At the Punta Tech Meetup the average age of the attendees did not exceed 35 years. Young people were the most attracted to the event, which took place on Monday, interested in turning their ventures into reality with the help of investors who walked alongside them under the strong afternoon sun at the Atchugarry Foundation.
Santiago Yañez came to Punta Tech with the help of the Da Vinci Foundation, his venture Claz.me, dedicated to training through online courses for entrepreneurs, will be partially funded by the ANII. I come to listen to the talks but above all to meet people," the young entrepreneur told El Observador.
With elaborate speachs or in a relaxed chat, the young people approached potential clients or investors to talk about their projects, thus achieving the main objective of the event: networking.
"In 2009 was the first time we did it, it was in the courtyard of my house and as my wife thought that offering beer was not enough; she also bought some empanadas," laughed Sergio Fogel (Uniotel), one of the creators of the MeetUp.
Together with Pablo Brenner (Globant) and Ariel Pfeffer (Trillonario), they transformed a business meeting into a mega event that kicks off the entrepreneurial agenda of 2016 and that, in addition to the interrelation of the participants, has as its highlight the speakers who provided the activity with enriching trends and experiences for the attendees.
The speakers
In the first instance, the executive director of Uruguay XXI, Antonio Carámbula, gave an overview of Uruguay's role in the international investment market and indicated that the country is second in Latin America, behind Peru, in attracting foreign investment.
Afterwards, the Canadian and co-founder of HootSuite, Dario Meli, advised entrepreneurs with some guidelines to follow when starting out on their journey. "You have to know what people need, it's not all cool ideas. Cool is good but it's not always a business", said the executive and emphasised the importance of empathy in order to achieve success.
After Meli, the keynote speaker of the night, Yuval Noah Harari, author of the bestseller "Sapiens: From Animals to Gods", burst onto the scene. Away from the business microclimate of Punta Tech, the Israeli gave a more theoretical and fundamentalist vision of the future. "Of course there will be new jobs in the future, but will humans be able to qualify better than machines?" he asked during his presentation, emphasising the scientific and technological advances that humans will have to face in the coming decades.
The third speaker of the evening was Mariano Amartino, global director of Wayra and Telefónica Open Future, who spoke in an interview format and said that "in Latin America there is a big problem of content generation". The specialist argued that only 2% of the content consumed in Latin America is produced in the region and thus left the door ajar to a niche that is not covered.
Claudio Bessa from IBM Latin America closed the speaking part of the event by referring to the new trends in cloud and internet of things, two areas that are on the agenda of most technology-related entrepreneurs.
The presentations opened up a new space for participants to exchange views and continue networking despite the approach of midnight.
Source: By María Noel Durán for portal El Observador
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