Category: Mexico

Luis Garza, Kinedu: Helping Parents and Kids Through the Magic of Software, Ep 89

Category : Crossing Borders Podcast, Mexico
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Luis Garza is the founder of Kinedu, an app that provides educational games and activities for parents and kids to play together. He was born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico but had the opportunity to study abroad at a young age. Luis knew from early on he wanted to give others the same educational opportunities he had been given as a child. 

After college, he joined the corporate world but eventually made his way to his passion: early childhood education and entrepreneurship. His first startup was Advenio, a high-quality daycare for preschoolers in Mexico, which led to his current pursuit: Kinedu. 

Kinedu encourages early childhood development at scale. Parents and teachers can access over 2,000 one-minute long videos on Kinedu’s app that provides them with content and tools to better engage in their child’s development.

For this episode, I sat down with Luis, our first guest from Monterrey, to talk about what it’s like starting a business and living in one of Mexico’s most important business centres. We cover his journey from the corporate world as a consultant, to developing a business plan for his first startup Advenio, and eventually starting Kinedu. We also discuss the cultural differences that led him to miss trains while he was attending boarding school in the UK, and what it was like to study at Stanford at a time when no one was really paying attention to tech. 

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Andy Kieffer, AgaveLab: Cultivating Guadalajara Talent to Solve Mexican Problems with Tech, Ep 83

Category : Crossing Borders Podcast, Mexico
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Andy Kieffer and his family decided to spend a year relaxing in Guadalajara, Mexico, and ended up staying. As founder of AgaveLab, Andy helps startups in the US and Mexico build tech products with local Guadalajara talent. 

Originally from the midwest, Andy moved to California straight out of high school and worked on early stage tech companies, helping them build product, raise money more quickly and even get acquired. After each project, he would take a year off to travel, which eventually led him to Guadalajara.

In this episode I sit down with Andy to hear more about his story building tech companies in Silicon Valley, creating products for the Mexican market, and how he is helping solve some of Mexico’s biggest problems with his “startup apprenticeship program” AgaveLab. We also cover lessons learned from the Mexican ecosystem, why Mexico is an attractive market for starting a business as well as for foreign investment.

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Cory Siskind, Base Operations: Using Technology to Secure Global Workforces, Ep 81

Category : Crossing Borders Podcast, Mexico
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How do you keep a global workforce up to date on daily security threats and confirm people are ok in the event of a natural disaster? Most companies are still stuck in phone call and paper based systems that are extremely expensive and hard to update.

Base Operations’ founder Cory Siskind realized there was a better way than the standard practice that most multinational corporations give to employees who travel abroad for work: thirty page risk reports which mostly don’t even get read. Base Operations is an app that provides just-in-time information to its users in markets with high crime rates but poor access to crime data. Global workforces can quickly get a feel for their surroundings as soon as they touch down in a new city or country with the app’s features: intuitive heat maps, safe routing, geofenced alerts, and check-ins.

Cory has always been passionate about emerging markets, specifically interested in how security and crime affect a country’s growth. But what was the spark that pushed Cory to start the business? A business plan competition while studying for her Master’s degree at Harvard!

I sat down with Cory to talk about her early interest in emerging markets, how she came up with the idea for her company (also part of Magma Partners’ portfolio as of 2018), her experience in Harvard’s business plan competition, and what it’s like to operate between the US and Mexico. 

Check out this episode of Crossing Borders to hear more about how Base Operations uses data to help multinationals keep their employees safe in emerging markets. 

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Johanna Posada, Elevar Equity: Driving Impact in Latin America via Venture Capital, Ep 79

Category : Crossing Borders Podcast, Mexico
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Originally from Mexico, developing microfinance in Latin America and India was a natural step for Johanna Posada. With over 15 years of experience working in corporate finance, economics, microfinance and investing in emerging markets, Johanna, now based in Seattle, has long been involved in economic development. Currently, as Managing Director and Founder of Elevar Equity, an impact investment fund that focuses on fintech in both of those regions, Johanna has been able to find an intersection between work that has a social component and is also business oriented.

Elevar Equity targets investment in transformative and scalable businesses focusing on underserved customers. In this episode, I sat down with Johanna to talk about her experience and lessons learned from managing four funds with more than $270M assets under management, helping startups through multiple exits and impacting millions of people. We also cover her experience in microfinance and how the ecosystem has evolved over the years, her reasons for choosing LatAm and India, why foreign investors should be looking into the LatAm investment scene, and what the future holds for Elevar.

Check out this episode of Crossing Borders to learn about Latin America’s impact investing space, and how the Elevar investment method helps people at the bottom of the pyramid build their businesses.

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