startupi

Some days ago I gave a talk at the University of Santa Cruz do Sul (UNISC), in Rio Grande do Sul, at the invitation of the Social Communications department, from which I had graduated as a journalist.  I challenged the class to send me materials about what is happening in their region relating to digital innovation, technology and entrepreneurship, in order to create visibility and an exchange of ideas.

Coincidentally I got an email the following day discussing a very interesting project. I didn’t know whether to be happy or disappointed, though, that the email was not sent by one of the students, but by an independent entrepreneur. Just to show you that when someone wants something to happen, he has to make it happen rather than count on others to do the work.

Of course there needs to be communication and a will to work together - this is vital to any project. Of course entrepreneurs in information technology don’t get the same attention when they are located in far-flung regions.

Below is our exchange:

“My name is Vitor Matheus, and I attended your talk yesterday at UNISC and wanted to say it was very fruitful for me. At one point in the talk you asked what the people in computing were up to. We are working on Valoriza Web (I’m a partner with Ismael), we are participating in the UNISC Technology Incubator where we have an interesting project relating to mobile marketing (there are other projects, but I’ll just discuss this one).”

“We are receiving some consulting support right now from a Chilean named Kurt Vega Olate, in order to do market segmentation and analysis, to plan marketing strategies for promoting the product. But I’d like to talk a little about our project.”

“Technically our system allows mass phone calling (using audio recordings or text to voice conversion), and allows the call recipient to interact (leave messages, select options, etc.); data about the call are received automatically and the cost is very interesting.”

“Conceptually the product offers businesses a type of differentiated marketing (direct, fast, emotional, interactive) that doesn’t just address explicit needs but also implicit ones, promoting the delivery of the messages but also measuring the return of results.”

Ismael Brixius (Dir. Adm), Kurt Olate (Chile – Consultor em Gestão de Negócios e Marketing Estratégico), Damian Sorroche (Argentina, intercambista de Engenharia de Produção), Vitor Matheus Wolschick (Dir. de Desenvolvimento).

“Our development strategy is to use innovation to create products focused on improving business for our clients and delivering not just products but solutions.”

“We are working (and this part might interest you the most) to integrate this system with social networks. We want to launch a similar project revolving around video calling (when the right moment of opportunity arises during the life cycle of the current project).”

“Anyway, this is a summary of what we are doing. I want to wish you much success and if some investor asks you about a good business in Brazil to invest in, well, hehehehe.”

After reading this email I recalled Nuswit, which participated in the “startupitches” during Campus Party and was one of the finalists there). I asked about the similarity.

“It is similar; I think we copied each other without knowing it - we don’t know each other. What I think is distinctive is the pricing (ours is quite a bit lower), if you integrate with a pre-existing system and dataset. But the main difference I see is that they are selling just the technology. I think with the team structure and commercial sector they have (bigger and “richer” than ours), and being located in the middle of the country, with the prices they charge, they should be more concerned about their clients’ business.”

How is it being part of an incubator?

“I came out of the Science and Computing one and my partner from Audio-Visual Media. We have people from Administration, Computer Engineering. The project we have in the incubator is the Rede Divulgação (focused on listing local businesses for local clients). The incubator was (is) very important for the business because it gave us a change to take part in a lot of courses and assessments (regarding adminstrative, finance and marketing), quality control, and so on.”

“Today we have a more professional vision, bigger than our own business, which is a big challenge for many businesses, since most often they are composed of people who have a deep technical knowledge and decide to develop an idea but lack administration and strategic planning skills.”

“On the other side, what is missing in the incubators, and I think this is something that happens all over Brazil, is methods for financing ideas; there are business with interesting and innovative ideas who can’t move forward to develop them. We have the assessment of a Chilean exchange student (I mentioned him before) and he was very surprised at the lack of investors. But in general I recommend businesses send their projects to incubators.”

Well, the guys have a project but need money to develop it robustly. But the other thing that’s missing in all this innovation and incubating (and in the region overall) is embracing communications! How do entrepreneurs gain clients? How do bloggers and journalists get news? How can no one notice that one project, which missed out on the attention, is practically the same as another that was a finalist in a major competition? Do people have to come to São Paulo to ask a question or send an email that gets noticed?

As a poet said, markets are conversations; it’s important to understand, innovate and talk a little about the future (or about the present!) in every news article. I hope to hear from more of you about what’s going on in your regions. When will communication return to inspire new cycles of development and put the interior of the country on the map?