Yesterday, during a rainy afternoon in Bogotá, I interviewed the co-founders of Latin American Payments, Jose Velez and Martin Schrimpff, which offers a robust payments platform, anti-fraud system and payments collection all designed specifically for the needs of the Latin American market. The company is PCI certified, have won international prizes for their platform and are already working with clients such as Sony, Amway, Harvard Business Review and Telefonica and are starting to speak with international retailers, gaming companies and travel players among others.
Latin American Payments is a division of PagosOnline, a Colombian start-up with almost 100 employees which counts Buscapé, the large Brazilian comparison shopping site, as it’s majority shareholder (75%). As many know, the South African investment firm, Naspers, bought almost all of Buscapé’s shares for well over US $300M a couple of years back and is busy building it into a Latin American powerhouse (along with it’s satellite companies).
As the pictures below show, there’s quite a bit of hustle and bustle going on right now at Latin American Payments. Jose and Martin are busy complementing an impressive team of developers and business people from top banks and international credit card companies as they go after a Latin American e-commerce market that is surging almost 40% annually to $21.8B.
It might seem strange to offer a Latin American solution from Colombia instead of Mexico or Brazil. Nevertheless, it makes more sense if you consider that, unfortunately, Colombia is one of the most challenging regions for combating credit card and ATM fraud in the world. Several years back, I was talking to a local bank executive who told me that ATM machine makers had to continually innovate in Colombia (some of these innovations found their way into the entire product line) because of the “creativity” with which some Colombians would try to “beat the system.”
Those Colombians are the bane of resourceful and entrepreneurial Colombians like the people at Latin American Payments who are using their ingenuity and hard work to make sure their clients are protected from losses. Incredibly, as happens all around the world, when you are challenged to survive (and thrive) in such hostile circumstances, you come out stronger. That’s one of the reasons that Jose and Martin are so confident about the future.
Nonetheless, there are competitors. Paypal is working to penetrate the market further and local competitors are also developing their own solutions and expand to other countries. Jose and Martin are conscious of this, but believe that 8 years of experience, constant investment in their platform and the ability of clients to collect payments from customers in a variety of ways (overcoming the low credit card penetration in the region) are key assets.
The final asset, they believe, which gives them an edge is the entrepreneurial environment they’ve fomented and the impressive team of young, knowledgeable collaborators they are assembling with the necessary chops to execute on the vision. Finally, (and for disclosure purposes), I the company its sponsorship of the Founder Institute in Colombia (for which I am the director).
The other day, I had a great conversation with Hernan Aracena, co-founder of a startup called Piola offering an web conferencing solution for meetups and events such as virtual barcamps. Lately, he hasn’t spent more than two months at a time in anyone country. He’s been to Madrid, Miami and San Francisco (where he’s living now) going to hackathons and entrepreneurial events.
Piola has gotten quite a bit of use in Latin America from radio stations such as RCN in Colombia as well as organizations that promote startups in the region. The other day, Tim Draper from DFJ, spoke (using Piola) at a Brazil Tech Valley event. Hernan and the Piola team know they were onto something when, in 2009, their first event generated over 5k realtime viewers without much marketing.
After testing his product in Latin America, Hernan is ready to promote it to a more global audience and take his company to the next level. Although he’s lived in Venezuela and Chile, he moved out to the valley because that’s where he feels he has to be to achieve his objectives. He’s already been working with a medical organization and a part of the UN as potential customers.
After hearing Hernan’s story, there are some characteristics that, in my mind, make him a talented entrepreneur:
1. Outlook and energy. From the outset, it’s obvious that Hernan is an extremely positive person as is evidenced by his demeanor (see interview below) and comments.
2. Talent. Hernan likes building and working within a team. He refers to his co-founding team members as “artists” and measures their talent, but also their commitment to the project before bringing them on.
3. Product Development. From the get-go, Piola has iterated its product numerous times working out the kinks and developing an API that helps customers and partners deploy the solution.
