Posts tagged startups

Choose another tag?

Inside South America’s Most Innovative Startups

Latin America has become one of the most productive regions within the digital arena, showing fantastic potential in technological innovation. In this blog post I want to go further and tell you what is happening right now inside of South America’s most innovative Startups. Prepare to be surprised. Uruguay, Brazil, Chile and Argentina are the countries that have the biggest startup movements and that are linked to the forefront of technological innovation in Latin America. Colombia and Peru are gaining presence in this area as well, although in a different way as their entrepreneurial community is younger and less experienced.

According to several entrepreneurs surveyed for this blog post, cultural differences are one of the biggest challenges to overcome.

Every startup in this post share the same key characteristics for success: they were born with the global marketplace in mind, they are competitive, they aim to bring value to the digital arena and they were created to make a dream come true.

FOOD EXTRA: Innovative Startup in Argentina

Food Extra is a social network to find out where food comes from, created in Argentina. This social network was built to connect food consumers and food producers. Food Extra allows each part of the food chain to interact with each other building trade relationships. On the other hand, Food Extra gives consumers information on how food is processed, as well as where the food comes from.

The central concept of Food Extra is food traceability. According to an article written by Sebastian Nader, Food Extra co-founder, traceability is one of the current useful tools in the Internet. Sebastian Nader -a graduated in Economics- , Fernando Valdivia -Veterinarian- and Sebastian San Juan – Systems Analyst and graduated in Management- are the founders of this new Argentinean Startup which has already landed in Silicon Valley. (Update 05/23/2011: Sebastian San Juan doesn’t work in Food Extra any more. Currently, he is a member of the Celeste Olivieri‘s team)

Fernando was kind enough to give us an interview where I asked him about how Food Extra actually works.

“Food Extra allows its users to get information about the products they consume: data about the company which has processed the product as well as the people involved in the production. In addition, users can read, write and share reviews and comments”, said Fernando.

Once Food Extra’s mobile app launches (which will be in May, 2011), the iPhone’s screen will read the bar-code of each product registered in Food Extra’s database and the system will send all of the information available about that product to the user. People could also use geo-location to find other users as well as food production spots.

However, to start using Food Extra at all, we have to wait some time as the public version hasn’t launched yet.

SOCIAL WEB: Innovative Startup in Chile

Social Web is a young startup that offers digital services such as social media marketing, web and app development.

Social Web won the Startup Weekend -Chile- in 2010 with its innovative product: Social Meter, a new web platform where TV ratings are measured using social networks. Cristian Correa and his team won the Santiago Startup Weekend 2010 competition and received 5 million Chilean pesos in funding.

Social Meter is a web platform where people share what they are watching on TV in real time through social networks, such as Twitter or Facebook. Social Meter’s goal is to improve the quantification system of People Meter. The platform measures the audience more effectively. It creates an interactional network with the user who receives discounts as a reward for participation. Users can also comment on the TV show they are watching and see what their friends are watching.

This Startup will offer a new TV rating measurement system to TV companies that is real time, covers a wider range of people and is web based. Social Meter will launch “soon”, per its website.

VIVA REAL: Innovative Startup in Brazil

Brazil stands out as one of the countries where innovative ideas are born every day and whose entrepreneurs are constantly searching for new opportunities. VivaReal is a good example of these innovative ideas. It is a real estate portal for buying, selling and renting properties.

This Startup received the award “Best Real Estates Portal in Emerging Markets”, given by Property Portal Watch.

VivaReal’s founder, Brian Requarth and his partner Thomas Floracks have a lot of experience in the US real estate market and since 2008 they have worked only in Latin America, where they have been living for a long time. Requarth and Floracks wanted to be on top of the real estate search in Brazil and expand to Latin America. Viva Real has been recently launched in Latin America and even in the USA and shows great potential to reproduce the success it has had in Brazil.

According to Alice Allan, editor of Property Portal Watch, “VivaReal has combined the traditional sales and marketing system with a very innovative educational approach. For example, they offer seminars in order to educate people about the value of online marketing”.

RING2SKYPE: Innovative Startup in Uruguay

Ring2Skype is an Uruguayan Startup that gives local telephone numbers to Skype users.

Skype offers VoIP call services only to 25 countries in the world. Ring2Skype was created to offer the same service to those countries which have been left out of the Skype list. While everybody can get a number, Ring2Skype especially concentrates on the entrepreneurs whose work is linked to others countries and who need to maintain fluent, daily communication.

