All posts in General

• 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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• March 20, 2016

  Brazil and Argentina startup ecosystems are further along, but here comes Mexico.

  

   

  My impression (which could be wrong), after visiting Brazil and Argentina and meeting with some awesome startup founders, I’ve come to the conclusion that these ecosystems are at a more advanced stage than the rest of Latin America.  Nonetheless, because of macroeconomic factors and the rise of startups and investors, Mexico has great potential to catch up quickly.

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• March 15, 2016

  Mexico’s Conekta from Founder and Investor point of view

  A 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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• February 7, 2016

  Time for a more holistic view on building startups in Latin America

  

  Through the years, I’ve had the opportunity to meet hundreds of startup founders in Latin America and have advised a growing portfolio of these.  During this time, I’ve been able to collaborate with amazingly talented founders in their building some great new companies. This achievement, by itself, is incredibly difficult in any region in the world and particularly so in Latin America.  Nonetheless, growing beyond this initial discovery and validation phase and into a large business (and organization) requires a great deal more in terms of leadership skills and seems to be less common in Latin America than in other regions.  A key reason for this, in my estimation, is the lack of awareness and understanding of the power of creating a strong company culture.

  There are a number of factors that contribute to the dearth of startups in Latin America that have grown into big businesses such a scarcity of experienced Venture Capital firms in the region, friction-filled (e.g., regulation, taxes, etc.) markets, unique customer monetization challenges (e.g., low credit card penetration, etc.) and a dearth of experienced talent, among others.  These challenges also present great opportunities that some startups in the region have used to their advantage.  These include MercadoLibre, PayU Latam, and Despegar, among others.  Local entrepreneurs as well as  investors in the region are very good at focusing efforts upon external (or market) factors such as sales and marketing.  These are important. Nonetheless, in my opinion, there is far too little focus on a key area that has the potential to multiply the number of startups that grow to become big companies in the region if more attention is paid to it: building a solid and coherent company culture.

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