The first edition of Startup Weekend Brasilia started last Friday with 41 elevator pitches and ended up with 14 new startups in the market. The winner is  Eu Consultor (“I Consultant”), a CRM for direct sales.

The idea of Eu Consultor came out based on a problem that Daniel Rochetti, CTO of Trip2gether, was experiencing at home: his wife is a sales consultant and used to work as many other consultants in this direct sales market, i.e., writing down the orders in the catalogues, compiling it in a notebook and then ordering the products at the company’s website. After a while he built a spreadsheet for the second step, but it was definitely not enough to support a good customer relationship and sales management. The team involved used to work together in their initial startup, Trip2gether, so the team integration led to a great execution of the project along the weekend. You can check the business model and great video about the product in its landing page.

Os Músicos (“The Musicians”), a marketplace for musicians and people or companies willing to hire those professionals, got the second place. In this platform you can register or find musicians and events and the first event took place on Monday, before the teams’ presentations.

Savespot, a platform to take reservations in restaurants, got the third place, was featured in the Startup Weekend’s newsletter and started to operate during the weekend, with some reservations completed using the platform.

The following positions involves the fashion industry: Fashionistas, an online look assistant, and TáNaModa, a search engine for the fashion industry, where you can search the right clothes and accessories based on your profile, not just online but also get the addresses of the real world stores with the selected products.

After an intense feedback, the team Challenge.me realized the lack of a consistent business model along the weekend and presented a series of lessons learned that pleased the audience.

The carbon footprint of the event was neutralized by another great startup launched in this edition: KarmaPoints, a solution to boost good actions bringing the online engagement to the real world. Using the KarmaPoints app (and further a web version), anyone can propose a social action involving the community. The sponsors of those actions pay a fee per action and per participants. The sponsors, organizers and participants earn KarmaPoints (check in in the place of the real action is required) and increase their reputation for the good.

Karmapoints proved along the weekend that is possible help people and the environment and also be profitable. The first action was called Startup a tree and besides neutralizing the carbon footprint of the event, was sponsored by seven companies, generating about US$600 in revenue.

It was a great pleasure mentoring those teams along the weekend and I am sure we can expect great things coming from those entrepreneurs in the near future.

Any reporter or public relations (PR) professional in Latin America understand the value that his or her network of contacts has to their being able to get things done.  The cumbersomeness of this process struck Carlos Solorio, an investment banker volunteering for Endeavor, as unnecessary.  In the states, sites such as Vocus offer PR executives more automation, so he decided to quit his lucrative investment banking position and found a new startup called Fursos to automate the PR process in Latin America starting with Spanish-speaking countries.

The site functions similarly to other sites such as HelpaReporter.com whereby, a reporter inserts a query into the system.  That query in turn generates a personal web page with information about the query.  Members can subscribe by RSS as well as by email.

For instance, a subject matter expert could respond to the aforementioned reporter query and provide his or her response and/or quote.  The reporter is then free to choose those responses that meet his criteria.

Estimating the market size for such a service in Latin America is difficult, but Carlos says that in a region with 200 million Internet users, this is the right time to start offering  services such as Fursos.  According to Carlos, the site has already gotten initial traction from firms such as Univision and AOL.

Carlos has worked at a number of investment banks including Barclay’s and is truly a citizen of the world.  He grew up in Arizona and his parents are Mexican. He has lived in a number countries such as China, Thailand, Colombia and Chile.  He currently resides in Medellin, Colombia, but has plans to move to Santiago, Chile next.

The site only just recently launched, but the roadmap includes additional services.  Scheduled features include enhanced member profiles and other premium services.  For now, Carlos is focused on growing the subscriber base and showing reporters and PR people that there is a better way.

Today will be held in New York  the roundtable: ” Outlook  for 2012:  How to build a succesful  tech startup” . The event which  is organized by the  Latin American Venture Capital Association ( LAVCA ) in partnership with  PulsoSocia​l , has the objective of analyzing  the scenario  that  Latin American entrepreneurs face this year. 

In addition to the discussion group, will be  give the award  to  the  winner  of the PulsoStartUp contest .

After 6 weeks, the Brazilian company Everwrite won the first place.  Everwrite,  founded by Diego Gomes and Edmar Oliveira,  is a  web tool that helps bloggers and journalists to  find out  topics and keywords in order to maximize the web content chance of being top ranked  in major search engines, which allows  to earn more   advertising.