4. Customer Development. As the below photos show, Hernan took a road trip throughout Latin America meeting with all kinds of users of the Piola platform. The photos below give a sense of Hernan enjoys his work (check out the last one with Hernan and Tim O’Reilly).
5. Willingness to learn and seek guidance. At a suggestion from his friend, Andres Barreto, he moved over the San Francisco to connect with everything that’s happening in the Valley. The company has been focused on product and customer development, but are now trying to get some help in deciding on a business model that makes sense.
Talking with Hernan, I was kind of reminded of the talk that the CEO of Airbnb gave at Y-Combinator a few months back about their search for a business model and a product/market fit that could take his company to the next level (he’ll also be checking out a session of the local chapter of the Founder Institute this week). If that’s a valid comparison, then I think Hernan and his team have what it takes and believe that we should be hearing interesting news about Piola and Hernan in the near future.
A few months ago, I wrote about “Mover & Shaker” Santiago Pinto, a successful Argentinean Angel investor and entrepreneur who’s backing ad network, Smowtion. I wrote about Santiago and about Smowtion’s success at building its publisher and customer base. Now, Facebook has just announced that they are part of its white list of approved ad networks. While I see tremendous opportunities in targeting the Latin American market and will be talking a bit about this at the SxSW panel in March, I believe that companies such as Smowtion and Brazilian company BT Buckets (mentioned in a vieo in a previous post) are great examples of entrepreneurial teams who think big and tackle global challenges. Yesterday, I was talking to a US journalist about trends in global start-up investing (at least my take) and it’s definitely a reality that top start-up talent knows now geographical boundaries and can be found world-wide. Latin American start-ups and entrepreneurial teams are maturing at an astonishing pace and companies such as Smowtion are leading the way.
It was only six months ago that I wrote that article for VentureBeat and the NYTimes.com about the fact that US web companies are starting to look at Latin America for strategic acquisitions. Now, VC’s are looking at countries such as Brazil, Chile and Argentina, but Brazil is, by far, the big blip on their radar screens.
It’s all part of a global trend whereby new players are disrupting established companies in industry after industry by incorporating the ever present web (mobile and otherwise) into their unique value proposition. These new players enter markets with more competitive business models and start to take share away from traditional companies in industries such as retail, commerce, media, financial services, entertainment and more.
There are a number of reasons why Brazil is in the lead including the size of the country, the investments in infrastructure and the growing importance of that economy on the world stage. Nevertheless, another reason is the Brazilians themselves (professionalism, creativity, world view, and ability to execute) and, here, other countries in Latin America can learn a thing or two (although, I think Chileans and Argentineans are keeping step nicely).
This Tuesday it was announced that Google CEO, Eric Schmidt’s, investment vehicle, Tomorrow Ventures, invested in a Chilean web event management company called Welcu. The company has already gartnered an impressive list of corporate clients from Coca-cola to BBDO. The fact that Schmidt’s investment company chose a company in Latin America for it’s 22nd investment attests to the fact that this region should be on the radar screen of more and more investors.
It’s important to note that Welcu is not simply a clone of established companies such as Eventbrite and others, but provides some innovation by more thoroughly integrating a social layer throughout its event management platform. The company has an impressive list of previous investors including Oskar Hjertonsson who recently sold his company (along with his cofounders) to Groupon.
I had a great conversation yesterday with someone, like me, who isn’t originally from the region (Latin America), but who has found a new home here. He was visiting Colombia and has been an entrepreneur in Latin America for more than four years and had some really tough going, but like any excellent entrepreneur, he stuck it through. The result is that, today, both he and his original angel investors experienced a nice exit as his company was sold to a much larger one.
This is a great story, but it’s just great to sit down and talk with people who are super sharp and, at the same time, down-to-earth and open. Within this journey through the start-up scene in Latin America, it’s been incredibly heartening to discover a core group of amazing individuals, who are also great people to be around. Some are originally from outside the region, but not all and all.
