Many worked for foreign corporations and were scouting contacts or likely investments. While the panelists were either German or Brazilian, the attendees hailed from all over – Italy, Portugal, the UK, even San Francisco. That chaos seemingly invites the disruption of cryptocurrency and new Fintech innovations. Unlike in Germany, institutions and banks are not trusted in Brazil, which has been beset by financial scandals. The country’s economy has suffered massive hyperinflation. Ironically, Brazil’s instability provides a market opportunity. Already profitable, he’s now looking for partnerships to expand into other countries. Last month Foxbit traded the same volume as in the entire previous year: $200 million Brazilian Reals. A true tech innovator, he met his co-founders online. Foxbit helps users learn how to buy, trade and sell the cryptocurrency. Felipe Trovão de Sá heads Foxbit, a bitcoin trading platform in Sao Paolo, and was happily handing out free cryptocurrency to any and all takers to entice people to take the leap. The contrast to Brazil was a bit like comparing Mahler to samba. “They will bootstrap all the way to the revenue stage and then tap investment for the growth phase.” German founders don’t want to give away equity,” said Zierer. The downside: the pace is far slower than in the US. Building off a deep foundation in academic excellence and world class engineering, German startups often find university or grant support and opportunities to incubate. The evening’s million-dollar question: Can the cautious, academic, engineering-heavy Germans and the renegade, improvisational, fast-moving Brazilians learn from each other?Īntonia Zierer, Executive Director of the Bavarian US Offices for Economic Development, outlined Germany’s strengths and weaknesses. The international entrepreneur, investor, and lawyer Kevin Smith led the panel. “Either you create something because you make a new connection or a new idea comes out of the difference between the two cultures.” Crossing Countries and Mindsets One function of mashups is the friendly friction between countries that don’t often come together in Silicon Valley,” the Vault’s Chief Revenue Officer Miika Mantyvaara told the packed room of expats from Europe, the U.K., and Brazil. The provocative premise: “The source of innovation is friction. This is the second in a Vault series (the first brought together Japan and the Nordics). Last Friday night at the tech incubator The Vault, Founder Kevin Smith added a novel twist: a Country Mashup, creating the unlikely pairing of two nations separated by nearly 6,000 miles – wild Brazil and orderly Germany, coming together to talk about Fintech and startup culture. San Francisco thrives on the sparks that fly from thousands of entrepreneurs, investors, startups, all interacting in a city feverish for innovation. Story by Susanna Camp and Jonathan Littman | September 17, 2017
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