All posts in English

  • September 14, 2012

    How about a smart phone that’s always charged?

    EverpurseI’m finally back posting to my blog after a several month hiatus while I was running the Founder Institute in Bogota and Medellin.

    I can’t even count the innumerable times that I’ve felt the frustration of walking around with an uncharged iPhone in my pocket.  That’s why I was intrigued when I met Liz and Dan Salcedo during my trip to San Francisco this year and watched as they took advantage of my shopping spree to do more research for their startup called Everpurse, which integrates an iPhone charger into women’s handbags.

    We were meeting because Dan and I had hooked up thanks to finding out that we’ve had similar experiences (e.g., Colombian background, startups, Founder Institute, etc.).  Fortunately, Dan brought along his lovely wife, Liz, and I came to know a truly impressive founding team.   I came to appreciate Liz’s thoroughness and decision-making prowess after conversing and after she helped tremendously during my shopping excursion.

    Instead of trying to solve the smart phone (starting with the iPhone) battery life problem by creating a better battery, Everpurse is allowing women to take their charger with them while staying fashionable.  As the below video shows, just slip the smaller purse with charger installed into any handbag and you’re ready to go.  Just watch the reaction of potential consumers.

    The Wow effect. Blind, first-time reactions to the Everpurse. from Everpurse on Vimeo.

    In the short time since they started their venture, they have been featured in a number of publications and are more than half of the way through their $100,000 KickStarter fund raiser.  There are a lot of things to like about this team not the least of which is their ability to execute on a world-class level.

    The product looks great and I’m sure they’ll get quite a bit of traction. If you get a chance, I highly recommend giving them a serious look, especially if you’re looking for a distinctive gift for a loved one.  :)

    1 Comment / English, General /

  • May 14, 2012

    Reflecting on the state of the Colombian startup ecosystem

    Founder Institute LuncheonIt’s been tough to find the time to write during the last several weeks, but after an eventful trip to Silicon Valley and other activities, there’s a lot to reflect on. In a few hours, I launch the 2012 Founder Institute semester in both Bogota and Medellin. It’s the culmination of a lot of time taken on the part of local and international mentors as well as support from sponsors (CO Internet, Ruta N, Microsoft) trying to guide new entrepreneurs in Colombia along their paths to (hopefully) success. Already five of the nine Founder Institute Bogota 2011 grads have lined up funding for ventures that they are running.  I thought this was as good time as any to reflect on the state of the Colombian startup ecosystem (some might debate that we could even call it that).

    There is certainly a lot of work to do here in Colombia to get this ecosystem off the ground.  Sometimes it seems that, compared to countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Chile, there’s a level of inertia that needs to become overcome here.  As I mentioned previously, there are some lights and a core group of people who want to see things improve.  For example, there are a small number of talented entrepreneurs making headway (some of these from the Founder Institute) while a lot of the country culture, simultaneously, seems to be in a state of suspended animation with the world passing it by.

    A couple of weeks ago, I was in Silicon Valley attending a number of Founder Institute events and having some meetings.   I’ve written about some of the meetings such when I had that great breakfast with an impressive and all around great guy, Ranjith Kumaran, co-founder of YouSendIt and founder of PunchTab.  He’s had an enviable knack (talent) for acquiring millions of users (also some companies) and turn a segment of these into customers. This is the type of talent that we are bringing to bear here in Colombia not to mention the CEO of Bundled and Director of the Founder Institute Seattle, among other things, Dave Parker.

    Wayra

    Aside from this, we have the CEO’s of companies such as Process Maker, SnappyGo, VivaReal, Voice123, PagosOnline, Kactoos, Zio Studios and others ready to guide the next batch of startup founders not only coming out of the Founder Institute, but also from other accelerators.  One of these is Wayra of which, as I’ve written, I’m a tremendous fan.  I recently participated in the activities leading up to selecting the next 10 startups selected to be “accelerated.”  I’m actually an advisor to one of these called Opination, a company dedicated to making surveys fun and disrupting to market research industry.

