From a group of school friends who decided to start a company, to individuals spotting gaps in the market, Latin Trade’s new Top 25 Young Latin American Entrepreneurs ranking includes a diverse set of businesspeople who have pioneered and innovated ways of doing business in the region. They have overcome all manner of obstacles, whether it was lack of initial capital, difficulty to access financing or challenging economic and political climates in their home countries.
In some cases, only a couple hundred of dollars was all it took to create what are now multimillion enterprises with worldwide presence, but in all cases, it took their ability to innovate and turn challenges into opportunities.
The honorees in our Top 25 Young Entrepreneurs ranking stand out among the rest because of their skills, passion, motivation, commitment, vision, and their ability to transmit those aspects to investors, partners and clients.
The list also shows that technology is by far the key aspect in helping these entrepreneurs reach their goals.
Most of the entrepreneurs in our ranking are also looking for ways to contributing to the development of their home countries and create better working and living conditions. Some of their initiatives even include changes to local or national laws that would help promote fairer competition, better education and ways of supporting other entrepreneurs.
Our ranking includes pioneers such as the creator of CAPTCHA, a a security procedure used in websites worldwide that tests if a computer user is human, angel investors, digital marketers, a coffee farmer and the so-called “Latin American Mark Zuckerberg”.
Argentina
Emilio Kargieman, the Argentine who wants to revolutionize the space industry
At age 19, Kargieman founded Core, an IT security firm now earning some $34 million per year. However, he left Core in 2006 to found Satellogic, a developer of miniature satellites that aims to revolutionize the space industry, which is traditionally dominated by large firms. In 2013, Satellogic launched the CubeBug1, known as Captain Beto, and CubeBug2, known as Manolito, followed by the BugSat-1, which is ready to compete against the big players.
Marcos Galperín, co-founder and CEO of MercadoLibre.com
Online marketplace MercadoLibre began as a project in the garage of a home in the Saavedra district of Buenos Aires, Argentina. By 2001, it had already struck a partnership deal with U.S. giant eBay, which allowed MercadoLibre to expand to Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Ecuador, Chile, Venezuela and Colombia. It now has some 100 million users. Today, MercadoLibre continues to grow through its e-commerce platforms MercadoPago and MercadoShops.
Tomás O’Farrell, founder of Sónico and co-creator of Workana
O’Farrell began his entrepreneurial career as the founder of social network site Sónico, oriented at Latin American users and now on its way to becoming part of twoo.com.
He then joined Guillermo Bracciaforte, Fernando Fornales and Mariano Iglesias to create Workana, an employment website focusing on freelancers. In 2012, DMGT, a subsidiary of the UK’s Daily Mail, invested $500,000 in Workana seeking to gain a stronger participation in Latin America, and now replicates Workana’s model in other countries and regions.
Alec Oxenford, creator of DeRemate.com
Online auction site DeRemate.com was Oxenford’s first success. Shortly after, he created OLX, and online classified marketplace with presence in more than 106 countries including Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Poland, Peru, Argentina, Switzerland, South Africa, Thailand and several other Latin American nations.
He also created DineroMail, an Internet insurance payment system, now part of South Africa-based Naspers MIH’s PayU. Oxenford is also part of ArteBa, a foundation that promotes Argentine and Latin American art throughout the world.
Brazil
Frank Martin, co-creator of Restorando.com
In 2010, Martin, along with Franco Silvetti, Andy Freire and Santi Bilinkis launched Restorando.com, a site where users can book restaurant tables in real time. With Martin as CEO, Restorando captured financing woth $17 million in three years, making it one of the most promising companies in the region. Today, the site has presence in seven countries and 17 cities.
Danilo Leão, creator of BovControl
The son of a farmer, Danilo saw at age 15 the need for reliable information about livestock for both farmers and consumers. That is why he created BovControl, a free application that works offline where farmers can log in information about livestock. The profiles include data such as date of birth, weight and vaccines.
Currently some 3,000 farms around the world use the app, including the US, South Africa, India and Colombia.
The aim now is to include information such as livestock diet, breed and health record, and it could help companies such as McDonald’s and Wal-Mart to keep track of the origin of the beef they purchase.
