What drives Miguel Galuccio, the businessman who defines himself as “grateful”
Nature, animals and small-town life: the personal side of Vista’s founder, far from balance sheets.
When asked to give his life a title, Miguel Galuccio answered with a single word: “Grateful.” The founder of Vista Energy often speaks about his career as an adventure rather than a career plan, and when asked what moves him, he does not mention market valuations or barrels per day. He talks about people, about moments, and admits one weakness: he is deeply moved when something bad happens to someone small or defenseless.
He traces that sensitivity back to his childhood in Paraná. The son of a baker who later opened a supermarket and an English teacher, he grew up between the rugby club and the small ventures his father let each of the four brothers try. He sold eggs from chickens he raised and made popcorn for the bar on the corner. From the club, he learned something he would later bring into business: that nothing is done alone, and that before playing, someone has to mark the field and fix the clubhouse.
An empathy learned in small towns
Galuccio says small-town life left him with a tool he now values more than any degree: the ability to understand the person in front of him. He says he can be at the family farm in Entre Ríos talking with the foreman, whom he admires, and the next day sit in New York with an investor, and genuinely connect with both. He considers that empathy one of the things that enrich his life.
Nature is the other constant. As a child, he was drawn to animals and the outdoors, and it was precisely a field practice at an oilfield in the south that showed him that oil combined everything he was looking for: remote places, technology and teamwork. Today, with more time and more freedom than at the beginning of his career, he says he often returns to those passions he had to postpone for years, the ones that connect him with the countryside and with people.
The advice he gives young people
When asked what he would recommend to those just entering the sector, Miguel Galuccio insists on two things: passion and craft. They should look for what truly moves them and become good professionals without skipping steps, climbing “the whole ladder” in order to arrive solidly prepared. He says this from his own experience: he himself started on a drilling team and believes young people have to go early to what he calls “the trench,” the place where things happen and where character is forged more than technique.
His son Matías experienced that philosophy firsthand. Initially oriented toward finance, his father suggested he try Schlumberger; he came back from the interview saying he had felt a team spirit, almost a brotherhood, and ended up spending three years in the Saudi Arabian desert sleeping in a container. Galuccio tells it with pride, like someone who recognizes his own journey in his son’s.
A white barrel that presides over dinners
At Vista’s offices, there is an object that sums up his way of looking at things: the first barrel of unconventional oil produced by the company, painted white and turned into an iconic piece. When the company organizes a dinner, they hold it in front of that barrel, so they do not forget where they started. It is the same logic as the telephone token that, for him, represented the freedom of his student years and, at the same time, the bond with Paraná, with his parents and with his girlfriend.
Galuccio does not regret the costs he paid along the way, not even having missed the birth of his first child because he was working in the south. He argues that life is not planned, that one explores until finding a direction and tries to make the best of the opportunities that appear. The value, he says, lies in enjoying the journey more than the destination. That is why, when he takes stock of everything he has built, he always returns to the same word.