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.

La tercera edición del Startup Weekend Bogotá se realizará los próximos 24, 25 y 26 de febrero en HubBOG, el primer espacio de emprendimiento TIC en Colombia.

El evento busca a través de un trabajo vivencial, guiar a los participantes por las diferentes etapas que llevarán a la maduración de su idea y/o proyecto. Durante 54 horas aprenderán acerca de qué se necesita para crear su empresa en Internet con la ayuda de mentores expertos en diferentes industrias: comunicación, marketing, negocios, tecnología, emprendimiento, entre otros.

El principal beneficio que el Startup Weekend ofrece a sus participantes es la posibilidad de establecer conexiones con otros emprendedores de varios perfiles y con mentores expertos en diferentes temas.

La edición 2012 está liderada por un equipo de emprendedores en cabeza de Luis Betancourt, Co-Fundador y CEO de Localo.com, quien describe el evento como:

“Una experiencia única y muy enriquecedora. El Startup weekend te permite hacer realidad una idea en tiempo récord y contar con mentores que difícilmente se podrían reunir en otro escenario. En esta 3ra versión esperamos 80 emprendedores y queremos lanzar muchas empresas de gran impacto para el país”, añadió Luis.

Esta versión premiará la capacidad de innovación y emprendimiento de sus participantes con un set de premios diseñado especialmente para darles las herramientas necesarias para seguir adelante con su idea y escalarla a un siguiente nivel. A su vez, El equipo más popular entre la audiencia (Online y offline) del evento recibirá un premio sorpresa.

Sin embargo, más allá de los premios, quienes participen de esta agenda emprendedora, tendrán la valiosa oportunidad de gozar de una experiencia de aprendizaje inolvidable. Así que no te quedes por fuera,  las inscripciones para el evento ya están abiertas hasta agotar los 80 cupos disponibles y la inscripción del evento cuenta con un 20% de descuento hasta el 15 de febrero.

Para mayor información visita:  http://bogota.startupweekend.org/

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.

Por allá por mitad del 2011, contábamos acerca del nacimiento de Wayra, el proyecto de Telefónica que a través de la identificación de talentos y  proyectos viables, se gestó con la idea de apostar y prestar ayuda económica para la creación de empresas innovadoras en la región, pero fundamentalmente, como un acelerador de negocios latinoamericano que sirviera de instrumento para evitar que el talento local deba buscar oportunidades por fuera de la región.

Asimismo, fuimos actualizando a la comunidad emprendedora de las novedades en la presentación de proyectos y convocatorias en los distintos capítulos, Argentina y Uruguay, México, Brasil y a los que luego se sumaron Perú, Venezuela, España y Chile.

La Academia Wayra Colombia -la primera que abrió las puertas en la región- acogió a los primeros 10 grupos de emprendedores seleccionados en la WayraWeek Colombia. Con localización al norte de Bogotá sobre una superficie de 400 metros cuadrados, está equipada con la última tecnología en materia de conectividad para prestar el contexto ideal al desarrollo y crecimiento de los emprendimientos.

A modo de balance de estos primeros meses de vida de Wayra Colombia y con miras a 2012, conversamos con Alfonso Gómez, presidente ejecutivo de Telefónica Colombia

¿Sorprendidos por la respuesta de la comunidad emprendedora?

Realmente sí. El proyecto inicia en agosto de 2011 y en marzo próximo se termina el primer ciclo de aceleración para 9 proyectos que fueron seleccionados entre 498 inscritos. El balance es positivo, son proyectos que además de recibir un apoyo financiero por parte de Wayra, cuentan con un espacio para co-working y toda una formación en temas de estrategia, comunicación, mercadeo y finanzas, que les permite a los emprendedores convertir su idea en un negocio real.

¿Qué implica para el emprendedor contar con el sostén de Telefónica?

Además de todos los beneficios los emprendedores reciben todo el acompañamiento de una red de mentores, conformada por altos ejecutivos del Grupo Telefónica, que han mostrado todo su interés y compromiso en ayudar a estos proyectos a alcanzar el éxito. Es importante destacar que Wayra trabaja de la mano de cada iniciativa buscando oportunidades de negocio en las diferentes áreas de Telefónica, aspiramos a que la empresa se convierta en el primer cliente de cada una de estas iniciativas.

