startupi

One time I was presenting my “startup comedy” at a university. A student asked me if startups were a different kind of business, and from there (happily) several people jumped in and carried on the conversation. This happened at an event, and in a similar way it came up again in a recent reader question.

Now for World Consumer Rights Day, held on March 15th each year: is there a special consideration regarding startups? How do they fit in? Read more…

Latin Moot Corp’s annual business plan competition is being held this week in São Paulo, Thursday through Saturday. The Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) holds this competition as a preliminary round in advance of the global Moot Corp, which is held at the University of Texas.

Among the eight finalists one is Argentine, one North American and another from New Zealand. The panelists include investors (Confrapar, Adrenax, Direct Talk and others) as well as experts in various fields (including myself and representatives from Sebrae, Universia, Poli-USP, FGV and Fiesp). The presentations for each startup are available on AngelSoft, an online system for viewing the proposals and creating relationships between entrepreneurs and investors. Read more…

I am publishing, with the consent of Márcia Lima, the responses I gave to questions from her earlier interview  “Empreender 2.0: o desafio startups” (Entrepreneurship 2.0: the startup challenge), which was published earlier this month on the website Baguete, which is a southern Brazilian site covering IT business.

The article also included responses from Edson Mackeenzy (Videolog) and Gilberto Jr (Amanaiê).

The questions Márcia had asked were: Read more…

That’s it! The value of the purchase by the brazilians was not revealed but it’s said they now own 75% of the company. By the way, almost nothing was revealed about this new acquisition from the heroes of the brazilian startup scene: no traditional press coverage and just a bit mentioned on Twitter (only some colombians retweeting the same 2 colombian posts - and it doesn’t mean we have relentlessly adopted every imaginable method of acquiring information).

Actually, neither the press assistants of the involved companies did communicate this. The acquisition was announced this Wednesday in Colombia, was covered on some sites there, and was shared by Startupi’s friend Alan Colmenares (of TaironaMedia), who had just lectured at Bogotech event.

Read more…

I was at Campus Party when I ran into Millor Machado (who blogs at Saia do Lugar, along with Luiz Piovesana) and heard about his idea for this project. It was a blog that would centralize the posts of other blogs and sell advertising jointly across the participating blogs. He said ReadWriteWeb Brasil (run by Diego Gomes) was the other blog participating in the project, and and he invited Startupi to join. After much  discussion and work, we are launching this project: Hubit. Read more…

Startupi has just become an official media partner of the Brazil Means Business event, which is taking place March 29th in Amsterdam. It’s focused on discussions of the economic opportunities in Brazil and intends to bring together business people and investors for networking and negotiations.

Participation is by invitation. The organizers are offering opportunities for readers of Startupi to participate by showcasing their products, with the chance to do business and perhaps get investments. Read more…