Tropical Gringo

When 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.

I 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.

The 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.

From a class of 34 founders, the Founder Institute in Colombia launched 7 start-ups with 9 graduates.  It was a tough program and many founders weren’t able to make it through the process.  Andres Cifuentes and Carlos Rozo were definitely the co-founders (of Thotz) with the biggest global vision: to help users visualize their information.  They’re currently working away at developing the initial app for Thoz.net that will run on the iPad and on Android Tablets and will give you a visual representation of all of your Google Apps information.

Carlos is an information/knowledge management freak (he studied this topic in Australia) and Andres Cifuentes is a successful entrepreneur focused don the Google Apps market.  They are building a strong team with a developer (Alex) and a designer (Gloria) working on the first version of the app.  Aside from this, they have been meeting with different users to get an understanding about how they’d organize their information from a conceptual perspective.  If you’d like to sign up for the beta you can sign up here.

Here’s my quick interview (in English) with Carlos:

Founder Institute Grad Thotz.net from Tropical Gringo on Vimeo.

It looks like I’ve been doing a lot of talking lately about Digital Innovation and Internet startups and the startup ecosystem.  Last night, I had the opportunity to talk at an event called eCommerce Day Bogota along with impressive entrepreneur, Oscar Giraldo, founder of Arcaris.  It was great to hear the interest from everyone in entrepreneurship and  what we’ve been accomplishing with the Founder Institute in Colombia.

Additionally, last week, I had the opportunity to address a group of bankers at an event sponsored by the Bankers’ Association.  I was able to give them a perspective on where the startup action is in terms of the financial services vertical and was happy with the feedback and the interest from the industry in these topics.  I was accompanied by my Founder Institute Colombia team member, Juan Manuel Lopez as well by a co-founder of one of the Founder Institute graduating companies that is firing on all cylinders, financial product comparator site: Comparamejor.

Last but not least, I had tremendous pleasure of staying in some swanky accommodations in Cartagena and took advantage of this by smoking 4 of my favorite cigars during that two day period.  I’m sure hardly anyone kicks back like that, but to each his own.

It’s only been two weeks since I got back from my trip to San Francisco and I’ll be going back this week.  It was really a blast last time not only attending the Founder Institute activities, but also hooking up with an old friend (and crashing at his place).  The Founder Institute has been amazing in terms of the energy and the impact the program offers.  Nevertheless, for me it’s Adeo Ressi, its creator, and his team, especially Cindy and Gopal, who all make it all so worthwhile thanks to their openness and great personalities.

Also, thanks to them, countries such as Colombia, South America have a bridge to Silicon Valley.   This country isn’t on the map for many in the US, but the impact that this program is already having and will have on this country is difficult to describe.  Nothing else happening in this country on the start-up front (and there is quite a bit happening) has the potential to create as big of an impact.

One of the activities that I attended was a luncheon to honor the top contributors (mentors) at the institute.  I was looking forward to talking to one of the mentors, David Weekly, and his fund in Mexico. I had met Cesar Salazar, who handles the fund activities in Mexico, a few months back at SXSW.  Needless to say, I’m sure I’ll be talking with David.  Like so many who have had success in the digital start-up space, he’s a super open person.

In that vein, I had the good fortune to sit next to Jason Johnson who, among other things, has set up the Founder’s Den as a unique place for a select group of start-ups.  it was really interested to hear that he had traveled to Costa Rica (and enjoyed it immensely) and had actually had experience with programmers in that country.  I really enjoyed our conversation which touched into topics such as family, travel and start-ups.  While we spoke, something that could only happen in Silicon Valley was occurring in the background.  Another impressive dude, Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, was walking around the room in robot form as he joined the event (and received a much deserved award) all the way from Spain.

Among the other activities that Adeo had lined up was the biggest (I think) Founder Showcase ever with excellent keynotes from Naval Ravikant and Mark Shuster.  At the event, a number of start-ups gave their pitches and the networking at the event was super productive. The general consensus seems to be that there is definitely a bubble that is about to burst.  Nevertheless, it might be wishful thinking, but it seems more like some isolated cases of overvaluations (Color, Twitter, some early stage deals, etc.) than a general bubble along the lines of what Ben Horowitz has eloquently (and with more gravitas than I could bring to the table) written about in his blog.

Well, next week, I’m off to the valley once again with some great meetings lined up.  This time I’ll be accompanied by my co-founders in an initiative to bring funding to some select start-ups in Latin America and, especially, those with operations in Colombia.

