All posts tagged startups

• October 28, 2016

  Observations on Latin American 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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• October 7, 2016

  Transformación de negocios crea inmensas oportunidades con algunas nubes

  

  Hace unos diez años, escribí un post en mi primer blog donde describía la inmensa oportunidad dentro del mundo digital.  Escribí ese post con la intención de despertar a personas talentosas en America Latina a todas las oportunidades que yo veia en el mundo digital.  Esto tuvo efecto en un colega y amigo de Guatemala quien me dijo que ese post lo impulso a meterse en un mundo digital donde, hoy en día, es un gran líder.  Esa experiencia me dio una gran satisfacción y, ya que veo una oportunidad aun mas grande hoy en día, llego el momento de otro post en la misma categoría.

  La tecnologia digital comenzó hace medio siglo con el primer computador (el ENIAC).  Estos computadores requerían todo una habitación por lo grande. Sus primeros clientes fueron los gobiernos, luego las corporaciones, las mediana empresas y luego las personas durante la era de la computación personal. La explosion de maquinas procesadoras de información (incluyendo teléfonos inteligentes) y el Internet ha creado un mundo donde las ventajas de economías de escala y la acumulación de activos físicos ya no forman barreras competitivas como antes.

  Hoy en dia, compañías como AirBnB, Uber, Amazon, Apple, Google (o Alphabet), Facebook, etc. han acumulado ventajas competitivas principalmente por su software, sus culturas corporativas (no siempre benignas para la humanidad) y su agilidad (innovación, capacidad de reacción, etc.).  Sin embargo, hemos llegado a un punto de inflexión muy interesante (y asustador). Por ejemplo, recientemente salió la nueva lista de las cinco compañías mas grandes y estas incluían dos compañías de medios, una de venta al detal, una de electrodomésticos y una de software.  Lo que todas tienen en común es que todas son tradicionalmente vistas como empresas de tecnología. Estas son Alphabet y Facebook (medios), Amazon (venta al detal), Apple (electrodomésticos) y Microsoft (software).  Para ser honesto, ninguna encaja 100% en una categoría ya que, por ejemplo, Amazon tiene negocios como Amazon Web Service y su nueva iniciativa con Echo y Alexa que, en mi opinion, son “game changers.”

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• December 3, 2015

  TropicalGringo Portfolio Update 2015

  

  Well it’s the end of the year and it probably makes sense to talk about the last year.  So as not to be so broad, I decided to focus on the companies that I advise.  I am an advisor to and shareholder in five startups.  I, presumptuously, call this group of companies, my “portfolio.”  Obviously, I’m bullish on each and every one of them.  Fortunately, all five have plenty of runway (funds) left for the foreseeable future and I expect them to continue increasing in value.

  One of the startups (Magnolia) is based out of Peru (although it is regional) and the others are headquartered in Colombia.  Some of these companies are much more well-known and several have already gone on to close a seed round.  When I began working with them, they either only consisted of the founders (Tappsi and Kiwi) or only had a few people working for them (1Doc3, Acsendo and Magnolia).  Identifying talent (especially in startup founders) early on is a very difficult thing to do and, in Latin America, it’s even tougher.

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• October 12, 2015

  Startup dreams and some spicy Indian cooking

  I just had the most surreal experience. I was able to hook up with an old friend from our days working at a software company in Santa Cruz, California.  His name is Sanjay Manchanda and the company we worked for was called Santa Cruz Operation or SCO.  It’s been 20 years since I was living and working in Silicon Valley (e.g., Cupertino, San Jose and Santa Cruz). That was a five year period of my life (after moving from Pennsylvania) that I’ll never forget both for personal and for professional reasons.

  Sanjay and I had the good fortune to travel to London at the same time, he for Box (VP Product Marketing) and I for BBVA (Ecosystem Builder).  It was pretty amazing seeing him again after so many years. He still has the same calm, self-assured way about him and hasn’t lost his sense of humor and enjoyment of life (e.g., he’s always been a jazz enthusiast and a great cook).

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