A common thread is that we all see amazing opportunities for creating start-ups in Latin America as well as the potential for developing a new seed fund to nurture more and more of these start-ups. He, correctly, mentioned that we should somehow coordinate our activities more among different countries in Latin America. It definitely makes sense to think about building a core group of sharp individuals in Latin America interested in, among other things, funding and developing new start-ups. We’ll see how this develops.
Additionally, yesterday, I had great video conference with a smart and funny colleague in Argentina about his interest in expanding his company footprint throughout Latin America. Also, I chatted with some buddies in Austin about an upcoming panel over there on the start-up environment in Colombia (I’m rounding up some interesting panelists). Well, gotta cut this short, because I’m off to Barranquilla this morning to visit another interesting company.
According to Kutchera, who has interviewed marketing executives from Ford, Best Buy and other companies, the Latino/Hispanic culture tends to be much more social and less individualistic than other cultures such as that in the states. The article goes on to cite someone who mentions that Hispanics and Latinos are the fastest growing group on the Internet and will command $1.3 trillion in purchasing power by 2014.
How can Latin Americans take advantage of the understanding of social media and develop new digital innovations? Just as the chinese market has generated numerous home-grown startups that understand the nuances of that local market, I believe the same opportunity certainly exists in Latin America (albeit, taking different size markets into account).
Recently, Simon Olson, a partner at FIR Capital Partners in Brazil, during a recent talk at Standford University, spoke precisely about the available opportunities within that market. Please click on his name (above) and subscribe to his blog as he’s certainly someone to follow.
In the video below, Simon also mentions how Brazilians, great social media adopters, are working to relay that into innovative startups that leverage social media.In Brazil, the growth in number and quality of startups is incredible. This should make other countries in Latin America sit up and take notice as Chile, Argentina and Mexico have.
Below is the video from Simon’s talk. It’s excellent and eye-opening for investors unaware of the opportunities in Brazil.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m developing an interesting project to provide programming talent to web startups in the states and perhaps other regions such as Europe. The concept continues to evolve with the focus now being on finding superstar programmers instead of the typical software factory with a variety of skill levels.
I really think that companies such as Globant have proven that, if done correctly, one can build a successful business by offering top-notch programming talent to interesting web companies. Realizing the potential of such an endeavor has as much to do with creating a vibrant company culture in tune with the needs of the programmers and the company’s potential customers. Here, in Colombia, I think a company such as Koombea, which has won international coding competitions, is further proof that the potential certainly exists.
Eventhough I’ve been looking forward to building my own web app (and a company around it), there are so many things pulling me in this direction, that I just can’t ignore it any longer. I’ve had qualms about going full force into a services business (like outsourced development), but, after further reflection, it’s finally clear to me that this path has a lot of positives.
Like I said, building a vibrant company culture is a big part of doing this successfully, but I’ve had great experiences doing this for others. Fifteen years ago, when I moved to Colombia from the states, I got the chance to build a services organization from 2 engineers to more than 20 at Compaq Computer and we achieved such a level of excellence that our country (Colombia) had the best customer satisfaction levels (our measure of success) in the whole world.
The incredible thing is that when I established that BHG (Big Hairy Goal) three years prior, I got a ton of snickers from the team and I’m sure they were convinced that they were dealing with one “gringo loco” (that part was true). Nevertheless, after five years in the valley (Silicon Valley) and a little flexibility in my adjustment to the Latin American culture, I saw that amazing things were possible.
I’m continuing to develop this project and will, firstly, make sure that I start locating top-notch talent before offering anything to potential customers (startups and other SaaS and web companies). I’d really like to get some young raw talent that can absorb a ton of high performance culture and values from Silicon Valley type companies instead of going whole hog for senior developers who might have acquired a few too many stodgy bad habits along the way.
What are your thoughts on what I’m embarking upon?
