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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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Most of us have special requests when we travel, but don’t really expect our lodging providers to be interested in these much less take them into account.  Nevertheless, celebrities, heads of state and royalty can depend on their lodging providers to cater to their every whim.  If Alexander Torrenegra, serial web entrepreneur, has his way, you’ll soon be traveling like a true Diva.

Alexander’s new venture, called LetMeGo.com, offers travelers the chance to upload their travel arrangements along with dates, places and special instructions to the site.  Afterwards, users allow all types of lodging providers (e.g., vacation homes, Bed and Breakfasts, hotels, etc.) to bid on their itinerary.   Each user can see the pricing and other data that is sent by each provider and each bidder can see other bids, but none of this information is made public; it’s between the user and the lodging providers.

There’s a lot that goes into a site like LetMeGo.com and Alex is no stranger to building such sites.  A number of years ago, after observing how difficult it was for his wife to promote her voiceover services, he created Voice123.com and has since positioned it as the leading site for promoting voiceover talent.  Almost as interesting as the niche he chose for this Internet venture is how he decided to build it.

Alex moved to the states several years ago after growing up in Colombia, South America.  Fortunately, he stayed in contact with his college friends and set up a development center in Bogota where principal development for Voice123.com took place and where LetMeGo.com was gestated during the past two years.  Alex is a perfectionist and relishes his role as a Product Manager and Customer Experience Manager just as much as CEO and he puts the talent at his company on a par with any engineers, designers and managers in the states.

Although he’s worked with computers since an early age, he honed his web skills as a consultant (webmaster, SEO, etc.) in 2000 for companies such as Terra and at lodging web site Rentalo.com.  He soon realized that there were inefficiencies in the lodging industry due to the fact that much of the digital infrastructure was riding atop early work in travel reservation systems such as Sabre and the industry was ripe for new model that incorporated social networking and a reverse action model into the mix.

When I was a Venture Capitalist in Latin America, I was struck by the lack of ambition of a lot of startups as well as questions about their ability to execute.  With LetMeGo.com, I see a highly ambitious objective (the vacation rental market alone is estimated to be a $24B opportunity in the US) as well as a team with the chops to execute.  My biggest concern for the company is that fact they may be biting off more than they can chew, but that qualm quickly goes away as I chat more with Alex.

It is truly amazing what the LetMeGo.com team has been able to build up to this point and they already have a good number of hotel and lodgings signed up.  In my mind, the biggest hurdle is getting enough users to actually insert their itineraries and, in general, changing customer and supplier behavior (talk about ambitious).  Nevertheless, they understand the size of the challenges ahead and will continue to market their site: they have an aggressive affiliate program ready to launch as well as plans to translate the site to Spanish, Portuguese and Mandarin or Cantonese.

All and all, it’s quite a grand undertaking, but I wouldn’t bet against Alex and his team (I’ve met them in Colombia).  They are passionate, competent and driven to make their vision a reality.  As I write about digital innovation in Latin America, I’m continually on the lookout for interesting companies for Venture Capital firms and I would put LetMeGo.com at the top of the list.  They have the team, a big pond (market) to swim in and business as well as technical acumen.  A VC with strong network connections and added capital would make the mix all the more powerful and, possibly, create a lot more Divas in the process.

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The days of multimillion-dollar CRM projects being closed left and right by the likes of Siebel have given way to thousands of dollars for CRM and Sales force Automation systems offered by Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors.  Nevertheless, Marketing and Sales have many more processes that can benefit from automation and Eloqua and its CEO, Joe Payne, offer a compelling solution to improve Marketing processes and align them (at least technologically) more with Sales.

Eloqua has been innovating in the Marketing Automation space for the last 10 years and thanks to their SaaS model can also incorporate best practice business processes into their offerings at a fraction of what it would have cost to deliver this value only a few years ago.  I actually used to work for SAS Institute and saw first hand how costly deploying a top of the line on premises solution can be and how long such an application can take to start producing results.  I’ve always been curious about the “Eloqua” name and Joe cleared that up for me when he mentioned that the URL for the word “eloquent” was already taken, hence, “Eloqua” was born.

