GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Clos­ing the gaps, dis­sem­i­nat­ing knowl­edge, en­abling con­nec­tion and pro­vid­ing a plat­form for the en­tre­pre­neur­ial ecosys­tem not on­ly in T&T but al­so re­gion­al­ly is the mantra of the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion (NGO) Caribbean Drag­ons.

They are hop­ing these will be strength­ened via its up­com­ing sum­mit called “Ig­nite” sched­uled to take place from Ju­ly 24 to 26, 2024 at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre.

This is Caribbean Drag­ons’ in­au­gur­al, key­stone in­no­va­tion event, which is in fur­ther­ance of its mis­sion to en­able Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean founders to make sus­tain­able, glob­al im­pacts.

In ex­plain­ing more about the event co-founder Marc Per­saud said Caribbean Drag­ons owns the Ig­nite Start-up Sum­mit. He said the sum­mit “is the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of one of our two core en­abling con­nec­tion pil­lars. We will al­so be cre­at­ing an on­line dig­i­tal hub so that we can tru­ly in­te­grate the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can re­gion.”

He not­ed that in the Caribbean, and Latin Amer­i­ca to an ex­tent, the mar­kets are frag­ment­ed.

“As a re­sult of that, you have the ge­o­graph­i­cal frag­men­ta­tion and the po­lit­i­cal frag­men­ta­tion so there is not a uni­fied ap­proach to our mar­kets. Nor is there a uni­fied ap­proach to our cap­i­tal. In terms of our mar­kets, a start­up founder in the US, who is be­gin­ning on day ze­ro im­me­di­ate­ly starts to think about how to scale up...In T&T, all the founders we have worked with start with the emo­tion­al ceil­ing, the fi­nan­cial ceil­ing, the aca­d­e­m­ic ceil­ing...that T&T is as far as they are ever go­ing to go.

“So they don’t have a uni­fied ap­proach on how they are go­ing to scale. They don’t have an idea of the Caribbean as one ecosys­tem. They just think of T&T. When they do that, the prob­lem is pro­fes­sion­al ven­ture cap­i­tal does not look at them se­ri­ous­ly...so this frag­men­ta­tion is a se­ri­ous is­sue that pre­vents us from scal­ing,” Per­saud ex­plained.

The oth­er is­sue, Per­saud iden­ti­fied, is lim­it­ed to space to cre­ate a start­up un­less there is fi­nan­cial sup­port.

“Tal­ent is very amaz­ing in the Caribbean and it is equal­ly dis­trib­uted and amaz­ing­ly smart peo­ple com­ing back home as well. But the space to cre­ate in a start­up world is not there un­less your fam­i­ly has enough wealth to sup­port you through that ini­tial jour­ney. If you look at the more de­vel­oped ecosys­tems, they have things that al­low them to blos­som with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly hav­ing fam­i­ly mon­ey to back them. How do we get more peo­ple in there with great ideas?”Per­saud asked.

Ac­cess to re­sources in­clud­ing sound men­tor­ship, he stat­ed, is an­oth­er chal­lenge.

To ad­dress these is­sues, he em­pha­sised, in­no­va­tion is key and he main­tained that the start­up com­mu­ni­ty can­not be ig­nored as it plays a vi­tal role in eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

“There are mar­kets, for ex­am­ple, ven­ture cap­i­tal and an­gel in­vestors that we have not de­vel­oped that peo­ple can be in­vest­ing in. Star­tups in the de­vel­oped world im­me­di­ate­ly start with a think­ing that they are go­ing to IPO (Ini­tial Pub­lic Of­fers)...our Ju­nior Stock Ex­change ex­ists, but we have on­ly had two com­pa­nies ever list on it? And not enor­mous­ly suc­cess­ful. If you start tar­get­ing the start-up com­mu­ni­ty these are peo­ple who want to IPO, start their jour­ney want­i­ng to IPO,” Per­saud said.

In shar­ing his “dream” he said that would be to have com­pa­nies reg­is­tered in T&T through the spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone and have “clus­ters” in that zone that are ex­port­ing their ser­vices around the world and cre­at­ing forex and for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment in­to the coun­try.

A key com­po­nent of these goals is build­ing trust, Per­saud said, which then em­pow­ers the ad­vance­ment of in­no­v­a­tive ideas.

Lisa Awai, part­ner, ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices, PwC who al­so spoke and fo­cused on build­ing trust in the re­gion­al start-up ecosytem agreed that trust un­der­pins a suc­cess­ful ecosys­tem.

“Trust that mem­bers of the ecosys­tem are trans­par­ent with each oth­er. Trust that all par­ties are act­ing in the best in­ter­est of the ecosys­tem and trust that the ecosys­tem is work­ing to­wards a com­mon goal. How else can you build a sus­tain­able start­up/en­tre­pre­neur­ial ecosys­tem with­out build­ing trust­ed re­la­tion­ships amongst all stake­hold­ers,” she said.

