About
Oswaldo “Oso” Trava is a Mexican entrepreneur, angel investor, and communicator who loves turning big ideas into practical businesses. He co‑founded InstaFit, a streaming fitness platform, and later launched Cracks Podcast, a long‑form interview show that digs into the habits of top performers across sports, tech, and media. His curiosity has also led him to publish two best‑selling books in Spanish—Tácticas de Cracks and Haz lo que importa—with Penguin Random House. In 2023 he stepped onto prime‑time television as one of the new “sharks” on Shark Tank México, bringing his candid feedback and data‑driven style to the startup pitchers who swim into the tank. Today he balances time between Dumo Labs and Cracks Educación—his education ventures—and a speaking calendar that regularly places him on stages across Latin America.
Before Fame
Trava grew up in Mexico City, dreaming first of engineering and later of global finance. After earning an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering, he secured admission to Stanford’s MBA program and graduated in 2008. Wall Street beckoned, and he joined UBS in New York—but the 2008 financial crisis ended that chapter almost as soon as it began. Rather than dwell on the setback, he flew home and built Lo Mío Es Tuyo, a successful electronics‑resale startup. The exit from that venture funded his next big bet: InstaFit, founded in 2013 to tackle Latin America’s obesity epidemic through on‑demand workouts and nutrition coaching. By 2019, Forbes México listed InstaFit among its “30 Promesas de los Negocios,” noting that Trava, then forty, had already helped tens of thousands of users train from home. The momentum of InstaFit—and the extensive network he built while raising capital—later inspired Cracks Podcast, which launched in early 2019 to spotlight the stories behind headline success.
Trivia
- Podcast reach. Cracks Podcast consistently ranks among the top business shows on Apple Podcasts in Mexico, and its YouTube clips have drawn individual videos with more than three million views.
- Social footprint. On Instagram alone he chats with an audience of roughly 850k followers, sharing behind‑the‑scenes lessons from founders, personal fitness milestones, and his signature “haz lo que importa” productivity tips.
- Books over buzzwords. Trava’s books read like extended coffee‑chats rather than textbooks; he purposely strips out business jargon so that readers at any stage can “get to action fast,” a philosophy he also applies to his workshops and mastermind groups.
- Runner at heart. After believing for decades that he “wasn’t built for marathons,” he trained for and finished his first 42 km race in his mid‑forties, a story he uses to illustrate the power of rewriting one’s internal script. (Instagram Stories, 2023).
Family Life
Trava maintains most family information confidential, yet he frequently states on the podcast that the entrepreneurial hustle would not be possible without his wife’s and two young children’s help. He attributes the disciplinary, positive, and humorous values he learned at home in Mexico for instilling the empathetic interview technique listeners are familiar with today. In sporadic social media updates he trades business jargon for photos of family hikes or weekend cookouts, reinforcing his view that work victories only count if they reinforce, not replace, life outside the office.
Associated With
Television viewers now connect Trava with fellow Shark Tank México investors such as Karla Berman, Adriana Gallardo, Brian Requarth, and Marcus Dantus, the returning veteran of the show. Together the refreshed panel has injected new energy into the tank and introduced a stronger focus on tech‑enabled ventures. Online, algorithm fans lump him into the same creator universe as YouTube giants MrBeast and Dhar Mann, thanks to the viral reach of his podcast clips and entrepreneurial explainers. Inside Cracks Podcast he has swapped insights with Olympic medalists, fintech founders, and thought leaders who range from Stanford professors to Latin Grammy winners—proof of his knack for drawing lessons from diverse talent pools. Friends and colleagues often point out that his real superpower is connecting people who “should talk,” then stepping aside to watch the ideas blossom.
