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The main players in the venture capital industry gathered at the #InventingTheFuture event organised by ChileGlobal Ventures, the venture capital area of Fundación Chile, and its partner Entel Exploralab, to reflect on the challenges imposed by the fourth industrial revolution and the opportunities and business models it enables.
The meeting featured the presentation of prominent speakers such as Craig Mullett, president of Branison Group and Carson Sweet, co-founder of CloudPassage, who presented interesting points.
KEY POINTS
Craig Mullett, president of Branison Group, angel investor of several companies, director of the Angel Investor Forum and executor of several exits in technological startups:
- To create value at the time of setting up a new business, innovators must look at the value of their product and service, make it difficult to copy and scalable.
- The more flexible your company is, the more attractive and scalable it will be.
- Investors are looking for startups with risk tolerance.
- When the product is extremely good for the customer, the marketing investment can be zero (E.g. WhatsApp and Facebook: the founders understood the market very well, they had such a good product that they invested almost nothing in marketing)
- When selling, a positive impulse that excites buyers is needed, so the ideal is to “sell a little earlier before it is too late.”
Carson Sweet, founder and CEO of CloudPassage, a cybersecurity service provider who has worked on the development of cybersecurity strategies for Netflix, Coca-Cola, Groupon and Halo, among others:
- From the beginning, entrepreneurs must know where they are going, what type of company they want to create and define its objectives: choose them wisely and handle expectations.
- All entrepreneurs want to have a business that changes the world, something totally new, but think about it because it is costly and risky.
- The balance between intuition, customer wishes and the market should guide innovation. Investors look for results, you have to be disruptive in the market.
- While customer wishes are basically a list of problems that we can transform into gold, they should guide our business.
Inventing The Future ended with a conversation panel that analysed the role of large companies in the generation of innovation, moderated by Andrés Pesce, sustainability and new business manager of Fundación Chile and Sofía Grez, CFO of Chile Global Ventures. It was also attended by Hernán Fernández, president of Angels Ventures (MEX), Carlos Rodríguez, innovation manager of Entel, Andrés Barriga, former CFO of Cornershop and Jamie Riggs, director of Chile Global Ventures.