Fur­ther, Awai al­so echoed that start-ups, mi­cro and SMEs pos­sess unique at­trib­ut­es that dis­tin­guish them from large com­peti­tors, adding that their agili­ty, en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it, nim­ble struc­tures, and close re­la­tion­ships with cus­tomers some­times en­able them to adapt and ex­per­i­ment with new ideas quick­ly.

“Star­tups and scale-ups are rapid­ly chang­ing the world around us, en­abling a hu­man-led and tech-pow­ered fu­ture. Our goal is to lever­age our net­work, ex­pe­ri­ence and re­la­tion­ships with key ecosys­tem play­ers to bring dif­fer­ent types of in­vestors, cor­po­rates and en­tre­pre­neurs to­geth­er, ac­cel­er­at­ing growth and fa­cil­i­tat­ing in­no­va­tion re­gion­al­ly,” she said.

Awai al­so added that, as it per­tains to the fu­ture, many of the un­re­solved chal­lenges the world faces, such as cli­mate change or health­care ac­cess, are so big and com­plex that no one com­pa­ny on its own can solve them.

She ad­vised that these is­sues can be ad­dressed on­ly by net­works of com­pa­nies and in­sti­tu­tions work­ing to­geth­er to­ward a com­mon pur­pose and mak­ing the most of new busi­ness mod­els and tech­nol­o­gy.

On PwC’s re­la­tion­ship with Caribbean Drag­ons Awai said this would not on­ly help the pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices firm be at the cut­ting edge of in­no­va­tion, but al­so al­lows knowl­edge to be im­part­ed as well as dri­ve con­nec­tions that hope­ful­ly will be in­valu­able.

Founder and chief mar­ket­ing so­lu­tion­ist of “That Look­it Brand” (mar­ket­ing, PR and me­dia man­age­ment firm) Krista-Lee Look­it, who gave her tes­ti­mo­ni­al of Caribbean Drag­ons, said ear­li­er this year she had the priv­i­lege of at­tend­ing the Caribbean Drag­ons’ Start­up Com­mu­ni­ty Se­ries, stat­ing that the op­er­a­tive word she would use is “priv­i­lege.”

“I was able to smart­ly net­work with like-mind­ed en­tre­pre­neurs and I re­al­ly loved that the Caribbean Drag­ons team was able to cre­ate a safe space for en­tre­pre­neurs to pitch and re­ceive feed­back from fi­nan­cial stake­hold­ers. In my ex­pe­ri­ence I have of­ten­times found that to be a very in­tim­i­dat­ing process but it ab­solute­ly was not, whether it was with fi­nanciers or ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists,” she said.

Say­ing she was ex­cit­ed about the up­com­ing “Ig­nite Sum­mit” Look­it added, “I am re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to be­ing able to ig­nite new ways of think­ing and new per­spec­tives for my busines,s but most im­por­tant­ly I am most look­ing for­ward to, with re­spect to busi­ness, how to be­come a drag­on.”

Goals for Ig­nite

This sum­mit builds up­on and ce­ments the ef­forts and ini­tia­tives that formed the Caribbean Drag­ons three-month start-up com­mu­ni­ty se­ries, which be­gan in Jan­u­ary 2024 and is cen­tred around de­vel­op­ing an ecosys­tem to dri­ve the rate of in­no­va­tion in the re­gion.

Its ob­jec­tives in­clude:

1.To reach across bound­aries to bring peo­ple to­geth­er who would not or­di­nar­i­ly meet and find that spark to col­lab­o­rate and trust

2. To en­cour­age peo­ple to strive for am­bi­tious as­pi­ra­tions and act dif­fer­ent­ly to achieve them

3. To nur­ture re­al eco­nom­ic trans­ac­tions and cre­ate gen­uine val­ue

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ABOUT CARIBBEAN DRAG­ONS

Caribbean Drag­ons was legal­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed in No­vem­ber 2023 and then launched of­fi­cial­ly in Jan­u­ary 2024 with its three-part start-up com­mu­ni­ty se­ries which was pow­ered by Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers, T&T.

The first cen­tred around sto­ry­telling and al­low­ing start-ups to present and to pitch their ideas to an au­di­ence of po­ten­tial in­vestors.

The sec­ond event fo­cused on com­mu­ni­ty build­ing while the third event was on rais­ing cap­i­tal; whether debt, eq­ui­ty, pri­vate eq­ui­ty, an­gel in­vestors, ven­ture cap­i­tal and shar­ing ways that start-up founders could go about rais­ing cap­i­tal.