The two-year-old company is headquartered in Sao Paulo and has eight employees, a new operation centre in Palo Alto and received a recent investment from Repoint e.ventures.
Eduardo Saverín, co-creator of Facebook
Brazilian-born Saverín grew up in Miami, Florida and was a classmate of Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard, where they both founded Facebook. After some disputes, Saverín sued and won a suite against the social network and Zuckerberg, which meant he received 7 percent of the company’s property and the right to be called co-founder. He now lives in Singapore where he invests in technology companies such as Shopsavvy, which allows users to buy products from their mobile phones, and Jumio, a new mobile payment technology.
Bel Pesce, co-creator of Lemon Wallet
Bel Pesce, born in Sao Paulo, has been named one of the most influential women in Brazil. She studied at the MIT and created mobile application Lemon Wallet with two other partners. But her career really took off when she worte a book about her experience as an entrepreneur. The book went viral, surpassing 1 million downloads. Back in Brazil, she founded online school FazINOVA, aiming to transform the education system in her country. The school has earned worldwide recognition as a company that can truly change education at a global level.
Colombia
Andrés Barreto, creator of Grooveshark
At the age of 18, Barreto created music streaming site Grooveshark, before other similar sites such as Spotify or Deezer existed.
Barreto, now 28 and founder of eight companies, has decided to move on from starting companies in order to promote entrepreneurship in Latin America. Last year he bet on 30 Colombian startups. His vision and entrepreneurship has earned him the nickname “the Latin American Mark Zuckerberg”.
Alex Torrenegra, Founder of Torrenegra Labs, President of Bunny Inc.
Torrenegra moved to the US before finishing his engineering studies in Colombia. But that didn’t stop the 36-year-old from continuing a 22-year-long career as an innovator, according t MIT. His name appears on the 2015 list of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders under 40. He founded Torrenegra Labs, a technology startup incubator. He is also President of Bunny Inc., a company that launched him into the cinema sound and voice bank business. The Bunny Inc. sound bank has 150,000 professional actors’ voices and some 100,000 clients, including the History Channel and Pixar, which used the company’s services for it’s Toy Story films.
In 2013, the White House contacted Torrenegra for councelling President Barack Obama about the immigration reform.
Ilana Milkes, Founder and director of World Tech Makers and Nativo Digital
A 25-year-old International Business and History graduate, Milkes is the founder and current director of to tech startups: World Tech Makers and Nativo Digital, which seek to make their users into programmers and entrepreneurs in the digital world.
World Tech Makers is the first immersive programming bootcamp in Latin America, with presence in Bogotá, Santiago de Chile, Sao Paulo and Medellín. It seeks to empower people and help them become programmers and creators of technology, in order to help them overcome the technology gap.
Tomás Garcés, Leader at First Build
From Bogotá, 28-year-old design engineer Garcés is one of the leaders of First Build, a venture between General Electric and Local Motors that seeks to redesign home appliances
Chile
Sebastián Valin, creator of ComparaOnline.com
Valin created comparison website ComparaOnline.com after finding it difficult to chose an insurance policy. The site initially only compared insurance companies, but now includes telecoms and financial information. Valin began his venture alone in 2008, but has now raised $5 million in investment and operates in Chile, Brazil and Colombia.
Ecuador
Maria Gabriela Pacheco, founder of TheDream.US
Pacheco is a leading human rights activists for immigrants in Miami, Florida. During her time in Miami Dade College, she was elected Student Body President of the state and set the task of solving the issue of accepting immigrants in schools in Florida, a move that lead to a political change and acceptance by several community and state colleges.
She created with the help of partners the US’s largest scholarship fund in :TheDream.US, which focuses on giving scholarships to immigrants and has earned Pacheco recognition for defending the DREAM Act and migration reform.
Guatemala
Luis Von Ahn, Co-creator of Captcha
Born in Guatemala in 1979, Luis Von Ahn is an IT expert, entrepreneur and professor of Computer Science at the Carnegie Mellon University.He is founder of Duolingo, Captcha and Recaptcha, the latter sold to Google in 2009.