I really enjoyed Ranjith Kumaran’s visit last week here in Bogota. Ranjith came to mentor at the Colombia chapter of the Founder Institute.  He also spoke at the alumni association of one of the most prestigious universities in Colombia.  As you’ll hear if you play the streaming version of this presentation he lays the blame on my doorstep for leaving him with little time to work on prettying up his slides after the several social engagements we had.  Also, Ranjith, very intelligently, stopped by the coast and experienced the amazing atmosphere in Cartagena before arriving in Bogota.

It’s been about two months since the Founder Institute semester started here in Bogotá and it’s been so gratifying to see the impact that it’s been having on the local ecosystem.  It’s tough to put into words the different levels on which the Founder Institute is starting to transform things here. Something I’ve really enjoyed is the observing the founders as they realize that people like Adeo Ressi and Ranjith Kumaran and the local mentors (building this group has been one of the best things about the Founder Institute for me) are so incredibly accesible and fun to be around.  My impression of Colombia is that, in some respects, it’s quite a formal society, and, because of this, many expect people who have earned a certain level of success to build a wall around them.

I have to say that the interest in technology startups is accelerating at a rapid pace here in Colombia.  There are really big organizations and companies (some multinationals) who are interested in nurturing this environment.  Nonetheless, it’s the Colombian startups such as CO Internet (Platinum Sponsor) and the regional “Paypal” called Latin American Payments that understood how transformational the Founder Institute will be in this country and decided to sponsor this initiative in Colombia.  Between these sponsors and the local mentors, the energy and interest in giving back has been the common denominator in supporting this initiative and that characteristic is obviously present in people like Adeo and Ranjith.

While he was here, Ranjith was also able to stop by the Caracol Radio station for an interview.  The Founder Institute session was excellent and, along with local mentors Camilo Gomez and Christian Boelke, Ranjith was able to review a number of the ideas from the Colombia founders.  Ranjith was also able to talk about his new loyalty startup called PunchTab which recently closed a $850k funding round.  Aside from specifics, it helps local entrepreneurs to hear HOW Silicon Valley entrepreneurs even talk about different aspects of their business from customer acquisition to customer development.

Aside from the impact that these external mentors have on the local environment, it’s great to see the impact that Colombia has on these mentors.  If you listen to any of the interviews, Ranjith comment about the fact that he travels around the world and he quickly felt like Colombia is one of those places where he could spend quite a bit of time in the future.

I’m sitting here on the plane from Bogotá, Colombia to Atlanta, Georgia. What irony. I’m actually just stopping by, but it is amazing to think that I was born in Atlanta (I’m not going to divulge how long ago that was). I’m on my way to South by Southwest (SXSW), a large event for tecnology, film and music held in Austin, Texas. Among other things, I’ll be moderating a panel about the investment and startup environment in Colombia.

As the picture on the left shows, already on the way, I began meeting interesting people. In this case, it’s Kelvyn Santos, aka, Kashmir Hip Hop, an exec at a multinational ad agency in the Domincan Republic and a part time Hip Hop artist.

Thinking about the topic of startup investing in Latin America, if I take the position of devil’s advocate, it’s not hard to see the excellent opportunities for investing in basic things like infrastructure projects, natural resources (e.g., oil, gas, gold, coal, agriculture, etc.). Even real estate, I believe, continues to promise top notch medium and long term returns.

For regional and local investors, these types of investments have the advantage of familiarity and relatively well-known risk levels. Even in terms of size of returns, as a whole, these traditional investments will probably generate one and more probably two orders of magnitude of the total amounts than startups will generate.

Investing in Latin American startups, I believe, holds the greatest attraction for two types of investors: 1) those looking to allocate millions rather than hundreds of millions of dollars to investment funds and 2) those who understand the space well enough and who truly enjoy investing in innovation and are interested in putting their knowledge and expertise to work in emerging markets.

If I would continue to play devil’s advocate, I’d really have to find a way to convince potential investors that they should pass up opportunities to invest in the next opportunity with hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars in value (Buscapé and Mercado Libre, respectively). Additionally, I’d have to come up with a reason not to look for companies who found quick and relatively lucrative exits, such as Clan Descuento and Three Melons or for the next OLX, Mentez and Vostu with large follow-on investments.

So I guess I’m answering my own question. In general, there are opportunities all across Latin America and, realistically, Colombia is getting into the game a bit late. Thus, I think the best way to look at this is to see the general Latin American landscape as a region with interesting opportunities with Colombia being a part of the whole.

So, instead of singling out Colombia as presenting more opportunities, I think it’s more relevant as part of the general Latin America startup story, which, in turn is part of the larger emerging market story. One only needs to look at the influence that funds such as Tencent and DST (both of which came from emerging markets) have in order to understand that powerhouse investment firms can come from other parts of the world besides the states.

