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.

La europea  Populis  empresa de contenidos y publicaciones Web anunció la compra del portal brasileño  Cidade Internet en una cifra aún no especificada.

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.

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.]

Fundada por el español Juan Lobato en el  2008 en Inglaterra e iniciando servicio a Argentina, Chile, Colombia,  México y Perú en 2011, BaseKit la plataforma que permite crear páginas web directamente desde el navegador, sin ningún tipo de descarga y sin necesidad de código, ni de saber programar, busca  incrementar el número de usuarios ( mil nuevos usuarios mensuales) pago de sus servicio en este año, cuando América Latina se encuentra en pleno expansión de contenidos en español y portugués.

Basekit es una solución integral que trae dominio, alojamiento y editor web para los usuarios que se decidan a probarlo. El fuerte de su oferta de servicio es el editor web ilimitado que habilita al usuario a modificar su página web siempre que así lo deseen. Adicionalmente no requiere que el usuario instale  software; especialmente útil para los editores que necesitan trabajar en sus tabletas o  netbooks.

La  plataforma recibió hace poco  5/5  puntos en  la review realizada por el diario Sunday Times, y Basekit forma parte del top 10 de las 50 empresas más innovadoras y creativas del momento, según la lista Red Bull Future 50, creada por Real Business y Red Bull.

Basekit apunto a competir con  programas  para  PC y MAC dedicados a la edición web y aplicaciones online que te ayudan en el desarrollo de sitios en internet y hosting del mismo. Una dura batalla cuando existen gigantes como Tumblr, WordPress, Joomla y  Blogger que cada vez se tornan más  completos, competitivos y estimulantes.

Basekit recibió USD 5,98 millones de la inversora española Nauta Capital Ventures en marzo de 2011, para continuar su fase de expansión global.

Se trata de una solución para autores no desarrolladores y pequeñas empresas que no tienen el presupuesto  pero sí el tiempo de armar su propia página eligiendo uno de  las 100 plantillas prediseñadas. Aunque también la plataforma ofrece una gama de servicios, en las que el diseñador gráfico profesional, se puede acceder a características avanzadas de diseño  en código HTML5 /Css3 para tener más control sobre el diseño.

According to an Endeavor’s research, entrepreneurship is definitely a way to go for the Brazilian students: 52.8 percent would like to see themselves as an entrepreneur in the future and 48.2 percent of the students frequently consider this professional option. The research is part of the Entrepreneurship Education Project, which covers over 40 universities along the world. It is a promising scenario for the economy growth, but also something to think about, as any given company to grow needs to hire high quality professionals … and not just a few.

Before a more profound analysis, it is important to mention that the study in Brazil is still a pilot and covered only 12 universities (most of a traditional support to entrepreneurship) and 604 students from South, Southeast and Northeast regions, who answered the questions from May to July 2011. The main objective is basically to capture the entrepreneurial intentions, influences and aspirations of those students. Besides, it happens in the year Endeavor Brazil has launched its “Bota pra Fazer” program, the local version of the Kaufmann Foundation’s Fast Trac.

The study shows that entrepreneurship courses play a significant role in the confidence of the students. For example, 41.1 percent of the students who have attended entrepreneurship subjects feel more confident to deal with problems and crisis episodes, against 29.6 percent of those that never attended a formal entrepreneurship program.

In Brazil, most of the courses offered in the local universities are about “introduction to entrepreneurship” (93.8 percent) and innovation (50 percent). Something that stood out is that 75 percent of the local universities have their own business plan competitions, against 57.8 percent worldwide. On the other hand, 71.4 percent of the universities abroad consistently invite speakers to talk about this subject and only 6.3 percent of the Brazilian universities use this same approach.

Despite seriously considering become entrepreneurs, the students confessed that they are not preparing themselves: 51.3 percent of the students that are or intend to be entrepreneurs have never attended a formal course in this subject. Measurement, pricing, demand and financial forecasting are the toughest activities according to the students.

Reality check

An interesting aspect is that among those students, 7.6 percent are already entrepreneurs and most of them have other entrepreneurs in family. When it happens, the confidence of the potential entrepreneurs is lower than the average. It is certainly a symptom of the legal local system that makes the entrepreneurial life much harder than in other countries.

