Ep 39 Kevin Valdez: From Guatemala to GroupRaise

Category : Crossing Borders Podcast, Guatemala
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GroupRaise is an online platform that helps groups raise money for the causes they care about by eating at restaurants. I previously interviewed two of the other founders of GroupRaise, Devin Baptiste and Sean Park, in Episode 5 and Episode 31 of Crossing Borders, so please check out those podcasts if you are interested in learning more about GroupRaise.

In this episode, I sat down with Kevin Valdez, one of the co-founders of GroupRaise to learn more about how he moved to the US from Guatemala in middle school, helped build the family business, and eventually joined Devin and Sean to found GroupRaise.

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LatAm List: Latin American Startup News in English

Category : Latin America Startups and Investing
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Latin America’s entrepreneurs are solving some of the world’s most pressing challenges, yet there is only minimal English language coverage of their work. As a result, these stories remain confined to the region, hidden away in their native Spanish or Portuguese.

With major English-language tech publications covering only the biggest stories, generally $20M+ fundraising and big ticket acquisitions from the region’s most prominent startups who have been funded by US venture capitalists, English speakers only have limited access to insights on Latin America’s booming startup ecosystem.

After we started the Crossing Borders Podcast ~1 year ago to highlight entrepreneurs with amazing stories with some connection to Latin America, the feedback was overwhelming. Building on what we’d started, we realized that there was a pressing need to bring the US and Latin American startup ecosystems closer together and to keep the English-speaking public informed of current events in Latin American entrepreneurship.

To solve this issue, we launched a new Latin American tech news site, called LatAm List to cover the stories that the English tech media isn’t covering. These stories are already being shared by mostly Spanish-language sources like PulsoSocial, El Mercurio, La República, and many more and many are aggregated into the great LAVCA bi-weekly English newsletter. Unfortunately, the language barrier prevents these narratives from reaching a wider, more global audience. (more…)

Latin America’s Growing Mobile Market

Category : Latin America Startups and Investing
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Latin America is the world’s second fastest-growing market for mobile subscribers, after Sub-Saharan Africa. In a region of approximately 640 million people, there are already 415 million mobile phone users, over half of which (more than 200 million) are smartphone users. By 2020, predictions say that 63% of Latin America’s population will have access to the mobile Internet.  

This news is crucial for both large global mobile providers and local tech companies. Latin America has proven to be extremely adaptable, adopting new technologies quickly and leapfrogging over older systems, such as landlines, entirely.

Brazil and Mexico already rank 3rd and 5th in the world for the most Facebook subscribers. In the Dominican Republic and Bolivia, mobile app usage is growing at 116% and 155%, respectively. As a whole, Latin America’s immense mobile growth presents a huge opportunity for businesses targeting the mobile market.

Why is Latin America experiencing so much mobile growth?

In 2015, Wharton published an article pegging Latin America as “the next big mobile battleground,” back when only 32% of Latin Americans had a smartphone. That article predicted that up to 50% of the region would be accessing the Internet via mobile devices by 2020. However, it is only 2018, and already more than 50% of Latin America’s mobile users are using smartphones to access the Internet. (more…)

E-Commerce in Colombia: Building on First Successes

Category : Colombia
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Colombia is one of Latin America’s biggest economies, yet traditional e-commerce has struggled to take a hold due to complex logistics challenges such as Colombia’s mountainous geography and lack of integration with international markets. Furthermore, many consumers in Colombia are still wary of online retail platforms and until recently, payments systems did not offer any options for the unbanked.

All that began to change when Rappi entered the market. Founded in 2015 as a grocery delivery service, Rappi has gone on to raise millions of dollars from US investors such as Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz for its intuitive app that allows users to order just about anything to their doorstep.

Rappi gained millions of users in Colombia and Mexico, as its founders quickly tackled issues like delivery logistics and offline payment systems that had long stumped e-commerce companies in Latin America. Rappi deliveries offer an immediacy that has helped skeptical consumers place their trust in online commerce. Furthermore, their cash-on-delivery payments system democratized mobile and electronic purchasing in Colombia and Mexico, where credit and debit cards remain relatively rare. (more…)