Every startup has a growth curve. It looks different for each company depending on many factors, and my guest on this episode says founders need to push their company through its growth curve as fast as possible.
Thomas Allier left his home in Paris, France to found a startup in Colombia. It’s not the normal path of a Latin American company but his decision paid off. His company – Viajala – is now the largest discount flights search engine in Latin America. You’ll enjoy this conversation.
The term International Business Strategy is typically used to describe U.S. or Western companies looking to maximize profits through offshoring or outsourcing, or extending their sales into foreign markets. But Andres Barreto is doing things in the opposite direction. He’s working to encourage Latin American startups to focus on the U.S. market and scale there, as well as encourage US companies to look to Latin America for the talented engineers and developers they need. But instead of outsourcing, they’re building integral startup teams in Latin America.
Costa Rica, literally “Rich Coast” in Spanish, is a fitting name for a country with diverse geography which ranges from tropical rainforests to vast oceanscapes. Five million people call Costa Rica home, and the official language is Spanish. Costa Rica’s GDP is US$74.9 billion with 72% attributed to imports and exports like coffee, sugar, and fruit. The average wage for Costa Ricans is about CRC654,059 (Costa Rican Colón) or US$1,150 per month.
Costa Rica is a prime location for entrepreneurs because of its proximity to the United States and because of its many free trade agreements. Its largest foreign investments come from the United States, which led to a 2016 marked a trade surplus of US$1.6 billion between Costa Rica and the US.
In the past few years, large tech companies like Amazon have invested in the Costa Rican market. One of the strong qualities of Costa Ricans, locally known as “Ticos,” is their literacy rate of 97.8%, The country has placed education as a top priority, and English is common among the young population. (more…)
With the success of huge marketplace companies like Amazon, it might be easy to think that new online marketplaces are not going to work out very well, but my guest on this episode has demonstrated over and over that it’s simply not the case. Guimar Vaca Sittic is an Argentinian entrepreneur who has built successful online marketplaces himself and who now is a venture parter at FJ Labs, which focuses primarily on US and international marketplaces. You’ll find his story and perspective very inspiring and helpful.