Bogotá today is thriving with budding startups, and one of the keystone ecosystem leaders helping these businesses to build on proper foundations is Mads Schmidt Petersen. As an entrepreneur, advisor, and the leader of the Bogotá Founder Institute, Petersen is positioned at the forefront of numerous industries and big developments taking place in Colombian business community. In particular, Petersen's resume includes working directly with medical technologies, cryptocurrencies, and AI, as the Founder or Co-Founder of FlightAgent, BitBrochure, and SMSmig. As a startup ecosystems leader in Bogotá, his mission is focused on “building companies and products to improve the world.”
With the startups and small businesses beginning to thrive in the heart of Colombia, Petersen offers the exact kind of leadership needed to further develop the local ecosystem. He has previously launched four companies, won the Venture Cup competition for medical technology, and is a something of an entrepreneurial globetrotter. This comes at a time when Softbank recently invested USD $1Billion into Bogotá-headquartered startup Rappi, the first tech company to gain the attention of the multinational investment behemoth. This makes Rappi one of only a handful of unicorn-status companies in Latin America, but illustrates investors’ optimism at seeing more tech goliaths emerge from the region.
In a recent interview with The Bogotá Post, Petersen highlighted the city’s startup ecosystem today, saying,
Bogotá especially has a lot of potential with a young tech culture and a lot of ambition. There are definitely still obstacles to overcome, especially a lack of funding for new enterprises, but the most common problems are the same worldwide: you start out, you lose hope several times throughout the process.
And the numbers don’t lie. Accord to a report from the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce, there were more than 39,000 new businesses created in Bogotá within Q1 of 2019. Around 50 of those startups pass through the Bogotá Founder Institute chapter annually. As Petersen alluded to, funding is still one of the biggest hurdles for local startups. However, top universities from across the country are located in Bogotá, and the local talent pool far exceeds that of other cities. Bogotá is also a central point regionally, with a constant flow of air traffic to some of the largest US and LatAm tech hubs, including New York City, Miami, Chile, and Panama.
Below are a brief sampling of just a handful of the many companies that Petersen has helped to develop and grow directly through the Bogotá Founder Institute:
- Plani: Following a subscription-based model, Plani will send contraceptives to the homes of their customers. They also provide related exams.
- Cannvest: Cannvest connects investors and cannabis growers, improving their crop valuation through traceability and crop optimization technologies.
- Docdoc: The company combines deep expertise in clinical informatics, artificial intelligence, and healthcare quality assessment to deliver simple yet powerful solutions.
- Questips: The app connects travelers via chat to operators and local guides to receive updated and reliable information about destinations and activities in real-time, as well as personalize experience packages designed by their tour operators.
- Portunus: Formed from scientific talent across the western hemisphere, Portunus produces biomaterials and prototype technologies based on cutting edge research from biological sciences and personalized medicine.
- Finbox: Part financial advisor part network builder, Finbox brings users and companies together with the right tools to help them improve their financials.
- Litmoi: Budding bands and artists don’t always have the financing to make it big, but with Litmoi, fans are able to buy and sell stock in the artists they love. The startup is creating the first stock exchange to invest directly in these creators.
The recent cohort of newest Founder Institute Bogotá portfolio companies, lead by Petersen, received a tremendous amount of press coverage from their Demo Day and cohort Graduation event. You can read about them in the Colombian press, here:
- https://thebogotapost.com/heres-the-batch-of-founder-institute-bogota-startups/38251/
- https://startupbeat.com/a-look-into-founder-institute-colombias-2019-graduating-class/32551/
- https://www.crazyaboutstartups.com/a-look-into-founder-institute-colombias-2019-graduating-class/
- https://socialgeek.co/noticias/founder-institute-colombia-batch-2019/
- https://www.colombiafocus.com/fifteen-startups-graduating-from-founder-institute-bogotas-2019-class
- https://www.contxto.com/en/colombia/15-startups-graduating-founder-institute-colombia-2019/
Learn more about and connect with Mads Schmidt Petersen on LinkedIn.
If you are local startup ecosystem leader interested in launching a new Founder Institute chapter, visit fi.co/grow to learn more about FI local leadership opportunities.
Graduates of the Founder Institute are creating some of the world's fastest growing startups, having raised over $1.75BN in funding, and building products people love across over 200 cities worldwide.
See the most recent news from FI Grads at FI.co/news, or learn more about their stories at FI.co/journey.
