Juan Vera joins me in this episode of Crossing Borders to talk about entrepreneurial business in Latin America. Juan’s experience as an engineer and CEO has helped him start several businesses, then scale those businesses from Colombia to Mexico and the United States. Listen to hear Juan share how he bootstrapped his early startups to eventually raising several million in venture capital, and everything he learned along the way.
Most people in Silicon Valley would not intuitively think of building startups in Guadalajara, Mexico. But Mak Gutierrez is part of a team working through Hackers and Founders to support and fund startups in one of the most historic cities in Latin America.
In this conversation, Mak and I talk about his background, how Science Fiction has influenced his thinking about the future and the role of tech in the world, and why Guadalajara is one of the best places in Latin America to start a company.
As I’ve featured Latin American entrepreneurs over the last 24 episodes I’ve learned more than anyone. The insights these entrepreneurs, investors and ecosystem builders in Latin America have are extremely helpful to anyone who’s looking to start their own company or grow an existing one.
I decided to share my key takeaways with you on this 25th episode, so what you’re going to hear is a shorter “best of” session featuring a handful of the great entrepreneurs I’ve spoken with over the last few episodes. I also take a few moments after each clip to share why I thought the advice shared is so valuable. And just in case you want to hear each of the interviews in their entirety, I’ve linked these great Latin American entrepreneur and investor names to their original episodes in the bullet point outline below.
There are many roads to Silicon Valley, but you’ll likely not hear one as unusual as the one my guest today took. Jonathan Nelson started out as the son of missionaries in Honduras and Costa Rica and learned the role of a serving leader by watching his Dad lead a mission organization. But he left Central America for nursing school, a computer science education, and finally headed to Silicon Valley.
Today, Jonathan runs Hackers and Founders, the largest network of entrepreneurs in the world. In this conversation we walk through the steps that led him from nursing school to startup founder, how he created an entrepreneurial meetup in a bar that led to an acceleration co-op, and the ways he’s iterating to bring more funding and more improvement to the cultures of Latin America through his company, Hackers and Founders.