You can see the list of the results of the contest our post :Meet the  Top10  startups in LatinAmerica .

The event  takes place  in the offices of Quotidian Ventures, New York

The Brazilian startup scene is having a really nice week and several were awarded in some top of the line competitions, locally and internationally. Let’s take a look on some of those results.

PS10

As featured here, the winner of PulsoSocial’s startup competition is Everwrite, a Brazilian startup that helps bloggers and journalists to discover the topics and keywords that offer real opportunities to rank high in the major search engines, which means more money and advertising profits.

Besides, 4 out of the 5 most online engaging companies among the finalists are from Brazil: Prolancer, Backpacker, Ledface and Helpin. Yes, Brazil is definitely social.

The Crunchies Awards

For the very first time we had a Latin American company winning one of the big awards: Peixe Urbano, the biggest daily deal offers company in the country that has been also expanding to other countries in the region. The company was founded in 2010, has now over 1,000 employees and was funded by the top institutions in the world. Alex Tabor, co-founder and CTO, was on the stage representing the team.

It was definitely a fierce competition, as companies such as Rovio (the creator of Angry Birds) were competing in the same category.

Prêmio IG Startups

After selecting the 10 finalists, the winner was announced in an invitation-only event last night: Benfeitoria, a crowdfunding platform for projects that can change people’s life, free of charge. Dorly Neto, the “Pontífice”  (a joke involving the “Pope” word and the radical of “ponte”/ bridge in Portuguese) of Benfeitoria, in charge of building the bridges at and with the company, represented the team and has made a touching speech.

Here is the other nine finalists: Minha Saúde Online, Boa Lista, Xogo Gaming Network, Fatodoc, Cidade Democrática, KeroCarro, Viva Cinema, Unicaronas and Cia das Mães.

The finals had only one woman among the founders: Daniela Buono, the founder of Cia das Mães, an online store focused on mom-entrepreneurs, including lots of contents for this specific audience. I hope this result and her product can motivate other women to become digital and high tech entrepreneurs in the country!

Congrats for all the winners and we are looking forward to hearing much more good news from them and other successful startups in the following months!

Today we met the best startups in Latin America, but the one who was picked as number 1, was the Brazilian project called Everwrite.

According to Diego Gomes -co-founder-, Everwrite can be described as:

“…A demand information platform focused on helping small/medium media companies to produce content that leverages demand and ROI. Keeping it simple, our vision is to be the “Google Analytics of Demand information for publishers”.

I had the opportunity to interview Diego  Gomes, and we talked about the company and PS10 award.

AX: How and when did you develop the idea for Everwrite?
DG: We always worked for media companies and always had a lot of trouble finding topics that would help us bring more traffic in.

AX: Who’s the team behind Everwrite?
DG: We started EverWrite in July 2011, and we’re a team of 2 founders; Edmar Ferreira, was a big data consultant and worked for several startups such as Omnilogic, Via6, and SwiftRiver and me. I used to run product management for SambaTech, and co-founded ReadWriteWeb Brazil.

AX:  What do you expect in 2012 for Everwrite?
DG: We expect to launch our self serving version really soon, hire more big data engineers and raise our angel round. All this in 2012.

AX:  Have you received any offers (investment, acquisition) for your company?
DG: Yes we already had some offers and we’re talking to some amazing investors. We are starting to raise our seed round right now, so this prize comes very handy, since we’ll be in front of top notch investors in NYC. We’re also going to Launch conference in March.

AX: How do you feel about winning PS10?
DG: It was an amazing experience and we are very happy to be picked among all these great startups. The Latin American market is booming right now, so we really feel like there’s a great value in being recognized by one of the most influential blogs of the market as one of the greatest startups here.

–

Diego and Edmar will be in New York this week to present Everwrite  in the offices of Quotidian Ventures; also, as part of the prizes, they can use for a whole year, one of the co-working spaces with which Bluevia has been working around the world.

If you want to know more about them, follow Everwrite on Twitter or visit their site. Congratulations to all the finalists, and thank you for participate.

Several months ago, at South by Southwest (SxSW) Interactive, the yearly startup and technology event held in Austin, Texas, I had the opportunity to converse with the Markus Lampinen and Valto Loikkanen, cofounders of crowdfunding startup, GrowVC.  I’ve been intrigued by this way of funding startups particularly as a potential option in Latin America where many countries still have an extremely nascent venture capital industry.

