This week I started a new chapter in my life as the Open Innovation and Ecosystem Builder in Latin America for BBVA (I’ll write a longer blog post about this soon). I’ll be traveling quite a bit around Latin America (especially, to Mexico) and Europe, which makes me quite happy as I’ve always wanted to get a clearer picture of the great entrepreneurs that exist throughout Latin America.
Right now, I’m in Mexico, at the moment, before going to the Open Talent competitions in New York and Barcelona in the coming weeks. Yesterday, we had a great session, organized by Finnovista (who also organized today’s event) with the entrepreneurs before today’s pitch competition where they can win 30,000 Euros and enter an immersion program in London and Mexico with key experts.
As the picture shows, in the morning, a few BBVA executives (including the Data Science expert shown) gave a quick 10 minute presentation about what they do and we all had conversations with the startup founders. It was incredibly productive and it was good to see so much interest from both participants (founders as well as BBVA employees). There are founders from all across Latin America including Chile, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and the US.
During the afternoon, I was part of a panel of mentors that heard each pitch and gave some feedback offering opinions about the business and about how, possibly, to improve the pitch. I was really impressed with this group of entrepreneurs. The judges today will have their work cut out for them. It’s going to be really tough to select only two winners.
Como algunos saben, tengo un nuevo rol como el Startup Ecosystem Builder para America Latina en BBVA. Un componente importante dentro de este rol es aumentar mi “exposure” a los startups en America Latina. Por esto, quiero aumentar mi participación en eventos de startups como el excelente evento de ATechConference donde participe recientemente en Aruba.