Though not as well known as CRM, Marketing Automation is excellent for reading prospects’ digital body language. In other words, as prospects click through the web and on company websites, they leave a trail of valuable information of which companies rarely avail themselves to provide users with personalized experiences.  A system such as that offered by Eloqua can automate the process whereby your company builds a relationship with that prospect in order to convert them to a qualified lead and, then, customer.

This market has a long way to go and Joe mentioned that the space is probably only about 4% penetrated.  As companies continue to migrate more of their Sales and Marketing budgets to the web, the possibility to achieve greater measurability of their efforts and actually have that measurability drive their actions, will be quite compelling.  The current global financial situation will only accelerate this trend. It’s so great to talk with innovative leaders like Joe, because now, more than ever, they’re excited about the global opportunity. One thing that surprised me is that Joe does speak a little Spanish though he mentioned that his children are better at it than he is.

Eloqua helps large companies as well as smaller ones with half its customers generating less than US $50M in yearly sales.  Even smaller companies can work with Eloqua partners called Marketing Services Partners that not only take care of the technical intricacies of Marketing Automation, but can also help companies create, store and distribute one of their most valuable new assets: digital content.

Eloqua customers include companies such as VMWare, Adobe, Omniture (now part of Adobe) and Rosetta Stone.  In the B2C space, the company works with the Miami Heat basketball team as well as ADP among others.  The fact that Omniture was a client impressed me since Omniture is known for their own measurement software.  Nevertheless, this brought home the fact that Marketing Automation integrates a number of different technologies with one end result:  measurable impact. To this point, Joe mentioned a hospitality customer which deployed Eloqua and achieved a US $1M improvement in their Sales and Marketing efforts in a relatively short period of time.

In Latin America, I think there is an excellent opportunity for Marketing Service Partners that already have a stable of clients to start offering this type of (outsourced) service.  Integrating the offering within a complete package makes customer education an easier proposition and will provide benefits in the form of: 1) Better prioritization of leads and 2) The ability to nurture prospects into qualified leads.

Although large companies are the most obvious candidates for such a solution, medium size business in Latin America that decide to adopt these best practices in Sales and Marketing (complemented with some consulting), will have obvious competitive advantages in the marketplace.   Thanks to the maturation of the SaaS model, I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before these types of services start to proliferate in the region.

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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.

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After reading The Age of Engage by Denise Shiffman, I felt that it was one of those rare books that clearly explains the implications (for organizations) of adopting online marketing strategies.  Having the opportunity to talk with Denise about her book and her perspectives was not only stimulating, but also, incredibly enlightening.  The conversation started off with an excellent mental exercise when Denise posited, “What would you do if TV and print went away?”

This simple conjecture certainly focuses your mind in order to more clearly comprehend the paradigm shift that is happening in marketing, today.  Basically, instead of marketing being a monologue, digital technologies have made it possible to have conversations with your customers: a proposition which can be frightening if the company in question isn’t a good “conversationalist.”  According to Denise, if that happens to be the case and said company embarks on a social media strategy without anything interesting to talk about, it’s likely that few customers will engage (as has happened to some brands).

Denise explained that a social media strategy is much more than making use of some tools.  It involves thinking about what your brand stands for and what you want to communicate.   More importantly, it’s about being authentic and building trust and conversing with your prospects and customers where they happen to be.   This is quite a change from traditional media where companies have been accustomed to controlling a specific message, which is relayed through a few well-established channels (e.g., print, television, etc.) to a mass audience.  There’s only one problem as Denise pointed out, customers are listening less and less to these mass messages.

Thanks to her unique background which includes a degree in Sociology, a Masters in Business and stints as a Vice President of Marketing for companies such as Sun Microsystems, Denise brings her own distinct perspective to the intersection of marketing and digital technologies. Specifically, she finds the current convergence of people’s behavior and the state of technological development truly exciting.  Even more, according to her, technology is actually allowing companies to behave more like real people.

When I brought up the Latin American market, she was quick to mention the fact that a country such as Brazil is known to have speedily adopted social networking technologies.  Indeed, studies have shown that Latin Americans and Hispanics have great adopters of social networking and are among the most active networkers once they adopt these platforms.

