Colombia Startup Hub Is A Jungle
Colombia Is One Of Latin America’s Most Promising New Tech Hubs
This was the title of a flattering article Techcrunch published in 2014 and today almost everyone in Colombia agrees with that. But people also agree with the fact that Colombia is still a rat race for entrepreneurs, with all its dangers and potential rewards.
When we think about Startups Ecosystem of LatAm, we immediately think about Chile or Brazil and we should ! Political and economic situations in these two countries have been stable for years now but trust me : Colombia has everything to catch up.
To truly appreciate what it takes to launch a business here in Colombia, I shared a jugo de maracuya with Miguel Rivera — Product Owner @ Grability, an amazing startup that reinvents how we do grocery shopping online. Today Grability is probably one of the future big Colombian success-stories. But as every success-story, the founders have faced a lot of difficulties in recent years. It was especially about the nature of these issues that Miguel & I discussed.
WHAT DAMPENS ENTREPRENEURS IN COLOMBIA
Latin Americans are known to be proud people, sometimes “macho” ones. It is a bit exaggerated but as a consequence success is something crucial : you cannot fail ! Success is still measurable to how big your car is, how fancy your clothes are, how beautiful you are. As a result of that there is still a huge social pressure on “losers”. Here failure is not an option unlike in Europe where we believe that you learn more with a failure than with everything else (“fake it until you make it”). A lot of brillant people with great ideas are afraid to try. Miguel for instance has never launched a business because his parents bankrupted one of their business. He knows how hard is it to bounce back here and that if you fail no-one will help you.
Colombian people are really money-driven and so are VCs! Unfortunately for entrepreneurs the country faces a real lack of VCs and private investment in startups. Undeniably the startup scene is maturing but investment backing is still in its early stage. To offset this dearth of funding, government begins to invest in startups and new techs but public investments cannot replace private ones. We see the same phenomenon with incubators in the country : most of them are run by the state.
WHY COLOMBIA IS PERFECT TO START A BUSINESS
So why is the country considered as one of the next big Startup Hub? Why do big tech companies (the GAFA for instance) love to work with Colombian people?
One simple answer is that here you can find a good working force for nothing. Let us take the example of a good engineer. In France or western Europe you will pay him / her around 5000€ (minimum). In Colombia you can hire a good engineer for less than 2000€ ! And I am talking about engineers, imagine the price for low-skilled workers. Also people here are really passionate : when they do something they do it at 200%.
“People in Colombia are real hard-working : they like to sweat like Rocky” — Miguel
As said above earlier, the Colombian government understands the necessity to help the advent of a mature Tech scene. First it has struggled with the insecurity issues and helped open the country to foreign people and investments. Then, and waiting for the startup ecosystem to stand-alone, the government implements a lot of public incentives via taxes and backing. It has for instance created iNNPulsa which promote entrepreneurship and back entrepreneurs (financially and via mentoring) or Apps.co which subsidized millions of dollars to accelerators or university programs.
However if the global situation of the country has truly improved, there are still tons of problems regarding infrastructures, services, natural resources, tourism, … and each problem is a potential market for entrepreneurs ! A country without any problems is a country that doesn’t need entrepreneurs. If you visit Bogotá or Medellin, you will immediately feel that the startup scene is growing fast in Colombia. Even if it seems harder to launch a business here, mentalities are changing and people begin to want to change their society. Actually, Colombia looks like France 15 or 20 years ago but I am quite sure that the country will quickly catch up its lateness.
