Interestingly though, some of the best initiatives and creative ideas I’ve encountered so far come from everyday people with no knowledge of online entrepreneurship or connection to the startup world.

For example, in Cartagena there was the dance instructor who runs a school that showcases traditional dances from all over the country that I could see being a big hit in festivals abroad. Also, the sports therapist starting up her business in the city who was originally taught her craft by a Shaman in the Amazon.

These initiatives all have one thing in common — they are all run by women. According to society’s stereotypes this might seem unusual, as described in a the recent Guardian newspaper headline below:

Entrepreneurs are expected to be white and male. We need to change this.

Sir Tim Berners Lee, the founder of the world wide web, echoed this sentiment at Leweb, a recent conference in Paris I attended.

In addition to the quote above, he spoke about the challenge of getting more women into tech entrepreneurship. He also said that changing society’s expectations was imperative in order to create a future world not totally dominated by the male gender.

As I have found, there are definitely undiscovered female entrepreneurs — even if they don’t brag about being entrepreneurs. By acknowledging and supporting them, we could all benefit more — for example by helping them be a part of a startup ecosystem or whatever other means necessary. I have been trying to help by teaching what I know about online marketing & programming. I have also introducing others that can help as well as building websites (which helps with my own portfolio), mailing lists and online workflows. I did this for both the sports massage service and the dance school previously mentioned.

It’s interesting that there are so many startups in accelerators and incubators who are still struggling to find their product and market fit. Then, you have a 22 year old girl working in a full time customer service job and attending university in the evenings, with two side projects that not only have the potential of becoming great businesses but are light years ahead of us in many respects. In fact, the tech startup community could actually benefit by learning from her and others like her.

She originally started posting pictures on Instagram of clothes and jewellery from her sister’s store.

Many of the clients at the bank she worked in, had disposable income. She would show them the accessories or jewellery and more often than not, they would be interested in purchasing. By word of mouth, friends of friends would be sent her way and photos were passed around and shared on Whatsapp. She dealt with delivery by asking her father to drive around and deliver items for her. She’s now trying to figure out a feasible way of sending clothes to Medellin, Bogota and other parts of the country.

Her second initiative came out of a headband that she sewed for herself. The headband proved quite popular with all her friends so she started making more and selling them.

When it came to the World Cup, she started producing them in the Colombian colours and sold them to a shop — although to her dismay, found that the shop was selling them at a substantial markup — 12,000 pesos compared to the 5,000 she had sold them for. The shop then also completely sold out her product.

She’s now been asked to produce 120 of these headbands before carnival in February. In the meantime, she works all day at the bank and attends University in the evenings where she studies business administration.

I put her in touch with the Tarud brothers who run Koombea, a digital agency who also recently opened a new space called Area Dos. This space has been used to launched a startup accelerator program that happens to be just across the road from the bank she works at. A recent Techcrunch article on Colombia describes them well:

In Barranquilla, on the Caribbean coast, the startup ecosystem revolves around Koombea and its charismatic founder, Jonathan Tarud. Many of the city startups are helped by the company and its has taken a leadership role in the startup ecosystem, becoming active supporters of events such as Startup Weekend, among others.

The Colombian government is also known to give grants of up to $150,000 for startups (as they did with Tappsi) with solid business plans.

I’m hoping she will benefit from this in some way or another.

There are still challenges. Talking to Eric Tarud, it became apparent how tricky and expensive it still is to process online payments in Colombia. This makes creating small ecommerce platforms difficult — and this is one of the reasons why the informal economy and people selling things cash in hand on Instagram is so prevalent and unfortunately not a very scalable or efficient business model. Somehow Tappsi, the safe Taxi app has been able to find a way of accepting credit card payments. I hope to be able to talk to one of the founders when in Medellin next week and find out how they managed to solve this problem.

Let’s go back to the main protagonists in the story — the unassuming girl with a natural entrepreneurial instinct, the sports therapist and dance instructor. I believe that there are plenty of other everyday people with creative talent and initiative out there that are still underrepresented. I’d like to try and do my part to help encourage, nurture and connect these individuals with the startup world to propel their ideas to the next level. I hope others feel the same way.