Colombia Taught Me to Survive. The World Is Teaching Me to Scale. Both Lessons Are Necessary and Neither Replaces the Other.
Building in Colombia gives you something no comfortable market can give you: the resilience of having made something work where everything is harder. That goes with you anywhere.
Project App
Engineering Team
I'm closing a week where many things happened at the same time: Colombian projects advancing, two Mexican prospects with high purchase intent, the fresh perspective from Europe still in my head, and ProjectApp's first semester with the best numbers in history. And with all that, there's a reflection I want to make before the week of my 20th birthday starts: about the role Colombia played in all of this. Because there's an easy narrative to make that is 'Colombia is hard, the world outside is better.' And that narrative, while partly true, is incomplete.
What Colombia Gives You That No Comfortable Market Can
Building ProjectApp in Colombia — with its long sales cycles, its perception of software as expense, its clients who negotiate every price, its market where you have to earn every project with more effort than seems reasonable — gave me something I wouldn't have gotten any other way: the ability to make something work where conditions weren't in your favor. That sounds like adversity. And it is. But it's also the most valuable training that exists for a founder.
"Colombia taught me to build with my hands. The world is teaching me what I can build. Both things are necessary — but in that order."
— This week's reflection
Key Takeaways
Key Takeaways
- 1Colombia gives you something no easy market can: the resilience of having built something where conditions weren't in your favor.
- 2The international market adds scale, perspective, and the experience of working with more mature clients — but needs the foundation Colombia built.
- 3Order matters: first learn to survive in the hard market, then use that strength to scale in more mature markets.
- 4The tension between local and international market isn't a problem to solve — it's the dynamic that defines the stage we're in.
If I had never built in Colombia I wouldn't have the resilience to navigate what comes next. And if I had only built in Colombia I would never have seen how big this can be. Both things are true at the same time. And that's the reality from which I turn 20 in 15 days, with a company that's learning to survive and scale at the same time.
If you're at that point — between the local market that formed you and the international one calling you — write to me. That's exactly the type of conversation I like most.