¿De qué se trata el próximo Investor Day?

A finales de marzo organizaremos para los emprendedores un Investor Day donde presentarán, de la mano de nuestros partners Endeavor y Accenture, su modelo de negocios a las redes de ángeles inversionistas del país. Posteriormente los proyectos más maduros tendrán acceso a un Investor Day regional con otros proyectos de las diferentes Academias Wayra de Latinoamérica.Para este primer ciclo, además de los 500.000 dólares destinados a la financiación de los proyectos seleccionados, hemos dedicado más de 154 horas a capacitaciones y vamos a completar mas de 50 horas en mentorías de alto impacto.

¿Qué expectativa debería tener un egresado de la Academia Wayra?

Las expectativas para los graduados son amplias, buscamos acercar a los proyectos a las diferentes áreas de negocio del Grupo Telefónica y así convertirlos en nuestros proveedores, pero también trabajamos para acercarlos a otros actores del ecosistema de emprendimiento para así garantizar que sigan recibiendo apoyo en sus diferentes etapas de madurez una vez salgan dela Academia, pero el acompañamiento de Wayra no termina ahí, son nuestros socios y siempre contarán con nuestro apoyo.

¿Qué tipo de reflexión te merece el ecosistema emprendedor colombiano?

Sobre el entorno colombiano, nos encontramos con un escenario para start ups con base tecnológica muy prometedor, naciente pero dinámico y con muchas ganas de crecer.  Además, con iniciativas del Gobierno que articulan a la academia y al sector privado para crear un escenario atractivo para los inversionistas nacionales y extranjeros. Estamos seguros que si unimos más esfuerzos lograremos sacar adelante proyectos de talla mundial. En 2012 Wayra realizará dos convocatorias que tendrán como énfasis descubrir proyectos innovadores de todas las regiones de Colombia.

Gómez señala que Colombia trabajará para consolidarse como un actor importante en el ecosistema de emprendimiento nacional, y para fomentar la integración de las iniciativas privadas y estatales que andan en busca de talento: “Nos interesan las grandes ideas pero estamos convencidos que detrás de las mismas están las personas que les dan el mayor valor, por ello para estas nuevas convocatorias daremos mucha importancia al perfil emprendedor de los participantes. Cada ciclo deja aprendizajes a los que esperamos responder muy pronto adaptando los componentes de formación, acompañamiento y acercamiento a fuentes de capital” concluye.

Los proyectos incubados por Wayra Colombia son Athor, Cubbi.co, Detección Celo Bovino, Glya, IWin, Maket over Vídeo, Nethub Media-Go2Do, Red de Confianza Positive ID, Toomga, YIMUP. Podés conocer más sobre ellos aquí

Companies such as Salesforce and SuccessFactors are well-known case studies of companies promoting a new model of software delivery called Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).  In Latin America, Salesforce and its CRM software has been a leader in terms of sales and top of mind in the last few years at his a built up an impressive cadre of clients.  Nonetheless, data crunching software offered through a similar model from the likes of companies such as QlikTech have been less successful in the region.  Colombian software company GED hopes to change this situation by introducing its analytics software (called Sikua) through the SaaS model.

Though 12 years old, GED has built up a client list in Colombia that includes a number of state agencies, hospitals and education institutions.  After selling its enterprise Business Intelligence and Analytics software packages to large organizations implementing Balanced Scorecard management initiatives, the company decided to take advantage of newer Cloud Computing platforms in order to offer its software to smaller organizations.

Though most startups these days are focusing on consumer markets, as Venture Capitalist Peter Theil recently mentioned, there are interesting opportunities within the small business market.  In Latin America, penetrating the small and medium business market is even more challenging.  Payment infrastructures, cloud computing and SaaS based offerings as well as company cultures predisposed to technology investments are less developed.  Nonetheless, GED is sanguine about its SaaS offering.

Up till now, 15 customers are using Sikua to generate specialized dashboards and help their organization with their strategic planning process.  CEO, William Diaz, affirmed that he expects to more than quadruple that number by the end of 2012.  Each installation includes a strong services component to configure the software for each customer’s organizational needs and to integrate the software with existing systems.

