Podcast appearances and mentions of devin baptiste

Devin Baptiste is a serial entrepreneur and investor who is the co-founder and CEO of GroupRaise, a marketplace for large group charitable bookings at restaurants, active in over 500 cities with 10,000+ restaurant clients. He has raised venture capital and investment from investors such as Techstars Ventures, Magma Partners, Kapor Capital and various top tier angels. As an advisor, Devin has translated the lessons he's learned to help founders raise just over $30 million+ for their companies raising pre-seed, seed, and Series A rounds; the vast majority of which have been underrepresented founders from LATAM and USA. In this episode, Devin discusses how to fundraise in any circumstance, strategies on effectively raising capital, best practices on navigating relationships with investors, and shifting mindsets about investing in a recession. Hosted by Cristina Tamayo, Endeavor Puerto Rico. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/endeavornorthamerica/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/endeavornorthamerica/support

Important Conversations In this episode I caught up with some brothers who are experienced in both the 9 to 5 and Entrepreneur life to discuss the pro's and cons of each path. We also went in on what I feel like is an assault on the 9 to 5 entrepreneurs and the myths that many are selling about ease of start up success. Entreprenuer and fellow podcaster Devin Baptiste had a lot of nuggets and insights. Al Hughes, Sr Marketing Director for Memphis Grizzlies, blessed us with a call in and had hella perspective to share. Great listen for any upcoming entrepreneur. The Rob Jay Show

GroupRaise is an online platform that helps groups raise money for the causes they care about by eating at restaurants. I previously interviewed two of the other founders of GroupRaise, Devin Baptiste and Sean Park, in Episode 5 and Episode 31 of Crossing Borders, so please check out those podcasts if you are interested in learning more about GroupRaise. In this episode, I sat down with Kevin Valdez, one of the co-founders of GroupRaise to learn more about how he moved to the US from Guatemala in middle school, helped build the family business, and eventually joined Devin and Sean to found GroupRaise. From the Guatemalan countryside to Houston, Texas When Kevin Valdez was twelve years old, his family moved from a rural small town in Guatemala to a small town outside of Houston, Texas. At the time, Kevin spoke no English and his family of five shared a single room in his aunt’s house. However, Kevin is proud to come from a “family of entrepreneurs,” and it did not take long for his mom and aunt to begin building an international business to sustain their family by delivering packages to Guatemala. Working in the family business taught Kevin to be extremely customer-focused, as he watched his parents take phone calls at all hours to help Guatemalan families in the US. Creating opportunities for other Latin American students Kevin frequently looks back at his childhood in Guatemala and considers his classmates who did not move to the US and receive the same opportunities as he did. While at university, Kevin attended a talk by former Mexican President Vicente Fox who reminded him that for every Latin American student who made it to the US, there were ten more who would love to be in their shoes. Kevin is inspired to work hard to help give other students in Latin America the opportunity he received and to uncover the untapped potential in the region. Getting GroupRaise to 10,000 restaurants and beyond in 2018 GroupRaise is already connected to 9000 restaurants in the US, and employs a team that spans Chile, the US, and the Philippines. Having worked at the family business since he was fifteen, with an outsize role since his parents didn’t speak English, Kevin is used to managing many projects at once. However, he struggled to drop the do-it-yourself mentality when it came to growing the business and had to learn to efficiently manage a team so he could focus on strategy. As GroupRaise reaches the 10,000 restaurant mark, Kevin is dreaming big; he thinks GroupRaise will be active in 25,000 restaurants in the next few years. Kevin’s unique perspective as a Guatemalan immigrant and child of entrepreneurs helped him gain the confidence to found GroupRaise and manage their Houston office. Check out the rest of the episode to find out how Kevin plans to empower students across Latin America to uncover the potential of the region!   Show Notes 1:33 - Nathan introduces Kevin Valdez 3:25 - How Kevin met Devin Baptiste while discussing their entrepreneurial dreams in university 6:10 - Did you always know you would be an entrepreneur? 10:50 - What it is like to move from rural Guatemala to Houston, Texas 13:16 - How Kevin’s ESL teacher changed his life 16:22 - The perspective Kevin gained from growing up in Guatemala 19:40 - One key lesson to build a successful business: be extremely customer-focused 21:51 - Advice from Kevin’s father: “Don’t waste any time. Time is precious.” 26:15 - How to go from from doing it all yourself to hiring a team 30:50 - Kevin’s entrepreneurial streak comes from working at the family business 36:24 - What to expect when you visit Guatemala 39:10 - Feeling responsibility to create opportunities in Guatemala 42:16 - How the internet could be used to leverage education in Latin America 47:05 - Why Kevin is bullish about the US and the business climate 56:02 - What it’s like to have a sales team spread across three countries 56:15 - What’s next for GroupRaise in 2018 Resources and People Mentioned Guy Kawasaki - Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions (BOOK) Tim Ferriss - The Four Hour Work Week (Book) Stanford eCorner Steve Blank  

