“Global thinking” is fashionable, especially among the technological entrepreneurial community, and it is due to the fact that now it is possible –with a relatively low entering barrier and global markets- to create a company, receive its first funds and aspire to make the world your client.
In Latin America, many startups counselors and advisors, tell new entrepreneurs to start with the markets they know better. The local or home markets first, and then conquer the entire area.
The fundamental reason for this is that launching business in unknown markets implies a preliminary knowledge of the culture, and the way they do business; things you might not know. This could complicate the launching process that is already complex and risky enough.
But in Argentina, there are multiple examples of entrepreneurs that decided not to follow the traditional recipe and just think big.
They created global projects from scratch that weren’t focused towards these areas, and managed to convince investors and accelerators that they had what they needed to conquer external markets, and they are now leaders of international markets that don’t involve Argentina or Latin America as important markets.
The startup founded by Mariano Suarez Battan, Agustin Soler and Pato Jutard managed to develop a tool that is used by reknown companies such as Ideo, Evernote and Autodesk when their creative teams want to organize, share and develop their ideas in a visual and collaborative way.
With operations in Buenos Aires, the company –that already has more than 350 thousand registered users, more than 40 thousand monthly active users and more than 1000 premium users- has its most users in the United States and Europe.
In their entrepreneurial road, they went by NXTP Labs and in 2012 the company received capital injection from Inter Capital, Alta Venutres, and 500 Startups.
Guidecentral
The project, launched in 2012 by ex Googlers and YouTubers and led by Gaston Irigoyen is focused in DIY tutorials of crafts or videos. What they did is they developed a tool that lets users explore, share and monetize these videos.
The proportion of Latin American users is very small, while the majority of their target- women among 20 and 50 years of age- is in English speaking countries.
The NXTP Labs former student –based in Ireland now- received USD 700K and now manages more than 3000 shared guides in a community of more than 100,000 crafters.
Wideo
Was created with the idea of making a tool so that companies and users could create their own online videos.
The tool created by Agu De Marco and Agus Esperón, is going through a transformation process now. They are now focusing in being a tool to communicate a message and to improve their metrics and functions so that the user can make better videos.
The startup also went through NXTP Labs and 500 Startups, it recently launched its Spanish version, and the majority of its users are from the US and Europe.
Today, the organic growth of the company is taking them to Asia and East Europe taking advantage of the universality of visual elements in different cultural environments.
The Social Radio
Roberto Gluck’s idea in 2011, created a new niche: a service that allowed users to listen to tweets, a way to take twitter into another level, one where you could listen instead of reading. The idea was surprising even when first presented in Silicon Valley.
When Alejandra Negrete and Demian Renzulli came the project took more shape and it went through an entrepreneurial path going by NXTP Labs, Startup Chile and now they are finishing an acceleration project in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais (Brazil).
The app can detect seven languages and is thought of to be used when you drive, besides it works together with music services that enhance the experience of listening to tweets.
Beepi
It is one of the most recent exploits of an Argentinian coming from the US. The entrepreneur Alejandro Resnik has just received USD 60 M (more besides the 5M and 1.3 M received before) due to his most recent creation, Beepi, a marketplace that achieves the impossible: shopping and buying cares online, entirely.
The revolutionary process includes benefits for both buyers and sellers and the fact that they receive the care literally after finishing the process at their doorstep –tempted and revolutionized the most renowned investors and advisors in Silicon Valley, such as Redpoint ventures.
Nowadays the company –based in Boston- is waiting for the investment to let them expand along the US.