Though the company has grown organically since its inception, they will be raising a $1M round this year.  The firm is eyeing geographic expansion opportunities into countries such as Peru, Ecuador, Mexico and Spain, among others.

Music, concerts, fame.
Sounds good, but often the beginnings of a band are not as easy -and glamorous- as we like to think; but thanks to social networks, streaming channels or video sites, music can reach places that perhaps a few decades ago had been a little more complicated.

A band that is starting may be looking for something practical to be disclosed, create a Facebook profile, Twitter account or a simple personal site. How about the idea of ​​an official site made with the content of all your social networks, customized with a photo, and also a name as cool as myband.is (insert your band name here e.g, TheAwesomeBand)?

With myband.is you can have in a matter of minutes – literally-, the official site of your band, ready to make it known to your fans, friends, family, everybody. This project was created by four friends and music lovers who work as web professionals in Colombia, also known as La Cocolería, they are: Lucho Molina, Mao Solano, Antid and Cesar Aguirre.

There is no excuse not to publicize your music anymore, people can love it and the next step may be a concert request in Bandtastic.me by your fans. Music-related startups are always appreciated because they allow us to enjoy new options to listen to something different or learn ways to promote yourself using the potential of the Internet.

Globalization is one of those terms that makes a lot of sense when you hear about it, but can be difficult to leverage from a practical standpoint.  For example, in Latin America, a certain percentage of affluent patients seek treatment at US hospitals.  A new startup, though, is looking to increase the flow of patients in the opposite direction.  FlyClinic is building a marketplace of healthcare providers in Latin America and offering these services to patients in countries such as the US.

Founded by Dr. Thomas Treutler who immigrated to Medellin, Colombia a number of years ago, the company is now helping connect patients in need with healthcare providers, which his company has vetted.  As healthcare costs skyrocket in the US, more and more patients are exploring options in other countries.  Some experts such as consulting firm, McKinsey and Company, forecast the medical outsourcing or medical tourism market to reach $100B by next year from approximately $20B in 2007.

Through its platform, FlyClinic is looking to provide patients with a Global Healthcare marketplace where Latin American healthcare providers can offer their services.  FlyClinic offers a payment platform where funds are held in escrow until the patient authorizes their release.  It even goes so far as to describe its service as an “eBay for Medical Services.”

Patients search for their specific procedure within the company’s database and are provided additional information about each provider and that procedure.  They can then communicate which each potential professional or provider and choose the one that fits his or her needs.  Finally, both parties sign a formal online contract and payment is sent to the escrow account.

Dr. Treutler says that the service launched a few months ago, but the growth in users has been encouraging.  The company is self-funded and is expecting revenues from commissions and other services to ramp up rather quickly.  With respect to healthcare service providers, Dr. Treutler has seen quite a bit of interest as FlyClinic offers these a new channel to reach a new pool of potential patients.

Ubidots is startup based in Medellin with cloud-based software that processes information from many different types of sensors (temperature, humidity, etc.) and taps into what a number of industry analysts (including consulting firm, McKinsey) call the Internet of Things. Among the company’s initial set of clients are three of the top 25 hospitals in Latin America.  Thanks to recently closed deals, the company is preparing for substantial growth in 2012.

A number of companies are similarly pursing this market.  For instance, UK startup, Pachube, was recently acquired by US-based LogMeIn for $15 million.  LogMeIn is a remote monitoring software company, with become public two years ago and is now worth almost $1B.  Like Pachube, Ubidots’ vision is to help users easily process data from sensors and connect to other software and devices through a RESTful API.

According to research firm GSMA, the number of mobile connected devices in the world will grow from 6 billion today to 12 billion in 2020.  More importantly, the proliferation of these connected devices will create a $1.2 trillion opportunity.  Already, large companies such as Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) are investing in deploying smart sensors to provide additional value to their customers (e.g., real-time energy consumption patterns).

In addition to customers in the healthcare industry, a recent sale to an energy provider to petroleum services companies should increase the company’s current data stream volume by a factor of 10 and make ample use of the platform’s cloud infrastructure.  Even though the product is still in beta (early pilots), the firm’s sales pipeline continues to grow.