The other day, I was talking about this with a reporter from a major US magazine who was curious about this phenomenon. That article should come out in about a month (I’ll keep you posted), but my thesis was that emerging market investments are sometimes worthy of Warren Buffet’s epithet of “moat” investments.

This is the reasoning that Buffet uses to justify investments in state furniture and jewelry stores. These franchises are firmly established in a geographical niche. First of all, they are hard to establish and, even more importantly, they are harder to topple. Similarly, emerging market firms such as Tencent and DST so thoroughly dominate their geographic markets (I’m talking of the startups that spawned the investment divisions), that they develop “moat” economics particularly in terms of steady and attractive margins.

In Latin America, I’d say two firms are great examples of this: 1) Buscape/Naspers and 2) Mercado Libre. If nothing else, those two firms, in addition to hedge funds and VCs already active in the region, provide valid exit options for startups.

Ok. That’s enough philosophizing (anyway the flight attendant is refusing to give me any more wine for inspiration). What do you think? What have a missed? How off the mark am I? Remember, I reserve the right to mention your comment and username during the panel.

I haven’t started packing yet for my trip to South by Southwest (SxSW), but I am running around trying to get everything in order here in Bogota, Colombia before I leave.  I’m going to be moderating a panel at the SxSW Tech Summit (this is the first time it’s being held) on the startup/investment ecosystem in Colombia.  At the same time, I’ll have a chance to visit SxSW and meet some interesting people.

There are tons of presentations and I’m sure there will be some interesting ones, but I’m more interested in meeting people and talking with them, which is probably why the parties are so famous (for meeting and talking with counterparts).  I’m going to take my video and camera equipment and blog to my hearts content.  In part, to let others know how this experience is stacking up and, also, as a public note-taking exercise.

If you’ll be there in Austin this week, I’d certainly enjoy meeting you.  Please let me know either at @acolmenares or emailing me at alan [at] tropicalgringo [dot] com  We’ll see how things go.

When you think of startups and venture capital investing, the last thing you’d probably think about is Colombia and for good reason. Although a local gaming company recently received a respectable investment from a local VC, that’s been the exception rather than the rule.  Nevertheless, after spending some time with Adeo Ressi here, it is quite apparent that his company, the Founder Institute, could have an incredibly large impact on the local startup/investment ecosystem.

Although other countries are further along in building up their startup ecosystems, Colombia has some interesting raw talent that is open to getting guidance on how to grow and develop their startups and a dearth of quality accelerator programs.   It’s within this vacuum that the Founder Institute enters the scene.  I’ll be discussing this further at the SxSW Tech Summit on March 16th.   For now, I’d like to talk more about Adeo’s visit to Colombia.

First off, after talking with Adeo over the phone several times during the past months, it was really great meeting him in person.  As the below photos show, we were able to talk with a diverse group of people and had some fun at the same time.  We were able to meet with some applicants to the Founder Institute, the local mentors, a radio interviewer and some government officials.

For the most part, entrepreneurs have been slogging away without much interaction with Silicon Valley and that has left Colombia a bit behind in terms of development in digital startups (with a few exceptions).  Hence, it’s no surprise that a program, such as the Founder Institute’s, that guides founders and connects them with networks of mentors and investors, is generating so much interest.  In the process, getting a solid team of mentors and other players together for the program has done wonders to get this small group of players organized.

It certainly feels like some subtle though powerful things are happening that can create a big impact on this country.  Time will tell, but I’m pretty confident that things are going to get a whole lot more interesting down here.

Finally, as the below video shows, Adeo held one of his Ideation Workshops for about 70 potential and current applicants:

Today, I had the pleasure of meeting Ricardo Guerrero during his brief visit to Bogota, Colombia.  We’ll be seeing more of each other during South by Southwest (SxSW) next week, but it was great meeting in person.  We had an enjoyable breakfast and, afterwards, as I smoked my stogie and annoyed him with my cigar smoke, he talked about how he got into Social Media.  After creating a radio show in Texas and working at that for a while, among other things, he started working for Dell Computer.  Then, in 2007 after a visit to SxSW, he got introduced to Twiiter and found a way to use it to sell refurbished PCs for Dell Outlet. Now that’s digital innovation.

Ricardo has a new company called Stwittergy which is developing a tool to help businesses better use Twitter to achieve business objectives.  He also has his own agency aptly named Social Media Dynamo.  Nevertheless, he’s not completely disconnected from his Latin American roots and is working with colleague and friend Fernando LaBastida in setting up the first Americas IT Forum the day before SxSW (next week) in Austin.