On Thursday, I had the good fortune to sit down with a number of startups in a host of industries to analyze their successes up to that point and ascertain, along with five other judges, the viability of these businesses to scale. Each one of these businesses was innovative in its own right by any standards (e.g., global or otherwise). Nevertheless, what really struck me was that the three business we chose in industries from fashion to education, digital innovation was an integral part of the company’s present and future strategy.
As I mentioned in a previous post about the workshops I am teaching on Digital Innovation, I believe that the time is ripe to evangelize business men and women from all industries on the possibilities for real differentiation through digital innovation. The companies we analyzed on Thursday had done an amazing job of marketing, human capital management and bootstrapping, yet they saw even more opportunity ahead thanks to the strategies they were each developing for taking advantage of digital tools.
This was truly an excellent confirmation of my thinking up till this point. I needed this “sanity check” because of my immersion in technology these past few years. During my speeches I certainly exposed the opportunities that I felt were available for organizations willing to make use of these tools, but my experience on Thursday was the confirmation I needed. Here we were hearing entrepreneurs who had come to that exact same conclusion all on their own.
During the next year, I will be executing many more digital innovation workshops and evangelizing these concepts even more. Organizations that don’t take advantage of digital innovation will, more and more, find themselves at a clear disadvantage.
I’ve spent the last several months, exploring the state of Digital Innovation in Latin America. Although I wouldn’t say that there are tons and tons of examples, what I would say is that there are some impressive companies. The obvious examples are players such as Buscapé with their US $340 investment from Naspers and Mercado Libre, which had their IPO in the states a few years ago. As ComputerWorld recently published, Latin American Net Arena offers VC Opportunities.
Nevertheless, smaller companies such as VivaReal and Compra3 have achieved great success early on thanks to building world-class teams and executing very well. Both of these companies, similar to Buscape and Mercado Libre, are focused primarily on Latin America though the potential to go global is being pursued by others. Though I wouldn’t dissuade a company from targeting the global market, there is such a void at the moment in terms of interesting content and applications targeting the regions rapidly growing user base.
Indeed, Twitter just released some numbers, published also by TechCrunch, on user growth and Latin America is the fastest growing region. Latin American culture is extremely social and this region has been shown to be heavy users of social media and mobile devices. The end result is that the users exist for new applications and content, but, for the most part, they need to make due with a few local choices or hook up with the main players such as Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and others.
Also, in terms of taking advantage of the approximately 150 million Internet users in Latin America from a marketing perspective, it certainly seems as though most companies in the region are asleep at the wheel. There are certainly exceptions to this rule doing some pretty innovative things. In fact, lately, Brazil has been in the news thanks to its growing economic leadership and even thanks to their recent interest in acquiring companies in the developed world.
Either way you cut it, there is a tremendous amount of opportunity in Latin America, which isn’t apparent yet to global investors and even people in the region. There are some exceptions and these are growing. Brazil, particularly, has been attracting angel investors such as New Yorker, Michael Nicklas, who has been quite active recently not only in terms of funding, but also, in promoting investment through speaking at conferences and his blog, Startupi.
As an example, I had the opportunity the other day to talk with another US investor interested in funding a company in Latin America in the digital space. It was a great conversation as this investor is extremely sharp and am sure closes deals worth many millions every week. Nevertheless, he was trying to rapidly come up to speed on the environment and the nuances of this market, which is not easy. Some things don’t happen as quickly down here and some basic infrastructure (e.g., credit cards, e-commerce, etc.) are not well established, yet, the growth rates and early successes can not be denied.
I could quote many statistics showing that each country boasts growth rates in terms of users, time spent online, e-commerce and other areas of 40% and above. Any of these statistics can quickly be found by doing a quick search. However, this is more of a paradigm switch where more US and European investors need to wake up to the fact that they are ignoring a region with a dearth of content and applications, but with a user base that grows exponentially on a yearly basis. Differentiating a company in Latin America is much, much easier and, for the most part, amounts to bringing world-class teams and execution to bear.
There’s no question that countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile and, to some degree, Mexico, are at a more advanced stage when it comes their start-up and investment ecosystems. Nevertheless, there are small pockets of world-class teams working away in countries such as Colombia and this will continue to grow.
