Analysis-They can’t wait on the banks, because they are not interested or simply do not understand. Some can do it with Credit Union Loans. Others sell their friends and family on the investability of their ideas. Yet many, many more sit languishing with great ideas and no cash to grease the ideas forward. I know I’m already preaching to the converted, when I say we need a Venture Capital Fund here, the start of a VC culture here in the Caribbean that will invest in bankable technology companies.( And when I say bankable, I mean in other things outside of companies set up to resell cellphones of the existing mobile providers. God knows we have enough of them.)
I know of too many companies that could use a love injection of cash to get their ideas going further, faster. I’ve spoken to the entrepreneurs who’ve been in the industry 3, 5,7 years and have achieved certain level of success, but none that can rival those of their colleagues in USA and
Maybe this is something that Digicel, Cable & Wireless, The Spanish Companies, resident billionaires, The Irish Expats can look at. Become Angel investors, set up a Venture Capital Fund that’s geared towards helping these many brilliant small, fledgling, talent packed technology companies become inpactful and profitable. It’s hard for many of these entrepreneurs to watch good money, strong money chase crappy ideas in the USA when simply half or a quarter of that funding could take Jamaica and the Caribbean’s software industry global, take the wicked web apps, mobile games, mobile services out of the underfunded companies and to the world.
Will the first batch of ANgel Investors and Venture Capitalists step forward!
Resource:venturebreat.com,readwriteweb.com,techcrunch.com
I hope to one day become an angel investor and hope that more people step up sooner. I don’t have a high opinion of VCs mainly because of the what seem to be their real motives.
We definitely need new sources of capital for entrepreneurs - even extremely low interest loans that don’t have to be repaid immediately would still help.
A grant program from a company like NCB or RBTT would also go a long way. They could use some of their enormous profits to support a grant program because they create new and bigger customers. A company that got a grant from a specific bank is more likely to do significant business with that bank in the future.
September 13th, 2007 at 3:16 am
I’d be very careful about franchising the Caribbean to venture capital that way. Some people have been building things on their own simply because banks do not understand… I remember the business plan I wrote from my father for solar energy being rejected by EVERY bank in Trinidad and Tobago because ’solar power is too cutting edge’.
What we NEED are banks that can compete. With that, needed change can happen. Waiting for someone else to help seems too much like practicing the colonial mindset.
September 13th, 2007 at 4:39 am
As a technology entrepreneur,I think its imperative that we develop some solution that can take Caribbean IT entrepreneurs to the next level in terms of development.
I KNOW that banks in the Caribbean are ALL risk averse to anything that does not come in a physical/tangible package.
Solution : Encourage Governments in the Caribbean to set up legislation so that telecoms and IT firms invest a percenage of their profits into a fund which is operated by an integrated public/private sector industry experts team.
This is the ONLY way that development can take place, or we remain stagnant and die.
September 14th, 2007 at 6:05 am
[...] can’t wait on the banks, because they are not interested or simply do not understand. Some can do it with Credit Union [...]
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:15 pm