A similar behavior is seen among those who actually attended an entrepreneurship course: 33.5 percent intend to create a new business in the future, against 40.1 percent of those that never studied how to make it happen.

Momentum and reflections

Doubtless Brazil is facing “the momentum” for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs-to-be. The awareness created by the local media, investors, groups supporting entrepreneurs, accelerators and startup events and competitions are making a big difference in a market used to have professionals looking for a “safe” position.

On the other hand, there is still a huge gap between the new entrepreneurs and what investors and the market expect. Be prepared and act fast is the best approach right now to live this momentum at its fullest.

The fact of more than half of the students would like to become an entrepreneur is huge and exciting, but also something to think about. Brazil is operating at the full employment rate and already has a blackout of human capital in the high tech industry. Even established companies are in trouble to hire and retain good engineers and developers and it is usual to see a “war for talents” among them.

In this environment, after transposing the funding challenge, that is going to be the highest risk for those startups, because of the lack of enough talents and because of the hype involving being an entrepreneur. And it leads to another question: are all of those students really receiving the entrepreneurship call or is the mindset in the established companies that are not attending the expectations of the Y-generation? Is it about being an entrepreneur or a need of change in the leadership style?

The new startup scene has the potential to deal with both: making easier for those suited to be entrepreneurs and creating a new generation of successful companies with a new and much more attractive culture for the self-started and high potential professionals. The next two years are going to be more than interesting!

The problem is well known: any company has to innovate and must have the best talents to grow fast and stay on top of its competitors.  On the other hand, in a hot economy everybody wants the best talents and those best talents are probably considering right now starting up a new business, especially in Brazil, where the environment for this kind of initiative is better than ever before.  Some local high tech companies have just found their way to balance those needs.

As briefly mentioned before, one of the highlights in 2011 was the Buscapé Challenge. With the headline “your idea worth a million”, the company went to the market to bring projects that could add innovation and be complementary to its core business. Companies or ideas involving social and/or mobile commerce could apply to compete for a R$ 300K prize in investments, considering a R$1mi valuation for the startup.

Buscapé is considered the biggest price comparison website in Latin America with presence in over 15 countries in this region, besides Brazil, US, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, México and Spain. The company was founded in 1999, survived the first high tech bubble and was sold to Naspers in one of the most successful exits for a startup in Brazil.

In the end of the challenge, 4 companies (Urbanizo, MeuCarrinho, Hotmart, AnuncieLá) were selected, joined the group and are now refining their products and business models. According to André Nazareth, co-founder and CEO of MeuCarrinho, a mobile app with web support to help you build your shopping list and compare prices among several supermarkets, they are working hard and have evolved significantly their product since the competition.

On the other hand, Ci&T is solving the same problem under a totally different approach. The company was founded in 1995 in Campinas and its core business is to deliver nearshore application outsourcing, software product engineering and digital marketing services, employing agile methodologies and lean principles.

With a high performance team, willing to innovate and work on their own projects, the company decided to launch an internal entrepreneurship program. Employees come up with the ideas and are oriented through the lean startup and business model generation methodologies, with the support and mentorship of the innovation department and interested mentors among the company’s executives.

The most promising projects, after the customer discovery phase spins off. The project starts during the employee’s spare time and as it evolves and gains some traction, the entrepreneur starts to work exclusively in the new venture, sometimes with an additional team and taking advantage of the whole infrastructure, know how and connections of the company.

A huge difference if compared to the regular startupers in the market is that along this process the entrepreneur is still an employee of Ci&T with his/her salary guaranteed. In exchange of this whole package, Ci&T usually takes 50% of share.

According to Flávio Pimentel, the executive in charge of this program, “we provide much more than just financial capital for the entrepreneurs: we help them evolve since the very first idea, with all the corporate support and mentorship required to lead them to the next level. In this process, our executives are also involved and we can foment innovation and the entrepreneurial mindset in different levels all over the company”.

