Since the new challenges of e-commerce companies like Buscapé Brazilian, Sky, Cybersource, to an in-depth interview with Marcos Galperin de Mercado Libre. We shared the views of entrepreneurs and investors from the likes of Alec Oxenford (OLX) and Eric Acher (Monash Capital). We analyzed the oportiunidades to invest in Brazil with speakers like Jose Marin (IG Expansion) or Kazah (Kaszek Ventures). And of course we’ve known Matt (Freelancer Berri) who conquered world markets from Australia and without moving to another country, among many other papers.

One of the most excited was the Start-up Competition: 500 projects, over 10 nationalities, 20 selected, 3 finalists and the winner KIDBOX.net, an educational project that makes available to Internet safely with training content, and designed for controlled smaller ones develop their skills in the network. Congratulations!

Red Innova has been the key event to find out and experiencing the potential of Brazil.

Although there are a number of music players in the US, the country with the largest number of players in the space, there are not many legal online music providers in Latin America, Senzari’s first target region.  But even in the US, most of the providers focus on subscription based, on-demand music streaming services, where the user needs to create playlists, while Senzari is a free ad-supported personalized radio provider, where the user can just type the name of an artist and get back an unlimited selection of similar music.  Senzari’s proprietary algorithms do all the work, as they create a personalized radio station with music specifically selected from a catalog of over 10 million songs.  In addition, Senzari is the most socially connected music platform in the world.  Senzari is seamlessly integrated to Facebook, providing the user with the ability to invite, share stations and chat with their friends right from the service. As soon as a user enters the service, he orshe will notice that all his Facebook friends are located on the right side of the interface, allowing them to chat with them in real time, from either Senzari or Facebook, as well as share their stations with them.

2. The industry is always fighting against piracy and illegal downloads. Does Senzari have any agreements with the music industry?

Senzari has secured all the necessary licenses to operate as an online radio provider across all the markets it operates.  The company has deep relationships with the industry, including leading organizations such as the Latin Grammys, and believes that all copyright owners and artists need to be fairly compensated for the use of their music.

3. In Brazil there are many states with very different music cultures. Which is Senzari’s plan for this big country?

Senzari algorithms were specifically built to adapt to the user’s unique musical tastes.  By utilizing advanced artificial intelligence and other Big Data analysis techniques, the service can understand the different cultural and musical taste patterns across a wide number of users and regions, and optimize the musical selections based on a large number of variables, including different music cultures found in different states in both the USA and Brazil.

4. “Senzari intelligently combines your favorite music and photos into a unique radio experience” is a part of the company’s mission. What is Senzari’s value proposition?

Senzari has created a highly engaging music experience.  We all know that music fans when they think of their favorite artists they not only enjoy the music, but are also very interested in their photos, tweets, etc.  Senzari will combine all these aspects in an elegant and visually impactful manner.  In addition, we want the experience to be highly social, so the users can experience and share the music with their friends, as they do in real life.

5. Senzari is based in Miami and San Francisco in the USA, and now is coming to Brazil. What are the differences between these two music industries?

The music industry is generally going through a difficult time everywhere.  People are consuming more music than ever, but they are not necessarily buying the music.  The are streaming it, watching the videos in YouTube or illegally downloading the files.  In Brazil, piracy is a bigger issue than in the US, where music piracy has been dropping year after year.  One of the major reasons for the drop, has been the wide availability of high quality music services that reduce the need to download the music from illegal providers.  In the USA, we now have many choices of digital music services, from personalized radio services like Senzari and Pandora, to unlimited download and playlisting services, like Spotify.  In the US, integrating social and cool features like chat, as well as making the best, personalized radio stations for a specific user is paramount to gaining and keeping an audience.  The Brazil market does not, until now, have a personalized radio service.  Senzari with all of our new features, has chosen Brazil for our launch, putting Brazil in the forefront of the digital music industry.  In addition, we believe that Senzari can have a major impact in the reduction of piracy in Brazil.  Why would a user need to download a file that be infested with viruses and of questionable quality, when she can listen to Senzari for free, while enjoying millions of songs that were specifically selected for

Without a doubt the travel industry is very fascinating, and throughout the years I’ve found many opportunities that made me stay in this industry and explore more of it. I’ve always been close to new technologies and innovations, and with the arrival of the Internet in the 90s, I saw that I could use it in a relational and transitional way for this industry. In that way, projecting with new trends, as well as behavior and cultural aspects, especially for new generations to come, using the Internet as a travel distribution channel would be a great business model in the future.

2. Less than 3 years after it was founded, ViajaNet sold  over U$30million in online fares in 2010. What is the reason for this sucess?

