Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from an article originally published by Conrad Egusa on TechCrunch.
Very nice church in downtown Bogota, Colombia. This old neighborhood is known as La Candelaria. Credit: TechCrunch.
Although the startup scene is still very much concentrated in Bogota and Medellin, activity is beginning to sprout up in other regions in Colombia.
In Barranquilla, on the Caribbean coast, the startup ecosystem revolves around Koombea and its charismatic founder, Jonathan Tarud. Many of the city startups are helped by the company and its has taken a leadership role in the startup ecosystem, becoming active supporters of events such as Startup Weekend, among others. In Cali, the country’s third largest city, large development companies comprise much of the tech ecosystem.
The government is working to promote activities in other cities, but the high-end spectrum of the Colombian economy in general is limited to a few cities. Expanding the tech scene, in that sense, may be as much a question of broader development as anything else.