Through my Crossing Borders podcast, I’ve had the opportunity to interview dozens of Latin America’s most inspiring entrepreneurs. In this special episode, I decided to turn the tables to bring a former guest, GroupRaise CEO Devin Baptiste, back to the show to ask me about my first days as an entrepreneur, and how that eventually brought me to Chile. I sat down with Devin, a close colleague and friend, to delve into how ticket reselling, and helping people plan for their deaths, brought me to Latin America and put me on a path to help found Magma Partners. Don't worry, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled guests next week! Refereeing soccer games at age 12 was the first step to becoming an entrepreneur. Nathan Lustig made his first money as a twelve-year-old soccer referee back home in Wisconsin. As an independent contractor, he enjoyed planning a game schedule and being in control of his income, most of which he saved. Sports become a common theme in Nathan’s journey to becoming an entrepreneur, as he became well-versed in the market of buying and selling tickets as a long-time sports fan. In many ways, his love of sports and attending sports games foreshadowed his first venture, a college ticket-selling marketplace called ExchangeHut. Companies are sold, they are not bought. Nathan got into ticket selling when he lost the lottery for season tickets at University of Wisconsin in his freshman year. As he looked for ways to buy tickets for himself, friends lined up to ask for help with the same problem. A year later, Nathan had purchased ExchangeHut alongside a childhood friend, using some of the funds he saved reffing soccer. Over the course of two years, they grew the platform from 1000 users on one campus, to nearly 250K users on eight university campuses. Getting acquired was a deliberate process. Neither Nathan nor his partner wanted to operate ExchangeHut after graduation, so they researched and contacted potential buyers, and were eventually acquired by the ad network that operated on the site.   Nathan emphasizes that companies looking to be acquired should be on the hunt for interested buyers. Few acquisitions come from companies that were shopping around to buy and find their acquisition target from a day of Googling. Selling to morticians and how Nathan ended up in Chile. After selling ExchangeHut, Nathan moved onto his next challenge, as co-founder of Entrustet, a service that helped families access, transfer, and delete online accounts when someone died. While they got great PR because the idea was just so novel, B2C marketing was near impossible. Very few people wanted to think about or plan for their death, except, surprisingly, in Japan and Mexico. As they pivoted, Nathan and his partner stumbled across an article about Start-Up Chile in Forbes and applied. They became a part of the program’s first class. The ecosystem in Chile was in its nascent stages at that time, but even then it was evident that something big was brewing. Nathan sold Entrustet after Start-Up Chile and made his way back to Latin America to work on his Spanish. The Magma Partners investment thesis After a stint as a Spanish language marketer, and as a university professor, Nathan settled into mentoring startups in Chile. When he met Francisco Saenz in 2013, they realized an opportunity to make an outsize impact in Latin America’s entrepreneurship ecosystem through a private fund that would combine capital investment, mentorship, and US best practices, giving Latin American startups access to support of the kind found in Silicon Valley. Francisco and Nathan founded Magma Partners with a US$2.5M fund they invested in pre-seed and seed stage companies that either sold to businesses in Latin America, or to a US audience. A lot of people thought their investment thesis was crazy, that Latin America was too risky an investment. Yet Magma I has already seen their original investment reach US$7.5M; their portfolio has also generated over 350 jobs. The 3 Mega Trends Happening in Latin America now. Devin and Nathan closed out their conversation looking forward at the future of tech in Latin America, just weeks after the announcement of Magma II, a US$15M fund to be invested under the same thesis. Nathan sees three huge trends in the Latin American startup ecosystem, with Magma Partners riding the wave of all three. Latin America’s tech scene is maturing at a very high rate and will be producing many highly profitable businesses over the next decade. Chinese businesses and investors are starting to look into investments in Latin America. Magma Partners also announced the opening of the first Sino-Latin American accelerator to help Chinese and Latin American entrepreneurs work together. The US is taking notice of Latin America. Nathan summed up our conversation explaining the long-term impact of Magma Partners on the startup ecosystem. “Magma is a multi-decade project,” says Nathan, “and we want to be a core building block of the ecosystem to continue building what other amazing funds in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico have done.”  Check out the rest of the episode to hear Nathan’s story in detail and learn how he went from soccer referee to Managing Partner at Chile’s first private venture capital fund! Outline of This Episode: [1:16] Devin Baptiste introduces Nathan Lustig [3:00] Starting the entrepreneurship journey as a soccer referee [8:10] Buying his first business at age 19 with a childhood friend [12:50] Growing your user base from 1000 to 250k within 2 years [21:10] Buying and selling tickets shows you what people’s true character is [23:40] Companies are sold, they are not bought [26:35] How do you get a company to sit down and talk acquisition? [34:50] Deciding not to compete against Facebook Marketplace was a mistake [36:15] Branching out: how did you get into your next company? [40:30] How do you sell a product that people use after they die? [42:43] How many people on Facebook die in a year? [50:37] Joining the first class of Start-Up Chile with no expectations [58:40] Giving a speech to Sebastian Piñera, President of Chile [59:23] Why Magma Partners and why Chile? [1:06:10] Do we want to be in the death industry for the next 5-7 years? [1:11:30] Learning Spanish in Chile as a Spanish language content writer [1:15:41] What values inspired the Magma Partners investment thesis? [1:21:44] Has your investment thesis been validated? [1:25:45] US reactions to a Latin American VC fund [1:30:33] Magma II - the investment thesis is playing out [1:32:20] Where is the China-Latin America business relationship going? [1:36:16] Three mega trends that Magma Partners is excited about [1:39:02] Lessons learned in Fund I to be applied to Fund II [1:44:30] Thanks to Start-Up Chile for bringing so many great entrepreneurs to Latin America   Resources and People Mentioned: ExchangeHut Entrustet - acquired by SecureSafe Start-Up Chile Welcu GroupRaise FounderList Magma Partners AliExpress Devin Baptiste Joseph Boucher Francisco Saenz Diego Philippi Adrian Fisher Jesse Davis Connect With Nathan www.NathanLustig.com www.MagmaPartners.com On Twitter On LinkedIn

