Day 9 - Buenos Aires Company Presentations

General facts about Argentina:

• Population = 40M
• Inflation = 8.5%
• Unemployment = 8%
• 2001 Crisis set them back a bunch
• Exports = Corn, Soybean, wheat, meat, crude, fuels
• Growth Rate = 8.5% (2003-08)
• Lots of corruption
• 70% of people in Argentina work & study

Our first meeting and probably our best meeting of the whole trip was with Globant, a software solutions company based out of Buenos Aires. The presenter was one of the four founders and CTO. Below are my highlights from the presentation:

• Very relaxed environment - Yoga, T-shirts, shorts, plasmas, ping pong tables
• Founded in 2003 by 4 people, now at 1000 at the end of 2008, trying to get to 2000 in the next couple years. IPO goal of 2yrs (NASDAQ)
• 4 forces of work - 1) Increasing outsourcing 2) off-shoring 3) open sourcing 4) IT spending
• Started with a $5K investment, now have raised $14M total
• Currently @ $100M in Revenue
• Largest exporter of IT services in all of Argentina
• The Argentina environment - A crisis every 5 yrs., no sources of financing, defaulted foreign debt, severe devaluation, interesting talent pool, weak local demand for IT (Globant focused on where the demand was, U.S. & UK), good cost structure
• Ranked 2nd best place to work in Argentina
• Finance the company by equity
• Google is one of their biggest customers
• **Social Networking, e-commerce & video games
• They have a MIT business case published
• Reasons for the IPO - much more visibility even with the increased regulation (SOX)
• Recruiting process - Started by giving out green apples at a trade show with their sticker on it and stuck ever since, green everything around the office (see pics of Day 9). Advertised a puzzle in newspapers with no company name. If the candidate could figure it out, they could then move to the next step, eventually determining the company. They look for problem solvers! Lots of referrals 
• Looking to expand in U.S. through the IPO and M&A possibly
• 10% of the shares are in the hands of employees
• The atmosphere was described as a "college culture"
• The conference rooms were named after cartoon characters (Simpsons, He-Man, etc.)

http://www.globant.com/Content/Home/

I can't remember where and what I had for lunch, so moving right along. I'm sure it was good, but hard to remember all these meals and names after awhile. After lunch we had a meeting with Transparency International, a global civil organization leading to fight against corruption. We met with the Director (one of 34 employees in BA office).

Highlights from this meeting:

• Founded in 1989, based in Buenos Aires
• "How do we fix it?"
• Corruption is high in Argentina - one of the reasons it is hard to get investments from U.S. (Mexico and Brazil in better situation currently).
• Limited or no regulations and laws
• Difficulty exercising rights
• Utilize partnerships
• The best way to get any information is to get coverage from the media. If not, extremely hard to to get company information (relationships are significant).
• Even if you get the information that is requested, it takes forever
• "silent majority"
• Have limited resources and funding (spent only $650K in 2008)
• They had 1st public hearing in 2008 - (14yrs. an avg corruption case)
• Only NGO in Argentina
• **They weren't too optimistic for future improvement either!
• Integrity and ethical issues
• Funding source - International donors
• More issues come from other provinces and local govt
• Win campaigns using transparency

www.transparency.org 

Dinner was on our own, but a large group of 16 of us went to an Italian restaurant nearby. The restaurant did tables of 4 so I sat with Drew, Chico and Kristen. Our meal and wine was fabulous. Mushroom risotto, salad, tenderloin & lasagna. We learned that Chico is a baker! I know there was some quote I needed to add here, but my memory is struggling. I will update if I can remember.

A small group went over to this bad@ss hotel named The Faena Hotel for drinks by the pool. Check out the site below for pics. We then returned to our hotel for a night cap. An early morning the next day, but still ended up closing the place down, ha

www.faenahotelanduniverse.com