Observations on Latin American startups
In this post, I’d like to give my general impressions on the state of startups in Latin America. There are much more thorough posts on the subject such as those from the impressive Omar Tellez on Techcrunch. Also, as usual, Conrad Egusa, CEO of Publicize, has published incredibly thorough and well-written reviews of the startup ecosystems in Mexico, Chile and Colombia. Federico Antoni wrote a comprehensive article on the exciting Fintech space in Mexico. Nonetheless, I’m going to offer a more general impression of the state of startups with personal opinions and points of view. I name some startups below, but am missing some important names so I ask that you include the names that I’ve missed in the comments section.
A little more about my particular point of view. I was born and raised in the US. Although I grew up in Pennsylvania, I lived in Silicon Valley for five years and worked at startups such as Santa Cruz Operation (Santa Cruz) and NetManage (Cupertino). I, also, wrote and edited articles for InfoWorld Magazine (Menlo Park). Nonetheless, my parents were from Colombia, South America and the “adventurer” in me drove me to check out the expat lifestyle and move down here. It’s been great and I am eternally grateful for finding the woman of my dreams (from Cartagena) and being blessed with two wonderful children.
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