All posts tagged latin america

  • February 16, 2017

    Digital Transformation Up Close and Personal

    Openpay-officeA year ago, I joined the New Digital Business group within BBVA, a large global bank actively transforming its business. Several weeks ago, we publicly announced the acquisition of digital payments startup Openpay, the culmination of a project that myself and a great boss within said business unit worked on during the last year. I’m looking forward to the huge impact that Openpay (see filtered photo of HQ above) and its impressive founders, Roberto Bargagli, Eric Núñez and Heber Lazcano will have on BBVA’s digital business.

    I’m actually writing this post from Queretaro, where this company is headquartered and I have the good fortune to work with them as part of BBVA. Finding and acquiring a high-quality startup such as Openpay speaks to the opportunities (particularly, in terms of acquisitions – only one tool) available for digital transformation in Latin America. I’d like to use this post to share some general opinions about digital innovation and the ensuing business transformations that corporations are going through as well as some insights about the Latin American startup scene.

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  • December 9, 2016

    Talking Bitcoin with international experts in Cartagena

    tropicalgringo-bitcoinI just got back from speaking at an excellent Bitcoin/Blockchain event in Cartagena, Colombia called Blockchain Latam. I spoke about Bitcoin within the context of industry disruption.  I enjoyed interacting with the audience immensely.  My thesis is that the pace of industry disruption that we’ve seen up till now (Uber in Transporation, AirBnB in hospitality, etc.) will not only continue, but will accelerate in the coming years.  Bitcoin as a virtual currency and Blockchain or Distributed Ledger Technology is a potent tool, along with Artificial Intelligence, Bots, Data Analytics, and others at the service of new industry disrupters.

    It was an honor to be on stage (presenting and as a panelist) along with experts in this technology, which included some awesome global experts from Argentina such as Diego Gutierrez, CEO of RSK, and Gonzalo Blousson, CEO of Signatura.  Taylor Gerring, Ethereum Director of Technology, also gave an insightful presentation on the present and future of these technologies.  Tony Gallippi, co-founder of BitPay, and Peter Bidewell, of Applied Blockchain, were able to promote their services to attendees interested in launching Bitcoin or Blockchain initiatives.

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  • October 28, 2016

    Observations on Latin American startups

    tropicalgringo-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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  • March 15, 2016

    Mexico’s Conekta from Founder and Investor point of view

    Tropicalgringo conekta jaguarA few weeks ago, I had the good fortune to chat in Mexico City with both the co-founder and the investor of one of Mexico’s key startups, Conekta.  Conekta is a payments platform that has previously secured funding from local VCs as well as some international angel investors such as Dave McClure. I spoke with the company’s co-founder and CEO, Hector Cardenas, as well as one of it’s investors, Eric Perez-Grovas, General Partner of Jaguar Ventures.

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