All posts tagged socialatom ventures

  • $3M invested in Founder Institute Colombia Graduates!

    Founder Institute Grad Logo

    The Founder Institute continues to grow globally.  It’s amazing to realize that I’m going on my fifth year as Director of the Founder Institute (FI) in Colombia.  In 2011, there were relatively few cities with a Founder Institute chapter and I was really determined to make sure that Colombia be the first Latin American country to have one.  By then, I had sat with a lot of Colombian entrepreneurs and knew that they needed help from the moment of conception.  Well that dream was realized and, with the amazing help of Adeo Ressi, the incubator’s founder, graduates of the program in Colombia have already received over US $2M in funding. This is unheard of for any startup accelerator or incubator in this country.

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  • FAIL: I just fell flat on my face

    TropicalGringo Fail

    Well, I just got a gut-wrenching notification that the Colombian government decided against a proposal that I presented, along with some local partners, to help create Tayrona Ventures and I’m still reeling from the this.  My local partners in the proposal were creating an early-stage Colombia fund to address opportunities in several industries (e.g., construction services, etc.) while leaving us (Tayrona Ventures) as a sidecar fund with a lot of freedom to pursue early stage deals with digital startups.  I thought (wrongly, as it turns out) that this would satisfy the government’s needs to support a number of sectors while also creating an amazing early stage technology fund with likes of Silicon Valley insiders Paul Bragiel and William Hsu.

    Before going on, I want to congratulate the three groups that will be receiving funds from the government (these include my current partners at Socialatom Ventures – an accelerator we own jointly).  All three of these groups have sharp people and the good news is that Colombia and Latin America will have more sorely-needed investors.

    So, I’m always telling my son that it’s not a question of falling down, but whether and how you get up.  Am I going to be a hypocrite (and ball my eyes out) or suck it up and keep going? It’s so much easier to give advice than to be coherent with that advice when things happen to you.  :)

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  • AngelHack es un Hackathon Global que llega a Colombia

    AngelHack BogotaAngelHack es un hackathon que se está ejecutando en mas de 30 ciudades por todo el mundo.  AngelHack llegará a Bogotá el 8 de junio y se ejecutará en las oficinas de Socialatom Ventures, aceleradora donde yo soy General Partner y Director de Programa.  Por varias razones que menciono abajo, este es un hackathon de grandes ligas.  Los interesados en competir en un escenario de talla global pueden inscribirsen acá: http://ahsp13bogota.eventbrite.com/ El costo es de US $35 pero para los primeros 10  lectores de este blog que utilicen el codigo “tropicalgringo” recibirán un descuento de 75% sobre dicho precio  y los siguientes 20 lectores recibirán un descuento de 50% sobre dicho precio.

    Algunas características de AngelHack Primavera 2013:

    • 6,000 desarrolladores y diseñadores increíbles a través de 30 ciudades alrededor del mundo. (En Bogota un aproximado de 200 )
    • Buena comida, material promocional, armas nerf, helicopteros, y un ambiente increíble.
    • Grandes premios, incluyendo un lugar en el programa de aceleración AngelHack Accelerator, capital semilla, e invitaciones a Silicon Valley para más de 40 equipos.
    • Cobertura de medios y un increíble panel de jueces para ayudarte a validar las partes debiles de tu hack.

    En general, los organizadores de AngelHack están promocionando la posibilidad de ganar $100,000 dólares en premios incluyendo capital semilla, aceptación en un programa de aceleración global, y un viaje todo pagado para presentar tu hack en Silicon Valley.

    Habrá un ganador grande de Bogota.  AngelHack busca que participen los mejores desarrolladores del país para crear su hack y tener la posibilidad de convertirlo en un startup de talla mundial.  Sin embargo, no solo son bienvenidos desarrolladores sino también diseñadores y diseñadoras y personas con ideas buenas. Entre los patrocinadores están Google y VoiceBunny.

    Utiliza el codigo de descuento “tropicalgringo” é inscribirsen acá.


  • Sixth week at Socialatom Ventures

    TropicalGringo and Governor Deval PatrickIt’s been quite an eventful week.  As I, and the startups that we’re accelerating at Socialatom Ventures, head to New York City (NYC), there’s a lot on which to reflect.  On Tuesday, government agency Innpulsa Colombia and ourselves hosted an innovation event at Socialatom Ventures.  Guests included a number of leaders from the Colombian startup ecosystem (public and private sectors) as well as dignitaries from the government of Massachusetts including the Governor, Deval Patrick. It was great to see all of this come about as it was only about a month ago that some of these people reached out and mentioned their tentative plans for a Colombia trip.

    During the event, I announced that Socialatom Ventures would be moving to a new location called the Atom House located a few blocks away.  Before this announcement Catalina Ortiz, CEO of Innpulsa Colombia and myself had the opportunity to introduce the Governor to the three startups that are going through our Atom Accelerator program.  We are running two programs in parallel.  A government program called Apps.Co and our own program called Atom Accelerator where we invest US $25k in each startup in addition to our mentoring them.

    Governor Deval Patrick & TropicalGringo

    The companies we presented to the governor included JustContract.me which provides an alert service that matches government contracts with the specific skills of service providers who sign up; LegalJump which is a Chilean startup with a model simlar to LegalZoom, but for Latin America, and, finally, Oja.la which offers programming courses online to Spanish-speakers.  The Governor really seamed to enjoy speaking with these startups and also the general vibe from all of the startups from the Apps.Co program as well.

    After this event (and a reception at the Ambassador’s residence), we had our weekly Wednesday progress meeting at midnight.  Some of the startups are really progressing and it showed during this meeting.  Not all of them are progressing at the same speed, but I think that it really helps the slower ones to watch the progress of the faster ones.

    Today, Thursday, I had a quick meeting with a top global Google executive named Nelson Mattos and then headed to the Wayra Demo Day to hear the pitches of some of the startups.  I’m an advisor for Mapache and was really happy with the pitch that Ricardo Jimenez gave that day.  I’ve also been working with two other startups called AgentPanda and CodeTag and was happy with their pitches, also.

    Wayra Demo Day 2013 MapacheBowei Gai & TropicalGringo

    Coincidentally, it turned out that I was flying out to NYC at the same time that Bowei Gai of the World Startup Report was arriving in Bogota so we set up a meeting at the airport.  It was great chatting with him (he sold his startup to Linkedin) about what he’s doing and about the Colombian startup ecosystem.  Tonight, it’s off to NYC on the read eye in order to attend tomorrow night’s meetup.  It should be an eventful meetup with movers and shakers within the NYC tech scene and I’ll try to post one or two pictures and write some more at the end of this post.

    Andres Barreto & Juan Arenas Socialatom VenturesSocialatom Ventures NYC Meetup