was actually one of the things that convinced me to merge my company with Kimia.
I’ll never forget that, right after the merger, Dani simply asked me: “What have you always wanted to do but couldn’t? We’ll try to get it done”. That showed me that I had made the right decision. Since then, even if not every idea succeeded, things have been going really well for Tidart.
Talking about things going really well for Tidart, what changed in the agency by being a part of Kimia?
The agency’s growth skyrocketed thanks to the level of service we managed to provide, and thanks to the people and the tech that we had access to. When the merger happened, we were ten people in Tidart, now we’re more than 50. Also, from 2018 to now, our profit quadrupled.
And what changed about you, from being Tidart’s do-it-all-CEO to Kimia’s CINO?
I feel like, in the beginning, the hardest part, and what I had to learn how to do, was to delegate. It’s difficult to delegate and I had a hard time, but, simultaneously, it was what took the weight off my shoulders, and what allowed me to fully mature in my role. I found in Kimia people that were very talented, who I learned to trust and, because of it, out of all the companies I’ve ever founded, Tidart is the most successful one.
Speaking of talented people, how’s your relationship with the team?
It’s very easy to work with everyone. I actually had already met part of the team before the merger and it was one of the things that convinced me to go through with it.
The cool thing about them is that everyone who works in the Group is very similar or shares the same values, based on teamwork, on helping out the person sitting next to you if they need a hand. So I feel very comfortable.
And now that you’ve become a CINO, how do you like the change?
Firstly, I want to say that this change doesn’t mean that I’ve closed the doors on Tidart. As Kimia’s CINO, I still work to develop technological solutions for them. But the agency does now have a new CEO [Antonio Ramírez] and he’ll take on all of my load regarding its business.
Antonio was the agency’s first employee. He later left the company when we were six or seven people, and finally came back as COO, so he’s been in Tidart for a very long time, knows it very well, and was a fundamental part of the agency’s growth. I think he’s the best person to continue leading the company toward where we first imagined we wanted it to go.
I won’t say that this is like taking a weight off my shoulders because I loved being Tidart’s CEO. Still, I was already getting involved with other projects [like founding Biddeo], and I knew that I could give a more valuable contribution to the Group as CINO.
So I’m really excited about this new challenge I’ve been awarded.
So what are you currently working on?
We have a few projects on the horizon, right now. All of them are related to AI and machine learning.
In our industry, many times companies say that they work with machine learning or that they have their AI tools, but upon further inspection, you realize it’s not true. In our case, it is true. We’re working with image classification, video filtering, and things like that, that are actually useful to clients.
Biddeo has a really cool AI tool that will be launched shortly, so I’m very excited.
All those changes and new projects sound very exciting. Is that what you like the most about your job? What keeps you inspired?
I think I’m one of those people who feel fulfilled by working. I’m actually very privileged to work with what I like and be able to make a living out of it. I don’t mind working as many hours as I have to because I’m that passionate about it.
In fact, the day that this job no longer inspires me (if that day ever comes, and I hope it doesn’t), I’ll have to go find something else, because one spends too much of one’s time working, so you might as well enjoy it.
This chat is part of a series of interviews with our team. Click here to check out all of them so far.
