Innovation Scout report -Mexico
2013 Pepijn Veling (pepijn.veling@climate-­‐kic.org) www.climate-­‐kic.org @ClimateKIC
Cleantech innovation in Latin America: Mexico City DF 1
Mexico City
¨One of the largest cities in the world and certainly
the biggest in Latin America: that must be total
chaos¨, is what I thought on my flight from Costa
Rica to Mexico. I couldn´t have been more wrong.
8-lanes avenues accompanied by trees, fountains
amidst
huge
historical
buildings.
People
are
enjoying themselves in fancy restaurants and bars
out on the streets until late midnight. 7 metro
lines, huge metro buses and 4000 eco-bicycles
used by 87,000 Mexicans.
Being the biggest city in Latin America, DF (Distrito
Federal,
as
the
locals
call
Mexico
City)
is
surprisingly save, ordered and pleasant to be. The
presence of immense skylines of tall buildings gives
you a sense that the city is booming.
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Figure 1. Mexico City Central Avenue
Clean tech Mexico City in a nutshell
Mexico
If we talk about cleantech in Mexico, on the one
hand
there
is
the
enormous
potential
ánd
application in rural areas of green energy such as
wind and solar. On the other hand, DF is home to
numerous entrepreneurs with green business plans
eager to get traction, but the road is wet and
slippery.
• 2nd largest economy of Latin
America
• Same time zone as US
Mexico City
• 21.2million people
• 2241m above sea-level
• $20,400 GDB per capita (2008)
Compared to the city size, the cleantech scene is
relatively small. About an estimated 100 people are
active in the organization of accelerator programs,
startup competitions and networking organizations.
Everybody knows everybody. And has an opinion
on one another.
• $390B GDP (8 richest city in the
world)
• 4.5hour flights to SF and NY
(´golden triangle`)
• 195 metro stations
• 4000 Eco bicycles, 275 ecobicystations, 87,000 registered users
• Good level of English speaking
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Cleantech innovation in Latin America: Mexico City DF Most visibly is the Cleantech Challenge, an annual business plan competition of 64 cleantech
startups. This year they received 1000 applications. Participants receive business coaching
and seminars and compete against each other in front of a jury. Finalists are taken on a tour
to MIT to meet fellow startups. Not so much as technological support, the Cleantech
Challenge provides its contestants with a reality check from a business perspective, and
above all, great exposure. They know how to make a show.
Intellectually most interesting is the incubator program
of the technological university Tec de Monterrey. The
program covers 68 incubators and is led by David
Romero (picture right) who skypes weekly with people
such
as
Steve
Blank
and
Bob
Dorf.
David
can
passionately lecture about why and how they create
entrepreneurs, not startups.
Another emerging phenomenon is incubators founded or
sponsored by multinationals: Coca-Cola has replaced its
headquarters heli-platform by an incubator for green
startups. Wal-Mart is sponsoring another green business
plan competition. Certainly not damaging the startup
scene, these incubators tend to create startups that
produce a one-day-fly highly visible green product Figure 2. David Romero, Tec de Monterey
instead of a durable business.
Startups themselves are shopping between the different providers. It is not unusual that a
startup has participated in the Cleantech Challenge, the Venture Institute incubator, and the
University of the Environment acceleration program. There is thus not such a lack of support
for startups. However, much more present is a huge valley of death: it is very difficult to find
seed capital for cleantech startups. Even the finalists of the Cleantech Challenge who end up
with beautiful business models, find themselves empty handed in the real world. This was
however denied by the director of the national institute of entrepreneurship (who then failed
to come up with alternatives).
Due to the valley of death, and due to the fact that Mexico is not the place where the latest
technology is created, low-investment `software` startups and business model innovations
are much more abundant than high-investment hard-core technological innovation startups. A
very successful example of a low-investment software startup is Aventones, an online system
of sharing cars between employees. Skyrocketing they are the pride of a number of
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Cleantech innovation in Latin America: Mexico City DF acceleration programs. An example of a more hard-core technological startup is Concreto
Ecologico that has developed a chemical additive to make concrete porous allowing the
natural flow of rain- to groundwater. However, even though this concerns an experienced
entrepreneur, the winner of the Cleantech Challenge, who is already selling to Holcim, the
needed $6m investment to grow to a $450m business is very difficult to find.