We actually ha our 2 year anniversary in November. Since we founded ViajaNet we saw a great opportunity: the new C class and Internet new comers. Both of those publics had a key factor: we had to make an intuitive website about travel and with an easy navigability, where in a few screens and few clicks the user would buy a travel package. We invested in technology – to make the website faster, in custom products – for those profiles, on line and off line marketing, in social networks – to show how easy and cheap is to buy with ViajaNet, in costumer service – at the moment of the sale and afterwards the sales, to be closer to the client by phone, online chat, “contact us” form, FAQ, and specially on our team of collaborators which internally are called “Crew ViajaNet”.

3. Viajanet had a $19million funding in May 2011. After the funding what changed for ViajaNet’s team and its users?

We made big investments in Marketing, Technology and new products development, besides preparing ViajaNet for international expansion. Also we increase our team of collaboratos in strategic areas of the company, and in costumer service department.

4. Latin America is the fatest growing region in numbers of Internet users in the world. How is ViajaNet preparing for this growth?

We really believe in Latin America’s potential. Recently we open our office in Mexico that was the first step to internationalization. Also, in the next few months, we are opening offices in other Latin American countries. ViajaNet believes that besides having a local website, we need to have a local ViajaNet team to expand our culture locally.

1. You’ve studied Marketing at ESPM, Innovation at MIT and product management at Silicon Valley. What’s the importance of an academic graduation on innovation and Internet projects?

The programs that I did abroad were key. To have the opportunity to be at one of the main poles of technology of the world open my mind. In the US, they have a different way to teach. They give you support for your theories, but in many cases they build you to became an entrepreneur.

Here in Brazil, we still have the culture of “get a job”, our parents did that, and their parents as well. Fortunately this culture has been changing and now, more than never, I see how important it was for me to bring back what I’ve learned to apply at Samba Tech’s everyday routine.

2. Samba Tech was created in 2004 as a mobile games distributor, and now is the largest online video platform of Latin America. Can you talk about the trajectory and facts that contributed for the company’s success?

Samba tried 3 tomes until consolidate in the market. Beside being a mobile games distributor we also sold PC games on the Internet. None of the business model worked out, but the technology did! We used the base that we’ve developed and apply that to the video market.

There’s a Canadian army law that says “between the map and the land, take the land”, that means if you are at a place that a river doesn’t run trough it and in your treasure map there’s one, believe in what you see. Bringing that to the business world that means: bet in what the market is showing you and don’t focus 100% on your first business plan. We’ve made an early bet on online video communications because the market was showing us that were the trend. Today we are the lead Online Video Platform of Latin America. But everything that we’ve built wouldn’t be possible without the team of talents that are part of the Samba Tech’s family.

The employees here “bought” a dream that I had and certainly that is the main differentials of the market.
I’ve assembled small startups here inside Samba Tech and adopted the tactic of “Power to the edges”, that means each one here have their responsibilities really defined and has the autonomy to make decisions. That contributes so the opportunities are not mssed and stimulates innovation.

3. Samba Tech started in Brazil and consolidated in all Latin America. How was the expansion, and which are the main online video markets of the region?

We are at the beginning of the expansion process. We opened an office in Argentina to act strongly in all Latin America. I always thought in creating a global company, that could scale, whether in technology, wheter in market – and then to be on the Internet facilitated a lot.

Latin America is the fatest growing market in number of Internet users in the world. E online videos are going to be responsible for 90% of the Internet traffic in 2013, according to Cisco, we are seeing this market as an excellent alternative.

4. What’s your opinion on what people are saying about Brazil being “the next big thing” to invest?

Amazing! We are seeing the birth of startups that are being born global and with excellent business model, making the country an entrepreneurship pole and focus of Venture Capitals of many parts of the world. The investment culture” is changing here, not only in startups but in investors as well.

The companies are losing the fear to search for accelerators and Venture Capitals, and we’ve never seen son many VC companies wanting to invest in Brazilians startups. That shows that besides the market being “hot”, that we are building innovative solutions in a world level.

5. You were nominated for Entrepreneur of the year by PEGN magazine in 2009, and now this year you are running for the Entrepreneur of the year for the INFO magazine. Which personal characteristics do you give for this kind of recognition?

I’ve started as an intern at a big company, but at that company, I was bothered with the slowness and bureaucracy of the process. I always dream of working at a place that I could expose my ideas and have fun. My entrepreneurship story started with a pinch of luck, but I always ran after of “make it happen”. One of the tactics that we use here at Samba is “Fail Fast”. Many executives are afraid of something going wrong e wait too long to launch a product. The innovation thought goes with that. It’s impossible to deliver a done “Mona Lisa” to your client, that’s why the sooner you use your client and research source and fail the better. You’ll only know if what you’re doing is going to succeed if real people are using it, and if you do it from the beginning of the development you could kill – learning from your mistakes – and discontinue what is wrong right away.

