Crossing Borders with Nathan Lustig

Juan Vera joins me in this episode of Crossing Borders to talk about entrepreneurial business in Latin America. Juan’s experience as an engineer and CEO has helped him start several businesses, then scale those businesses to Mexico and the United States. Listen to hear Juan share how he bootstrapped his early startups to eventually raising several million in venture capital, and everything he lear...

What would it look like to manage sales teams and business units in multiple countries simultaneously? On this episode of Crossing Borders, my guest Neil Coleman shares exactly what that looks like, and offers advice for companies looking to scale sales teams and business internationally. Neil Coleman is an Irish entrepreneur and technology professional. His interest in tech started while he was a...

Most people in Silicon Valley would not intuitively think of building startups in Guadalajara, Mexico. But Mak Gutierrez is part of a team working through Hackers and Founders to support and fund startups in one of the most historic cities in Latin America. In this conversation, Mak and I talk about his background, how Science Fiction has influenced his thinking about the future and the role of te...

As I’ve featured Latin American entrepreneurs over the last 24 episodes I’ve learned more than anyone. The insights these guys and gals have are extremely helpful to anyone who’s looking to start their own company or grow an existing one. I decided to share my key takeaways with you on this 25th episode, so what you’re going to hear is a shorter “best of” session featuring a handful of the great e...

There are many roads to Silicon Valley, but you’ll likely not hear one as unusual as the one my guest today took. Jonathan Nelson started out as the son of missionaries in Honduras and Costa Rica and learned the role of a serving leader by watching his Dad lead a mission organization. But he left Central America for nursing school, a computer science education, and finally headed to Silicon Valley...

Digital security is a problem globally, not just in the more highly developed countries of the world. My guest today is Marco de Mello, a startup founder from Brazil who has built one of the most successful mobile app security companies in the world. His story is incredible, from his experience at Microsoft to startup founder, and you can hear his entire Journey on this episode. Marco's company, P...

Most American investors don’t immediately think of putting their money to work in a place like Peru. But business in Peru is growing exponentially and the startup ecosystem is one of the places some of the greatest gains are being made. Greg Mitchell works with Angel Ventures, a VC company that focuses on Peru and the rest of Latin America. In this conversation, Greg and I chat about what’s going...

No matter where you live in the world, it can be difficult for female entrepreneurs to succeed, but in Latin America it's especially true. In this episode of Crossing Borders, I speak with Rocio Fonseca, Executive Director of Start-Up Chile. We talk extensively about her first startup, what it was like starting a tech business in Chile in the early 2000s, why she moved to the US to study at MIT an...

Every startup has a growth curve. It looks different for each company depending on many factors, but my guest on this episode says founders need to push their company through its growth curve as fast as possible. Thomas Allier left his home in Paris France to found a startup in Columbia. It's not the normal path of a Latin American company but his decision paid off. His company - Viajala - is now...

The term International Business Strategy is typically used to describe U.S. or Western companies looking to maximize profits through offshoring or outsourcing, or extending their sales into foreign markets. But Andres Barreto is doing things in the opposite direction. He’s working to encourage Latin American startups to focus on the U.S. Market and scale there, as well as encourage American compan...

With the success of companies like Amazon, it’s easy to think that new online marketplaces are not going to work out very well, but my guest on this episode has demonstrated over and over that it’s simply not the case. Guimar Vaca Sittic is an Argentinian entrepreneur who has built successful online marketplaces himself and who now leads a startup incubator and funding company that focuses primari...

Codie Sanchez is not your ordinary financial expert. She started out as a journalist, writing about human trafficking and abuses going on just over the southern border of the U.S. That is, until she wrote her last story about the abandoned women of Mexico. That’s when she realized that she needed to be doing more than just writing about the issues in the world - she needed to do something about th...

Investing in Latin American startups is not the first thing that was on Santiago Zavala’s radar growing up. Even though he grew up in a home where his father was working in tech from the early days of the internet, Santiago wasn’t drawn to the finance side of business at that point. He was totally into programming. He’d have been the last person to anticipate what would happen in his life. This co...

