All posts in General

• June 27, 2015

  Evento de Founder Institute anoche con Juan Martinez

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  Ante noche tuvimos una gran evento de Founder Institute con enseñanzas y experiencias de Juan Carlos Martinez, CEO de Ciudad de Mascotas.  Tuvimos una audiencia de mas de 25 emprendedores y emprendedoras interesados en aprender mas sobre startups y el programa del Founder Institute Colombia.  Gracias a Wayra Colombia por patrocinar el evento y al gran apoyo de Edgar Castañeda y Camilo Lucero, co-fundadores de Lorapp!

  Durante el evento, Juan Carlos compartió sus experiencias creando y creciendo su startup, Ciudad de Mascotas, y ofreció varios consejos sobre como escoger a un co-fundador, el proceso de conseguir inversion (Ciudad de Mascotas recientemente cerro una ronda de inversion notable).  Juan Carlos y los demás mentores de Founder Institute son la razón por la cual el programa ha sido tan exitoso no solo en Colombia sino por todo el mundo.

  Varias emprendedoras y emprendedores se lanzaron hacer su pitch y tengo que decir que he visto un gran progreso en ideas y presentación durante estos últimos cinco años.  Estuvieron muy abiertos a feedback y sugerencias para mejoras todo lo cual es de admirar.  Realmente puedo ver que el ecosistema a evolucionado y esto es muy alentador.  Les dimos, adicionalmente, unos ejemplos de las preguntas que encontraran en el examen de admisión que mide su ADN de founder y aptitude para crear un startup de alto impacto.

  Tuve oportunidad para hablar sobre estos éxitos y sobre la estructura del programa de 4 semanas con presencia una noche a la semana y trabajo fuera de las sesiones en construir y lanzar un startup.   Founder Institute no garantiza el éxito pero si evita cometer muchos errores básicos que pueden ser bastante costosos para un emprendedor o emprendedora.  Para los interesados, la aplicación para el Founder Institute no tiene costo y se puede aplicar haciendo click acá: http://fi.co/apply/2001

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• June 19, 2015

  Do you really want to boil the ocean?

  Throughout my professional career, I’ve observed how those with tons of resources and outsized ambitions, try to execute Hail Mary initiatives with very limited results. On the other hand, focusing on high quality, low quantity results (e.g., get a few fanatical users of a product versus thousands of site visitors), is much more effective. Later, they are able to build upon these successes.  Startups should really resist the temptation and pressure to ignore this key principle in pursuit of the “boil the ocean” strategy.

  I’m still surprised by the strong voices that startup founders hear leading them down a road that will dilute their efforts and produce negligible or incredibly costly results.  These voices take the form of their own desires, of criticisms for not being ambitious enough or “thinking too small.”  My personal experience has been anecdotal, but there are actual studies that confirm this even more.

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• March 2, 2015

  Startup hiring. First, get this right.

  

  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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• February 28, 2015

  Healthcare startup 1DOC3 keeps growing.

  

  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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