I was able to record a small portion of our chat and here it is:

It’s been quite a week.  I was finally able to write about a VC round closing in Colombia.  A local VC actually closed a $1.3M series A round with social gaming company, Zio Studios, based in Colombia.  This has been the talk of the town down here since VC investing is pretty non-existent here (although, private equity investing is pretty well-established).  It’s really another example of how things are changing making geography less of an obstacle and more of a choice of life.

Last week, I also wrote in a local portal called KienyKe about the stuff going on in the Middle East with the toppling of Mubarak in Egypt and the turmoil in the other countries.  In this new world we’re living in, if entrepreneurs aren’t connected to other world-class entrepreneurs and investors, it’s almost becoming a matter of choice.  As I said, geography is becoming less of an obstacle.

Even within the Latin American region, digital strategies that target the whole region used to emanate from countries such as Brazil and Mexico and, on occasion, from Argetina (Mercado Libre) or Chile.  Nevertheless, now companies such as PagosOnline with their Latin American Payments (see video) strategy and VivaReal are targeting Latin America all from a headquarters based in Colombia.

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).

Latin American Payments from Tropical Gringo on Vimeo.

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.

Watch live video from aracena1 on Justin.tv

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.

About 15 years ago, when I first moved down here to Colombia from Silicon Valley, one of the biggest culture shocks was the fact that it was pretty much impossible to find a bar where I could watch the Super bowl.  After checking out numerous places, I was just unable to find any place that was showing the game (most didn’t even know what the Super bowl was).  This is in stark contrast to how things are today where one has a host of options where to, not only watch the Super bowl, but to really enjoy it.  By the way, my brother and I are the two on the left side of the photo (guess who is who).

This may not have anything to do with anything, but last night, while watching this at the local Irish Pub, I couldn’t help thinking about how things have changed.  A lot of expats really are enjoying Colombia and this is just one of many reasons why they choose to stay.  In the last few weeks, I’ve been amazed by the amount of Colombians living abroad (Diaspora) who are either moving back here or considering it. Almost all of these are focused on the tech start-up market.

Well, on a personal not, last night was also the end of a three week trip that my brother and his friend, Tim, have taken here in Colombia.  It was great to see how much they thoroughly enjoyed their trip and referred to it as the “trip of a lifetime.”  It seems that this isn’t just a case of a couple of guys who enjoy remote places.  This morning I was having breakfast with a super sharp entrepreneur, Camilo Gomez, CEO of Mantaraya Travel and he mentioned an article in the New York Times with it’s readers naming Colombia as the second highest rated travel destination. Also, check out this article from the Huffington Post on why it’s Colombia’s time.

Well, it was quite wild time last night. Here’s a quick video I took during the game (interviewing Tim, but also with my brother, sister, Matt, Thomas and Daniel!):

I had a great coffee the other day at one of the many Juan Valdez locations here in Bogotá with an entrepreneur named Daniel Dominguez.  His company is called i-Azul, which was focusing on QR codes in general, and is pivoting by offering a more complete ticketing solution with Tickqr.  It goes a bit further than ticketing solutions such as Eventbrite in that, among other things, it makes better use of mobile devices (sms or smartphones).

Daniel, who has a Masters in Robotics, is still in the process of pivoting his company.  Although, there’s still quite a ways to go, he’s shown persistence and tenacity in becoming a start-up entrepreneur as he’s been at this for a couple of years.  He’s got a great quality that I think will help him tremendously, which his interest in learning and getting guidance from the right places.  He’s been to Silicon Valley to get a feel for the start-up environment there and will be applying to the Founder Institute here in Bogotá.

There is definitely an entrepreneurial culture in Colombia, but what I feel has been lacking is the development of high impact businesses.  In other industries, there are some great examples such as BodyTech, Andres Carne de Res and others.  Nevertheless, I believe that this country really needs to connect with the rest of the world and expand its start-up and investor networks to include Silicon Valley and other places and that’s one of the things that I hope that the Founder Institute will help with.  Apply here.

Yesterday, I had an excellent conversation with the impressive group of guys behind Brazilian real estate and automotive aggregator service Fisgo.  Brazil has been experiencing more than 20% growth in both markets and the World Cup and Olympics are sure make things even more interesting.

The team, based out of Rio de Janeiro, includes Federico Alves as CEO as well as Eduardo Rodrigues and Helio Lemos.  This group has previously worked at Buscapé, QueBarato and other Internet sites.  As mathematicians and experienced developers, they definitely have the chops to give Fisgo the technological tools (e.g., cloud computing, etc.) necessary to have a high performing site.

