All posts tagged startup

  • Startup hiring. First, get this right.

    Source: Crimson Tide (Buena Vista Pictures)

    There’s a topic I’ve been thinking about for quite a while and that topic is startup hiring. Yesterday, I decided to write this post after reading a post by one of the people’s who’s thinking I thoroughly respect on startups.  I’m talking about Hunter Walk’s post a few days ago on Hiring Momentum.  It’s hard to overstate the importance of this activity when building a successful company.

    People who have built successful startups and those who have invested in these companies talk about a number of factors that contribute to startup success. The fact of the matter is that research has shown that product/market fit is the top determinant of success.  Just to drive the point home, no less of a figure than Marc Andreessen famously wrote on the subject a number of years back.  At the Founder Institute, we spend quite a bit of time analyzing (along with experienced startup CEOs) each entrepreneur’s idea and getting them to validate some of their key assumptions. Thanks to this effort, the results in Colombia have been pretty phenomenal.

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  • Healthcare startup 1DOC3 keeps growing.

    1Doc3

    As I’ve stated in the past, one of the most rewarding things that I do is advise startups. I truly enjoy working with strong founders and, though, I’m called an advisor, I see myself more as an admirer and fanboy of these entrepreneurs.  Fortunately, I can say that all of the companies that I advise are going strong and most of these have had some great news to report recently (I need to write a post about this).  Today, I’m proud to say that I am now advising another company called 1Doc3, which currently offers a health Q&A site for hundreds of thousands (and growing) of Spanish speakers from all walks of life.

    I met the founders during my mentoring stints at the local Wayra accelerator during the past year.  I met several impressive founders and startups from Wayra’s last batch, but there was something extra that I felt about the 1Doc3 founders and the opportunity they were pursuing.  One of the things that I really like about identifying and working with early stage companies is how hard it is to spot future success stories. Time will tell whether I’m any good at this, but, even though there were, apparently, “sexier” startups both at Wayra and elsewhere, this company and it’s founders stood out in my mind.

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  • Colombia: Pais en la mira de inversionistas de startups.

    Schroeder Andreessen No es todos los días que uno comienza una hornada nocturna (con los niños al fin dormidos) y se encuentra con, posiblemente, el inversionista de startups mas famoso en el mundo, Marc Andreessen, enviando un Tweet sobre Colombia.  Mi plan esta noche no era escribir otro post pero no pude dejar después de ver este Tweet del eje de Silicon Valley sobre un articulo escrito por Chris Schroeder y Mach Kolarich sobre Colombia.

    El articulo habla sobre lo que ha pasado en Colombia durante los últimos años  en términos de startups y sobre una iniciativa de Startup Angels de venir para este país en Marzo.  He seguido la carrera de Andreessen desde cuando yo vivía en Silicon Valley y el estaba fundando su primera compañía , Netscape.

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  • $3M invested in Founder Institute Colombia Graduates!

    Founder Institute Grad Logo

    The Founder Institute continues to grow globally.  It’s amazing to realize that I’m going on my fifth year as Director of the Founder Institute (FI) in Colombia.  In 2011, there were relatively few cities with a Founder Institute chapter and I was really determined to make sure that Colombia be the first Latin American country to have one.  By then, I had sat with a lot of Colombian entrepreneurs and knew that they needed help from the moment of conception.  Well that dream was realized and, with the amazing help of Adeo Ressi, the incubator’s founder, graduates of the program in Colombia have already received over US $2M in funding. This is unheard of for any startup accelerator or incubator in this country.

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