Why I invested in Sonico
I first met Sonico at BarCamp in Buenos Aires last September. They were by far the most interesting company. Alec and I met Rodrigo, the CEO, and his team in person a few days later and we were blown away. It’s hard to put my finger on what it was exactly, but they just got it. They were fantastic people – all close friends from San Andres University in the mid to late twenties – and we loved their approach to business
They already had great traction and we were convinced we could do great things together as the things they were struggling with were exactly things we could help them with (structure of the company, fund raising, etc.).
We decided we had to work together and set about fund raising and restructuring the company (making it a Delaware C Corp, etc.). It ended up being much more difficult than expected. The company continued to grow extremely rapidly reaching nearly 17 million users in less than 9 months of operation! However, Argentine politicians seemed bent on making the country less appealing to investors. They increased their agricultural export tax (one of the worst policies possible to begin with) which led to riots by the farmers. They let inflation runaway and it’s now nearing 25% per year! Several American VCs were put off by the macroeconomic environment in Argentina.
In the end, the team and the story were compelling enough and Rod just succeeded in raising $4.3 million from DN Capital and a few investors. The project remains risky given the competitive nature of the market. Facebook effectively enters market through the expat community and sometimes takes off dramatically as it did in Turkey and Columbia in the past few months.
Despite the threat, I bet on Sonico because I believe that they will find a way to succeed given their single mindedness, extreme focus, doggedness and passion!
Rod, Alvaro, Tom, Gustavo, Alejandro and Anton: it’s all in your hands now, go kick some butt!
I love the net precisely because of entries like this. Every day the papers bring news and comments about the farm strike and it’s economic an political consequences but only after reading this post I was able to fully understand the true cost of this crisis: many projects won’t be as lucky as Sonico, and because our own stupidity we’ll loose them.
And it’s a pity because the “digital revolution” and the coming of the information age can be the stepstones for our prosperity: we have the human resources and in the web it doesn’t matter if your country is near Antartica!!
Congratulations to Sonico, and to the investors.
Congratulations, Fabrice. Facebook descended on Turkey with the field wide open, and any would be competitors, nascent. With the traction you have in Sonico, your story will hopefully resemble StudiVZ.
Cem: As they say: “From your lips to God’s ears!”
I’d watch out – http://www.vostu.com/ is looking pretty good . . . 😉
What do you think about the New World Order? search Aaron Russo on youtube
John:
People love conspiracy theories, but the reality is that cover ups like this are just too hard to pull off, especially by governments which if anything have demonstrated their incompetence. Morever, there is no unified global elite – when I go to events such as Renaissance Week-End or Dialog – there are essentially as many ideas as people.
As people become better off they demand representation. They will fight to protect what they have to loose.
Not that I am not in favor of a global government. I am – the nation state is a remnant of the 19th century policital organization. It seems archaic given the world we live in where we travel and live in numerous countries, have sales and employees globally. However, the existing political class will want to cling to its power so I don’t see the power of the nation state ebbing anytime soon.