User adoption is great, but why are so many companies in Latin America basically ignoring their users by not engaging them more on these platforms?  When I asked Denise this, she relayed her observations from about seven years ago in the US, when social media was just ramping up. At that time, there was a notable generational gap between company directors (including CEO’s) and their younger workforce.  While younger workers were blogging and adopting these technologies, many C-level executives were almost oblivious to the changes taking place.  From what I’ve observed, a similar situation (there are some differences) is playing out in Latin America.

As Denise explained, the Internet offers an incredibly cost-effective, measurable platform for engaging customers. Ignoring this runs the risk of tarnishing your reputation, which is exactly what happened to Dell several years ago when customers filled the social networking “air waves” with tales of the company’s customer service failures.  Back then, Dell was ill-prepared to respond to such communications and its image suffered as a result.  Such situations have a way of hitting the bottom line relatively quickly and the company has since improved markedly in this area.

As Denise points out, there is a convergence of how people behavior and the maturation of digital technologies, which can only serve to accelerate the changes already underway.  Even companies that one would not normally associate with the digital technology adoption such as Indium Corporation, a metal alloy and solder manufacturer, are engaging more deeply with customers through a well thought out blogging and online strategy. It’s up to Latin American companies whether they, too, wish to take advantage of these tools.  The alternative is to bet exclusively on traditional media while their customers flock to digital media looking for interesting conversations.

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I’ve been a fan of Frances Cairncross since reading her insightful book, The Company of the Future, about the changes taking place within organizations and within society as a result of the accelerating adoption of digital technologies.  Although books on new technologies seem to be published by the bushel, I’ve found that good ones dedicated to the impact that these technologies are having on organizations and people are few and far between.   That’s why I was so happy that Frances graciously accepted my request to speak with her.

A lot has happened since 2002 when The Company of the Future was first published and I was extremely curious about Frances’ perspective on things now that many of the technologies (collaborative and otherwise) had progressively improved.  After writing for the The Economist for two decades (most recently as its Management Editor), Frances Cairncross, today, is the Rector of Exeter College at Oxford University where she gets charged by the interaction and education of young people many of whom are sure to be leaders of the future.

I have always been extremely interested in explaining the impact of new technologies to the people who can make the most use of them (usually, not technologists themselves).  I think that’s a key reason for my interest in Frances’ work.  When I mentioned this to her, she reminded me that this is precisely the perspective that economists such as Alfred Marshall have brought to the table in explaining the impact of the telegraph and trains on organizational structures more than a hundred years ago.

I was curious about her ruminations on recent developments and the first area that we spoke about was the current economic environment (e.g., financial crisis, etc.).  She mentioned that the financial crisis seems to be pulling organizations in different directions at once as they try to react and adapt to the new reality (inducing investment in technology), but also increasingly question any additional spending (putting pressure on investments in technology and other areas).  It’s a dichotomy that will only grow more intense not only because of the current economic climate, but also because organizations continue to grapple with the changes brought about the accelerating pace of adoption and development of digital tools.

One of the areas that Frances mentioned as ripe for tremendous change is the public sector now that governments will come under increasing pressure to make the most of any funds available to them.  She mentioned that each day there are new examples of innovative ways of delivering government services by better adoption of digital platforms from places such as Singapore and Hong Kong.  Nevertheless, she expects to see much more change in the near future.

We spoke quite a bit about change in general and, as an economist, she understands how slow cultural change can be, but has been a keen observer of its progress.  In her current position at Oxford, she’s been able to witness the behavior of young people and how different things have become.  For instance, whereas in the past, congregating at a specific time and place either required precision planning and promotion (or luck), today, a quick message on a cell phone can move groups of young people with the synchronicity of a school of fish.   Although organizations are still trying to understand how to make use of all of these new digital tools (not only Internet, but also, mobile-based), newer generations have it in their DNA.

Finally, I asked Frances about her thoughts on the opportunities available to people and countries in Latin America.  She quickly suggested that these should look at examples of companies such as one that she was able to visit in Costa Rica, which provided technical services to orthodontists stateside by crafting models of patient’s teeth and shipping these through one of the priority mail carriers.  In other words, look for high quality production that is now a possibility for Latin American companies, as the “death of distance” becomes more of a reality.

All in all, having the chance to talk with Frances was enjoyable and helped me tremendously in terms of gaining additional insight into the changes that are happening before our eyes.  Either way, I hope she continues to put her ideas in writing because it would continue to enrich the public discourse.

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