To conclude: just as Mexico is an emerging market, the cleantech scene is emerging as well.
It is vibrant and there are a lot of bright and entrepreneurial people to meet. Top two
organizations to meet are the people behind the Cleantech Challenge (Luis Aguirre, awarded
Champion of Change by Barack Obama) and the incubator of the Tec de Monterrey (David
Romero).
Among most organizations I met, there is a lot of willingness to cooperate with Climate-KIC in
terms of exchanging knowledge, interns and startups. They are more than happy to host
Climate-KIC startups on tours and connect them with Mexican startups. Whenever ClimateKIC will open its doors to accelerating foreign startups, there is interest among startups to
come and develop their business in Europe. Mainly because of their perception of Europe as
technologically advanced AND easier access to seed capital than in Mexico. Mexican
incubators and acceleration programs in Mexico could serve as the filter to allow only the topof-the-notch cleantech startups to apply to the Climate-KIC acceleration program.
Figure 3. Tec de Monterrey
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Cleantech innovation in Latin America: Mexico City DF 3
Top-2 organizations
Name
Cleantech Challenge Mexico (Green Momentum (GM))
Contact person
Rafael Carmona Dávila
CTO
Employees
16, of which 5-fulltime staff work on the Cleantech Challenge.
Budget
$1m, 60% USAID, 35% Mexican private sponsors, 5% others
and subscriptions
Founding year
GM: #?, Cleantech Challenge: 2010: tripled resources in three
years.
Business
Green Momentum is a green consultancy firm with strong ties in
the US. Its cofounder and CEO, Luis Aguirre, has received a
champion of change award of Barack Obama and should be the
person to talk to during a visit.
Since 2010 GM organizes the annual Cleantech Challenge
Mexico. This is a 6 months competition in which everyone can
participate who has a cleantech idea or startup. The goal is to
turn these ideas into solid business plans. Subscription is $250
per project (symbolic to force commitment). This year (2013)
they received 1000 applications of which they selected 64 to
compete in the challenge. During the challenge, open webinars
and seminars are given, mostly on how to write your business
plan. The participants compete in different rounds. In later
rounds personal business coaching is given. Eventually 10
finalists remain. The winner receives $25k. Last year the finalists
were invited to an MIT venture mentorship event where among
other things, they speed dated with possible investors and
launching customers.
Pros
Finalists said they benefit from:
+Exposure, every Mexican interested in this field knows about
the cleantech challenge
+Commercial tools, how to give a pitch, write a solid business
plan, ¨reality check¨
+interaction with other startups, business angels, mentors
+learning how to convert an idea into a business model
+management tips by 1 on 1 coaching
Discussion
Logically, GM uses the Cleantech Challenge as exposure for
themselves as well. They therefor select a lot of winners:
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Cleantech innovation in Latin America: Mexico City DF startups that are already in later stages of development, looking
for exposure themselves to find investors. Good for GM, because
they can show the world that they accelerated great startups,
and good for the startups, who get attention. Who might loose
are early stage startups that cannot compete with these
advanced startups. Also, some technological startups lacked the
missing of technological knowledge support. Other discussion
points are lacking access to investments and the basic level of
the seminars.
Website
www.cleantechchallenge.org
http://www.greenmomentum.com
Figure 4 Cleantech Challenge
Name
Tec de Monterrey
Contact person
Prof. David C. Romero Díaz
Director Centre for Incubation & Technology Transfer
Very intelligent and passionate leader of incubation program. Is
close to Bob Doff, Steve Blank and Alex Osterwalder. When he
signed up he simultaneously wrote his resignation letter.
Employees
#?
Budget
-
Founding year
?