Besides, I think that being flexible is essential. If we had focused on our first business plan we would be selling mobile games until today – or not! Adapting to the market is essential, even so in a market so dynamic as the technology market.

“Rework”, a book from 37signals and a New York Times Best seller, talks about “planning is guessing” – to plan is to try to predict the future. Don’t waste too much time thinking about what to do and don’t take your first business plan as “Koran”, is what I’ve learned and adopted to the Samba Tech’s context.

6. What is your advice to new entrepreneurs that are trying to make it in this market?

(a) Focus: Focus on a big market or a promising niche. Specialize in something that no one does and that a big company is not interested at the moment. With that you will raise as a leader and may take advantage of that. However is important to draw a line in the sand and recognize the boundaries: one who does everything doesn’t do anything.

(b) Be flexible: explanation on the question above.

The 20 selected startups are:

Agenciafreelancer (Brazil)
Altodot | The Fan Machine (Argentina)
CAPSDOC (Brazil)
Ecoshop Spa (Chile)
Everwrite (Brazil)
FaceCommerce (Brazil)
gBolso (Brazil)
Integra CCS (Uruguay)
Kerocarro (Brazil)
Kidbox (Uruguay)
Kinetik (Ecuador)
Leafer (Portugal)
Museworld (Brazil)
Pixowl (Argentina)
StartBull (Colombia)
Sys&App (gootaxi) (Spain)
UIVIX (Peru)
Vigilanti (Brazil)
Vurbia (Argentina)
Zukbox (Argentina)

We wish the best of luck to all the selected startups during the presentation of their projects, and we will see you on November 29 and 30.

Thanks for all the startups that participated!

Keep innovating!

Photo by Rbk Saez

As they explain in this video, “thanks to Red Innova our project became known in Spain,” and the most important thing of having won the La Red Innova Open Talent award is that it will allow to turn their objectives into reality: the company’s internationalization.

Palbin.com is a cloud service that offers the possibility for any company or user to have an online company.

On the other hand, we leave here the interview with Jimena Llopis, winner of the competition in 2010, in which she also highlights the opportunities that Red Innova has brought to her business.

RI: You currently hold the position of Vice-President of International Operations at Evernote. Can you tell the Red Innova community a bit about your work and experience in the company?
DS: I joined Evernote in 2006, when we were just starting to build the team and prototype the service. We launched Evernote in June 2008, and soon after that decided to take it outside of the US. It was unusually early for a Silicon Valley startup to tackle foreign markets, but we figured that everyone needs a better memory, and 95% of our future users live abroad. Evernote was well positioned for international expansion – from the very beginning we had a multicultural executive team and a small R&D office in Moscow, Russia. I started building a team that would localize the service for different markets and run local marketing and business development efforts. The team was and still is small, but we have great help from Evernote user community. Volunteers help us translate the product in their native languages, and we have many passionate users who spread the word about Evernote and share tips how best to use it.

Our first international launch was in the UK, in early 2009. And in April 2009 we launched our first localized version in Russia. In the fall of 2009 we added French, German, Spanish and Italian, and soon after that for Japanese. Fast forward – today Evernote fully supports 15 languages, 21 more languages are work in progress, we have local PR teams in Brazil, Japan, Russia, Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and India. Over two thirds of our users are outside of the US. The bet we made in 2008 to expand early outside of the U.S. is paying off.

RI: You come from an engineering and geography background. How has that influenced your penetration into the high-tech market?
DS: I’m a geophysicist by training, graduated Moscow University in 1986, with major in climate studies. I started by studying interaction of the atmosphere with glaciers. I worked in expeditions doing field research on Arctic and mountain glaciers. It was an amazing experience, but after freezing there for a couple of seasons I decided that there should be a better way. So I started building numerical models of these processes. I was lucky to get great training in Applied Math from Moscow University, so it was an easy switch. My Ph.D. was based on two numerical models that I built and calibrated using field observations. In the process I got exposed to hard-core scientific programming on mainframe computers first, and then to PCs. I also moved to the US – in 1991 I was invited to join small Boston-based research institute as a visiting scientist. That was a slippery slope – over time I became fascinated with computer technologies, and in 1994 left academia and went to work as a software developer, building consumer imaging products. I worked as a software developer, architect and tech lead on a number of great projects before I join Evernote. That’s where my training in Geography caught up with me – I was asked to lead our international business efforts.