GrowVC has been making headway in a number of regions and have been building out their team in Latin America and provides a platform for connecting investors (most of these assign small amounts) and potential startups.  One of the most popular crowdfunding startups has been Kickstarter, which focuses on funding creative projects.  Similarly, Fondeadora is a company that recently launched in Mexico using similar model.

Indeed, though new, there has been some excitement building around this model.  For instance, Latin American startup Nuflick is building a platform to fund and distribute independent films just as companies such as Slated in the states are planning on doing.  It goes without saying that in capital starved regions such as Latin America crowdfunding opens up a host of options.

Nonetheless, this model is creating it’s own challenges in each country and the legislation that needs to be put into place to support it.  Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak with Cythnia Traeger, CEO of Pacific and an active mentor on entrepreneurship and advisor on topics such as crowdfunding.  She is based in Washington D.C. and has been working with a number of senators to help establish some parameters for developing legislation around this new asset class.

One of the key issues being addressed is balancing the risks involved in crowdfunding versus the benefits.  One lever to move in the mitigation in the risks involved is limiting the amount of funds that can be raised through this asset class and this is indeed an area that is being discussed.  The Netherlands through their Dutch Authority of Financial Markets, has been one of the leading countries working on crowdfunding legislation.

This type of funding is providing one more source for businesses and individuals in developed countries.  Nevertheless, for developing markets, crowdfunding might be the only capital available for certain enterprises.  Hence, the impact can be even greater in these areas of the world, such as Latin America where capital is not as plentiful.

As opposed to the US where a good percentage of the population is used to investing in the stock market, Latin Americans are only now experimenting with this asset class.  In fact, according to startup Startbull, less than 4% of households in Latin America are investing in their country’s stock market.  Startbull aims to change this state of affairs by offering simulated stock trading as well as a specialized social network for its users to connect.

Similar to companies such as Stockpickr in the states, users will be able to connect with each other and discuss the latest news on their favorite equities.  Stockpickr was acquired in 2007 by financial information portal, The Street, in order to augment the company’s own publishing strategy.  Since then, Stockpickr has grown to more than 150,000 members who have access to the company’s Stock Idea Network for discussing stock ideas.  Startbull currently has close to 2800 users mostly in Chile and Colombia.

According to co-founder Santiago Pineda, the company’s stated goal is to become the “financial Facebook of Latin America” and started with the goal of democratizing financial knowledge.  The founders feel that, by creating tools that allow individuals to share and discuss financial experience and, in the process, becoming educated in financial matters by tapping into the collective knowhow of others. The current beta version offers a stock and foreign exchange purchasing simulation program for some of the key markets in the region, which include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Colombia and Peru.

The company’s founders are originally from Colombia although the company was selected in 2011 for the StartUp Chile program, which helped them launch initial versions of the software.  The founders continue to look for top level mentoring as evidenced by their becoming a finalist during the Red Innova competition in Brazil as well as with Brazilian accelerator 21212.

The current economic climate, says he was never more secure and attractive to invest in Latin America. It is therefore timely to introduce cultural change of local investors to invest in a region traditionally skilled and talented entrepreneur.

When Scott Bird and Scott Thomson met on the high school baseball team in Rockville, Maryland, they hit it off immediately.  The two Scotts as they’re commonly called, brainstormed startup ideas for several years and never dreamed that their startup would blossom in South America.  The attended the Startup Chile accelerator program in July 2011 and launched Bungolow in November of that year offering 40% off on lodging at a premium hotel in Mendoza, Argentina.

According to Thomson, “Latin American countries welcome over 60 million international tourists a year.”  Bungolow deals are offered to members who are referred by other members or who register on the site.   Currently, membership comes from 56 countries with 44% hailing from the US, 23% from Brazil and 16% from Chile.  The site has featured hotels in Argentina, Mexico, Dominican Republic and Chile with more on the way.

Bungolow is trying to engage members with well-presented deals for premium lodging venues.  According to Bird, “We have made the whole hotel booking process feel more tailored and visually enjoyable compared to the traditional sites.”  If Guilt Groupe’s Jetsetter site is any indication, Bungolow could encounter notable growth if it taps into similar dynamics.  Though focused on a bigger market (US travel), Jetsetter grew over 100% last year and offers limited time deals to its members through a similar private sales or flash sales model.