Business
The Tec de Monterrey is probably the best private technological
university of Mexico. It has campuses and 68 incubators (trained
by David Romero) all over Mexico including two big ones in
Mexico City.
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Cleantech innovation in Latin America: Mexico City DF ¨We develop entrepreneurs, not business plans, anyone can
write a business plan!!
6-9months incubation programs in which they focus on learning
entrepreneurs the right tools to become successful. Because
they are in a university setting, they do everything they can to
break out of that. They give workshops, not courses etc.
Workshops are centred around Lean Business. Themes are
product innovation, IPR etc. They also give 10-20hours of
consulting by experts and 36hours of business coaches in order
to develop business plans. However the conviction of David
Romero is that they create entrepreneurs, not business plans,
not startups, but entrepreneurs that must be able to deal with
changes in the environment or business plan at all times.
Therefor he gives all participants an entrepreneurial diary, in
which they are obliged to motivate the important decisions they
made throughout the program. The business plan is needed, but
the diary shows the real capacity, the business logic of the
entrepreneur and should give an investor a real idea of who is
behind the business plan. Also, it ensures that the business will
not only be a one-time success of growth, maturity and decline,
but will repeat itself over and over again, because of the
entrepreneur behind the business plan.
Other
Dr. Rafael Lorenzo Piñon, director del Parque Empresarial
Innovacion y Emprendimiento
Mtro. Guillermo Lagos Espinosa, Director de Venture Capital y
Alianzas Estrategicas
Smart people, wanted to know everything about how we
accelerate startups. (¨Climate-KIC gives startups 20k euros in
the first phase: for what??¨).
Website
http://www.itesm.edu/
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Cleantech innovation in Latin America: Mexico City DF Figure 5. David Romero, Tec de Monterey
4
Other organizations of interest
Venture Institute
Isabel Gil
Dimitrio Gomez
leader acceleration program
http://institute.vc/empresas-vi list of startups (ES)
Incubator with solid track record, very good atmosphere, open to receive Climate-KIC interns.
Empleos Verdes
Orly Goldsmith
Catalina Jáuregui
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Cleantech innovation in Latin America: Mexico City DF www.empleosverdes.com
Founded 2 years ago by two young and smart girls, now with 5 employees. Originally started
as a job board for green jobs (they have 15.000 registrants), they are becoming the next
Centre of Intelligence (education, workshops etc.) of the cleantech industry in Mexico. They
literally know everyone in the cleantech scene in Mexico City and have motivated opinions
about one another.
New Ventures
Araceli Campos
Didier Quiroz Ceballos
www.nvm.org.mx
Non-profit organization of 30employees that promotes cleantech. They have an accelerator
program, an online green database and manage a venture fund. They have accelerated about
300 firms since 2004. Just like
Empleos Verdes they know,
and are known, by everyone
in
the
cleantech
scene.
Coolest thing: they have a
map of the whole cleantech
innovation scene in Mexico,
with
linkages
between
players! (picture right)
all
Figure 6. New ventures network
Universidad del Medio Ambiente (University of the Environment)
Priscila Alaniz
Valle de Bravo (2 hour drive from Mexico City)
Known as the UMA. 70 master students, 25 staff, 20 professors, 45-55% educationconsulting. They have an accelerator program for cleantech startups. The founder is supposed
to be a Steve Jobs-like hippie, which makes it come as not surprise that the acceleration
program starts with a week surviving in the mountains, to get people out of their comfort
zones. The UMA has a very good name in the cleantech scene.
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Figure 7. Rooftop CIEL
Cleantech innovation in Latin America: Mexico City DF Transformadora CIEL
Eduardo Moreno
idea.me/transformadoraciel
http://youtu.be/qWRkgSU_hLs
Hidden in the attic of the Coca-Cola building, reachable only by elevator followed by two
emergency stairways, exists the Coca-Cola (Femsa) incubator: Ciel, named after its bottled
water brand. Bottled water of competing brand are, literally, removed from you by security
guards.
