Silicon Drinkabout Blossoming in Latin-America
We love our Silicon Drinkabout organisers for supporting their local startup communities, all over the world. When one of them put his hand up and said he wanted to help grow the event to more Latin American cities we of course jumped at the chance. Meet Emiliano, Silicon Drinkabout Evangelist and all round awesome person!
Hi Emiliano — in a few sentences can you tell me a bit about yourself?
I was born in La Pampa, in the countryside of Argentina, a place full of farms, animals and peace and quiet. I decided to bring more action to my life, so I moved to big cities to study and for work. I lived in Córdoba, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, San Francisco, Brisbane, Rio de Janeiro and, since 2013, I have been living in São Paulo.
How did you get involved in Silicon Drinkabout?
When I arrived in Sao Paulo I started a digital business in the area of tourism, so I needed to create a team both of developers and sales people. I created an account at meetup.com and that’s it! Silicon Drinkabout São Paulo was an option for networking with entrepreneurs, so I got in touch and got involved!
What do you enjoy most about being a SD organiser?
I love bringing people together and connecting them to my network because its a great way to empower them — both my contacts and these entrepreneurs can be full of doubts of how to start a business, create a team, test their product, etc. We started with 5 people in a small bar, and now we are minimum 40–60 people every Friday. We had lots of crowded Fridays gathering 250 people with Yelp, Plug, Cubo and other sponsors. I got a job as a result of Silicon Drinkabout and now I am a partner of the biggest cowoking space of Brazil. Lot of people get jobs and partners and start businesses here, its amazing! Now, I am stepping down from the organisation in Sao Paulo and 8 amazing entrepreneurs are coordinating Silicon Drinkabout. It was not easy, I suffered and was scared, but here we are, because we were tough and people helped and trusted our the goal. Now, its Latam’s turn!
And now you’re the community evangelist for Silicon Drinkabout Latin America! What does that mean to you?
We have a bunch of entrepreneurs in different communities with tremendous ideas, starting to create big businesses. We need to encourage them, we need to gather these cities — Buenos Aires, Santiago, Lima, São Paulo — to create the strongest possible region for innovation. Brazil is huge; it’s got money and very creative people. Silicon Drinkabout will put them all on the same map so we can address business needs and challenges together. With our simultaneous, weekly events we hope to provide the opportunity to democratise the connections here and improve accessibility. As it stands, only a few have access to important and key people. Silicon Drinkabout is free, there’s no expensive membership, just sign up and you have are welcome. We work hard to create the best environment by connecting with key spaces like coworking hubs, incubators and also mentors and investors.
Tell me more about Latin America and the startup scene there.
Latam is a very rich region, we have a considerable market and lots of big corps and startups are here. We have lots of problems to be solved here. We are more likely to create startups to solve real world problems than to create the next Facebook or tesla. True story!
Fintech business is growing really fast: Mexico and Brazil are the main players in the region. The platforms for marketing, sales and digital created here are fantastic like RD Station, Content Tools, Rock Content, Samba Tech, Pipefy (better than Trello in my own opinion) among others. I haven’t much experience of other countries but I’m sure we have excellent developers here, plus Brazilians and Argentinians are very creative. It’s also much cheaper to live and run a business here compared with Europe and the US for example. Marketplace companies such as Easy Taxi, Uber and Cabify are showing that we are a potential market. Argentina is the eldest community that in 1995 started to sell flights online. Then, MercadoLibre comes up as the equivalent of E-Bay in the US. The thing is that Argentina is a small country — only 20M people of their 40M population are really a potential market.
Argentinian startups need to go to Brazil and Mexico, and then the rest of Latam. Chile and Uruguay are in the same situation of Argentina. Brazilians start locally and then grow inside the country, but then they go out. Every country except Brazil start globally, first Latam and then, the rest of world.
Silicon Drinkabout is a global community — is that important to people in Latin America?
Yes, 2 very close friends, both ex-organisers and members of the meetup are working in Europe. We received Brazilians that were living in Berlin and Brussels and they know Silicon Drinkabout from there. That is amazing! That proves that Silicon Drinkabout works! The networking (that some people think is only drinking and chatting) actually works and does help people and their businesses, no matter at what stage they are.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Gracias, Obrigado and Thank You to the people that built this community and keep it stronger everyday. Thank you Vicky for being a dreamer and for starting this amazing event. Thanks to my wife that supports me and awaits me every Friday until 11pm when I arrive home from the meetup ❤
Well thank you Emiliano, it’s been a real pleasure.