It definitely feels like we’re at the beginning of something very big. I am extremely confident that within three years Angel and VC investment in technology start-ups will have dramatically increased and two years after that Latin America will be home to at least ten powerhouses on a par with Buscape and Mercado Libre.
It’s been quite a week which, for myself and others such as Felipe DeConce (Chile) and Simon Olson (Brazil), marks an inflection point in the world of Latin American web start-ups. As I mentioned in the article published in VentureBeat and NYTimes.com, US web start-ups are starting to acquire Latin American web companies much earlier in their development process. For example, witness the recent actions by Groupon and Playdom in rapidly acquiring web companies in Latin America.
Also, I wanted to write said article because I’ve been observing the funding process of a few Latin American start-ups looking for funding in the states and I wanted to get something published on the Latin America web investment opportunities which start-ups could reference with international investors. Although I wasn’t able to go too much into detail, I highlighted the fact that I feel Latin America offers what Warren Buffett looks for in investments which are defensible “moats” around great profit margins and growing competitive advantage.
Aditionally, VentureBeat published an article I wrote about Netactica, an Argentine web company offering end-to-end solutions to the online travel industry in Latin America. Incredibly, yesterday, Google acquired ITA Software (relatively similar to Netactica in Latin America) in a demonstration that there is much value in these types of end-to-end solution providers in online travel. According to a number of analysts, this acquisition changes the dynamics of the online travel booking and search market. Personally, I think that a player like Netactica has much to gain with this turn of events and, with the increasing interest on the part of international investors in Latin America, the company should benefit quite a bit.
As if this weren’t enough, I spoke last week with Fernando LaBastida and Ricardo Guerrero who have an excellent initiative with the organizers of SXSW in Austin (they live there) to include a panel on Latin America during the next event in 2011. Nevertheless, in order to make sure there is interest on the part of audience members, it’s important for people to suggest ideas for the panel.
I’m completely serious when I say that this week was a critical moment for the development of Latin American web start-ups. You can be certain that investor interest will now start to accelerate at an amazingly fast pace. Now, we need to find the most talented technical and non-technical people in the region so that these can focus on digital innovation.
In order to accelerate this, Thomas Floracks and myself are launching a weekly show (we haven’t decided the day and time, yet) so that, among other things, we can analyze one or two interesting initiatives during the show. Note: for now, we’ll do it in Spanish, but will do a shorter recap show in English if there is interest. More details on this are coming soon. It’s a good moment to launch this show because we need to elevate the conversation beyond comments like “look at my neat website” or “I’m going to sell xyz on the internet.” It’s time for clear paths to profitability and solving real customer problems.
Today is a great day. An idea that popped into the heads of myself and Gabriel Amorocho a couple of months back is gathering steam and tonight is our first Meetup for an impressive group of online marketing professionals. During the past months, we’ve had some excellent discussions inside the Linkedin Group that Gabriel created and now has almost 200 members. One of the discussions was about what needs to be done in order to accelerate adoption of online marketing tools among Colombian organizations.
Among the suggestions related to market education or evangelization is the need for more events or activities where potential customers can learn and appreciate real life success stories. This was an excellent validation of an idea I’ve had for quite some time and that I’ve been discussing with the founder of Social Media Week in New York. The potential for an event like this is huge (attendees, sponsors and industry players)!
That particular event is a perfect fit for Bogota (and really a number of cities in Colombia). Aside from the excellent content, the format is extremely open and collaborative. For instance, many of the conferences (speeches) can be held at venues which can be used in return for “in kind” sponsorships. This provides a new and more connected experience for the attendee while maintaining costs in check.
The momentum that’s been building during just the last month is quite exciting. Aside from how things have been coming together with the impressive group of online marketers and the event, I’ll soon have some exciting news to report on my role within the Colombian online marketing market. There are some impressive and great people hear and I’m, first of all, grateful to have met them and, secondly, looking forward to working more closely with them.