Since October 2009, the Uruguayans, Andrés Bzurovski and Sergio Fogel -founders of Ring2Skype-, slowly have been gaining ground as the solution for several Startups with respect to international call services. Currently, Ring2Skype offers local telephone numbers for free to 100 cities in the world. The company is headquartered in Miami, has a development center in Uruguay, and clients in more than one hundred countries.

MEGUSTA-PE.COM and ROM.PE: Innovative Startups in Peru.

Megusta-pe.com is a Peruvian platform where users can share their favorites sites. Generally speaking this is a good idea -while not very original- but the site doesn’t talk about any specific topic, it is just about “everything” and I don’t think that this will add any value to the ecosystem. What people need is information within a categorized system that helps them find what they are looking for.

Besides, its design and content isn’t entirely neat and user friendly.

Rom.pe is an online magazine that promotes original articles about Fashion, Technology, Businesses, Economy, Art & Design, etc.

Like “megusta-pe.com”, Rom.pe covers a large range of topics but in this case they are organized into categories and its content is a 100% original (without any copy-paste or translations from others sites). Although this doesn’t mean a lot to many of us, it is just what makes Rom.pe special, because most of the successful Startups from Peru are only copies of successful business models from the USA. There are only a few companies which stand out thanks to their innovative and genuine spirit.

Rom.pe is a personal project of Lynn Mora -launched in December 2009-. Mora admits that his project “has demanded a lot of effort but it has finally reached success”. The site -which is currently running its second version- has incorporated advertising and has started to sell articles to other media.

Right now, 30 writers and 3 editors are working for Rom.pe, which so far has produced 157 genuine articles.

The entire content of Rom.pe can also be read by mobile devices.

FACTORY INTERACTIVE MEDIA: Innovative Startup in Colombia

Factory Interactive Media is a young Startup that offers audiovisual technological development. Its “star product” is called HeartView, a technological platform for cardiovascular disease.

Personally, I agree with what Alan Colmenares wrote in his blog: “I’ve seen a lot of initiatives here in Colombia and many of them have merit, but I haven’t seen initiatives which, in my opinion, take Startup space (specifically, Startups which make use of technology to innovate) to a level that’s really required to get Colombia more competitive (especially when compared with Chile, Argentina and Brazil)”.

A good example of this is the Colombian Startup Factory Interactive Media which won the second prize in the “Startup Competition of Red Innova” which took place in Madrid last year.

While Factory Interactive Media won several contests with HeartView, its way of presenting itself isn’t as innovative as this Startup could be. The design of its website lacks readability and its style is quite old fashioned, in contrast to current sites which are filled with “whites” and stand out because of the simplicity of their message.

Angel Investment Outlook in Argentina: 2011

2011 will be the most active year in Argentina regarding angel investments, since the stock market crash in 2008.

According to the study carried out by Ernst & Young Argentina, based on investment intentions showed by more than 800 employers surveyed, investments will rise 10% – 20%.

If we also consider the non-stop growth of new enterprises in this country, we can foresee a very positive scene for the new generation of entrepreneurs.

Thanks to the Argentine work force -recognized worldwide as creative, innovative and committed- this country became in a very promising region, especially respecting the Internet industry.

In recent years, several Argentine Startups, linked to technological innovation, have grown surprisingly fast and even started to compete in the global market. However, most of them projects were benefited with an initial investment of foreign capital because the micro-investments are not highly developed in the country.

In Argentina, the culture of angel investments hasn’t kept pace with the startups. This is why groups have emerged to promote angel investments in Argentina, a practice hitherto reserved only for USA and Europe. Clearly these groups are trying mainly to create a framework of trust in which investors feel more secure. Credibility in financial matters is one of the major pitfalls that Argentina must overcome to achieve a real growth of angel investments.

Groups promoting angel investment in Argentina

The Business Angels’ Club

This group, created by former students of IAE, seeks to promote investment awareness in those people who are able to provide risk capital. The Club aims to encourage the emergence of a new generation of entrepreneurs, companies and investors to maximize the intellectual capital of Argentina.

The target investor profile pointed by the Business Angels Club is a person with an entrepreneurial spirit who, in addition to providing capital, can also be involved in the creation and consolidation of a company through their experience, knowledge and contacts.