The big challenge in my mind is marketing and branding.  Although, they mentioned that new traffic is increasing by over 80% in monthly visitors, they definitely have a substantial hill to climb to get users to go to their site first instead of established players such as Zap in real estate (or new players such as VivaReal).

However, if they are able to establish their brand, the aforementioned companies in addition to Mercado Libre and others will most likely become Fisgo customers looking to get quality lead traffic driven to their sites.  The real competitors are companies such as TrovitBrasil, a division of Trovit, an aggregator in a number of countries.

The performance of the site is quite fast and the user interface is well designed although the choice of including banner ads is interesting as it could detract from the focus of getting users to other sites.  Needless to say, I’m sure a savvy investor (or investors) will see great potential in this business when they dig further.

Since it just launched a few months ago, this phase is more focused on proving the model and they seem to have good data to show this.  With investment and guidance, I wouldn’t be surprised to see someone take advantage of the platform that this team has built to expand into new geographic markets, new segments such as group deals and other areas.

The company plans on talking with investors in a few months and I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about them in the near future.

I just had a great time visiting a place in Colombia called Chinacota.  This was actually the place where my mom was born and where I spent some great vacation days as a child when we’d come down to Colombia from Pennslyvania for summer vacation.  My brother insisted that I hook up with him and his friend, Tim, who was also visiting.

Not only was it a bit nostalgic, but it was great fun and gave me some much needed rest as well as an opportunity to disconnect from the daily routine.  It was really great to get away and just relax, have fun and a bit of drink and cigars (my favorite).  My brother had an interesting contraption called “la caja china” shipped over and we roasted a pig inside a box (which was really an oven).

Colombia has a ton of great points including the way it’s people like to have fun and enjoy life.  it was wonderful to see this through the eyes of my brother’s friend (Tim).  He has been having a blast, going to the local country club and playing golf and tennis while at night he enjoys the gettogethers that everyone attends.  There’s just an amazing love of life down here that shows up especially in these smaller towns (away from the capital).

Now it’s back to work and things seem to be coming together nicely with the Founder Institute initiative.  We alrleady have 30 applicants in Bogota and 400 people registered for the conference with Adeo, the creator of the Founder Insititute.  I’ve got a number of options in terms of venues and need to decide which one makes the most sense.

I just got off the phone with Santiago Pinto, an extremely sharp entrepreneur/angel investor from Argentina.  A few years ago, he got to talking with Smowtion, a global ad network with a speciality for recruiting quality niche publishers, co-founder and CEO Andrés Alterini and decided to invest US $500k in the company.  Within the last year (when I last spoke with Santiago), they’ve not only tripled the number of publishers (more than 100k) that they work with, but have also become an “Endeavor company.”

Santiago is a veteran of the Internet business having previously co-founded and sold companies such as Gauchonet and Bumeran in Latin America. After spending any bit of time with Santiago, it’s obvious that this is a man who gets things done and surrounds himself with people just like him.

There are thousands of reasons you could theoretically give for why an Argentinean company shouldn’t be able to penetrate such a competitive market (their biggest market segment is in the US).  Nevertheless, Santiago doesn’t seem to have much time for theories; he and his colleagues prefer action.

I’m sure we’ll all be hearing a lot more about Santiago and any company he’s involved with and that’s why he’s a mover and shaker and someone to watch.

Thanks to blogging, I’m able to meet some incredible human beings.  In some cases, such as with Marco Vanossi, founder of Sao Paulo-based mobile visual search engine, Pe2, it’s still only through digital channels, but the impression I have is outstanding. He’s got youth (20’s), intelligence (interesting IP developed by him), persistence (more on that later) and the human touch (as so many Brazilians do).  Come to think of it, I think I hate him.  Just kidding.

A few months back, Marco took the time to tell me his story and I was blown away by a number of things not the least of which was his ability to stick to his guns.  Apparently, he’s had some opportunities to make some deals, which would have helped him advance with his company, but, which he felt was not in his long term interest.  It takes a lot of “cojones” to stick to your guns like that.

Since our first conversation, I’ve seen Marco travel to Silicon Valley and become much more visible on the web.  He’s preparing to announce something exciting in the near future.  Either way, I’m sure I’ll be writing more about him in the future (as will the media in general).  This is an intelligent, talented and persistent entrepreneur who is a mover and a shaker and definitely “someone to watch!”

On a personal note, it was great to pick my twin brother up at the airport last night for his yearly visit. We’re psyched for Thursday, which is the day we’ve chosen to spend time together.  Twin power!