  Can you imagine what it would be like to be from the US, but trying to build a successful company in Latin America? My guest on this episode did exactly that. Brian Requarth took advantage of his season in life as a young guy who’d just finished college to try his hand in the entrepreneurial world. He’d spent a little time in Latin America so he decided to integrate his experience into his busin...

It’s always exciting when I get to sit down with someone like Sebastian Vidal. In his experience working as part of the Startup Chile team and now as the leader of Parallel18, a startup accelerator based in Puerto Rico he’s been part of the launch of over 1000 startups. Can you imagine the insights, connections, and lessons-learned a guy like that has? That’s what I wanted to tap into in this conv...

The mindset of many entrepreneurs has transitioned from profit-first to responsibility first, and it’s a good thing. In a competitive space like the world of fashion, it may not seem that building a successful sustainable clothing brand is the best move - but Jason Grullón and the team at Virtu have made it happen. In this conversation, I talk with Jason about how he transitioned from Law School i...

Anytime you have an item that you need to send from here to there you enter the world of transport logistics. It may seem as simple as calling UPS or FedEx, but there’s a lot more that goes into it for the companies that provide the service. And when it comes to Latin America, things get even more complicated. In Brazil, for example, 40% the trucks that are on the road delivering packages are not...

Many people who do business in the United States don’t realize that there are burgeoning and viable markets in Latin America. After being educated outside the country, my guest, Alejandro Freund saw that his homeland of Ecuador was ripe to become the hub for a leading ecommerce company in Latin America. This conversation with Alejandro is a look into the start of a Latin American ecommerce company...

It sometimes feels like investing in Latin America is a secret that U.S. Investors don’t know about. There are so many great companies and talented entrepreneurs in the Southern Hemisphere who are doing great things - not only in business but also for the economies and peoples of Latin American countries. Patricio Williams Becú is a great example and is my guest on this episode of Crossing Borders...

Have you heard of smart luggage? It may not sound like something you need but wait until you hear what it can do to make your travel more enjoyable and effortless. Connecting luggage to an app and building out the hardware to integrate the two has enabled Diego Saez-Gil’s company, Bluesmart to jump into a very competitive marketplace and gain a foothold with amazing speed. On this episode of Cross...

Welcome to Crossing Borders with Nathan Lustig, where I interview entrepreneurs doing startups across borders and the people who support them, with a focus on companies that have some relationship to Latin America. Last week, I talked with Nora Leary Co-Founder and Head of Marketing and Business Development at Launchway Media, about how to get press in the US and what it's like starting up with th...

Hello and welcome to Crossing Borders with Nathan Lustig, where I interview entrepreneurs doing startups across borders and the people who support them, with a focus on companies that have some relationship to Latin America. If you're new to the podcast be sure to check out Episode 2 with Adrian Fisher who went from selling hotdogs to raising three million dollars and Episode 5, with Devin Baptist...

Welcome to Crossing Borders with Nathan Lustig, where I interview entrepreneurs doing startups across borders and the investors who support them, with a focus on companies that have some relationship to Latin America.   My guest today is Jose "Caya" Cayasso, a Costa Rican entrepreneur who is cofounder and CEO of Slidebean, a software company that helps people stop wasting time wresting with presen...

Hello and welcome to Crossing Borders with Nathan Lustig, where I interview entrepreneurs doing startups across borders and the investors who support them, with a focus on companies that have some relationship to Latin America.   My guest today is Devin Baptiste, cofounder and CEO of GroupRaise, a company with more than 50 employees in 3 offices in Houston, Texas, Santiago, Chile and the Philippin...

Hello and welcome to Crossing Borders with Nathan Lustig, where I interview entrepreneurs doing startups across borders and the investors who support them, with a focus on companies that have some relationship to Latin American.   My guests today are chilean entrepreneurs David Basulto and David Assael, the cofounders of Archdaily, the largest architecture website in English, Spanish, Portuguese a...