It all started on Wednesday morning. After the Platanus Ventures Demo Day, some investors wanted to share impressions and information about startups to invest in, but I couldn’t find platforms or communities to do so.
there was between them Hussam Sufan, global vice president of growth at Examedi, which had already invested in some initiatives. She started asking for opinions in her personal chats, met others who had the same concern and decided to create a WhatsApp group that would initially only be for ecosystem investors, but which In just a few hours, it has already added 500 people.
Sufan uploaded it to one of his LinkedIn posts, where he has more than 12,000 followers, and it blew up. Startup founders, investors, accelerators, venture lawyers kept coming and the conversation began to become chaotic. Between founders who made their services and products known and said they were in a round to raise capital and investors who asked them to contact them internally, bloody videos of trolls appeared which were deleted in good time by the group administrator.
What became clear was the need for a faster tool for sharing information. Some have even talked about the experiment as a sort of MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of something that could become a startup in its own right.
Several well-known investors have joined the chat, including Andres Matte of Platanus Ventures, Natalia Antillo of Brainvest, Ian Lee of Examedi, Federido Iriberry of Broota and Christian Van Der Henst of Platzi. And although some ended up leaving, due to the chaos that ensued, they agreed to return when a way was found to organize the participants, eager to share information.
Several startups looking to raise capital have also taken the opportunity to make their minipitch in a few lines and they even set up a meeting for the following week to share facts about taking a ride.
Hussam Sufan says the madness was so great that late Wednesday afternoon he had to drop his cell phone and go for a walk to process everything that was happening: It had opened the door to an unmet need in the ecosystem, but he couldn’t do it alone. Some members of the whatsapp group he didn’t know offered him help Thus was born a parallel chat of administrators who met on Thursday evening to organize information and give shape to spontaneous creation.
In the midst of Wednesday afternoon’s maelstrom, several disjointed communities had sprung up from the same chat: a total of nine groups with names like “I need feedback”, Pitch/Lift cap, Talent Attraction, Investors, Founders & Co-founders, Consolidated Startups and International Startups.
Thursday 20:00 Sufan met Teresa Herrera of Conecta Mujer, Sebastián Araos of Global66 and Peter Fulle of SmartMart and together they have taken some definitions that will guide the development of what this initiative could become: defining a brand identity, organizing events with ecosystem experts, maintaining the aim of connecting startups with investment opportunities, sharing feedback on existing businesses and seek support for startups to continue growing.
So far, the community continues to grow. There are already 955 participants and new founders and investors continue to join the group.
