Thoughts from Brazil

Last month, I was a delegate to the Global Entrepreneurship Congress, which attracted more than 1,500 entrepreneurs, government and community leaders, and investors from around the world.

The experience left me with a few distinct impressions, and it reinforced other facts for me:

Countries around the world are developing programs to attract the best entrepreneurs to launch businesses in their countries. Startup Chile is giving over $12 million per year in equity-free startup capital to entrepreneurs who launch their businesses in Chile. Most of the companies come from the U.S. (24%), followed by host country Chile (19%) Argentina (9%) and India (7%). The program will also host startups from countries like Morocco, Ukraine, Pakistan and the Netherlands.

In the next three years, Startup Brasil is investing $20 million to over 150 startups—25% of which will be international.

Whether or not I agree with these models (I lean towards Brad Feld’s thinking that the development of entrepreneurship communities should be led by entrepreneurs, not the support organizations), the point is that top talent will move around the globe to where there is opportunity, support, and resources.

The reason why companies seek out accelerator programs, such as the ones listed above, is because of the mentorship network. I talked with Bowei Gai of the World Startup Report, who is surveying the global startup community. Through their travels, he and his team have seen that the best accelerators have the best mentor network. Mentors give not only advice, but valuable connections. And the best mentors aren’t always local.

While at the GEC in Rio de Janeiro, I attended the 21212 Accelerator’s Investor Pitch Event (yep, that’s me on the front row). The room was packed with investors from all over the world. The presenting companies didn’t pitch especially innovative concepts. Rather, the companies in the 21212 Accelerator Program take proven business concepts from around the world and adapt them to the hard-to-enter Brazilian market. All of these companies had raised a seed round and were looking for a second round of investment; one had already raised their Series A investment, which provided a nice success story to cap off the pitch event.

These were quality startups run by talented entrepreneurs who had been served by great mentors, thus creating quality investment opportunities. The ideas were secondary to their solid business fundamentals.

Brazilian red tape and a passive culture make it hard to do business, yet there are entrepreneurs eager to jump in. I met several U.S. entrepreneurs who had moved to Brazil, and some Brazilian natives who had spent years in the U.S. and recently decided to move back home. The country has been on the radar of the investment community for a decade, and the momentum continues.

My trip was underwritten in part by Springboard Baton Rouge. They have big ideas for Baton Rouge in the works. I’m honored they assisted me to travel to the southern hemisphere so I could bring back a global perspective to share.