Search Results for: chile

Populist Revolt: Draining the Swamp and Refilling it With Old Swamp Water

A friend of mine texted me on Wednesday, “I’ve never been sadder to be proven right.” As someone who saw Hillary as the lesser of two evils and voted for her, I feel the same. Donald Trump, the vindictive, race-baiting, populist con man with authoritarian tendencies is our next president.

He wasn’t a joke or a clown. He’s the backlash against:

  • Elites taking all of the benefits since the 70s, and looking at the rest of their fellow citizens with disdain while calling them stupid, lazy or racists for complaining.
  • Politicians looking us in the eye and lying while promising to make things better.

He’s a big fuck you to the ruling class of both parties who made them the butt of their jokes and didn’t help as their lives got harder and in same cases shorter.  As I wrote two years ago:

As the US elites continue to amass wealth on a scale reminiscent of the years just before the Great Depression and continue to move toward Chilean levels and you see things like affluenza being used as a successful defense for drunkenly killing people and large corporations paying nominal fines and nearly zero taxes while normal people are punished severely for similar or lesser transgressions.

Solving these issues and putting the impunity index and Vautrin’s Law back into balance requires buy-in from government, politicians and most of all the elites that are currently benefiting from these conditions. I don’t believe that these conditions can last forever without some sort of reaction, whether its an economic reaction like the financial crisis or the election of a populist leader who will implement already disproven ideas that will punish the elites, but not raise the standard of the rest.

He’s also the backlash against social just warriors and bigoteers who have preached against and punished microagressions like asking someone “where are you from” the same as calling someone a racial slur. As I wrote in July:

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Magma Colombia

monica-avila-foto-headshotI’m excited to welcome Mónica Ávila Forero to Magma to lead our Colombia team. Mónica, based in Bogota, has worked in the entrepreneurial ecosystem from all sides for the past 15 years: she’s started her own startups, worked with Ventures, a private NGO to build the Colombia ecosystem, and has worked closely with and mentored Colombia entrepreneurs, helping them figure out their business models, connect with potential investors and scale their businesses. I’m really excited to work with Mónica to help entrepreneurs in the Colombian market!

Why Colombia? (more…)

Peru Venture Capital Overview

This post is the second in a series about Latin American startup ecosystems. Greg Mitchell, Managing Director at Angel Ventures Peru, provided much of the research for this post. Thanks Greg! Read the post on the Chilean Venture Capital, Highlighting Latin American Startups.

VCs

Angel Ventures, a Mexico-based VC, has a local presence in Peru through its Angel Ventures Peru branch office. Angel Ventures Peru has sourced deals from Latin America for the regional fund, but the fund has yet to make an investment in a Peru-based company.

Accelerators

The Peruvian government, through the Ministry of Production has a program to support local incubators and accelerators.

Endeavor – Endeavor is a global organization that promotes high impact entrepreneurs. It arrived in Peru three years ago and has been a leader developing the ecosystem.

Wayra – Wayra Peru is part of the investment arm of Telefonica. They invest in startups generally with $50k + $25k of services for 5-10% equity on convertible notes. They prefer technology companies that can be Telefonica clients or have products that can integrate into its other solutions. (more…)

Latin American Entrepreneurs: Don’t be Scared of the US Market

Note: A version of this post appeared as a column in Spanish in Chile’s El Mercurio with the title Emprendedores chilenos: Pierdan el miedo a EE.UU. Although this post focuses on Chilean entrepreneurs, it can also apply to other Latin American entrepreneurs. From what I’ve seen, Mexican entrepreneurs are the least scared of the US market, followed by Argentinians, Colombians, then Chileans, who generally think they don’t have much of a shot at competing in the US. This mindset is slowly changing and this article’s goal is to push it along faster.

A few weeks ago, COPEC, a Chilean convenience store and gasoline service station chain, acquired Delek, a US convenience store and gas station chain with 348 US locations for $535MM. COPEC has operations in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Panama, but this is their first foray into the US market. It’s an important step for Chile because it shows that both big companies and startups alike shouldn’t be scared of the US market. In fact, they should view the US market as a big opportunity to expand outside of their home markets.

For way too long, when Chilean companies large and small have wanted to expand out of Chile, they’d look at Peru, Colombia and maybe Mexico. But we’re recently seeing a big change, both by startups and by big companies like COPEC.
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