Startup CEOs that think big!
It’s been more than a year since I’ve written an update on the TropicalGringo Portfolio, the five startups where I am an advisor and shareholder. There is really big news from all of these companies from multimillion dollar rounds raised to Silicon Valley and other US investment activity. Though there is a lot of work to be done to advance the Colombian startup ecosystem as a whole, these companies and their founders join a growing list of Colombian startups that are incredible role models for the future startups in this country.
Ubits. Julian Melo and Marta Forero have done an amazing job of building an amazing organization and getting sales of this corporate e-learning startup growing nicely almost since day one. Currently, they’re about midway through YCombinator’s acceleration program in Silicon Valley. They continue to grow their content library, number of customers, number of satisfied users (they have the highest rate course completion) and are currently expanding in Mexico and raising a round of funding.
1Doc3. Javier Cardona, CEO of this medical Q&A startup, has already raised about $2M and, along with his co-founders, Nicolas Duran, is building an impressive team. The product team includes a team of data scientists as well as top developers that continue to innovate in building an intelligent medical response engine for Latin America. Javier had two roads that he could have followed: 1. the typical “conservative” road of squeezing as much revenue from the product he had in his hands or 2. take advantage of the immense opportunity to markedly increase access to medical services to millions of Latin Americas by continuing to invest in product innovation (e.g., AI, ML, etc.). He chose to continue to test himself as a CEO and pursue the bigger opportunity and create the biggest impact that he can.
Kiwi. Felipe, Sergio and Yeison, the cofounders of this robotic delivery startup in Berkeley, California, are growing an impressive team both in Silicon Valley and in Medellin, Colombia. Felipe is especially adept at motivating and leading a passionate group of young collaborators in breaking new ground in hardware and software. Felipe has already raised more than a million dollars and is, currently, raising a multimillion dollar round. This is a company that started here in Bogota, expanded throughout Latin America and is now laser focused on being a global player in this important new space. Similar to Javier, Felipe and his team have shown tremendous courage in applying their talents to an ambitious global problem.
Vendty. Arnulfo Ospina and Roxanna Vergara continue to build a solid POS SaaS startup almost completely bootstrapped. Aside from about $50k of funding, they had no other income to fall back on and have had to find resourceful sales methods in order to position Vendty to where it is today. They are near both their thousandth business customer and an important financial milestone in the next few months. They have complemented their clothing and retail POS offerings with an cloud-based restaurant POS that is becoming more and more differentiated in the marketplace.
Acsendo. Carlos Santana continues to grow sales of this Human Capital Management SaaS startup at a brisk clip and has raised more than $1M. This has allowed Acsendo to expand to multiple countries throughout Latin America with sales growing particularly strongly in Mexico. The company’s brand is pretty well positioned and has repeatedly beat out international competitors for deals. Carlos is also about to hit an important financial milestone for the SaaS business model and is preparing to take the company to a new level in it’s development in the coming year.
As anyone can see, these founders are incredibly inspiring and I really feel privileged and grateful to be able to accompany them on their journey. I really enjoy interacting with them and I learn just as much (many times more) from them than they from me. Two of these companies are breaking new ground globally within logistics (e.g., Kiwi Campus) and healthcare (e.g., 1Doc3). Ubits is working with the top accelerator in the world, YC in Silicon Valley, and Vendty and Acsendo are building valuable software businesses in Latin America.