There Are Industries in Colombia Still Running on Paper. Most Software Developers Don't Even Look at Them.
Medical cannabis was the first one we digitized. But there are dozens of industries in Colombia with the same problems and almost no technology solutions available.
Project App
Engineering Team
After talking about how we scaled our first SaaS in the medical cannabis industry, I received a question that repeated several times: 'How did you identify that was the right industry?' The honest answer is simple: most software developers in Colombia always look toward the same sectors. Fintech, retail, education, conventional healthcare. And while everyone points there, entire industries — with real companies, real problems, real willingness to pay — are operating exactly the same way they did 20 years ago. On paper. With physical spreadsheets. With manual processes that destroy productivity, generate errors, and in many cases cost them regulatory penalties. Cannabis was the first. It won't be the last.
Why Nobody Is Looking at These Industries
There's a very concrete reason why software developers ignore niche industries: they're hard to understand from the outside. Medical cannabis has its own terminology, its own regulation, its own operational logic. The same is true for floriculture, artisanal mining, technified livestock farming, last-mile logistics in rural areas. To build software that genuinely works in those industries, you need to understand how they operate from the inside. And that knowledge isn't on the internet or in a course. It's in the people who have spent years working in them. That entry barrier is exactly what makes them attractive: few competitors, enormous problems, and clients who have been waiting years for someone to come solve them.
The Signal We Look For
When an industry has demanding government regulation and its companies still keep records on paper or Excel, there's a traceability problem costing real money. That's exactly where custom software generates the fastest and clearest ROI.
The Industries I See With That Same Pattern Today
After working with over 50 companies at ProjectApp and building software for very different industries, I identify the same pattern in several Colombian sectors that remain poorly digitized:
Floriculture and Export Agroindustry
Colombia is the world's second largest flower exporter. Large farms have systems, but medium and small producers — who are the majority — still manage production control, pest tracking, agrochemical applications, and export logistics in notebooks and spreadsheets. Traceability to meet the standards of destination markets (US, Europe) is a permanent pain.
Rural Transport and Logistics
Fleet coordination in areas with intermittent connectivity, cargo control, transport manifests, and compliance with Ministry of Transport regulations — all of this remains largely manual in mid-sized sector companies.
Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining
Over 350,000 artisanal miners operate in Colombia under a regulatory framework that requires production reports, explosives control, and environmental certifications. The vast majority have no system to manage any of this. ANM penalties are real and frequent.
Alternative Health and Integrative Medicine
A rapidly growing sector, with increasingly demanding Ministry of Health regulation, clinical records still kept on paper in many centers, and no management systems that understand the specific logic of these practices.
Construction and Mid-Sized Civil Projects
Materials control, project progress, reports to oversight bodies, and subcontractor management in mid-sized projects remains a chaotic combination of WhatsApp, Excel, and email. The cost of that chaos is measured in cost overruns and projects that don't finish on time.
Key Takeaways
Key Takeaways
- 1Regulated niche industries have the most urgent problems and the scarcest software competition.
- 2The triangle of regulation + traceability + absence of specific software is the clearest signal of opportunity.
- 3You don't need to know the industry from the inside to digitize it — you need the right partner who will teach you.
- 4In Colombia there are dozens of sectors with that pattern waiting to be digitized. Whoever arrives first with real software has an enormous advantage.
Medical cannabis taught us something that changed how we look at the market: the best software opportunities aren't where competition has already arrived. They're in the industries that most people ignored because they were hard to understand from the outside. That difficulty is exactly the barrier that protects the business once you're inside. At ProjectApp we keep looking for those industries. And every time we find one operating on paper with demanding regulation, we know we're looking at exactly the type of problem we love solving most.
If you're part of an industry with those problems, or know someone who is, that's a conversation I love having. Write to me.