Lessons from women in Uganda: Chile, take note.

Mary is a small, slim woman no taller than 5 foot 3, but she speaks with a sincerity and conviction unparalleled among people two times her size, and when she does so, the world stops and listens. When you speak to her, her eye contact never wavers from yours as she carefully digests every word, consonant, and syllable that you say. She is a mother, a teacher, a leader, and an entrepreneur (in no particular order, she puts her heart into everything). Her laughter is contagious, her kindness infectious, her spirit uplifting, and her ambition inspiring. She embodies beauty and strength.

Mary (whose name has been changed for anonymity) is a woman that I met last April, who I had the pleasure of working alongside throughout 2013. Five years ago, Mary and her family were living in a mud shack. When a local organization offered to give her a microloan to start her own business, Mary wasn’t sure she was capable of becoming an entrepreneur, but she mustered up her confidence and began her own store, selling bottles of soda for around $0.20 USD in her small village. A few years later, Mary saved enough money from her small business to build a semi-permanent house. She and her family are healthy and financially stable; most of the money she makes now goes towards her children’s school fees to ensure that they receive a good education. Furthermore, she’s now an Assistant Director of the nonprofit organization that gave her the loan to start her business in the first place. She inspires women in three different countries to follow her lead. She is Ugandan, and she is the strongest woman I have ever met.

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6 tips for entrepreneurs and small business owners on a budget

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest post was submitted by Nerd Wallet, a resource driven website that makes recommendations and provides education to help consumers and businesses improve their finances.

Even if you have a great plan for a business, it takes more than an idea to effectively run one.

From money management to administration, many factors go into making a business well rounded, and the foundation of a successful business is money. Although many may think that business owners need truckloads of money to get started, there are numerous ways to create a business on a strict budget. Continue reading

PayPal’s 9 tips for entrepreneurs to prevent cyberattacks

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest post comes courtesy of PayPal as part of their continued efforts to support the growth of Chile’s SMB community.

Brett McDowell, Sr. Manager of Ecosystem Security for PayPal—leader in electronic payments—shares 9 tips to help entrepreneurs and SMBs prevent cyberattacks.

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3 tips for how entrepreneurs can maximize their technology use

Editor’s Note: This guest post comes courtesy of Jaguar PC, a VPS hosting firm. Technology is everywhere you look in the world of business.  From the largest global corporations that have been on the landscape for decades to the businesses that will register and become reality today, technology has a key role to play in how these companies operate and succeed. Indeed, numerous studies have shown that, in contrast, those who do not embrace and use technology fully actually tend to struggle. Entrepreneurs are a unique breed. At the same time, technology has a key role to play in their success, too, arguably to an even greater degree than in the other types of business cited earlier. Whether an entrepreneur is the head of a small business or literally going it alone, technology is going to have an important part to play. Continue reading

South by South America: Chile, Brazil lead LatAm presence at SXSW 2013

 Editor’s Note: An uber special thanks to our friends at uShip who inspired this ‘South by South America’ themed post. However, they did not create nor endorse this post.

Hearing the lineup of countries attending SXSW this year, it is starting to sound more like South by South America! As all the local and international press begins to surface about Chile and their big showdown going on at South by Southwest 2013, some folks have asked us why are we “late” on releasing a news story regarding Chile’s involvement this year.

(In photo, Nixter team from Chile when they first arrived to U.S.A.)

At AndesBeat, we work to provide exposure in many different ways to early-stage startups and major foreign technology firms ideally before they enter the Chilean market. So our interest is more targeted towards promoting:

  • The start-ups and foreign tech companies at the SXSW conference who are newly launching in Chile
  • The start-ups and foreign tech companies preparing to launch a product or service in the Chilean market
  • An individual who can share an experience with Chilean startups who are not able to attend SXSW but can learn or benefit from the experience

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Be different! Why not bootstrap your start up company in Latin America?

Why would you ever bootstrap an online company in Latin America?

Have you ever asked yourself that question? Did other people ask you? Or did you ask other people?

Hernán Amiune has probably asked himself this question about a million times, but the difference maybe is that he has found his personal explanations for why he did indeed take that risk of bootstrapping in LatAm.

Continually asking himself why led him directly into an entrepreneurial path and ultimately inspired him to found elMejorTrato, an Argentinian online comparison site that helps people to save time, money and effort in finding the best deals on financial services in just a few seconds.

Hernán states that his biggest achievement to date as an entrepreneur has definitely been making his very own company profitable. CONGRATS!!!

If you want to know what Hernán thinks of the rarely used alternative of bootstrapping among Latin American entrepreneurs, read his tips below of how he did it!:

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[google appengine logo]

Google App Engine: The best recommendation for Startups

Some time ago Rodrigo Augosto began an entrepreneurial venture with two friends in which he was given the role of CTO, Chief Technical Officer.

So, for him, the challenging question was:

How can we build a platform to implement our solution, keeping in mind that they didn’t have enough budget to pay neither system administrators, nor servers, DNS, etc?

So he took some time investigating and testing a lot of platforms such as Amazon, Heroku and Google App Engine to decide on which would the best one to use and easy to handle….

…Even if you are not a “tech guy”.

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Studying and doing business at the same time – Anyone can do it?!

Editor’s note :
Alan Earle, currently 25 years old and Manga Corta founder, shares with us his thoughts about starting a business and studying at the same time. 

His conclusion:
It is possible and definitely recommendable.

Most of you probably didn’t know anything about Alan Earle and I must admit that I, personally, didn’t either.

But now I can say that I honestly respect his strength and optimism, his eagerness of doing his own thing and by doing so, encouraging others to follow him! How? Well, find out! Continue reading

Let’s change the Chilean mindset

Editor’s Note: This guest post is courtesy of Francisco SáezNixter CEO. In this post Francisco writes about a ‘real story’, his story!
..and if you’re from Chile or Latin America, it’s probably your story, too!!  

Would you like to feature your experience, story or knowledge in a post?

Please connect with us!

We’re open to share guest-posts generated by our community.

First off. Chile doesn’t need more (cut and paste) engineers.

Chile needs more artists, more innovators and of course…more entrepreneurs.

I’m trying to find the reason why Chile has a low rate of entrepreneurs and I think it’s all because of history. Continue reading