Building the bridge between Mexico and Latin America with Seedstars Connect

After going around 11 countries in Latin America, one thing in particular surprised us: a lot of the entrepreneurs we had met weren’t considering Latin America within their expansion plans. It was usually their country then the neighboring ones, then Mexico or USA.

There are some initiatives promoting regional collaboration such as Alianza del Pacifico and there are a couple of regional accelerators such as NXTP Labs and Wayra however we detected there was a need to push for this regional collaboration. We started a pilot program in Mexico this year called Seedstars Connect. Within this program, supported by Instituto Nacional del Emprendedor (INADEM), we accompanied 8 Mexican entrepreneurs to 4 high-growth countries in the region to help them explore expansion opportunities. From Mexico we traveled to Santiago, Chile, Lima, Peru, Bogota, Colombia and Sao Paulo, Brazil together, where we helped them connect with local ecosystem players and key industry partners.

Here’s what some of the entrepreneurs have to say about the program:

“Our visit expanded our vision. As an entrepreneur, we all have certain ideas how things work in other countries. That is, until we had the opportunity to speak with the leaders in our industry in Chile, who assured us that the mobility problems in Mexico are quite different as those in Chile.”
Ramón Carmona, co-founder of Bussi, a van sharing platform for commute

“ Visiting Peru- and South America for the first time- allowed me to confirm the need to market our product in this country. This trip permitted me to confirm that Peruvians are confronted to the same problems as Mexicans in healthcare.
Zaid Badwan, CEO of Mediprint, a company that helps people recover their capabilities with high tech medical solutions using 3D printing technologies

“Borders are invisible nowadays. The best option is to collaborate, discover other ideas and support each other as entrepreneurs”
Yuri Cortes, COO of Homesquad, a platform to book cleaning services for homes and offices in less than 90 seconds

“ It was an amazing experience, it helped me identify the market in Colombia, I met lawyers, accounting partners, everyone from the startup ecosystem, it was a lot of networking!
José Luis Altamirano, Commercial Director of City Wifi, a startup transforming wifi sharing into a revenue stream

“This type of initiative is very important. It’s great to see that INADEM is helping startups get ready to think not just regionally but also internationally. This is the only way to change our vision in Latin America.
Leonardo Mirón, founder of Gus, a mobile personal assistant powered by AI

“We found out that Brazil is a very interesting and is similar market(culturally speaking) to Mexico. In our country, there are 500’000 wedding per year but in Brazil there are 1mio weddings annually! This pushed us to develop our platform in English and Portuguese to launch in Brazil by mid-2016.
Raúl González Franco, founder and CMO of Uniko, a cash-Backed Online wedding registry