All posts tagged socialatom

  • February 6, 2013

    Lulo wants to make business sweet

    OnLuloOne of the companies that we’re accelerating at Socialatom Ventures is called Lulo.  That happens to be the name of a tropical fruit as well as a new startup focused on making running a small business fun.  They’re starting out with the sales process and, although us techies like to talk about terms such as CRM and Marketing Automation, they’re objective is to provide the simplest and easiest to use tools to nontechnical business owners.  Sure, they’ll include functionality that crosses some product categories, but that doesn’t mean that their target customer will be interested in such categorizations.

    The company was founded by Andres Felipe Chavez, CEO, and Javier Santiago Lozano, CTO.  Both are in their early 20’s with a passion to create an impact on the small business sector.  They’re families are small business owners and Lulo is the result of the lack of high quality web tools for nontechnical business owners.  Though companies such as SohoOs and Xero are also targeting this segment, both believe that the space still holds much promise.

    They are constantly improving the project and have opened the beta program up today.  If you’re interested in providing direction to the team on how to improve this product, please sign up for the beta program.  There are 30 invites for readers of TropicalGringo and you can click here to get your invite.  You can send them your feedback or post a comment on this blog post.  Lozano is a passionate coder and if your suggestion is aligned with creating a powerful, yet simple tool to small business owners, I have no doubt that they will implement it.

    Sign me up for Lulo, now!

    No Comments / English, General /

  • January 27, 2013

    Second Week of Socialatom Ventures

    Solocontratame PitchOk. Week two is “in the can” and things continue to progress.  Some of the startups are intensely working on improving their product, some are mainly focused on customer acquisition and others are still working on their general value proposition. Last week, during out Wednesday 10pm progress meeting, we got a visit from an active early stage investor from Mexico called Sergio Romo of Investomex.  Also in the room was Francisco Solsona who is one of Google‘s Developer Relations mangers for the region as well as Andres and David Cifuentes from eForcers, a strong local Google apps partner. Note: Andres Cifuentes was one of the graduates from the first semester of the Founder Institute in Colombia.

    Investomex and Google at SAVOn Friday, the whole group was able to hold a great video conference session with an experienced Venture Capital investor in New York.  Several of them were able to get some interesting insights into the mind of an investor when hearing their individual pitches.  Others were able to ask general questions such as the importance of incorporating their company in the US. Other mentors such as the talented Sergio Martinez of Vulcan Estudios were able to talk with some of the startups about their user experience and how to improve it.

    Startups talking at SAVSeveral of the startups have been making great use of the incredible work space we have set up here at Socialatom Ventures.  Aside from the physical space, this gives them a chance to talk with each other as well as with mentors and any other visitor that comes to check us out.  Also, they can have a quick chat with Andres or myself and interact in a bit more relaxed format. The rest of the Socialatom team has been instrumental in making things run smoothly.  This includes Felipe Betancourt and Karen Acosta.

    There’s a lot to be done before our trip to New York City. The founders will be meeting with mentors and investors and will also get to experience the NYC startup scene.  There’s a lot to be said for the vibe you can get from a particular startup ecosystem. I’ve personally lived and traveled quite a bit to Silicon Valley.  Nonetheless, many years ago, when I was a young man (many, many years ago) one of my first jobs was an Electrical Engineer for a defense contractor in New Jersey and I absolutely loved getting into “the city” and walking around Manhattan.  The vibe then was absolutely electric.

    Federico Ortega mentoring at SAVFinally, on Thursday, we had an excellent session with all of the startups and Product Mentor, Federico Ortega.  It’s tough to find someone as passionate about digital products and about what goes into making them as Federico.  Not to mention the incredible experience he has on the subject having worked for El Tiempo, Zemoga and, now, VivaReal. The session was an extremely interactive one with a barrage of questions and anecdotes about prior experiences.

    No Comments / English, General /

  • January 20, 2013

    Socialatom Ventures ends first week with Hackathon

    Socialatom Ventures kick-offWell, it’s been quite a week.  We kicked off the Socialatom Ventures startup program on Monday with 12 initial companies.  Andres Barreto (co-founder of OnSwipe), one of my partners, has been here in Bogota and it’s been great for the startups getting his point of view on their individual startups.  He’s not only got experience with his own startups, but has been contributing quite a bit to the Latin American ecosystem in general.

    Some of the startups are going through a government “consolidation” program called AppsCo where the Ministry of Telecommunications and other incubators besides us had a hand in selecting the specific companies.  Additionally, there are two other companies that we selected and invested in (thanks to our partner NXTP Labs) and will be doing all we can to accelerate the growth of all of these companies in the coming three months and a half.

    During our one-on-one meetings with each startup, we try to get them to take a serious look at what they’re doing and how they’re going about doing it.  Andres has been instrumental in getting everybody to “think big.”  A tool that we are using to reinforce this is the New York City trip we’ve planned with some pretty amazing mentors.

    Socialatom Ventures Wednesday night meetingOn Wednesday, we had our first status meeting at 10:10pm in the evening.  We chose this date and time for the progress meeting for a number of reasons with one of these being that of inculcating the reality of startup culture into the founders.  Each startup pitches and also provides status on milestones in order to make sure they are learning and progressing.

    It’s great to see the amount of activity in the Colombian startup ecosystem although there’s still a long way to go to even be on a par with the Brazilian and even Argentinian ecosytems.  It’s great to work on this acceleration phase.  Two years ago, when I first brought the Founder Institute, a pre-idea incubator,  I saw (and still see) a major need for a program that could help founders develop their ideas into viable companies (that can later get “accelerated” if necessary).  Accelerators such as Wayra and Socialatom Ventures really need a wider selection of companies from which to select their startups.

    Socialatom Elite HackathonAs if all of this wasn’t enough, it’s Sunday evening and I’m sitting here at Socialatom Ventures at a great Hackathon that Andres set up with some of our developers and host of other talented developers who were handpicked to participate.  There are a number of interesting project such as a platform for asking mayors from different cities questions to a simple gifting app based on Facebook likes.  In general, we’ve done everything we know to get these startups in the right frame of mind to accelerate their progress.

    4 Comments / English, General /