They have an acceleration program of 3 months, where they provide coaching, master classes
etc. They also have an online crowd-funding platform for green products. Whenever a green
product achieves its crowd-funding target, Ciel doubles the fund. Although they have quite a
lot of success, the goal of the incubator is Coca-Cola marketing. It is run by an external
marketing firm, which hires Venture Institute (see above) to develop its incubator program.
Critics from other is that startups are selected that provide the most visible products to the
public, regardless if it ever can result in sustainable companies. Fair enough, they have a
great meeting location and roof terrace.
Instituto Global para la Sostenibilidad
Dr. Ma Isabel Studer Noguez
Directora Fundadora
www.igs.org.mx
Institute within the university of Tec de Monterrey that conducts research to and stimulates
the sustainable activities of medium to large companies. Very closely related to the incubator
program.
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3 Cool startups
Aventones
Ignacio Cordero
www.aventones.com
Offers organizations an online system that facilitates the process of car sharing among its
employees. This reduces the number of cars on the road (traffic jams, CO2 emissions), saves
costs (gasoline, maintenance, parking) and improves the social interaction among employees.
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Cleantech innovation in Latin America: Mexico City DF Concreto Ecologico (Winner of Cleantech Challenge 2012)
Ing. Alejandro Alvarez Gómez
Youtube
There is so many concrete used in roads and sideways in Mexico City, that the natural flow of
rainwater to groundwater is hindered seriously. This has resulted in a decline of groundwater
levels from 20m to over 200m in a decade or so. Engineer Alejandro Alvarez has the solution:
His startup Concreto Ecologico has developed an additive to concrete that makes it
permeable. This allows rainwater to flow through the concrete naturally ensuring normal
levels of groundwater under cities.
They already have multinational Holcim as their first customer, but are looking for an
investment of $6m that will allow them to grow worldwide and reach sales of $450m in 4-5
years.
Ecobiosis
(2nd place Cleantech Challenge 2012)
Ing. Miguel Creixell Vargas
Ecobiosis has developed a way to process liquid waste from alcohol distilleries that would
otherwise be tossed in nearby lakes and rivers
into purified water ready for reuse. They have interest from BID network and some investors.
Ecoshine
Ing. Marco A. Escalona V.
www.ecoshine.homestead.com
Cleaning product made from rainwater that, after use, is complete clean to be used to water
plants. And it even cleans! Moreover, a refill system is developed that can be installed in
supermarkets to save on packaging and on (water) transportation as an extract is used.
Needs $1m investment.
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Investors
Mita Institute and Tech Accelerator
Lynne Bairstow
www.mitainstitute.com
Venture capital fund and strategic advisory program (accelerator) for early-stage tech
companies (Punta Mita). MITA utilizes a network of mentors, financial, educational, and policy
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Cleantech innovation in Latin America: Mexico City DF partners in Mexico, Latin America and the U.S./Canada, to foster cross-cultural opportunities
and investment in tech startups selected and mentored by MITA.
Newgrowth fund
Karla Gallardo Hernández
$15m investment fund. Most interesting is Karla Hernandez, very smart and passionate
woman that is one of the judges of the Cleantech Challenge.
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Supporting organizations
Dutch Embassy
Dolf Hogewoning
Ambassador
Jaap Veerman
hoofd economische afdeling
Judith Blaauw
British Embassy
M.A. Salvador López Carbajal, Gerente de Desarollo Económico
Very interested in supporting the UK part of Climate-KIC. The organize a startup contest
themselves in Mexico: Londontech
GreenExpo
Angélica Rodriguez Dufau
Matilde Saldivar Uganda
www.thegreenexpo.com.mx
Annual exposition of about 150 providers of green industrial solutions. They have a (highly
secret) database of 15,000 professional clients interested in green solutions.
Expo en verde ser
Marcela Altamirano
Directora General
Natalie Garcia Buhler
Directora de Mercadotecnia
www.gentecomouno.com.mx
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Cleantech innovation in Latin America: Mexico City DF Annual exposition of providers of green consumer solutions to about 15,000 consumers.
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