?? Why Startups in Latin America do not succeed ?

There are less IPOs, public companies and +1B startups in Latam vs Europe, South* Asia and countries like Israel, India or Indonesia. Why?

1/10: ?????? Success requires a big market:

The Latam Founder loves to make businesses for the city or country of origin, instead of targeting all Latam or the world. This limits their market and growth.

2/10: ?????????? Succesful startups need talent and excellence:

Latam is full of holidays, lack of accountability and there's no culture of excellence. "A Players" migrate to the US or are deeply entrenched in banks and traditional corps.

3/10: ???? The best talent works hard, excellent and smart:

In Latam we work harder than ANYWHERE in the world. But without attention to detail, self-leadership and continuous personal improvement. 

We need to work looking for excellence, not looking for hours in a chair.

4/10: ???? Investment money:

Latam investors are TERRIFIED about innovative business models.

Why invest in something new when I can invest in a clone of a US model or in an apartment or a farm?

5/10: ?? Sophisticated investors:

Latam is improving at this. Proof of this can be found in people and funds like Pedro Sorrentino, Erik Torenberg, Mariano Amartino, Florian Hagenbuch, Julio Vasconcellos, and funds like Mountain Nazca, ONE VC, Foundation Cap, Omidyar, Endeavor, etc.

6/10: ?? You NEED Silicon Valley to make something big:

If you're not an Stanford graduate white-male or equivalent it's gonna be harder to get inside Silicon Valley and raise the Series A/B/C that make the difference.

500 Startups and Y Combinator are the best solution to this problem, for now.

7/10: ?? Payments, banks and local finance.

In the USA, refunds are a no-brainer, everybody owns a credit card and online transactions are the default.

In Latam even techies are TERRIFIED of using their cards in a new digital service. Latam Banks do NOT have your back either.

8/10: ?? FRAUD:

Fraud detection in the US is pretty advanced.

In Latam (specially in Peru and Brazil) online fraud is almost a competitive sport. And financial institutions are very dissapointing and slow to answer to this issues.

9/10: ?? Corporate clients and government:

In Latam, govt moves +60% of all deals ??

In the US you can close a deal with a card and a website.

In Latam you need special contracts, lawyers, legal docs, passports, burocracy++. This kills a lot of B2B startups.

10/10: ???♀? Entrepreneurship mediocrity:

Latam is awesome creating a lot of OK startups that NEVER die.

The best companies are willing to risk more and bet everything to grow. We DON'T need more entrepreneurship. We need a few amazing case studies of hypergrowth. That'll create the knowledge in the region on how to do it.

We're close.

?? Thanks Christian Van Der Henst, Jeduan Cornejo, Bernardo de Pádua, and Tomas Pollak for their perspective and helping me review this ??