Tag: wizeline

Bismarck Lepe, Wizeline: Building innovative end-to-end products worldwide, Ep 141

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.

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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:

  • [1:46] – About Wizeline
  • [3:30] – The vision behind the expansion plan
  • [5:10] – Bismarck’s nomadic upbringing
  • [6:38] – On building wealth
  • [8:29] – Entrepreneurship in the media
  • [10:40] – From medicine to startups
  • [13:04] – Leaving Google
  • [14:02] – Lessons learned from starting, building, scaling, and selling a business
  • [16:33] – Advice on dealing with boards
  • [17:54] – The Telstra deal
  • [20:00] – Starting the next company
  • [22:34] – What it takes to be successful
  • [26:25] – Guadalajara’s tech ecosystem 
  • [32:55] – Advice to Bismarck’s younger self
  • [34:25] – Books, blogs, & podcast recommendations
  • [35:20] – What’s next for the companies?

Show notes on Latamlist.com.

Mexico’s Startup Ecosystem: Mexico City, Monterrey, and Guadalajara

With startup hubs across Latin America vying to become the next Silicon Valley, Mexico may be ahead of the game, and carving out its own niche south of the border. In 2015, TechCrunch published an article that argued that Mexico’s transition over to the innovation economy might just turn it into one of the world’s biggest economies in the next decade. Bismarck Lepe, a Mexican-American entrepreneur who pioneered Mexico-Silicon Valley cross border companies with Ooyala and now Wizeline, contends that Mexico is one of, if not the most interesting country in the world over the next decade.

Mexico’s unique geographic and cultural positioning allows it to capture both the US and the Latin American markets, while its size and natural resources allow it to compete with South American giants like Brazil.

Three major cities in Mexico – Mexico City, Monterrey, and Guadalajara – are at the forefront of the innovative movement and each city is contributing intensely to the growth of the startup ecosystem in Mexico.

While Mexico City is the most powerful due to its size and the availability of private and federal capital, Guadalajara and Monterrey are important second cities that are vying for technology and startup leadership. Here’s a deeper look at the startup ecosystems in each of these Mexican cities. (more…)