eBay of Latin America: Mercado Libre CEO Marcos Galperin (Part 3)

SM: Having just 3% Internet penetration must have been very frustrating! MG: Exactly! We tried to focus more on milestones which were operational but not necessarily revenue. We still remember the first time someone came and paid their bill at the office. We still have the PDF of the scanned check. We tried to focus

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eBay of Latin America: Mercado Libre CEO Marcos Galperin (Part 2)

SM: Did you get the sense that eBay was not focused on Latin America at all yet? What was the Latin America Internet market at the time? What kind of Internet penetration? MG: It was very small. There was 3% penetration roughly. Today it is 20%, so it still can grow a lot. Out of

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Vertical Ad Networks: A Trend to Watch for 2008

I talked about Audience Fragmentation and the Rise of Ad Networks recently. At the moment, the Ad Networks are in the business of amassing large volumes of fragmented traffic, and offering a channel to advertisers to access the publishers who own this traffic. Expect, in 2008, a trend towards these “mass” Ad Networks gradually becoming

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Angel Investing: The Impact of Participation

Laura Roden drew my attention yesterday at a meeting of French delegates at Stanford to a Kauffman Foundation study on Angel investing. In most countries that are attempting to put an entrepreneurial ecosystem in place, Angels are an important piece of the equation. We have discussed this in detail in the context of India. Here

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Multi-channel Retailers Seeing Upside

Here’s an interesting piece on how Brick and Mortar retailers are benefiting from customers coming to pick up merchandise instead of waiting for shipment, which is offering tremendous up-sell opportunities. It begs the question: In the end, do the Brick and Mortar retailers win the eCommerce game?

eBay of Latin America: Mercado Libre CEO Marcos Galperin (Part 1)

I did this interview in Buenos Aires, Argentina, during my recent trip consulting with Mercado Libre, Latin America’s largest online marketplace. I found the story fascinating, and wanted to capture it for my readers all over the world. SM: I would like to hear the story of how you built Mercado Libre. Let’s start with

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Indian Entrepreneurship Blogs

Here are some of the blogs that report or reflect on the Indian entrepreneurship phenomenon. I tend to keep an eye on these (and others), along with numerous offline conversations, to stay on top of the trends developing in the business. Venture Woods: India’s leading VC and Entrepreneurship blog with a vast host of experienced

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Building a Telecom Equipment Startup from India

Sujai Karampuri sent me his recent piece, Ground realities from a technology product company in India . Sujai’s company Sloka Telecom is building Wimax base stations, and recently, they have won an important validation in France at Saint Medard en Jalles (5.8 GHz Wimax deployment). I know that Sujai is pounding the doors of the

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