00:00The official launch of the Founder Institute Caribbean's regional program last Thursday is a milestone event that will bring together founders, government officials, investors and innovation ecosystem leaders from across Latin America and the Caribbean to celebrate a new chapter in technology, entrepreneurship and economic development for the region.
00:21Founder of the Founder Institute Caribbean, Roel Anand Singh, emphasized the role that the organization and its program will play for entrepreneurs throughout the region.
00:28But for startup founders across the region, Founder Institute Caribbean is now your community.
00:37It's a global community of founders, a community of mentors, Neil is here, a community of investors.
00:45So I often say that it takes a village to raise a child. Similarly, it takes a community to build a startup.
00:52So our community matters more now than ever. We need to create an innovation ecosystem where we nurture, support and invest in our own founders.
01:07If not, we risk losing our best talent to more developed markets.
01:13Jonathan Gretchen, CEO and co-founder of the Founder Institute, which boasts the largest network of incubators, accelerators and investors globally, spoke about the role of the Founder Institute and what kills a startup ecosystem.
01:26The Founder Institute focuses on getting people to those initial steps, getting that first funding so then they can get off to the races.
01:33So we have education. We run free startup events all the time to educate people all over the world.
01:40We've educated over 750,000 people now through our free programs.
01:46One of the biggest things that kills a startup ecosystem is fragmentation.
01:49It's when a small number of players start to say, hey, if you mentor for our program, you can't mentor for these other programs.
01:58And, you know, a lot of competition comes forward, where in the beginning, the best thing for entrepreneurs is to have a lot of people kind of fueling that wind behind their sails in the beginning to give them optionalities.
02:11Gretchen is also of the opinion that if given the right tools, entrepreneurs can be the driving forces of change in the world.
02:17We believe that entrepreneurs are the greatest catalyst for social change.
02:22We think that governments can put the guardrails in place, but at the end of the day, if an entrepreneur can use the power of the market, right, essentially the power of the people to take what they want, what they're willing to pay for and spend time on,
02:36they can use that power to create really, really meaningful social change, change that is much more organic, right, that is driven by the people and not mandated from the time.
02:47And that's what we do at Founder Institute is to try to empower people to create that change in the world.
Be the first to comment