Investor’s Club of Emprear

This Club has similar characteristics to The Business Angels’ Club, regarding its target investor’s profile, its philosophy and its goals but, in addition to regular meetings where projects are presented, it organizes training programs for investors and entrepreneurs as well.

How does the investments system work?

The Clubs conduct the search, screening and analysis of projects, but the investments are decided by each member. People invest money from their personal assets in the projects they choose.

Both clubs are concerned about supporting the growth and development of Argentine enterprises, due to the enormous human and material resources of the country, which were so far only exploited abroad.

Globant, the Argentine Startup which causes wonder around the world

With only $ 1,000 inicial investment but big ideas and knowledge, the engineers Martín Migoya, Martín Umaran, Guibert Englebienne and Néstor Nocetti founded this computer services company, which now has about a thousand of professional employees and first class customers like Coca Cola, Sabre and Citi and others.

Currently, Globant has offices in major cities of Argentina and also in Colombia, Chile and the United States.

Globant is also a novelty because its Human Resources department, which has modern policies tailored to the needs and expectations of the generation of professionals known as Generation Y. As a result of these policies, Globant is the company with less employees fluctuation, a common phenomenon in most companies involved in the technology industry.

A couple of years ago, Martin Migoya, Globant’s CEO, said in an interview: “The greatest value that our group is contributing to society in Argentina is showing that a small company -born in a 30m2 apartment- can become a multinational which transcends borders and has a value at which Argentines are not used. “

El Fenómeno Startups.com

En el ámbito de las Startups, la mayoría de las compañías que se inician recurren, como primera fuente, a la información existente en Internet.

Cada compañía buscará seguramente en Google y allí reconocerá al instante que hay alguien que maneja al menos el 80% de la información sobre Startups, en la web.

Estamos hablando del sitio Startups.com o la red que incluye este dominio: Startup Network.

El servicio más consultado y al que podríamos adjudicarle gran parte de su éxito como referente de información, es su wiki Q&A Startups o su sitio AskMe.Startups.com, un servicio web que provee respuestas a preguntas sobre negocios, y le da a los usuarios la posibilidad de contestar ellos mismos las preguntas de otras personas. También está disponible la posibilidad de enviar preguntas por email y Twitter, haciendo muy fácil, para la comunidad de Startups.com, obtener respuestas muy valiosas.

Startups.com fue fundada en 1998 por Donna Jensen, un ex ejecutivo de VentureOne, para manejar varios detalles en cuanto a la organización las oficinas y las operaciones de sus clientes, de manera que esas compañías pudieran enfocarse en sus negocios, operando más eficientemente y pudiendo llegar más rápidamente al mercado.

A pesar de haber existido durante sólo 4 años (la empresa ascendió y cayó junto con muchas otras al reestructurarse el mercado, después de “la burbuja del dotcom) Startups.com alcanzó los $17.2 millones.

En enero del 2008, KillerStartups, un blog que se ocupaba de las “killer startups”, adquirió el dominio Startups.com por un valor cercano al medio millón. Su URL era el único activo que había sobrevivido.

KillerStartups, que fue fundada en 2007 por los hermanos argentinos Fernando y Gonzalo Arzuaga, apuntaba al mismo nicho económico que Startups.com pero al momento de la fusión de ambas empresas la web de origen sudamericano contaba ya con 1.5 millones de visitas al mes.

Actualmente Startup.com Network es una red de sitios de negocios que ha lanzado sitios propios y ha crecido hasta convertirse en el gigante que es hoy.

¿Cuál es su secreto?

Startup.com Network ofrece hoy a su público 6 servicios diferentes:

Killerstartups: una plataforma para que los interesados puedan mantenerse informados sobre las últimas novedades del “mundo startups” y donde los emprendedores presentan sus proyectos y los exponen a las opiniones de otros.
Dataopedia.com: un servicio de agregación web que permite a los usuarios encontrar encontrar los hechos más destacados sobre cualquier sitio web, tales como tráfico, online buzz, información de contacto, popularidad, etc.
BlinkList.com: una herramienta que hace mucho mas fácil para cualquiera compartir y guardar sus links para después.
Stimator.com: Acumula en una cuenta factores clave, con el objetivo de dar un valor monetario a cualquier sitio web en el mundo.
BlogPlay.com: con este plug-in, cualquier persona que tenga un blog será capaz de adehrir a él funcionalidades para compartir su blog en las redes sociales.
Startups.com es un servicio web que proporciona respuestas a las preguntas sobre y de negocios. Los usuarios tienen la posibilidad de formular todas las preguntas que tengan sobre su negocio y esperar que sean respondidas por la comunidad Startups.com.

