Tag: Sebastian Vidal

Puerto Rico’s Business Climate and Disaster Recovery

Puerto Rico is a US territory, which makes Puerto Ricans US citizens who can live anywhere in the US, but don’t have full rights in Congress and Presidential elections.

Pre Hurricane Maria, you probably knew Puerto Rico from Despacito, the fastest growing video in the history of YouTube, its beautiful beaches and by its crippling debt that has stunted its growth. Entrepreneurs were working against the economic crisis’ backdrop to rebuild the economy even before Maria, but now are also helping in the rebuilding effort.

Home to 3.4 million residents and surprisingly some of the largest and highest grossing retail shops in the world, Puerto Ricans do not let the island’s debt or hurricane recovery define them.  The average monthly wage in San Juan is ~US$2500. However, while Puerto Rico was just getting back on its feet, it was hit with Hurricane Maria, which will take years to fully recover from. Many entrepreneurs hope that Puerto Rico takes these disasters as an opportunity to rethink issues and start from scratch using policies which will hopefully lead to policy changes to help stimulate the economy. One of these projects that Puerto Rico is exploring is leveraging Tesla’s Powerwall and solar energy technology to redo the electricity grid. (more…)

Ep 14 Sebastian Vidal, Building a Powerful Startup Accelerator in Puerto Rico

sebastian vidal - startup accelerator

It’s always exciting when I get to sit down with someone like Sebastian Vidal. In his experience working as part of the Startup Chile team and now as the leader of Parallel18, a startup accelerator based in Puerto Rico he’s been part of the launch of over 1000 startups. Can you imagine the insights, connections, and lessons-learned a guy like that has? That’s what I wanted to tap into in this conversation, so be sure you take the time to listen.

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