The security guard at the outside of the bank had the same words for everyone that came through the door: “The system is down!”. The look on my grandpa’s face was a mix of a laugh and frustration. Inside the bank we talk to one of the cashiers: “This usually takes 5 minutes, but when is longer than that it usually takes several hours, so It’s going to take a while. There’s been 30 minutes so far.” We asked if we could go to another branch, at which he said: “Oh no, this is a national thing. The whole system is down.” Nothing to do there. No pension today.

This happened in Banco de Venezuela, the main back of the country, owned by the government. The one which, is supposed to be the safest one, theoretically. This system issue, we understand later in the day when we tried to paid the groceries, made all transactions unavailable. You couldn’t get cash from the ATM, you couldn’t pay with your debit card and you could’t retrieve money from the bank. Simply put, you are not able to use your money while “the system is down”. The most noxious thing of all this? This thing happens frequently.

The Startup Cookbook

Software and Internet is changing the world. The entity known as Startup, which typically is refers to a software-related company, has become one of the main game changers in the last decades. Their power to escalate quickly, the low cost to maintain the systems and the large adoption of computers and internet-able devices in the last years has allow to create large impact in a really fast way. We are the generation that have seen Google, Facebook, Dropbox and Apple been mass adopted in a matter of years. We, the ones that used Yahoo and Altavista to look for this text documents called “websites” on something called “internet” have witnessed their power, impact and have been inspired by their stories.

Nowadays, Startups are growing quicker and their solutions are stretching to almost every subject: House cleaning, 3D printers, Taxis, accommodations, Food and many others. Even that in general, the risks involved in creating a Startup are really high and most of those companies will eventually fail, it does discourage people to keep pushing and keep creating solutions. Because, in this case, the higher the stakes the higher the rewards, too.

But, why to create a Startup? How you create one? And what will you create? This questions have many answers and some respected people on the business have explain this point with much detail. But let’s say you want to create something valuable, something important, you want to put a dent in the universe. Well, one of the main suggestions you’ll read in interviews, books and videos is to make a list.

Is often recommended to write somewhere a list of problems you find on your everyday life and try to solve them. Theory says, if you have this problems, maybe many people also have them and may pay for a solution.

Seems valid… right?

The Solitude of Venezuela

Later in the day, we decided to do a quick stop into the supermarket. There was a huge line in each one of the cashiers. I took a deep breath and keep looking what I was needing. I didn’t found the articles I needed and end up buying Butter and some cookies that I had long time without seen at the stores. On the line, a lady asked my grandpa if he could pay some Corn Flour packages for her; one can only take 4 per person and it’s a really hard item to found nowadays so you must buy more in order to stock for later days. An hour and a half later, that we got to go out of the Supermarket, I did another stop at the pharmacy, where again, didn’t found what I was looking for and the cashier suggested me: “Don’t you want shampoo? you should buy it, we don’t know when we will stock back.” I had shampoo at home, but I bought two, because you never know…

For any Venezuelan, this is an everyday struggle. We could add this to our “Problems to solve list”. The internet services yesterday went off for at least 5 hours, I have to ISP, both were down. Day before yesterday the electricity went out for at least 3 hours, and this usually happens twice a week. At which I consider myself lucky, some friends of mine in other zones spend 12 hours of no electricity. Water supply? It depends on where you live, but chances are you will have some hours where the service will be shut down in order to save some water. It’s not a money or class issue, it affects everyone.

So we have in our list: scarcity, electricity, water, internet and long lines. We could add to it, frequent holes in the street, garbage and maybe an unexpected protest somewhere around the city.

The main issue with this problems, is that there’s no need for a new idea to solve them. This problems have been solved many years ago. Water supply, Electricity distribution and Food logistics were issues at the beginning of the XX century, they shouldn’t be one on 2014. Sadly, they are.

It’s hard to find global solutions when your country in more a singularity than an average. The Venezuelan case, each day is becoming an exception in every aspect: serious issues at the base of the Maslow pyramid, economical instability, restricted markets, almost no competition, and many other things.

So, are we destined to fail because of our homeland? Is our ability to create solutions so affected and distorted beyond help?

We are, Latin American Rockers

Truth be told, many of the issues faced by Venezuelans, are shared with the rest of Latin America, just that here we see them amplified. Crime, corruption, poor education, scarcity, rural labor, entrepreneurship, trading, goods distribution, transportation related issues, security, just to name a few are shared by most of the South American and Central American countries. These aren’t new. We’ve been living with this kind of difficulties since decades. But you know what? That’s our main advantage.

Confused? Ok, let’s talk about numbers.

While North America had a 84% of internet penetration for December 2013, South America had only 54% and Central America 38%, this clearly shows that there are many potential users in LatinAmerica yet. Almost a half of Sudamerica haven’t reached any of the internet services that are so famous today.

Last year Latin America had a 21% grown in internet usage while North America just had 1%. This clearly state that in spite of the low bandwidths, each year there are more people joining the internet, via internet-able devices or computers in our countries.

This new users, have different characteristics than many of the early adopters of the web. Their needs will be different, the solutions the will crave will be diverse and will be really hard to predict from Silicon Valley. But we, the ones that have been inspired by the stories, that are decided to create, to lead a change, to create new products have live though many of the issues that this new users have. As Latin americans we understand that even that most of us speak the same language there are fundamental differences between our lifestyles and cultures, but also that there are many things that unite us.

We have a lead advantage to create products and solutions for a growing market that is way different than the one we are custom to, than the one we’ve read on books and watch in movies. I think that new books and movies should be written and that our problems may result on one of our best opportunities.

While following the ideas and essence The Startup Mindset: building products people love, focusing of design, user experience and growth, new everlasting solutions could be created, this solutions may not just satisfy this new Latin American user, but also users from other Third world Countries that may be having the same struggles than we do everyday.

Latin flavored solutions

The main concept is to look beyond the structural issues related with the current situation of the country, and try to identify the core problems. The ones that may be shared with other fellow countries. A good idea would be to have a “validation network” with you. A group of friends that live in other Latin American countries that could be asked if the same issue is experienced by them. Let’s take two examples or core issues and their solution. In this specific case is related with transport:

Any Latin American, have some experience on how hard is it to find bus tickets easily, most of the times you must go in person to the bus station, which is a waste of time. Companies like Busportal in Peru, are making easy to their citizens the access to bus tickets from anywhere in the country. This startup found a problem in Peru, but that also is present in other countries in the region.

Sometimes you need to move from one place to another and a bus is not a solution, but there are very few taxi companies that operates in the whole country. Most of the times are little companies organice by city zones, so you need an specific telephone number everytime. EasyTaxi, is a brasilian company with a proposal similar to Uber or Lyft, but adapted to the Latin American market that provides a solution for this problem. The power behind this startup it’s not software, but the system created to organize and recruit Taxi Drivers. It has quickly escalated to many countries in the region, even to Venezuela!

This kind of solutions might look odd in places like Silicon Valley or other First World Startup Centres. Buying a bus ticket there, for example, might not be an issue there. A recruiting system like the one of Easy Taxi, may not seem interesting for those places. And it shouldn’t be, the markets are different because the cultures are different. Their realities are different.

I believe that thinking first-world type of solutions in a place which its situation is nowhere close to the average country may lead to distortions and false assumptions. One must be located close to target user/market or in constant communication or contact with it.

Let’s use our years as citizens in this part of the world as our advantage and create the solutions for the ones that are coming. For the ones that don’t know yet there’s another way. It’s in our hands the ability to help/improve our continent.