What I learned About the Tech Ecosystem in San Jose
Wow. It really was about time to post this. I’ve struggled to put this one together.
As I’m thinking of the outline of this post, I can anticipate that it will be much shorter than the rest. Firstly because I’m subjective and biased, and the subjective part of me quickly rejected Costa Rica as a strong hub for innovation. Secondly, because I don’t think I managed to get the full picture of what the ecosystem looks like over there.
I had been once to Costa Rica before and I left those beautiful Santa Teresa beaches feeling that I was in a dream. How insanely beautiful. Pura Vida was tattooed in my heart.
Anyway, back to urban life.
As part of my innovation research I went to San José. Really no offense but it is probably the least developed capital that I have ever been to. Major need for investment in infrastructure.
Putting that aside, with the little knowledge I had about that country, I assumed that Travel or Hospitality Tech would be the bread and butter of CR, considering the amount of tourism that the country received every year (approx. 1.7M tourists, and $1.7B annual revenue). As they say, however, “the road to hell is paved with assumptions”. There wasn’t really such a thing.
Looking back, it is very comparable to Lima in some way: still very much in a phase of learning and educating young professionals on what entrepreneurship is, though considerably more developed than Lima.
When I arrived to San Jose, the city was preparing for the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) that goes on every November (GEW is an international initiative present in 170 countries with the intention of promoting the entrepreneurial activity). The GEW included a series of events, courses and all kinds of entrepreneurship related content that is offered to the public. From panels, to pitch nights, startup competitions, and a very long etcetera. While I didn’t stay through those events, I did manage to meet several of the companies organising them. Sharing here the ones that I liked the most:
· Yo Emprendedor: pretty much the guys running the show. They are the ones that take care of organising the GEW and work together with all the ecosystem players. Their goal is to support the culture of entrepreneurship as a pillar for economic and social development. I had the chance to meet one of the guys running it @Fernando Arce. Super young, good vibes, open and excited to position Costa Rica as a strong player and to encourage that thinking and mentality in the country.
· Get in the Ring: startup competition that started in Holland that is literally in a boxing ring. There are 3 categories for the startups: “lightweight, middleweight and heavyweight” — all classified based on the amount of funding that they have raised since inception.
They did this same “Get in the Ring” for young entrepreneurs and the classifications were based on the age group (anywhere from 12 to 18 year olds).
· Auge: the entrepreneurship unit of the Universidad de Costa Rica. Their mission is to nurture and incubate startups and entrepreneurs. They are open to the public and have most of their courses or academic program online. Startups can apply at any point and start their journey. Depending on the industry and stage of their company, they will be linked with a mentor that can guide them and help them develop their company.
When I asked about how selective they were, they said: “if everyone looks for the best ones alone, how are we going to help and educate the ones that are not quite there yet? We want to develop the future entrepreneurs of Costa Rica and give a chance to everyone to decide for themselves if they want to pursue that or not”. I liked that a lot.
I met other interesting people and some other nice companies like Caricaco (a mix between an acceleration program for startups and also courses around entrepreneurship and innovation), or Ideas en Acción (create innovation programs with high impact potential), but in hindsight, I didn’t come across anything that blew my mind.
I still have a lot to learn about the culture, but after having gone through my meeting notes to write this post, I’ve realized that even though many of the meetings ended with clear action items, collaboration opportunities, and a lot of excitement for next steps, nothing really happened. My followup emails were neglected.
Half way through my San Jose experience, I had understood that writing this post would be very hard. I simply didn’t connect to the ecosystem. With the exception of the companies/people that I’ve mentioned, nothing really struck me, excited me or wowed me.
I feel that this post is quite negative and not too informative. I guess that’s the feeling that I left San Jose with.
Regardless, Pura Vida Mae
Originally published at www.alexinwonderland.io on December 27, 2018.
