Tag: colombia

Martin Schrimpff, Zinobe: Bringing Credit to Underserved Markets, Ep 115

Category : Crossing Borders Podcast
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You can now find the full show notes of the Crossing Borders podcast on LatamList.com’s new podcast section. I’ll still post the audio of the podcast on my blog and I’m planning to start writing more again on my blog, like I used to.

Subscribe to the LatamList Weekly newsletter to get updated on the week’s top tech news and stories from the region.

Thanks for listening to Crossing Borders all these years! If you have any feedback or questions, please feel free to reach out here, or contact me on social media.

Outline of this episode:

  • [2:12] – About Centeo
  • [2:56] – Growing up in Colombia
  • [3:28] – Choosing to be an entrepreneur
  • [4:11] – Culture shocks in Latin America
  • [5:34] – First business: Sirius
  • [6:48] – Advice to entrepreneurs on developing a product
  • [9:48] – Starting a cashflow business
  • [11:06] – Payu’s milestones
  • [13:35] – On raising money after bootstrapping
  • [15:15] – Expanding Payu 
  • [16:26] – Starting Zinobe
  • [20:26] – Next project: Centeo
  • [22:16] – Lessons learned as an angel investor
  • [24:18] – Advice to Martin’s younger self
  • [26:12] – What’s next for Zinobe and Centeo?

Show notes on Latamlist.com.

Florence Frech, Leal: Bringing Data-Driven Customer Engagement to Latin America, Ep 114

Category : Crossing Borders Podcast
Posted on by

You can now find the full show notes of the Crossing Borders podcast on LatamList.com’s new podcast section. I’ll still post the audio of the podcast on my blog and I’m planning to start writing more again on my blog, like I used to.

Subscribe to the LatamList Weekly newsletter to get updated on the week’s top tech news and stories from the region.

Thanks for listening to Crossing Borders all these years! If you have any feedback or questions, please feel free to reach out here, or contact me on social media.

Outline of this episode:

  • [1:37] – About Leal
  • [3:11] – Customer engagement in LatAm
  • [6:33] – Growing up in El Salvador
  • [9:05] – Becoming an entrepreneur
  • [13:12] – Leaving a stable job
  • [15:04] – Florence’s inflection point
  • [17:52] – Understanding the problem first
  • [20:04] – The initial product
  • [22:25] – Leal’s use cases
  • [25:17] – Raising money 
  • [26:37] – Advice to other entrepreneurs
  • [29:31] – Books, blogs, & podcast recommendations
  • [32:00] – Advice to Florence’s younger self
  • [33:23] – What’s next for Leal?

Show notes on Latamlist.com.

Gonzalo Ucar, Hogaru: Empowering Colombia’s Cleaners to Earn Stable Wages, Ep 103

Category : Crossing Borders Podcast
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As an engineer, Gonzalo Ucar wanted to solve real-world problems. Originally from Spain, he decided to move to Latin America to become an entrepreneur and tap into the region’s opportunities. Today, he lives in Bogota and is co-founder of Hogaru, an on-demand cleaning company in Colombia.

Gonzalo and his partner recognized a huge pain point in Colombia’s cleaning industry: a deeply-rooted informal economy. Most cleaners in Colombia do not have a steady income or a social security number, which restricts their ability to realize their full economic potential. That’s why Hogaru’s cleaning service functions on a direct employment basis and avoids encouraging a gig economy. 

In this episode, I sit down with Gonzalo to talk about how a Spaniard ended up in Colombia, Hogaru’s unique business model, and the lessons he’s learned as an engineer that he applies as an entrepreneur. We also discuss his major takeaways from participating in YCombinator and working with Endeavor.

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An Overview of Latin America’s Food Delivery Industry

Category : Latin America Startups and Investing
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In the startup world, success always attracts copycats and competitors. As a result of past successes, Latin America’s food delivery industry is one of the most competitive in the world. Brazil’s iFood, a subsidiary of tech giant Movile, became one of the biggest players in the Latin American startup ecosystem, raising US$500M from Naspers and other international investors, in what many consider to be the largest round in Latin American startup history. iFood is growing incredibly quickly, registering 390,000 daily deliveries, a 109% increase from 2017. iFood’s CEO, Carlos Moyses, recently appeared on my Crossing Borders podcast to talk about the growth of Brazil’s biggest delivery company.

Rewinding back to the early 2010s, food delivery in Latin America had its first peak long before the region truly went digital. Latin America’s food delivery hit the news because Delivery Hero, a German food delivery conglomerate, secured international reach through a spate of acquisitions in the region.

In many ways, these deals spurred the next generation of entrepreneurs in the food delivery space and created many of the most popular apps Latin Americans use today.

Food delivery fits into a trend that is shifting Latin American shopping patterns online. When PedidosYa was founded in 2009 in Uruguay by Alvaro Garcia, Ariel Burschtin, and Ruben Sosenke, just 27% of Latin America’s population had Internet access.

Today, 66% of Latin Americans have Internet access, and in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Uruguay, more than 70% of people are Internet users.

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