Hello and welcome to Crossing Borders with Nathan Lustig, where I interview entrepreneurs doing startups across borders and the people who support them, with a focus on companies that have some relationship to Latin America. If you're new to the podcast be sure to check out Episode 2 with Adrian Fisher who went from selling hotdogs to raising three million dollars and Episode 5, with Devin Baptiste, cofounder of one of the most diverse startups in the world. My guest today is Nora Leary Co-Founder and Head of Marketing and Business Development at Launchway Media, a marketing agency that works with global startups launching in the US. Nora and I talk about her journey from the US to Africa to Latin America to leaving a job in Latam to start her own business. Nora lived in Buenos Aires and starter her business there with two other female cofounders, and then moved to Medellin to continue to expand the business. We cover cultural difference between doing business in the US and Latin America, what it's like being a woman in tech in Latin America, practical tips for getting pr in the US, getting into a US accelerator from latam, and tools and tricks you need to be successful launching in the us market. And also emojis. I've been working with Nora and her team for a few months now and it was great to finally get to connect outside of a pure business context. I hope you enjoy our conversation. If you enjoyed my conversation with Nora, please be sure to recommend Crossing Borders to a friend and rate us on Itunes and sticher.

Hello and welcome to Crossing Borders with Nathan Lustig, where I interview entrepreneurs doing startups across borders and the investors who support them, with a focus on companies that have some relationship to Latin America.   My guest today is Devin Baptiste, cofounder and CEO of GroupRaise, a company with more than 50 employees in 3 offices in Houston, Texas, Santiago, Chile and the Philippines. GroupRaise is a platform that allows groups of 15-50+ to book events in more than 6000 restaurants across the united states. These restaurants then donate 10-20% of their bill to the organization or charity of the group's choice. As Devin puts it, it's the tastiest way to change the world. Not to mention the most cost effective customer acquisition strategy a restaurant can have.   Devin and I talk about his journey that took him from Houston to Taiwan, Korea, Hawaii, Chile, Germany and back to Houston again, how he thinks about scaling businesses from Latin America to the US, how he raised his recent fundraising round from Techstars Ventures, Kapor Capital and Magma Partners, how he looks at being a minority founder and what its like to run an international business while married with two young kids.   Devin is one of the most interesting people I've met in the past few years and I feel lucky to be able to work closely with him on his journey to building a world class business. We had a few sound issues, as Devin was in a target in a thunderstorm and then in his car when we recorded our conversation, but please don't let my recording issues get in the way of learning everything you can from Devin. Let's jump right in!