Time will tell whether Bungolow will experience success comparable to similar sites in the US and Europe.  Nonetheless, though not everyone is a Startup Chile fan, new companies such as Bungolow can’t hurt the Chilean startup ecosystem.  Eitherway, Latin America has gained to passionate fans from the US: the “Two Scotts.”

Last week we posted about the entrepreneurial aspirations of the Brazilian students and how it reflects the momentum of the local economy. Despite all those wishes, the entrepreneurs-to-be need a way to start up a real business out of their ideas and it is not so easy for the first time entrepreneurs. Besides all startup competitions that happened in the last year, the Startup Weekend framework became part of the local scene creating mobile and web based startups. The next stop is Brasilia, on February 3-5, 2012.

For those not aware about how it works, here is an overview: it is a weekend-long, hands-on experience where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if their startup ideas are viable.  This next edition starts on February 3 with a Business Model Generation/Lean Startup presentation and with Alex Tabor, co-founder of Peixe Urbano, sharing his experience. After the opening session, the attendees bring their best ideas and inspire others to join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday the teams will focus on customer development, validating their ideas, practicing Lean Startup Methodologies and building a Minimal Viable Product (MVP). On Sunday evening teams demo their prototypes and receive valuable feedbacks from a panel of experts. During this process, experienced mentors will support the teams.

The event started in Seattle in 2009. According to the StartupWeekend.org website, about 500 events took place worldwide, creating over 5,000 startups and engaging about 45,000 entrepreneurs so far. During the same weekend EUA (NYC), Canada (Calgary and Montreal), and Netherlands (Enschede) will have their own Startup Weekends.

In Brazil, the first edition occurred in São Paulo in November 2010. The second edition took place in Campinas in May 2011 and was followed by Rio de Janeiro, Recife and another edition in São Paulo.

You can always expect positive results after a Startup Weekend. Just to mention a few, some of the companies started at Startup Weekend Campinas have evolved and are currently in the market improving their products and talking with investors: Fonista (initially  “I’m hungry”/”Paladar” and featured here), Nossos peludos (helping you help abandoned pets) and VideoVivo, an “eBay for virtual services” being developed now in Silicon Valley.  Most of the other attendees are currently involved in other projects and have been attending other Startup Weekend editions and startup programs, events and competitions.

The Brasilia edition is being organized by Microsoft Innovation Center and IPe Engenharia de Redes and supported by Microsoft BizPark and SENAI.

The event is already sold out. We can just expect good results from there!

[Disclosed: I co-organized the Startup Weekend Campinas and will be one of the Brasilia’s edition mentors.]

Last Friday we told you that 121 enterprises in Latin America  were running to be chosen as the best in the region for the period 2011 to 2012.
From January  13 until  now we have carried out a process of analysis of each case and preselected a list of  the 20 semifinalists of the PS10 contest.

The selection process took into account the following criteria

1) Compliance with requirements

2) Quality of information provided by entrepreneurs

Evaluation criteria for this phase got focused on:

1) Objectives met by the entrepreneurial team

2) Clarity of business model explained

3) Innovative Concept

As I overtook in a previous post, the task was not easy, but the selection has been made on schedule in the competition.

Start-Ups The 20 selected are:

1. Fanwards .- (Argentina)

Loyaltu Social platform. Gamficiation based that allows fans of brands to get points for social action by the marks made and redeem them for rewards.

2. Kidbox.- (Uruguay)

Kidbox will provide a web service that will introduce already existing internet contents (sites, videos and games) in a safe environment. select, categorize offers the contents and children will have access to them in a personalized way, according to their profile, age, genre, nationality, interests and needs.

3. Myband.is .- (Colombia)

Is a solution to the fragmentation of digital content. With myband.is bands can continue to use the networks they already use and have it all updated on its Web site myband.is.En up the contents, we simply indicate where you are.Then choose the fonts, colors, place a background image and voila, you have a site with flexible design done in minutes.

4. Nuflick .- (Mexico)

Nuflick crowd is a distribution platform for independent filmmakers. Seeks to resolve the problems of self distribution for artists and the supply of legal content and different for moviegoers. Meet the demand for independent films and offers a new distribution channel for creators

5. Clerk .- (Chile)

Cloud service for customer management, sales, and independent hotel reservations. The 85% of hoteliers in the world are SMEs and have no simple and robust tools to help them manage their stores as big chains. Clerk delivers business intelligence to the hotel.
6. Everwrite .- (Brazil)

EverWrite is a tool that helps bloggers and journalists discover topics and keywords that offer real opportunities to rank high in major search engines and make more money with advertising.