Esta plataforma de A&Q es la que ha llevado al sitio a ser lo que es, sobretodo en cuanto a posicionamiento web, ya que it is a SEO play.

Si bien existen otros sitios similares a éste (incluso construídos con la misma tecnología que Answers.OnStartups.com), Startups.com ha logrado reunir la mejor comunidad de “know-how” de negocios. Su estrategia fue invitar a más y más expertos que sentían que Startups.com era el lugar correcto para que ellos respondieran preguntas relacionadas con su área específica.

Una de las críticas que podemos hacerle a esta plataforma es que las preguntas son respondidas por la misma comunidad y no por expertos pagos, que trabajan como consultores.

Al respecto, Gonzalo Arzuaga, CEO de Startups.com dice: “No creemos en pagarle a la gente para que responda dudas. Nosotros apostamos al poder de la comunidad, como una “wikipedia sobre negocios”, de alguna maner”.

Realmente ambicioso!

The First Week at the Tangelo Startup House

How much have we accomplished so far? The first week of the Tangelo Startup House is already behind us.

As usual, here is an update on our progress. This time we present it graphically to be able to see at a glance how much we worked this past week and how far we’ve gone.

Work during the week is very intense and every advance motivates us more. We are having an amazing experience. We want to thank you all for following on Twitter comments and photographs of Tagelo Starup House (#tsh).

Global Collaboration and Company Culture

Globalization is changing both, the model and the concept of a business corporation.

The first multinational companies that became international built a network of sales and distribution that exceeded the nations borders; however, the manufacturing of its products was always been in their country of origin. The multinational model involves having sales department in each country with a marketing department, human recourses department, etc.

Today we are comig closer to overcoming the multinational business model in order to achieve a new one based on global and horizontal integration.

What is Global Collaboration?

Global Collaboration in a business is the system which organizes the activities of the company, regardless of frontiers, and with a more horizontal structure. Employees and employers of these kind of companies, work from different parts of the world. The hierarchy between them is barely perceptible.

Global collaborative companies have a different nature than multinationals. Global collaborative companies establish their operations anywhere in the world. They are based on the appropriate balance of costs, available talent and the right environment for business.

How does global collaboration work in a company?

The company needs a collaborative process design and stability to coordinate the actions of all persons employed therein.
The employee training is allways necessary. By doing this, employees learn how to collaborate and articulate their practice, despite not sharing the same workplace with the rest of their colleagues.
These companies are made by teams or individuals from different cultures, different strengths, different skills and working methods. They form a body of knowledge that prepares the company to resolve unanticipated problems, as well as responding correctly to its clients.
Online platforms, which function as “virtual offices” are critical for these organizations because they enable dispersed teams to work together smoothly.
The company needs to have at least one language shared by all the people, to have a consistent and fluent communication.
The company needs to have the ability to “orchestrate” and integrate the efforts of its members, spread over the world.
The workflow depends on three essential features: the costs, knowledge and networked working environment. Thus, the work flows to where you can do it better.- The talent factor: Currently, to have different talents and abilities is the only way that have a company that differentiates itself from the others. The availability of skilled professionals is not reserved to a handful of developed countries -China now produces more engineers in a year that Europe and America together.
For the collaborative work is necessary to have a high degree of confidence along and across the company.

Key Benefits

The high degree of expertise and the access to adequate technology offers companies of all sizes and features to benefit from this way of working. Each part of the company is globally integrated, avoiding the replication of departments in each country, as is the case of multinationals.
The companies organized in this way can cope with the demands of their customers anytime, anywhere.
In an ultra-competitive environment,the increased efficiency and cost reduction are central to achieving a competitive advantage. The Global Cooperation provides these elements.

The Global Collaboration in Tangelo

Tangelo has its headquarters in San Francisco, USA, and other offices in Argentina. The whole team works together although they do not live and work in the same place. Like other global collaborative companies, Tangelo has an online platform that works as a virtual office. On this platform, the employees load the strategies defined for each project, activities to do and its respective responsibles. The platform helps the team to have clear and fluid communication.

One person centralizes all information and sends general guidelines to each team member. Every day, Tangelo team members meet in a online video-conference. There, they communicate a summary of the day, determine the steps to follow for each project and answer questions.