We’re still ironing out some details, but I’m confident that Social Media Week will be held in Bogota (and hopefully in other Colombian cities through streaming) in September. Tonight, at the Meetup, we’ll be talking with a core group of industry members and sharing with them some general news about the impressive lineup of speakers and potential sponsors that are on deck for this event.
In keeping with the theme of the online media and the event (it’s social), I’m sure we’ll get excellent feedback there and through the Linkedin group channel. If we work together as an industry we can accelerate adoption of these tools (e.g., social media, etc.), which will have a domino effect on digital innovation, productivity, competitiveness, profitability and, ultimately, development of the country (in economic, social and quality of living terms) in general.
Well, time to run to one more meeting and then it’s off the the Meetup. I’ll post some pictures and a video tomorrow with more news.
Well, I finally finished a pending article I needed to write and it just got published yesterday by VentureBeat. It was an interesting topic related to a Santa Monica, California start-up called Sency, which offers a real-time search engine. It was cool talking the CEO, Evan Britton, and hearing that he also launched a Spanish version of the site especially for the Latin American market.
There’s no doubt about it, this region has two really neat things going for it, among others: 1) There’s so much more room for growth in so many areas with special mention for anything related to online and mobile. 2) It’s a vibrant and very sociable environment to be in. It really does boggle the mind how much opportunity there is down here and it certainly is good to be off the corporate “teet” and make a play towards tapping into that potential.
It is so cool to meet amazing entrepreneurs and innovative people down here at this time in the region’s development. Digital Innovation is just starting to take off and the next years will certainly be exciting ones. What’s so stimulating about this time is that there is so much market education to get done and it really feels like the online community is getting together to find ways to accomplish this (educating the market).
I’ve been so busy contributing to other publications that I’ve been falling behind in posting to my own blog. Lately, I’ve been writing articles about companies such as Vivareal in Colombia and Compra3 in Brazil each with excellent prospects for the future. I’ve been psyched to see these articles published in the NYTimes and in Venturebeat. There is such a tremendous opportunity in this region for setting up dev centers, targeting the region for products and services or both.
I just got back from a night of Salsa and Sushi with the Mrs. and, after waking up at 2:30am this morning should be hitting the sack. Nevertheless, as if the day hasn’t been good enough, I just read Chris Brogan’s post on Colombia. By now, I’m used to seeing fellow “Gringos” wowed by the life down here, but it’s so great to see someone who appreciates that aspect, but, more importantly, objectively, sees the tremendous potential down here.
That was just the cap to a truly amazing day where, aside from happy family times, I had some great meetings with top executives at two major multinationals down here, a financial services company and a friend who works at Twitter that I finally met in person (she’s down here). Aside from all of this, Compra3 (amazing founders) had their production launch of their social commerce site, which I was able to write about to get the word out.
I should really back all of this up with more numbers and statistics, but I’m too tired tonight. I’ll leave that for another post.
Conclusion: there’s no doubt in my mind that Latin America is going through a transformation and that, within the next 5 years, the number of US VC/angel backed digital innovators with either dev centers or target market (or both) down here will explode.
It’s been a busy start of the year. I’ve been contributing articles to a number of blogs and it’s been an extremely satisfiying experience. Aside from meeting new people, it helps improve my writing (in English and in Spanish). Among my posts is one dedicated to my thesis that a Twitter-Amazon alliance makes sense as well as a profile of a new social software startup in Argentina called JoinCube. In Spanish, I wrote a number of posts for my friend, Jesus Hoyos’ blog and for PulsoSocial, a Latin American technology blog founded by the impressive Andres Barreto.
Unfortunately, this has effected the number of posts that I’ve uploaded to my own blog, but I plan on rectifying this. Although I have been writing a lot (and working a lot), it hasn’t showed as much because of these endeavors. Nevertheless, I am committed to posting more on this blog and alerting you on my Facebook fan page.