7. Shopperception .- (Argentina)

Shopperception allows the use kinect to detect people in front of the gondola, and record time, interactions, events and selected products, and imaging in cases that require it (conversions and returns).

8. Arcaris .- (Chile)

Arcaris provides a Talent Management platform for Call Center Outsourcers and Enterprises to improve their agents performance and motivation. Leveraging gamification concepts with our platform encourages positive agent behavior; resulting in decreased staff turnover rates and increased profits.

9. Dafiti .- (Brazil)

Is offering to  Brazilian (and now Argentine & Chilean) a new way of accessing and buying fashion. Dafiti is offering access to fashion to many people living in remote area with the free shipping and offering convenience to clients of larger cities by presenting 31000 items ready to buy.
10. LedFace .- (Brazil)

We built Ledface as a knowledge-discovering engine powered by crowdsourcing technology. We are talking about people creating your answer in real time. You ask, but you do not get a list of replies. Ledface knows you well enough to pick the right global group to create together, to co-create a custom answer for you. Free, fast and easy

11. Hadza .- (Chile)

Hadza is an innovative way to experience online videos synchronized in time. So you can create and experience collective storytellings through videos.This will enabling people to re-edit the world through videos.
12. Tweegee .- (Brazil)

Tweegee is a social media site that is designed exclusively for children and pre-teens ages 6 to 12 to express themselves creatively, and safely through an innovative and customized online environment, with local & global News, Avatars, Email for kids, Files sharing, Personal calendars, Forums, Chat, Virtual Worlds, Gaming and much more, giving kids a complete fun and safe community atmosphere for all their social living needs

13. OmbúShop .- (Argentina)

Ombú Shop allows you to create your own online store in a very simple, non-technical. Anyone with a product to sell can register and build your online store fully customized and integrated with the most popular means of payment.Today, if you buy something basic, such as sheets or books, do not complete the transaction without sending many mails in which you are notified that stock, the latest version or delivery to reach your home. It’s a frustrating way that makes you lose time and then the desire to buy something to that seller. To eliminate these difficulties Ombú Shop and give them to both the seller and the buyer a better experience of e-Commerce

14. Aivo-Agenbot .- (Argentina)

Aivo develops virtual customer service agents that intelligently recognize, interpret and respond to written client questions across diverse digital channels. At nearly 80% less cost than their human counterparts, virtual agents are changing the face of the US$55 billion customer service industry. AgentBot, Aivo’s chat-based virtual agent, differentiates itself with personality and strong linguistic ability in deciphering written Spanish across its regional complexity.

15. Prolancer .- (Brazil)

It is a platform where companies can find professional within minutes to fit specific project needs. Today in Brazil the market for professional hiring freelancers is underused, with little development of solutions that do not meet the real needs of both businesses and freelancers or freelancers.

16. Backpacker .- (Brazil)

Our product aims to provide the retail employees a unique experience of learning English in an accessible way (1/3 the monthly price of classroom courses), improving their employability (potentially increasing his salary from 25% to 75%). In addition to the owners of retail chains, there is the improvement in the positioning of their brand. Customers associate the brand name with a seal of approval, indicating that the attendants know how to communicate in English.

17. Babelverse .- (Chile)

Babelverse is the first application for real-time on-demand interpretation, powered by a global community of human interpreters.It’s a platform where skilled amateurs and professional interpreters alike will be able to earn money for their time, creating a new source of income for people all over the world.

18. Helpin ( Brasil)

Service marketplace – search and shopping online for offline services.It is the best choice for finding service providers, because today this “search” is provided on platforms that do not give due importance to these professionals, essentially they are designed for sell products or put classifieds online that are poor in information.
19. ikiGaming .- (Mexico)

Development of technology based on HTML5 and JS to create games that run once in IOS, android and thus navegadores.De not have to create specific versions for each platform and the problem is more generic cross-platform solutions that do not meet the required performance for games.

20. Thotz .- (Colombia)

Thotz is a web application that allows you to centralize and visualize the information of the organization. It allows organizations to save time and money, given that on average an employee who handles knowledge loses 20% of their time researching pre-existing in the organization. It resembles a Pinterest for companies

Congratulations! And thanks to everyone who submitted your applications for this competition.  We would be knowing more deeply the candidates in the coming days in order to identify the 10 most promising of our region as well as the number one.