However, Tangelo knows very well that any coordination strategy must be accompanied by a good human resources policy. Tangelo knows how to spot talented, responsible and motivated professionals, persons who are specifically trained to work in a global strategy. Communication and motivation are keys to successful alignment.

Startup House Meetup in Buenos Aires, Argentina [PICTURES]

Entrepreneurs, designers, investors, developers and friends met last Friday in Buenos Aires to discuss the technology we are developing at the Tangelo Startup House. We want to help people discover other interesting people by using an open social graph that is relevant geographically and that transforms socializing into a game. We’ll expand on the concept in later posts. In the meantime, here are some pictures of the meetup.

TSH Tangelo Startup House

: TSH Tangelo Startup House

: TSH Tangelo Startup House

: TSH Tangelo Startup House

: TSH Tangelo Startup House

: TSH Tangelo Startup House

: TSH Tangelo Startup House

: TSH Tangelo Startup House

The phenomenon Startups.com

Most companies that want to organise a startup will turn to the internet as their first source of information. They will enter the term into Google and probably realize at once that there is one site that manages at least 80% of the web information on startups. We are talking about Startups.com or the network that includes this domain, the Startups.com Network.

The services most consulted, and to which most of the success of the site as a source of information can be ascribed, are its wiki Q&A and AskMe.Startups.com, a web service that provides answers to business questions.

Startups.com was founded in 1998 by Donna Jensen, a former executive of VentureOne. It was founded to help companies to set up their offices and operations so they could focus on their core business, operate more efficiently and get on the market faster.

In the beginning Startups.com was like an incubator program, offering office space, HR, and other business services to startups, and in only four years it achieved a market value of $17.2 million. The company rose and fell along with many others when the market was restructured after the burst of the dot.com bubble and in January 2008 KillerStartups, a blog that covers killer startups, bought the domain Startups.com for approximately $ 0.5 million. Only its URL survived.

KillerStartups, founded in 2007 by the Argentinean brothers Fernando and Gonzalo Arzuaga, is aiming for the same economic niche like Startups.com. However, in 2008, when it took over Startups.com, this website of South American origin already had 1.5 million hits per month.

Currently, Startups.com Network is a network of business sites that have launched their own sites and has grown to become the giant it is today.

What is the secret of Startups.com Network?

Currently, Startup.com Network offers six different services for entrepreneurs:

1- Killerstartups: a platform that keeps people informed about the latest developments in the “world of startups” and where entrepreneurs present their projects and are exposed to the opinions of others

2- Dataopedia.com: a web service that lets its users find out all the valuable facts about any website

3- BlinkList.com: a tool that makes it much easier for anyone to share and save their links for later

4- Stimator.com: an online calculator that, taking into account certain key factors, gives any website in the world a monetary value

5- BlogPlay.com: a plug-in that allows anyone who has a blog to add social sharing functions to their own blog

6- Startups.com: a web service that provides answers to business related questions. Users have the opportunity to ask any question they have about their business and it will be answered by the Startups.com community.

The Q & A platform is responsible for what the site is today, especially in terms of search engine optimization, since it plays an important part in the SEO game.

While there are other similar sites, Startups.com has assembled the best community for business know-how. Its main strategy is to invite more and more experts who feel that Startups.com is the right place for them to answer questions related to their area of expertise.

One point of criticism that could be made about this platform is that the questions are answered by the community itself and not by paid experts working as online consultants.

Regarding this criticism Gonzalo Arzuaga, CEO of Startups.com, says: “We don’t believe in paying people to answer questions. We bet on the power of the community, like “wikipedia for business” in a way”.

Really ambitious!

Startups: Do You Have Skin In The Game?

Purist by GapingVoid

Why some startups succeed and others fail? Most importantly, how do you define success and failure and can you possibly be successful by challenging the status quo of innovation and startup value creation? Those are questions that I attempt to answer with a few things I’ve experienced through my own experience building a technology and marketing company from scratch. It all boils down to this: make sure your partners have skin in the game.

Success and failure. Two distinct outcomes and it is just as hard to do both right.

How do you define a success or a failure really depends on how high your bar is set and what are you willing to do, feel and explore in the quest to making your business work.

