startupi

Brazilian angel investor associations coordinated with GVCepe and selected 16 businesses as semi-finalists in the 2009 Desafio Brasil (Challenge: Brazil 2009).  This Friday and Saturday they will participate in a mentoring event in São Paulo, sponsored by Intel and the law office of Derraik Advogados.

This is one more stage in the competition for new businesses focused on technology and innovation. The interested public is invited to participate in the event (which offers panels and workshops) in order to get to know the projects, the panelists and the investors! The schedule is super interesting; for those who can’t attend, you can follow it on the web. Read more…

At the request of people who participated and those who couldn’t attend, I’ve published a podcast of the conversation between Brazilian bloggers and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Read more…

In his visit to Brazil this week, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured at left) announced a Brazilian Applications Challenge. Aiming at the development of third party applications within Facebook’s own site, as well as integration with external sites, the challenge will offer prize money to Brazilian developers.

Mark has involved the press, bloggers and students in his first visit to Brazil. He arrived Sunday night and stayed in São Paulo, where on the following day he gave interviews and participated in a chat with invited bloggers (including myself).

Read on to learn more about this meeting, see photos, and watch videos of the workshop with developers, which addressed strategies like that which the portal Terra just implemented. Read more…

At the end of June I was on a panel evaluating pitches at Start-up Lab, hosted by The Hub in São Paulo in partnership with Artemisia. The event gave the representatives of the eight pre-selected projects the 5-minute opportunity to present their business plans to the panel and the approximately 80 attendees. After these “elevator pitches”, there was a discussion period in which everyone could participate. Read more…

A real business catalyst for investors and entrepreneurs in Latin America, Challenge Brazil is set for another edition of the annual competition for innovative new technology businesses. This year, more than 140 projects were submitted by entrepreneurs from eight Brazilian states. The step of verifying requirements has been completed, and the Challenge is off and running with 48 selected projects. Read more…

Imagine a world where technology helps solve the world’s toughest problems. This was the theme of the Imagine Cup 2009, an international competition for technology students. Imagine, too, that among over 300,000 competitors from 142 countries, five Brazilian teams won four of the nine official categories, plus three of the ten special prizes. Brazil was on top of the world in this year’s edition of the event. Check out the winning teams and their projects. Read more…