Startup Landscape in Latin America
To bring this 3 part series of posts to a close, I wanted to highlight the tech-startup scene in Latin America. Some of you may be asking yourselves, what is the correlation between the tech-startup scene and brands wanting to market in the region? — there is a relationship! When you look at technology for the sake of technology, you may miss the most important aspect of it — which is innovation.
StartUp Organizations in Latin America
Facebook and twitter are result of tech-startups and venture capital firms working together for the next big thing. When you look at these two today, these platforms that allow brands to reach millions of people around the world at the push of a button. For this very reason, knowing what is happening with the tech-startup scene in Latin America is as important as knowing the state of mobile users and digital infrastructure in the region. For all we know, the next Facebook, Foursquare or even Pinterest may come from our friends in the south. With that in mind, I wanted to highlight some of the interesting aspects I found useful from across the web.
Different from there is a new comer to the top, the tech-startup scene is being spearheaded by others in the region. Nations like Chile and Argentina are pushing forward in the innovation front. In Chile, “StatUpChile.org” is a governmental initiative to attracts early sage entrepreneurs to get their ideas going within their eco-system. Just this January 23rd in Chile, the government passed a law where entrepreneurs can open a company at zero cost upfront in 1 days time over the web. This will certainly make it easier for startups to concentrate in what they do best, innovation.
In Argentina, there are a few accelerators that are making the startup eco-system to boast with innovation. These are NXTP Labs and Wayra, among others. NXTP Labs provide startup with advice, a space to work as well as seed money for qualified startups to get their businesses going. On the other hand, Wayra is a worldwide initiative, and they have a solid presence in Latam. They provide a wide variety of support and encourage startups to apply for the Wayra program. If a startup is selected to be part of Wayra, they may provide financial support starting at thirty thousand dollars and up, depending on the stage, valuation and maturity of the startup. Wayra has partners like PayPal, Nokia and Microsoft just to name a few.
2013 is trailing towards more initiatives in the startup scene. Tech-Blog PulsoSocial.com (a central hub for all thing startup and social media in the region) is partaking in initiatives to foster the startup ecosystem in other countries. By deploying events like PS10(http://ps10.pulsosocial.com/), and helping support events like Wayra DemoDay (http://wayra.org/globaldemoday2012/) and Start-Up Chile (http://startupchile.org/), PusoSocial is doing its part to bring Latin America as a focal point of innovation.
Hasta la próxima!
Originally published at medium.com on May 26, 2014.
