Category: Crossing Borders Podcast

Ep 11 Alejandro Freund, Pioneering Ecommerce in Latin America

Alejandro Freund - Ecommerce in Latin America

Many people who do business in the United States don’t realize that there are burgeoning and viable markets in Latin America. After being educated outside the country, my guest, Alejandro Freund saw that his homeland of Ecuador was ripe to become the hub for a leading ecommerce company in Latin America.

This conversation with Alejandro is a look into the start of a Latin American ecommerce company from zero, including how Alejandro and his partner raised capital, what they did to find products to sell through their ecommerce platform, the tech challenges, beating local competition, the governmental regulations, and more. Anyone who’s interested in ecommerce will learn a lot from his ground-up journey.

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Ep 10 Patricio Williams Becú, Investing in Latin America Through Funding Farmers

patricio williams - investing in Latin America

It sometimes feels like investing in Latin America is a secret that U.S. Investors don’t know about. There are so many great companies and talented entrepreneurs in the Southern Hemisphere who are doing great things – not only in business but also for the economies and peoples of Latin American countries.

Patricio Williams Becú is a great example and is my guest on this episode of Crossing Borders. His company, DTA via PagoRural provides funding for farmers in Latin America – and the ways Patricio has grown his company and gotten outside the box to do it provides many lessons for us all. I hope you’ll take the time to listen and learn from his amazing story.

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Ep 9 Diego Saez-Gil: Smart Luggage To Make Travel Easy and Enjoyable

Have you heard of smart luggage? It may not sound like something you need but wait until you hear what it can do to make your travel more enjoyable and effortless. Connecting luggage to an app and building out the hardware to integrate the two has enabled Diego Saez-Gil’s company, Bluesmart to jump into a very competitive marketplace and gain a foothold with amazing speed.

On this episode of Crossing Borders, Diego shares the story of his entrepreneurial journey, how he’s founded and funded his new smart luggage startup, and how he manages an international team with offices all over the world. It’s a fascinating example of the kind of innovation and forward thinking that’s coming out of Latin America these days. (more…)

Ep 8 Nathan Klarer: Preventing Mining Accidents with Wearables

Welcome to Crossing Borders with Nathan Lustig, where I interview entrepreneurs doing startups across borders and the people who support them, with a focus on companies that have some relationship to Latin America.

Last week, I talked with Nora Leary Co-Founder and Head of Marketing and Business Development at Launchway Media, about how to get press in the US and what it’s like starting up with three female cofounders in Latin America.

My guest today is Nathan Klarer, founder of Bridgecrest Medical, a wearable that helps mining and oil companies around the world track employee performance to avoid accidents and keep employees safe.

Nathan was working on some technology while at university and saw the coming wearable wave and realized that he could use the technology he was working for good. After raising more than $1.3m from venture capitalists in the Bay Area, Nathan continued to build his business, selling to some of the largest multinational mining companies in the world. This journey took him to Latin America, where he signed about half of his clients, including his first one, high up in the Argentine Andes Mountains.

We talk about the challenges of doing business in Latin America as a US company, how investors looked at having half of his clients in Latin America, support systems from Latam governments, opportunities he saw, technical challenges he over came and how he led his business to be acquired by ability wearables.

We’ll also talk about where Nathan sees wearables going in the future and whether he would do business in Latin America in the future. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Nathan Klarer.

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Nathan Klarer. If you do, please subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher, leave a rating and tell your friends!

If you have questions, think there’s something I should improve or have recommendations for guests you’d like me to interview, please let me know in the comments!