Storytelling 101: Anson Tou

Anson Tou, founder of Qempo, demonstrated what it takes to have a successful startup meetup:

• Meeting space
• Food
• Presentation about a recent experience with key takeaways

That’s it!

Anson recently participated in the BlackBox acceleration program in the U.S., joining the ranks of Peru founders who have participated in acceleration programs outside the country. He returned to Peru and invited friends and founders to hear about his experience last Sunday afternoon in the common area of his office building.

Guess what? 50 people showed up.

This type of organic informal meeting are what Chris Heivly talks about in the Lima Startup Ecosystem Assessment as a key to building a more dynamic community: founders and ecosystem actors getting together to share their stories.

Qempo strives to democratize logistics and empower Peruvian entrepreneurs by providing access to international markets. Anson recently raised an investment round from friends and family investors.

Anson was nice enough to share his presentation. A few takeaways he had for fellow founders were:

• Build empathy for customers by meeting with them frequently to understand their problems.
• When raising capital ask investors “what three things do you want to learn?” prior to the meeting.
• Investors in the U.S. focus on the market opportunity and want to invest behind founders with “Big, Hairy, Audacious, Goals”

Pedro Neira, the first Peru founder to participate in the program also attended the meeting. He is now a BlackBox ambassador in Latin America and is happy to share is experience with founders considering applying. Anson said that after talking to Pedro, we debating attending the two-week program due to its cost but after coming back he feels the future pay back will make it more that worth it. You can learn more and sign up for the program here.