You have probably seen Moreno at the Open English TV commercials, they are known for their light tone and fun references regarding the way people try to study and learn English. As for today, Open English remains a successful online platform with over 10.000 users and a 10 million dollar estimated value.
Moreno was born in 1982. While he was studying Mechanical Engineering at the Simon Bolivar University in Caracas, he came up with an idea and decided to drop out of college. Andres and Wilmer Sarmiento (a former classmate) wanted to create an online English school. In 2005 they came up with the first version of it, Wilmer worked on the technological aspects and Andres traveled to California in order to get investors.
In September 2012 Open English capital’s was around 55 million dollars. Andres is from Venezuela but he traveled a lot as a little kid, his stepfather raised him and due to his work, he took Andres to several countries during his early years; during such trips, Moreno learned Slovenian, Italian, English, and also he started learning Portuguese. Open English has its bigger market business in Brazil.
Andre’s love for other languages and cultures was one of the main drives while developing this successful learning system. Open English has had a huge impact in Latin America, not only because of his innovative learning methods; the TV commercials had a tremendous success. According to Moreno, they could not afford to hire actors, so he and his wife decided to do them themselves.
Open English has branch offices in Caracas, Miami, Bogota, Panama City and Sao Paulo. Moreno has been part of events such as the StartUp Weekend, the Global Entrepreneurship Week (Argentina), the Rasu Fest (Chile) and the Americas Venture Capital Conference in Miami.