Brazil is being described as the “next hot tech market” and several VCs are getting aggressive in “the country of the future.” Recently, The New York Times announced that Redpoint and BV Capital have begun a new venture capital firm called Redpoint eVentures based in São Paulo, Brazil. The Samwer brothers, through Rocket Internet, are also raising the stakes and their main local success is Dafiti, Brazil’s largest multi-label Fashion e-Commerce.
Julio Vasconcellos, Peixe Urbano founder: born in Brazil, educated in the US, tech millionaire in... [+]
However, many Brazilian entrepreneurs believe that to make it big time, they first need to spend some time in the Silicon Valley. Gustavo Lemos, IBM Global Entrepreneur of the Year competition winner, said in a Pandodaily interview, “I want to help Brazil, but Brazil cannot help me now.” In fact, some of the best Brazilian entrepreneurs in Brazil are the ones who “learned some skills in Brazil, went to the US, learned new tools and brought everything back to Brazil."
The recipe “Brazil – Silicon Valley – Brazil” worked well for one of the most successful Brazilian entrepreneurs, Julio Vasconcellos. Julio was born in Brazil, educated in the US: he is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford Business School, and went back to Brazil to found Brazil’s hottest startup in 2011, Peixe Urbano.
If like Gustavo Lemos, CEO of Brazilian-based analytics solutions provider IDXP, you agree with the recipe “Brazil-Silicon Valley-Brazil” you will be very interested in Startup Dream Team, who is reserving an entire hostel in San Francisco to serve as headquarters for 30 entrepreneurs wanna-be students from all over the world. The 30 students will live together in the StartupHouse San Francisco from June 18th to August 12th, do a lot of teamwork and get a deep and quick integration in Silicon Valley as they will attend and organize talks of entrepreneurs, gurus, and startup experts like Robert Scoble, Hiten Shah, and Aaron Levie.
Pierre-Simon Ntiruhungwa, co-founder of Silicon Students, who came up with the idea of Startup Dream Team while he was an intern at Ifeelgoods in Silicon Valley last summer andwill run the program along with Edouard Foussier and Nicolas Grenie, says the main goal of the adventure is to "make young entrepreneurs really understand the fundamental importance of teams in startups by having them working with as many fellows of the program as possible.” As the group will be international, the participants will also have a better understanding of how aspiring entrepreneurs think in other countries and in Silicon Valley.
Many entrepreneurs don't find the right team-members, end up launching their business anyway and fail because of that. The concept behind Startup Dream Team is to first find your team, then work on your idea to launch your startup. They work on the assumption that if you try to convey this message to young aspiring entrepreneurs who don’t have a startup idea yet, you are more likely to be heard. Many entrepreneurs know how important is the team, but they are so obsessed with their idea that they may think that they don’t have time to find the perfect team before launching their startup.
If you had already thought about going to the Silicon Valley, Startup Dream Team will provide you a perfect environment for team creation, a network of minded like people and an enhanced experience of Silicon Valley. You have until May 20th to apply on Startup Dream Team website. Pierre-Simon adds that application from Brazil will get special treatment, “we are looking forward to getting applications from Brazil. I heard a lot about how hands-on Brazilians are, I want to experience if the “jeitinho” is really helpful in doing business.”
