Ep 43 Lisa Besserman: Startup Buenos Aires & Building Argentina’s Startup Community

Category : Argentina, Crossing Borders Podcast
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Lisa Besserman escaped the New York winter in 2012 to work remotely from Buenos Aires, and never came back. She fell in love with the city’s entrepreneurial culture and began to build Startup Buenos Aires (SUBA), an organization that helps represent the startup, tech, and entrepreneurial community in Buenos Aires. With SUBA reaching its five-year anniversary this year, I sat down with Lisa Besserman to learn how Argentina’s startup ecosystem has grown and changed since she moved to Buenos Aires.

In this episode, we talk about what it’s like doing business in Argentina, new opportunities for venture capital investment, the changes she’s seen in the ecosystem over the past five years, and where Argentina’s ecosystem is headed next.

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The Brazilian Startup Ecosystem: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, and Florianópolis

Category : Brazil
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Brazil’s economy experienced ups and downs over the past decade. Almost immediately after Forbes published an article raving about Brazil’s entrepreneurial potential in 2012, Brazil entered one of the most disastrous economic crises in the region. Just this year, stories of political corruption, monetary deflation, and falling commodity prices have plagued Latin America’s largest country.

Brazil is a country of contradictions. In the first three months of 2018, Brazil produced three new startup unicorns. The first was 99, acquired by Didi Chuxing for a rumored US$1B. Then in quick succession, PagSeguro reached US$2.7B in its January 2018 IPO (the 5th highest IPO ever), and Nubank became the third unicorn of 2018 with a US$150M Series E round in March 2018.

As the largest market in Latin America, with a population of over 210 million people, Brazil is still the most attractive country for investment and growth in the region for many investors. Despite the economic downturn, international investors often look to Brazil first when they want to enter the Latin American market. Many tech giants, such as Google, Uber, Airbnb, and Amazon, have built offices in São Paulo before moving into other Latin American markets. Many entrepreneurs look to invest in Brazil for their long-term growth strategies, as well.

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Ep 42 Pierpaolo Barbieri: How Ualá is Increasing Financial Inclusion in Argentina

Category : Argentina, Crossing Borders Podcast
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According to Pierpaolo Barbieri, Argentina is a country where young people would prefer to visit the dentist than to go to the bank. More than half of Argentina’s population is excluded from traditional financial institutions and few efforts have been made to help the middle class access services like savings and credit. My guest on the podcast today is Pierpaolo Barbieri, the founder and CEO of Ualá, the first fully-mobile and free bank card for the Argentinean market, which is trying to bring financial inclusion to Latin America’s second largest economy.

We talk about Ualá’s efforts to serve the underbanked in Argentina, the financial environment in Latin America, Pierpaolo’s background studying in the US and the UK, and why he has decided to maintain Ualá as a free service for all customers.

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5 Habits of Exceptionally Successful Distributed Teams

Category : Latin America Startups and Investing
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Not too long ago, teams almost always needed to be in the same physical location to work effectively. But today, it’s no longer unusual to work with team members spread across different time zones, countries, or even continents. In fact, remote work is on the rise, with more and more organizations opting for 100% distributed teams. Dell, Apple, U-Haul, Microsoft, and Buffer are just a few notable companies that have had a great deal of success operating with distributed teams.

Having the right communication and collaboration tools in place is vital to streamlining your processes as a remote team; however, managing a geographically dispersed team isn’t without its challenges. If you’re struggling to keep your team motivated and unified, there are ways to get your team back on track. I spoke to a few entrepreneurs to get their advice on how they’ve been able to manage their distributed teams successfully. Here’s what they had to say.

Create a repeatable onboarding process

When a new team member joins your remote team, it’s important to eliminate any feelings of isolation and set clear expectations from day one. Establishing an onboarding process is an essential part of this step. (more…)