Ci&T’s program is not open for external entrepreneurs, but an employee in this program can bring an external partner for her/his startup. And none of the invested projects are related to the company’s core business. It is definitely a very good approach to retain the best talents and invest in the very early stage in high potential spin offs, developed under a very structured and measured model.

The program started officially last March and among several projects being developed, at least two are already gaining some traction in the market.

Márcio Cyrillo, one of the company’s executives based in NYC, and Lucas Persona started up runens. The app was launched last April at The New York Tech Meetup and it allows you to connect locally and worldwide with others like-minded runners in a social way. They are also launching Clubs that will add a B2B layer on top of the B2C approach of the app by itself.

Another spin off produced by Ci&T’s program is Ipanema Games, the creator of Smelly Cat, a puzzle slingshot game that figured well ranked in the Brazilian App Store and had over 300,000 downloads along its first 3 months. Here is a short video of the game.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07pS1o6Ugbw&feature=player_embedded#[/youtube]

In a market where the number of local accelerators recently exploded, those programs look like a very down to earth alternative for the growing and still evolving entrepreneurial market. We will probably have a good idea of the results of both approaches in one year or so to compare their performance.

P.S.: MeuCarrinho and runnens were finalists of the AppCircus in São Paulo last December.

Brazilian entrepreneurs! This is an opportunity for you.

iG, in partnership with the Startupi Blog, presented his entrepreneurship digital channel launches iG Startups Awards 2011.  The award aims to support the entrepreneurial culture and innovation initiatives, identify and promote startups, digital products and services directed to the final consumer.

Pedro Ripper, iG president says:

Innovation is in our DNA, with iG StartupsAward, the portal is still focused on innovation, providing opportunities for entrepreneurs in the digital world - the startups - to expand its presence to all platforms.

The iG Startups Awards have national coverage, and startups of products, applications, plugins and other digital services for web platforms,smartphones, tablets and TV, can apply and compete. According to Caique Severo, director of editorial development in iG:

 Our focus is on digital services and sites whose business model is based on advertising.

Applications will be accepted until January 9, 2012. Those selected will be entitled to an incentive package that includes business and technology consulting, as well as promotion of their product in the iG site. The prize package is equivalent to more than $60,000.

The contest is open to Brazilian citizens (+18) or juridical persons duly constituted in Brazil who make the application in accordance with the regulations.

FutureBrand, a US consulting firm, recently published its yearly Global Brand Index (GBI) report, which, among other things, highlights the rise of Latin America.  Although Latin America still has a ways to go when compared with other regions the report shows marked improvements in global brand perception for some countries.  In particular, Brazil scaled 10 positions to #31 and Chile moved up 6 positions to #34.  Though Costa Rica still is tops in the region at #24, the aforementioned countries are notable because of improvements in business and technology related areas.

As noted by America Economica magazine, these countries as well as Argentina (#32) have the strongest “Good for business” rankings with strong showings in their business and investment environments.  Though the report singles out Brazil and Chile as stars, it includes Peru (#44) and Mexico (#47), along with the aforementioned countries, within the top tier.  Canada, Switzerland and New Zealand hold the top spots with the United States dropping two spots to number 6.

Several Latin American countries are focusing much effort and resources towards developing vibrant startup ecosystems.  For instance, initiatives such as Startup Chile are still refining their programs, but an ancillary result of such initiatives is their potential for raising awareness of their country brands.  Evidently, some countries in the region are more cognizant of the importance of promoting a business friendly image than others.

Recentlly a report from Centre for Economics and business Research (CEBR) ,informed that Brazil overtaken the UK to become the world’s sixth-largest economy. In the past year Brazil expanded at a three percent rate in 2011 and is projected to grow five percent in 2012. Just remember that  China China invested around  USD 4.5 billion in Brazil’s technology sector  in 2011.

Brands have a lot to do with perception. In today’s global economy, Latin American countries need to understand that they are being compared to other countries around the world and act accordingly. If attracting foreign investment (such as from technology focused Venture Capital firms) is a country objective, a weak brand can create unwelcome friction.  As a region, the report is generally positive about Latin America as region, but some countries have quite a bit of work to do.