Ubidots allows its customers to track specific metrics as well as to rapidly set up customized portals for different groups of users.  According to CEO, Agustin Pelaez, it is seeing a growing interest in its offering in Latin America as well as in other countries.

With the end of 2011 approaching, take a look on what happened in the last 12 months can be entertaining and a very good strategy to review your plans for the next year. The recently published Google Zeitgeist 2011 is definitely an interesting source to realize what really happened among the online audience, based on their actual searches. Digging the published data for Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru) you can find way more interesting trends than the top ranked “rising star” Rebeca Black.

Social Networks

Statements that the Latin culture is social and that this market is especially huge in Brazil is everything but new and the search numbers just prove the point: among the fastest rising searches, “Facebook” is top ranked in Brazil, Argentina, Peru and the runner up in Colombia. Tumblr and Twitter are also in the rankings.

This is even more symptomatic in the Brazilian market, the only country in the world where Orkut established the leadership in the last years. Therefore, as the searches show, it is probably something about to change. In September 2011, Ibope Nielsen Online has published that Facebook would have overtaken Orkut’s leadership. It is hard to be sure, as comScore affirms that the first place is already with Orkut despite the high growth of Facebook’s market share and Hitwise numbers shows a technical tie. According to the numbers and trends, if the change in the first place hasn’t happened in 2011, it is about to happen early 2012.

If you look at the “How to” ranking in Brazil, the items about create and delete a Facebook profile are on top. How to recover an Orkut profile and how to exclude a Twitter account are also in the Brazilian ranking. A similar behavior can be found in the same ranking for Colombia.

Several startups are emerging in the region focusing in social solutions and they definitely have a huge and high growth market to conquer.

Shopping

While in US the new gadgets such as tablets, e-book readers and smartphones are leading the rankings, digital cameras are still in the spotlights in Latin America: first place in the Shopping ranking in Brazil (followed by digital photo frames), second in Argentina and under a specific brand in the 6^th position in the Colombian ranking. In Colombia (first place) and Argentina (fourth place) TVs have also showed up.

While smartphones are taking the place of several other devices such as the digital cameras, the high price of those devices is probably a reasonable explanation for this trend, especially in Brazil, where is cheaper travel to US and spend a couple of days in NYC or Miami to buy the new IPhone 4S than buy it locally at an insanely high price. We already posted about the Brazilian mobile market a couple weeks ago.

Travel destinations, pancakes and cupcakes

With the rising middle class in Brazil and the weak US dollar, the number of travels abroad has been increasing dramatically in the last years (a reason for so many digital cameras?). Orlando and Las Vegas are the top destinations of the Brazilian tourists in US, who are becoming one of the most profitable tourists for the local commerce.

Cancun is another destination that stood out in the Google’s numbers: it is the first destination for Chilean tourists and the second for Brazilians and Peruvians. In the Chile’s and Peru’s ranking, Orlando is also there, but in the 10^th position.

Curiously, pancakes and cupcakes are apparently delighting those travellers back home: recipes and how to make those treats are all over the rankings of all countries analyzed. It is probably Google showing the culture exchange in the modern world.

In Brazil, passport issuing and other typical traveller’s goods have a considerable presence in the Fastest Rising Searches and Shopping rankings.

What is … maybe some hope in Brazil?

A kind of ranking that wasn’t published for other Latin America countries, except by Brazil, was about the “What is …” searches.

After a year full of corruption problems that brought down several ministers and mayors across the country and a massive effort to boost entrepreneurship in Brazil, here is the top ranked searches in this category: Ethics, Sustainability and Citizenship. Biodiversity and Entrepreneurship are the 5^th and 6^th and Social Responsibility on the 10^th.  Maybe a hint for some changes or in the Holidays spirit: a little bit of hope for the next year!

Zeitgeist 2011: Year in Review (global)

The following video shows the 2011 in review according to the global Google searches. Enjoy it and Merry Christmas!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAIEamakLoY&feature=plcp&context=C3ddbc9cUDOEgsToPDskIGrP4Geb-Fpqkz3f25R5qB[/youtube]