Puerto Rico start-ups draw investor interest in NYC
David Beatty, director of Golden Seeds, an investment firm that has invested more than $58 million in technology companies.
Startups of Puerto Rico held its first Puerto Rican start-ups presentation to investors in New York City Wednesday, which group officials said expressed an interest in the projects that were unveiled.
“Today [Wednesday], four Puerto Rican start-ups showed the most demanding investors in New York that entrepreneurs in Puerto Rico are able to conquer new markets through their innovations,” said Marcos Polanco, co-organizer of the event.
“The reaction was amazing. World-class investors pointed out the immense potential of Puerto Ricans start-ups. According to them, in addition to seeing Puerto Rico as a place to vacation, today they see it as a destination for business,” Polanco added.
At the event, local start-ups Blimp, Leavebox, Kytelabs and iGenApps made individual presentations to dozens of would-be investors. Among those in attendance were David Beatty, director of Golden Seeds, an investment firm that has invested more than $58 million in technology companies; Ricardo García-Amaya, leader of the only Latino angel investor network; Bob Dorf, entrepreneurship and “lean startups” guru, founder of six high-tech companies; Baris Yuksell, senior engineer at Google, based in NY; and Jorge Torres, of SILAS Capital, a major investment firms in technology in the Big Apple.
“By definition, a ‘start-up’ is a company that seeks to create a new business model. These are the companies that take a risk to create what does not exist,” Ramphis Castro, co-organizer of the event.
“Therefore they need the support of an entire business ecosystem. Yesterday, we took another big step in creating this ecosystem, exposing our best start-ups to investment networks in the United States,” he said.
Event pays off
Among the achievements of the evening, was a meeting between Kytelabs team, a start-up founded by three young Puerto Ricans 10 months ago, with K.J. Singh, “Managing Director” of accelerator TechStars.
TechStars, one of the most important start-up accelerators in the world, is a unique program where a select group of start-ups (they only support 0.6 percent of all applicants) is selected to be part of an intensive training program. At the end of the program, accepted start-ups receive, on average, $400,000 in capital investment for their company.
In addition, organizers announced that Beatty will be coming to Puerto Rico soon to learn more about Puerto Rican start-ups.
Start-ups of Puerto Rico is a factory that produces entrepreneurs who are establishing high-tech companies based in Puerto Rico.