The coming year will certainly be interesting. I believe that the economic environment will be even more challenging (and for an extended period of time); social media will continue to penetrate further into the web’s fabric and the mobile web will have a profound effect on the total web experience. Basically, it’s a perfect storm of factors that will drive a lot of change not only into the web, but into our lives. It’s a great time to be writing about digital innovation!
My conversation with Jeffrey Eisenberg, co-author of the book, Call to Action
When I spoke with Jeff Eisenberg several days ago, I was prepared to get some valuable insights into how to effectively use the Internet to increase conversions and sales. I was, nonetheless, incredibly impressed by how succinctly he was able to break down key concepts (nothing impresses me more than the ability to simplify the seemingly complex). Nevertheless, I was completely flabbergasted by the fact that he had been to Latin America many times (20 times to Colombia), his Latin American heritage (his parents are from Argentina) and his fluency in Spanish.
Jeff and his brother, Brian, are well-known experts, speakers, consultants and authors within the online sales/marketing industry and from my conversation with Jeff, it’s obvious that they intimately understand Latin America (more on this a little later). Given the fact that Latin America is at an inflection point in terms of growth in online marketing and ecommerce, having access to world-renowned experts in the field who not only know the language, but also, the culture, should be viewed as a gift from the heavens. Forgive the hyperbole, but Latin America is one of the fastest growing regions in the world (in some cases, the fastest) in terms of Internet adoption with over 100M users and a growth of over 30% and it’s time that companies in the region seek out the top experts in the field to take advantage of the fact that most of their customers are active online.
The reason that Jeff is so knowledgeable about the region is that his previous job within the financial industry brought him many times to Latin America on business. Also, his parents immigrated to the states from Buenos Aires in 1962 and since Spanish was spoken at home (as in my case), he and his brother are completely fluent. Given this fact and the business context described above, I’m surprised that Latin American firms haven’t contacted him for consulting and speaking engagements in order to leverage the knowledge and experience that he brings after working with clients such as NBC Universal, Overstock.com, Dell and Volvo.
Talking about Colombia, I mentioned that, though this country is a leading technology adopter with more users on Facebook than any other Latin American country, I’ve only seen organizations with some exceptions take initial steps at developing and executing online strategies. I also mentioned that eCommerce still has quite a ways to go. Jeff’s answered this observation with a question: “Are we [Colombian companies] waiting for countries such as Argentina, Mexico or the US to take our market?” In my view, that is most definitely the question to ask and this scenario will, indeed, occur if local companies don’t awaken to the opportunity.
With respect to eCommerce, Jeff mentioned that the key catalyst for increasing activity in this area will most probably come from new mobile initiatives down the road. Nevertheless, regardless of what happens on the eCommerce front, there is a plethora of options that Latin American organizations have available to them to interact with their customers. Basic websites were fine to start off with, but, as Jeff mentioned, when a customer clicks on a hyperlink, that customer is asking a question such as “How much does this cost?” If a company’s website answers that question with something like “We’re great,” the conversation has little chance of going further and a key conversion opportunity has been lost. In the current economic environment, wasting these types of opportunities is becoming an unaffordable luxury.
More than anything, according to Jeff, digital technologies are forcing more and more transparency on all types of organizations and this new environment can be scary. In order to succeed, organizations need to be authentic and offer real and tangible differentiators. Initiatives such as reputation management, online reviews and participating in online conversations with prospects and customers can yield substantial results.
Either way you look at it, Latin America is at a crossroads. Everyday companies are feeling more competitive pressures from outside their country’s borders, their prospective customers are flocking to digital media and differentiating themselves is getting harder. Sticking to traditional techniques of marketing their wares at the expense of newer, more cost effective channels (where their customers are congregating), is a paradigm that will be less and less effective. Experts such as Jeff have been working with growing stable of companies in other regions with compelling results. The time has arrived for Latin America to begin amassing its long list of regional success stories before others do it for them.