Duolingo is a free language-learning and crowdsourced text translator, designed in a way that as users progress through the lessons, they help translate websites and other documents at the same time.
Captcha and Recaptcha are web security systems by using distorted letters or images to determine whether or not the user of a computer is human.
Mexico
Gabriela Enrigue, Founder of Prospera
Enrigue, 33, is a consultant at the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, IFC. In 2010 she founded Prospera, a social initiative aimed at helping single mothers living in poverty, unemployed, with low-paying jobs or owners of non profitabe businesses. Prospera develops products for companies such as Starbucks, turning once poorly performing businesses into profitable ventures that offer attractive products to consumers.
At the IFC, Enrigue has worked closely with State Secretaries and public policy specialists in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Indonesia, Kenya, South Africa and Mexico.
César Salazar, Partner of 500 Startups
Salazar is a partner at 500 Startups, a seed accelerator and business incubator, and has invested in more than 90 companies during their early stages in Latin America, Europe and the US.
In 2014, he featured on the cover of Mexican business magazine Expansón, for his potential and contributions to startups.
He is co-founder of Mexican.VC, the first seed funding initiative focused on Mexican tech startups.
Sebastián Tonda, Founder of Flock
Tonda is a digital marketing pioneer in Mexico. He first spotted the potential and growth of social networks in 2008 and founded Flock, one of Mexico’s leading digital marketing agencies. Among the firm’s clients are Nike, Domino’s Pizza, Coca-Cola and American Express. He is also an ambassador in Mexico of Singularity University, a not-for-profit organization that aims to teach leadership skills to overcome challenges through technology.
Carlos Orellana and Javier Okhuysen Urrutia, founders of SalaUno
Driven by the motivation to eradicate blindness caused by cataracts, engineers Orellana and Okhuysen created SalaUno in 2011, an Ophtalmology clinic that offers low-cost services aimed at helping low-income families. After striking deals with public and private institutions, such as Fundación Cinépolis and the Inter-American Development Bank, SalaUno has treated more than 70,000 patients through three branches since it began operating.
Carlos Camacho
At the age of 22 and drive by his passion to look after the environment, Camacho created a plan to attract business partners. He found Olivia and Juan Carlos Peralta and together they created Ecoshell, a company that develops technology to create products from biomass. Their largest clients are supermarket chains across Mexico, and they are on their way to expanding to the U.S. and Central America in the next few years.
Paraguay
Christian Chena, the Spanish language Internet domain king
Christian A. Chena is kown for being the Spanish-speaking world’s largest domainer, investors that trade with Internet domain names. In 2007, he reached the highest number of recorded sales in Spanish domain history and has owned some 100 domains considered to be the most valuable in the Spanish market. In 2007 he sold a large portion of his generic domain names to Marchex, in association with Fox Latinoamérica, for $10 million.
Peru
Wilson Sucaticona
Sucaticona began his working life as a small craft cofee agricultor. Today his five varieties of Arabica beans are ranked among the best in the world. He has won prizes from the Specialty Coffee Association of America and the National Coffee Competition in 2009. Some of his quintals, bags of 45 kilos, have reached the $1,000 mark.
Isabel Medem, Co-founder of X-runner Venture
Medem, 29, co-created x-runner, an initiative that helps low-income homes in Peru with sanitary toilet solutions.
The organization gathers human waste and turns it into compost, and their goal is to reach 15,000 homes over the next five years.
Uruguay
Ariel Burschtin, Alvaro García and Ruben Sosenke, founders of PedidosYa.com
After graduating from university, these three classmates decided to create online food ordering service PedidosYa.com in 2009. The service finds restaurants near the user and allows for online ordering for home delivery. The service is now available in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Puerto Rico, with some 12,000 participating restaurants.
Venezuela
Pedro Torres Picón, Venture Capital
Picón began investing in early stage tech firms in 2004 and is the Founder and Managing Director of Quotidian Ventures since 2010. He has invested in more than 60 companies in a wide range of sectors such as real estate, construction management and mobile commerce.
He is also CEO of Matchbook.com, an app that saves users’ favourite places in their city and gives recommendations based on their preferences.