RI: In July 2011, it was released that Sequoia Capital, with participation from Morgenthaler Ventures, secured a round of funding of US$ 50 million to Evernote to promote an aggressive growth and company expansion. How much and what ways has the company grown since the announcement?
DS: Oh, that was so long ago! Well, since July 2011 we grew Evernote user base from about 10 million to almost 16 million subscribers, improved all Evernote clients, launched new ones, acquired Skitch, released its Android version, grew the Evernote team to 110 people (we started 2011 with 40 people), grew our development community to over 8,000 developers, conducted our first Evernote Trunk Conference, added support for several more languages, launched in Brazil… We’ve been busy!

RI: Evernote has a strong presence all across the globe. How is the company positioned in the Latin American market, and which are the key countries within the region?
DS: The great thing about Evernote is that it has universal appeal – everyone can use a better memory. We had a fair number of users in Latin America before we started focusing there. Some of them learned about the service from their friends elsewhere, others from the US or Spanish press. When we added support for Brazilian Portuguese we saw a jump in new user registrations in Brazil. At this point we have over half a million users in Latin America, with about 40% of them are in Brazil, 30% in Mexico. And we see very fast growth in Latin America, it’s one of our fastest growing regions. Earlier this month we started reaching out to our users in Brazil through press and social media, and will soon expand our Ambassador Program to Brazil.

We started in Brazil because of its size and fast adoption of new technologies. From there we plan to quickly move on to the Spanish-speaking countries, starting in Mexico, followed by Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela. By the end of next year all 19 countries will be covered. This is largely inline with the pattern of adoption of mobile devices in the region.

As we are starting our rollout in the region, our immediate plans are to make sure we reach out to current and new users via press and social media and help them have the best Evernote experience. We will also be reaching out to potential partners.

RI: Given that Evernote’s objetive is to “ give everyone the ability to easily capture any moment, idea, inspiration, or experience whenever they want using whichever device or platform they find most convenient,” what are the challenges of breaking into markets still not familiar with the technology?
DS: The idea to expand human memory is an old one, that’s what Babylonians did with clay tablets. Since those times technology has improved quite a bit – and made Evernote possible. Actually, it’s a great time to enter Latin American markets. Economies are growing nicely, Internet infrastructure is built up in most countries, incomes are rising, internet connectivity is becoming widely available and more affordable. Smartphones are growing in popularity, people are getting used to downloading apps from app stores. All this is great for Evernote. The challenge in Latin America is the same as everywhere else – educate people what Evernote can do for them and how best to use it. That’s what we focus on. The early signs are very encouraging, and we expect Latin America to become a major market for Evernote.

The Buscapé group has done 11 acquisitions and received four rounds of external investments, and had among its partners Itaú Unibanco, Merrill Lynch BofA and Great Hill Partners. The last transaction happened through the South African Naspers, which acquired 91% of shares, at a market value of U$D 374 millions.

Romero has already participated as a speaker in the last Red Innova Madrid edition. You can watch a bit of his speech here!

Which are the key points of the event?

- The place of celebration. Brazil is enjoying a tremendous growth in all technology fields, and besides, São Paulo is one of biggest metropolitan regions in the world and one of the most relevant business centers in Latin America.

- The space. The Sheraton Word Trade Center São Paulo is a unique space for this specific kind of celebration, because of both its capacity – it has more than 12.000 squared meters – and its design and conception.

- The speakers. The level of expertise among the speakers is incredibly high, all coming from the best technology companies and from the entrepreneurial and innovation world.

- The program and themes. Designed for this occasion, the program has at its core the e-commerce market and its main areas. This sector is experiencing a strong growth in the Brazilian and Latin American markets, and for this reason it was incorporated into the Red Innova Brasil program – always taking into consideration key subjects like innovation, internationalization, consumers in emerging markets and Internet banking, among others.

- The Startup Competition. Without any doubts, the competition is part of Red Innova’s identity. The best projects in Latin America and Spain will be awarded during the event, and the entrepreneurial community will know who’s ahead of the market.

And you? What are you most excited about Red Innova Brazil?

Monashees Capital is a venture capital firm focused on Internet and Education. Our business model, tailored to the Brazilian environment, is based on long-term vision, autonomy, agility and engagement in the companies in which we invest. We partner with outstanding entrepreneurs determined to build innovative high-growth businesses.

Eric sits on the Boards of Peixe Urbano, Mind Lab, boo-box, Baby.com.br , among other portfolio companies. Prior to founding Monashees Capital, Eric did VC investing in the U.S. and Latin America with General Atlantic, strategic planning with Unibanco and strategy consultancy with McKinsey & Company. Eric received an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, a Diploma in Business Administration from Fundação Getúlio Vargas and a B.A. in Communications from ESPM.

If you haven’t seen our full speakers list, visit the Speakers’s page. More announcements to come!