Ruta Startup

Crehana, Tekton Labs and Xertica are making a big impact on Peru’s startup scene. These scale-ups are led by tech savvy founders who have proven ability to scale their companies.

The companies are:

• Hiring top-talent
• Growing their teams quickly
• Expanding regionally with operations and customers outside of Peru
• Building business that generate cash
• Attracting interest from regional and global investors (Salesforce Ventures and Endeavor Catalyst invested in Xertica)
• Led by Endeavor Entrepreneurs who are giving back (Kenneth Lopez of Tekton Labs is the Endeavor Entrepreneur of the year in 2018 for his hours giving back to other founders and Saul Chrem of Xertica is a board member of startup Quantum Talent)

This is good news for our startup ecosystem. Based on a recent Endeavor Insight(1) report, “entrepreneurship communities become productive by generating a relatively small numbers of companies that reach scale.”  By building these companies, founders Diego Olcese, Kenneth Lopez, Saul Chrem and Luis Arbulu are playing a part in making Lima a productive entrepreneurship community.

Continue reading “Scale-ups making a mark”

Yesterday fans of Universitario, a historic football team in Peru, became fans of Joinnus, a once-small startup launched in Lima. The fans used Joinnus’s ticketing platform to purchase 30,000 seats in 10 hours. This beat the previous record, for a Peru national team game, of 72 hours.

Joinnus is one example of a startup that a large corporate player in Peru has invested behind. In 2017, Grupo RPP, a large media company, backed Joinnus’s tireless founders Carolina Botto and Domingo Seminario with a financing round.

In another example, BCP, the largest bank in Peru, announced it had teamed up with the startup Culqi to help improve the bank’s payments platform.  Culqi is led by Amparo Nalvarte and Nicolas Di Pace, who launched the startup after graduating from Universidad del Pacifico.

These founders are teaching some of the biggest corporations in Peru how to innovate and scale. Technological disruption has come to traditional sectors like media, banking, and retail in Latin America. Even the most dominant incumbent players are turning to startups. Learning from startup founders is one way, and perhaps the best way, for them to stay ahead. 

This is exciting for Peru’s startup community. Even with the odds stacked up against startups, founders do have a chance to make it big – 30,000 adoring fans big.

Building a successful startup in Peru is hard enough. You don’t need to try to do it all alone. There are many free resources available and people willing to help you on your journey.  Continue reading “It takes a village to raise a startup in Peru”

January has started off with a bang in the Peru startup community, with multiple options for accelerating your startup. Continue reading “Accelerated start to 2019”

As the Peru startup community grows, so does the number of startups with truly disruptive solutions.

These startups have some combination of the following characteristics:  (i) tech savvy co-founders, (ii) regional or global market from day one, (iii) data-driven decision-making, and (iv) new or tweaked business models.

Here are is a list of 9 startups in alphabetical order:

• AmigoCloud – Collaborative mapping platform with a cloud-based dashboard
• Anda – Watch with a has messaging system and symbol language to allow parents to connect with their children
• Apurata – Loans to the un-banked in under 30 minutes
• Arrivedo – User-centric guide that helps travelers to find and enjoy experiences around their hotels
• Ecovol – Device that lowers gasoline consumption by up to 20%
• Quantum Talent – Software with AI to automate recruiting and selection
• Simcase – In-class simulations that allow students to have engaging learning experiences on-campus
• Space AG – Imaging and software solutions that help optimize crop production
• Valia – Data-driven real estate platform to provide information to owners, buyers and renters.

This list is not complete, and does not include many edtech and fintech startups which are all providing solutions that will bring transformational impact to those industries. I expect this list will grow over time as more founders in Peru push the envelope and seek to disrupt the status quo.