All posts tagged ruta n

  • November 23, 2016

    A Thank You message to two awesome Paisas

    TropicalGringo Thank YouAn article was recently published by Philip Beere, a Business Development and Sustainability expert from the US, about his takeaways and critique of the innovation environment in Medellin (after his spending some time in that city).  Philip interviewed me  for the article, but because of the focus of his piece, something very important to me (thanking two instrumental people from Medellin, “Paisas”) was not within the scope of Philip’s topic so I’d like to take a moment and send Luis Florez and Juan Pablo Ortega a personal and public thank you message.

    In a prior life, I spent five years working on initiatives to support new founders by connecting them with local and international entrepreneurs and by offering my advice from my years working at Silicon Valley startups and as a Venture Capitalist.  I feel incredibly satisfied with what I, and especially a great network of mentors, were able to accomplish. Nonetheless, after going deeply into debt and arriving at a grouchy old age where I became sick of a lot of silliness (I’m being diplomatic with that word) that takes place within the public “ecosystem” in Colombia, I decided to go back to the corporate world (my family is thanking me for that) as well as focusing on those early stage startups that I truly believe in as an advisor and shareholder.

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  • November 14, 2013

    The impact of mission-driven organizations on emerging markets

    Adeo Ressi New York TimesToday, New York Times subscribers are reading the story on Adeo Ressi and the incubator he created: The Founder Institute.  In the article, when asked why he launches also in countries such as Colombia that are nontraditional entrepreneurial environments, he responds that he has created a mission-driven organization with the objective of helping the two percent of the population with “entrepreneurial genes” launch meaningful and enduring technology companies.

    As I’ve written before, it’s been quite a rewarding ride to have been able to work with Adeo and the Founder Institute for these past three years and to be able to count on his support while running the program here in Colombia.  At one of the Founder Institute Director meetings that Adeo ran in Silicon Valley, he asked all of us, among other things, about the value of FI in each country.  In my case, I said that I feel that the value of something like the Founder Institute could be even greater in an emerging market such as Colombia, because the size of the startup industry is so small and the know-how is extremely sparse.

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  • November 8, 2013

    Emerging markets have a unique opportunity that most will squander.

    Think biggerThe 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.

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  • May 22, 2013

    Medellin Antes y Despues

    medellin-innovadora

    Founder Institute Medellin 2013 está haciendo algo especial y está dejando abierto las inscripciones hasta este domingo 26 de Mayo y, luego, el martes, habrá una reunion informal de networking en el Dry Martini Bar del centro comercial La Strada con los co-Directores Dario Palacio y Jose Betancur para conocersen mejor y para cualquier preguntas que los inscritos y los interesados en inscribirsen puedan realizar. Tambien, posiblemente estarán algunos mentores y graduados del programa. Read more

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