{"id":872,"date":"2016-06-07T14:05:58","date_gmt":"2016-06-07T14:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.startupblink.com\/blog\/?p=872"},"modified":"2021-03-05T11:41:58","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T11:41:58","slug":"monterrey-startup-ecosystem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupblink.com\/blog\/monterrey-startup-ecosystem\/","title":{"rendered":"Monterrey Startup Ecosystem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Monterrey<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to view Monterrey’s Startup Map<\/h5>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Monterrey is located in the northern region of Mexico near the Texas Border (a two-hour drive) and it\u2019s one of the most industrialized cities in the country. It is home to several of the best universities in Mexico and Latin Am\u00e9rica that every year graduates a lot of students in engineering, design, and business. Also several of the best companies and business groups in Mexico have their headquarters in Monterrey (Femsa, Frisa, Xignux, Alfa, Cemex, Arca Continental, Vitro, Gruma, Banorte, Proeza, Cuprum, CYDSA, Protexa, and more).\u00a0 In StartupBlink’s 2019 report<\/a><\/strong>, Monterrey ranked 2nd in Mexico and 81st globally. <\/p>\n

Entrepreneurs have emerged in this city in the industries of steel, glass, cement, and beer, who fostered the technological development of these and other industries around them. With a culture that is very work-oriented, a lot of money is leading to new investments like real estate and entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n

The new wave of entrepreneurship started with two of the most important VC funds in Mexico (IGNIA<\/a> and Alta Ventures<\/a>), resulting in a startup ecosystem that is constantly growing, incorporating more players like: funds, angel investors, incubators\/accelerators, coworking spaces, and startups.<\/p>\n

Successful startups in Monterrey<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Here are some notable mentions:<\/p>\n

DeCompras.com<\/a> the first e-commerce company in Mexico, sold to Terra and PlazaVIP.com, acquired by Grupo Carso, are some of the ventures Juan Carlos Garc\u00eda (@jcgs68<\/a>) co-founded a few years ago. Being a serial E-Commerce entrepreneur, Juan Carlos also co-founded Banco Amigo, now ABC Capital, had the opportunity to work as VP in Wallmart, and now as Amazon Mexico CEO and co-founder of Pagamobil.com (@PagaMobil<\/a>) the first mobile app in Mexico for the online payment of utility bills.<\/p>\n

Naranya<\/a> (@NaranyaGroup<\/a>) was founded by Arturo Galvan (@agalvanc<\/a>) (Former Infosel co-founder, one of the first technology companies in Mexico and former CTO at Grupo Reforma, the largest news company of Mexico). The company started in 2002 with televoting services and migrated to mobile subscription services, launching a mobile app store for Latin America in the last years. Naranyas\u2019 reaches more than 600 million only with the App Store.<\/p>\n

Env\u00edaFlores.com<\/a> (@enviaflores<\/a>) was founded by Jes\u00fas Martinez (@larralde21<\/a>) in May 2001 but in the last 3 years, they grew to become the most recognized flower delivery company in Mexico. Jes\u00fas shows us that sometimes you have to keep pushing towards developing your project to make it happen. A lot of entrepreneurs quit early when things don\u2019t go as planned.<\/p>\n

SeMeAntoja<\/a>, now acquired by Hellofood, was founded by Tavo Zambrano (@tavowzg<\/a>) with the purpose of ordering food online. Tavo is recognized for being brilliant at retaining users and closing sales. In early stages he realized that people visited his site only to see the phone number and menu of the restaurants, so he changed the numbers to call his company directly.<\/p>\n

Strengths for startups in Monterrey<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Monterrey it\u2019s very close to Texas, not only geographically but also in cultural aspects. There are strong business relationships with Austin and San Antonio, also a lot of people living in Monterrey are used to travel to McAllen or Laredo. The closeness to the US, brings another mindset for Monterrey companies, they usually visualize their businesses in big scale, expanding to the Mexican and American market.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, every year Monterrey graduates a lot of students in engineering, design, and business, including different parts of Mexico and Latin America. This new graduates now see entrepreneurship as an opportunity for their professional careers and are stepping up the level of working professionals. We\u2019ve seen an incrementing number of startups founded by students and also new graduates, entrepreneurship is becoming part of the DNA of many citizens of Monterrey.<\/p>\n

Monterrey\u2019s businessmen are committed to developing the city. Directors from different companies are board members of universities and other entrepreneurship organizations. They invest time and money on providing better opportunities for entrepreneurs. As an example we can take INCmty<\/a>, the biggest entrepreneurship festival in Latin America (@INCmty<\/a>), were most of the funding for the event comes from these companies. There\u2019s a special pride in living and working in Monterrey, and you can see businessmen wanting to give back to the community.<\/p>\n

Weaknesses for startups in Monterrey<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The first of all weaknesses is lack of information, a lot of new entrepreneurs don\u2019t know about the different institutions that can help them succeed and also some of them don\u2019t know the new ways to start a business. As a city we are focusing on solving this problem through MEET<\/a>,\u00a0Monterrey Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Together, (@MEETMTY<\/a>) were we are trying to centralize all the information regarding entrepreneurship in Monterrey. MEET is different to the other entrepreneurship events and movements because it acts as a platform where entrepreneurs can meet all the different players of Monterrey\u2019s entrepreneurship ecosystem. Last year more than 30 players showcased and more than 900 persons attended the event.<\/p>\n

Second is the lack of mutual efforts within the players of the ecosystem. Every month there are new events, that on many occasions are on the same day of the week. Also, many of these same-day events focus on the same target market. MEET is also working to solve this problem, a more informed ecosystem leads to better outcomes.<\/p>\n

The third aspect is that venture funds in Monterrey are targeting later stage startups, making a gap between early-stage startups and seed funding. Monterrey doesn\u2019t have public angel investors and many of them are hard to reach. This problem has been detected by new funds, but they don\u2019t have the expertise of investment like the established ones. This brings an opportunity for foreign funds to reach and invest in Monterrey\u2019s startups.<\/p>\n

Biggest magazines and blogs relevant to the startup ecosystem <\/strong><\/h2>\n

Monterrey:<\/strong><\/p>\n