My conversation with Jeffrey Eisenberg, co-author of the book, Call to Action
When I spoke with Jeff Eisenberg several days ago, I was prepared to get some valuable insights into how to effectively use the Internet to increase conversions and sales. I was, nonetheless, incredibly impressed by how succinctly he was able to break down key concepts (nothing impresses me more than the ability to simplify the seemingly complicated). Nevertheless, the I was completely flabbergasted by the fact that he had been to Latin America many times (20 times to Colombia), his Latin American heritage (his parents are from Argentina) and his fluency in Spanish.
Jeff and his brother, Brian, are well-known experts, speakers, consultants and authors within the online sales/marketing industry and from my conversation with Jeff, it’s obvious that they intimately understand Latin America (more on this a little later). Given the fact that Latin America is at an inflection point in terms of growth in online marketing and ecommerce, having access to world-renowned experts in the field who not only know the language, but also, the culture, should be viewed as a gift from the heavens. Forgive the hyperbole, but Latin America is one of the fastest growing regions in the world (in some cases, the fastest) in terms of Internet adoption with over 100M users and a growth of over 30% and it’s time that companies in the region seek out the top experts in the field to take advantage of the fact that most of their customers are active online.
The reason that Jeff is so knowledgeable about the region is that his previous job within the financial industry brought him many times to Latin America on business. Also, his parents immigrated to the states from Buenos Aires in 1962 and since Spanish was spoken at home (as in my case), he and his brother are completely fluent. Given this fact and the business context described above, I’m surprised that Latin American firms haven’t contacted him for consulting and speaking engagements in order to leverage the knowledge and experience that he brings after working with clients such as NBC Universal, Overstock.com, Dell and Volvo.
Talking about Colombia, I mentioned that, though this country is a leading technology adopter with more users on Facebook than any other Latin American country, I’ve only seen organizations with some exceptions take initial steps at developing and executing online strategies. I also mentioned that eCommerce still has quite a ways to go. Jeff’s answered this observation with a question: “Are we [Colombian companies] waiting for countries such as Argentina, Mexico or the US to take our market?” In my view, that is most definitely the question to ask and this scenario will, indeed, occur if local companies don’t awaken to the opportunity.
With respect to eCommerce, Jeff mentioned that the key catalyst for increasing activity in this area will most probably come from new mobile initiatives down the road. Nevertheless, regardless of what happens on the eCommerce front, there is a plethora of options that Latin American organizations have available to them to interact with their customers. Basic websites were fine to start off with, but, asJeff mentioned, when a customer clicks on a hyperlink, that customer is asking a question such as “How much does this cost?” If a company’s website answers that question with something like “We’re great,” the conversation has little chance of going further and a key conversion opportunity has been lost. In the current economic environment, wasting these types of opportunities is becoming an unaffordable luxury.
More than anything, according to Jeff, digital technologies are forcing more and more transparency on all types of organizations and this new environment can be scary. In order to succeed, organizations need to be authentic and offer real and tangible differentiators. Initiatives such as reputation management, online reviews and participating in online conversations with prospects and customers can yield substantial results.
Either way you look at it, Latin America is at a cross roads. Everyday companies are feeling more competitive pressures from outside their country’s borders, their prospective customers are flocking to digital media and differentiating themselves is getting harder. Sticking to traditional techniques of marketing their wares at the expense of newer, more cost effective channels (where their customers are congregating), is a paradigm that will be less and less effective. Experts such as Jeff have been working with growing stable of companies in other regions with compelling results. The time has arrived for Latin America to begin amassing its long list of regional success stories before others do it for them.
Yesterday, during a rainy afternoon in Bogotá, I interviewed the co-founders of Latin American Payments, Jose Velez and Martin Schrimpff, which offers a robust payments platform, anti-fraud system and payments collection all designed specifically for the needs of the Latin American market. The company is PCI certified, have won international prizes for their platform and are already working with clients such as Sony, Amway, Harvard Business Review and Telefonica and are starting to speak with international retailers, gaming companies and travel players among others.
