Before 2013 finished, we had a great Meetup with Gabe Zichermann who stopped by Bogota . It was December 27, 2013 and Gabe decided to relax a bit in Bogota before continuing his travels on to Lima, Peru. Gabe had been in Bogota and Medellin more than a year ago when he mentored during the 2012 semester of the Founder Institute in Bogota and Medellin.
It was so satisfying to hear from him that he really enjoyed his stay last time and, when setting up his trip to Peru, he decided to make Colombia one of his stops. This was all the more surprising given the fact that I went a bit overboard during Gabe’s last visit as I scheduled a Gamification workshop and beaucoup press interviews in addition to all of the Founder Institute mentoring. Wayra Colombia graciously had allowed us to use their excellent facilities both for the workshop a couple of years back and this latest Meetup.
Gabe is a top mentor international mentor and also co-Director of the Founder Institute in New York. Among other things, he created the Gamification Summit and has written a number of books on Gamification. It was extraordinary to have him visiting Colombia and his agreeing to doing an excellent Meetup with a room full of entrepreneurs was much appreciated.
The other day I wrote a post about thinking bigger and now see that the concept has applicability to countries as well as startups. I took a day trip to Medellin yesterday to talk, along with my friend Conrad Egusa, with the management team of a multibillion dollar corporation with almost 200,000 employees. They are taking a serious look at Colombia and, particularly, Medellin. It really made me think about something that I’ve stated verbally but don’t think I’ve written here. That we are living during a moment in history when a number of things are shifting (e.g., economic power, penetration of digital tools, etc.). Many countries (particularly, in emerging markets) such as Colombia can either decide that the future will be much different than the past and start making decisions commensurate with the opportunity before them or squander their window of opportunity and forfeit a much brighter future to emerging market countries who have more insight into this new global context.
This event reminded me of the beginning of the year when an agency in Boston, Massachusetts (Jim and Sandy) reached out to me through my blog here because they were planning to visit Colombia. For anyone reading this who needs confirmation that writing a blog and connecting with the outside world is rewarding, this should be proof enough. In that case, I was able to connect them with the national government as well as my Founder Institute alliance partner, Ruta N, and they ended up having a tremendous visit. In this case, it wasn’t a case of connecting them with others (they had that covered), but more a matter of giving them the low down from a bicultural perspective on what we see here.
Going back to the session we had yesterday morning in Medellin with this impressive group of visitors. First of all, it was impressive to see that the whole management team from the Chairman and CEO were present. I just looked at their corporate website and it’s and looking at the management team pictures it’s amazing to see that they were all here. It was really stimulating to follow their thought process in terms of analyzing the potential for doing business in Colombia and the types of deep, penetrating questions that they asked.
As readers of this blog will note, I haven’t been able to keep up with my writing. It’s not for a lack of topics to write about, but more because I’ve felt so overwhelmed with so many activities.
I continue to work towards my goal of creating an early stage fund for Latin America called Tayrona Ventures (new website coming soon). Along the way, I’ve brought the first international digital incubator (Founder Institute) to Colombia, founded a new ecommerce startup with very hands-on local angels and became a General Partner in a new startup accelerator.
El martes en la noche tuve una experiencia que me alentó mucho y que me llenó de energía. Estuve en Medellín para liderar, junto con mis co-Directores Jose Betancur y Dario Palacio, un evento llamado el Founder Institute Pitch Bootcamp en las instalaciones de Ruta N (aliado del Founder Institute) con emprendedores y emprendedoras de Medellín. Fue un evento dinamico é interactivo con mas de 50 emprendedores y potenciales emprendedores digitales lo cual fue alentador porque a Medellin todavia le faltan muchos mas emprendimientos digitales para fortalecer su ecosistema.
Primero que todo, Jose Betancur se demostró como lider y como conocedor de los retos como emprendedor digital (él es el creador de QuickGraph con millones de descargas y clientes como Harvard University). Esto muestra que, con él y Dario dirigiendo las sesiones durante los siguientes meses, los founders del Founder Institute Medellin 2013 están en buenas manos.
Segundo, me encantó ver la participación de graduados del Founder Institute Medellin 2012 como Tomas Posada, CEO de La Bonoteca, Daniel Morales, CEO de Tuttores y Esteban Perez, CEO de IntelData. Tomás y Daniel hablaron sobre su experiencia en el Founder Institute y la oportunidad que tienen los asistentes del evento con entrar al programa. Tomás agregó unas palabras elocuentes no solo sobre el programa sino sobre mi persona que aprecio mucho.
Tercero, varios mentores (todos de talla mundial) estuvieron presentes para dar sus sugerencias a los que se lanzaron a presentar su idea de emprendimiento (su “pitch”). Serge Kruppa también presentó unas ideas sobre como escoger una idea y sobre el emprendimiento, sobre el programa y sobre mi persona. Serge ha creado varios startups (uno en Silicon Valley) y, hoy en día trabaja para un startup que está basado en San Francisco y es un gran activo no solo del programa en Medellín sino tambien a nivel personal conmigo ya que lo conozco desde hace mas de diez años.
También contamos con la presencia de Conrad Eugusa, mentor del Founder Institute, fundador de startups y de otras empresas. Entre estas está el lugar de networking mas reconocido en Medellin llamado Espacio. Conrad tambien es escritor para varias publicaciones incluyendo VentureBeat y TechCrunch.
Tambien estuvo presente Camilo Usuga, co-fundador de varios startups incluyendo Kactoos. Hoy, junto con su socio Dario Palacio, son co-fundadores de otro startup llamado Multiplica. Camilo tambien es mentor altamente calificado del Founder Institute. Ver el entusiasmo con el cual todos estos mentores apoyan al programa (y a mi personalmente) y ofrecen sugerencias y consejos a los nuevos emprendedores provee gran valor al ecosistema digital (muy) naciente de Medellín.
Muchos de los asistentes salieron del evento listos para comenzar el programa y algunos que no habían aplicado, aplicaron inmediatamente. Especialmente, dado el caso que, este año, gracias al apoyo de Ruta N, la inscripción no es de USD $995 como lo es en muchas ciudades por todo el mundo sino USD $200 y, fuera de los excelentes mentores que ya se encuentran en Colombia, contaremos con 7 mentores de EEUU este año haciendo esta realmente una oportunidad unica para fortalecer el ecosistema de startups digitales en Medellin.
Before 2013 finished, we had a great Meetup with Gabe Zichermann who stopped by Bogota . It was December 27, 2013 and Gabe decided to relax a bit in Bogota before continuing his travels on to Lima, Peru. Gabe had been in Bogota and Medellin more than a year ago when he mentored during the 2012 semester of the Founder Institute in Bogota and Medellin.