Find your drive and make sure it can support you through thick and thin

For some that drive to make it happen is the dream of seeing their vision implemented and alive in the form of a product. For others is the sheer need to prove that they can make money from the very beginning of the startup. For others is a way of life. But why would you want such a tough life? Why risk it when you have the opportunity of stability and a paycheck every two weeks with a comfortable office overseeing the bay? The answer for me is simple. The option of being a mid-career manager scares the shit out of me. Plus I need the challenge of diving into the unknown and coming out the other side with the experience of having figured it out. And potentially the upside that it represents. That seems rather incomprehensible for some but for me it is the natural next step.

The opportunity to be the best in the world

A startup represents the need and opportunity to create something unique. Something that no one else in the world can do it quiet your way. The opportunity to be the best in the world at one thing.

Seeking the coveted upside of sweat equity

In the grand scheme of things, people will remember your company by a great liquidity event. Going public big time or being acquired makes people remember the success or failure of a company. It doesn’t matter if you created Friendster, the first social networking ever, if you don’t transform that into tangible value, then your company might not matter.

Let me know what your thoughts are — I would love to hear your thoughts and experience.

Introducing: Creating something from nothing: Exploring Startups and the Latino Influence

Wealth depends on your ability to create something from nothing. Paraphrasing Jason Calacanis, creating something from nothing as an entrepreneur is one of the hardest things that one can do and people that are doing it deserve our support.Â This is the case in any country or culture. It is simply very difficult to get other people to believe in your idea or to understand the need–the fire inside– that pushes you to start something on your own. That’s part of the challenge and great entrepreneurs thrive on it.

In a series of posts that we are calling Creating Something From Nothing: Exploring Startups and the Latino Influence in the Market”. we will highlight stories of outstanding efforts to create value as well as practical advice on how to get there. We will focus around the efforts of the South American Â and US Latino Talent and the value of its Market as we believe that it Will Soon Reach The Tipping Point.

Many people cite the year 2030 as the year where the Latino community will reach critical mass. My take is that we don’t have 20 years to wait. Furthermore, this is already happening but people are not paying enough attention.

I’ve had the luck to gain perspective into this in the US and in Latin America and one thing that strikes me as very different is the mindset of people in both markets. In Ecuador and in many of the other countries I’ve worked and visited across South America, the need to start your own business is key to your financial progress unless you come from a family that has already done that, then that need rapidly disappears or it is masked in the form of smaller ventures always under the umbrella of the family business.

If you are middle class and have a great technical or business education in South America in general you have two routes.

The first one is to work for a company for decades and try to make it into the small group of people at the top. It certainly can be a rewarding life if you are able to get the right job. There is not a lot of upward or parallel professional mobility and the rewards for a job well done are minimal as raising stars need to be kept under control as they threaten the established top management. This sounds similar to any company but the difference is that the C-suite and senior management is not for the best and brightest but for the better connected regardless of the skill level. This is a sustainable practice as the competition in large local industries is usually non-existent thus a poorly managed monopoly is still a monopoly with power and financial well being.

The second one is to start your own business. To start an adventure travel company, an environmental practices consulting, a construction company, a restaurant or an Internet cafe.Â All of these are real examples but not all of them have websites so no links could be provided. The latest trend is starting an outsourcing practice to support software development projects from the US and Europe.

Creating a company in an environment like the South American bureaucracy is quite an accomplishment on its own right. Maybe except for Chile that is trying to embrace technology companies by asking for a 5 year commitment and a$500K investment that would be matched to a degree with some government funds.Â Beyond keeping up with theÂ bureaucracy is only part of it. The culture is not as welcoming to successes as it is in the US or Europe.

Beyond all these issues there continues to be a fire that ignites the need to create value and to compete in the worldwide market. If you look at the Argentine success in Spain (Spanish) you can see the success of the creative talent that is bottled up in that country.

Ecuador is another example of a country that produces quality management and scientific talent that cannot flourish within the country. Friends of mine are sprinkled across the world. Heading financial operations in Dubai, coding for a startup in Barcelona, getting an MBA in Australia, selling Ecuadorian fruit across the world, importing clothing from Miami, working for a bio tech company in the Silicon Valley, etc.

Little by little this South American and Latino talent is coming together mainly through the internet.

They are collaborating and letting that fire inside flourish into better and more influential startups and communities. It will be hard to see this come to live in South America itself due to the ridiculous restrictions on businesses but the United States in particular is poised to see a strong growth of Latino lead companies that will succeed based on the sheer smell of opportunity.