    There’s still a lot of components of the ecosystem that need to be improved.  A few days ago, for instance, I was speaking at a breakfast given by Microsoft for it’s hardware manufacturers about the transition that we’re experiencing and the impact of the cloud, mobile apps, etc.  There is indeed interest, but, and they may be right, the impression one gets is that such stuff is far removed from this market at the moment.  A few days prior, I had spoken to 413 small business owners about a similar topic and, although many were interested, it’s apparent that the local market has a long way to go in order to adopt the powerful and accessible tools available to them.

    Finally, and one of the areas I hope to remedy in the near future, is the lack of local Angel investors.  Money is not lacking in this country, but an interest and understanding of the potential in the web/mobile sector is still quite faint.  There are ways to address this and I hope to make this my future project.  The easy thing would definitely be to “forget about it” (remembering the Sopranos), but I guess it’s the Don Quixote in me that keeps on truck’n. :)

    2 Comments / English, General /

  • November 9, 2011

    Smart Money Diving into Colombian Internet Companies

    brandsbag launchWhen my friend, Jorge Pulido, from PriceWaterHouse invited me to a launch party, I never expected it to be such an impressive launch of an Internet company for the Colombian market. The company is called BrandsBag and it’s entering full speed ahead into the Colombian market with a flash sales site targeting women who love fashion.

    What’s most interesting about this new endeavor is that it is a mix of impressive entrepreneurs from Brazil, Argentina and Colombia that have decided to start their Latin American strategy from Colombia.  As I mentioned previously in a NYTimes article, the Brazilian Internet market is on fire and more and more US VC’s are investing in that country.  Nevertheless, witnessing the impressive launch tonight of BrandsBag confirms our confidence in Colombia as a country from which to launch Latin American-wide Internet initiatives and funding these initiatives through our new Micro VC fund,  Tayrona Ventures.

    alan delioI had the chance to meet the leaders of BrandsBag such as Diego Rodriguez and Delio Epaminondas (with me in the photo on the left).  These are sharp business people who are extremely serious about transforming the shopping experience in the region and see Colombia as an excellent lauchpad to achieve this objective throughout Latin America.  The country boasts a growing middle class, internet penetration and ecommerce increasing at above 40% and a market with overpriced fashion items (sometimes more than 100% markup above prices in other countries).

    As Marc Andreessen mentioned in a previous WSJ article, software is indeed eating up industry after industry as digital innovation takes hold. In countries such as Colombia, the potential is even greater since competition in markets such as retail is much less ferocious allowing incumbents to charge an arm and a leg.  These types of companies are ripe for disruption and make Colombia an ideal market to provide new (digital) offerings that can be incredibly profitable and still undercut the established players.  BrandsBag is betting big on Colombia and in the process has a chance to showcase the potential of this country as a profitable gateway/launchpad to the rest of Latin America.

    1 Comment / Case Studies, English /

  • September 27, 2011

    Social Media Week Bogota Presentation

    Alan Colmenares - Social Media Week BogotaThe other day, I had the distinct pleasure of addressing a capacity crowd at Social Media Week Bogota.  I had been working hard on, among other things, launching an seed fund called Tayrona Ventures as well as helping launch a new flash sales startup called SuperTrendi and didn’t expect to have such a good time presenting on Friday.

    I really enjoyed the audience and found them incredibly receptive to my message about how social media (among other digital tools) is changing the way companies do business and the general business environment. This environment is great for startups and for accelerators such as the Founder Institute of which I am Director in Colombia. I call this whole phenomenon Digital Innovation and explained it at length during my presentation.

    Today, I was gratified to read Diana Luque’s impressions of my speech and the message I was trying to get out there.  I also put my presentation slides on Slideshare and was amazed to see how popular the slide deck became.  It was great to see this because, as I wrote in a post on the day of the presentation, I had been working hard on that deck the night before and for the first time used my new corporate image and brand of TG Coach although the website is still under construction.  Among the points I made during the presentation, was the fact that the advertising agency industry is coming under attack as mentioned in an article yesterday in Adweek.  Finally, I was quite flabbergasted to get two separate emails from Slideshare informing me that my presentation was one of their hottest pieces of content on Twitter and Linkedin and am showing a shot of the homepage at that moment here. :)

    Social Media Week Bogota - Slideshare

    1 Comment / English, Internet Marketing /
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