An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

For decades, the Caribbean has ex­port­ed its bright­est minds and most promis­ing star­tups to for­eign ju­ris­dic­tions.  

Rawle An­nands­ingh, Di­rec­tor of the Founder In­sti­tute Caribbean, in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, said that glob­al ven­ture cap­i­tal has in­creas­ing­ly shown in­ter­est in Caribbean en­tre­pre­neurs, but the con­di­tions at­tached to that cap­i­tal of­ten force them to up­root, rein­cor­po­rate abroad, and build else­where.

He cit­ed three com­pa­nies from Ja­maica—Head­Of­fice, Gro­ceryList and Cyphr—and one from Brazil, Salvy, that were re­quired to in­cor­po­rate in the US in or­der to re­ceive US-dol­lar fund­ing.

An­nands­ingh’s own ex­pe­ri­ence un­der­scores the ur­gency of the ef­fort. His pre­vi­ous start­up, called Ty­chon, was ac­cept­ed in­to Tech­stars, a ma­jor US-based ac­cel­er­a­tor in 2022, but ac­cess to that cap­i­tal came with a steep cost. In or­der to achieve US$120,000 in start­up fund­ing, he had to shut down his Trinidad-reg­is­tered com­pa­ny and re-in­cor­po­rate as a US Delaware C-Corp, ef­fec­tive­ly re­mov­ing both the com­pa­ny and its cap­i­tal from the Caribbean econ­o­my.

The re­sult, he said, is a dev­as­tat­ing cy­cle of brain drain, cap­i­tal flight, and lost eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty, and while the re­gion in­vests heav­i­ly in ed­u­ca­tion and en­tre­pre­neur­ial de­vel­op­ment, it con­sis­tent­ly fails to re­tain the busi­ness­es and ideas it helps cre­ate.

That dy­nam­ic, An­nands­ingh said, is be­ing di­rect­ly chal­lenged by the launch of Founder In­sti­tute Caribbean, a re­gion­al chap­ter of the world’s largest pre-seed start­up ac­cel­er­a­tor, which is backed by a glob­al net­work that spans over 100 coun­tries and more than 200 cities. The Caribbean chap­ter aims to build high-growth, glob­al­ly in­vestable com­pa­nies with­out forc­ing them to leave the re­gion.

He sees this as a piv­otal in­flec­tion point for the re­gion’s in­no­va­tion econ­o­my.

The in­sti­tute’s in­au­gur­al co­hort launch­es on Oc­to­ber 28 and al­ready in­cludes star­tups from Trinidad and To­ba­go, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Puer­to Ri­co, and Colom­bia. The goal is sim­ple but am­bi­tious: cre­ate a re­gion­al in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem that can ri­val those in Latin Amer­i­ca and South­east Asia and bring for­eign in­vest­ment di­rect­ly in­to Caribbean economies, rather than ex­tract­ing it.

He high­light­ed that most in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors in the re­gion, es­pe­cial­ly from the US and Cana­da, ac­tive­ly en­cour­age or re­quire Caribbean star­tups to re­lo­cate or re-reg­is­ter in for­eign ju­ris­dic­tions.  

“In many cas­es, the in­vest­ment dol­lars nev­er touch re­gion­al banks or economies. Caribbean founders are stripped of their lo­cal cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty be­fore they re­ceive their first cheque,” An­nands­ingh out­lined.

He said this is where the Founder In­sti­tute Caribbean is seek­ing to re­verse that trend by cre­at­ing a path­way for start­up growth that stays root­ed in the re­gion.

The 14-week ac­cel­er­a­tor is vir­tu­al and ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly ag­nos­tic, al­low­ing founders from any­where in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca to par­tic­i­pate.  The reg­is­tra­tion fee for the event is US$399,

“But the in­tent is de­lib­er­ate­ly re­gion­al: to po­si­tion the Caribbean as a uni­fied mar­ket large enough to at­tract ven­ture cap­i­tal with­out need­ing to op­er­ate through for­eign shells.”

Ap­pli­ca­tions for the first co­hort close on Oc­to­ber 11, and the di­rec­tor in­di­cat­ed that the pro­gramme is de­signed to ac­com­mo­date founders at dif­fer­ent stages of de­vel­op­ment, whether they’re en­ter­ing with just an idea or al­ready have a min­i­mum vi­able prod­uct in-mar­ket.  

“By tai­lor­ing its sup­port struc­ture to meet each start­up where it is, the In­sti­tute is aim­ing to dra­mat­i­cal­ly im­prove the speed, struc­ture, and suc­cess rate of start­up launch­es in the re­gion.”

Crit­i­cal­ly, he said grad­u­ates of the pro­gramme gain ac­cess to the Founder In­sti­tute’s glob­al ven­ture net­work, which in­cludes over 1,000 an­gel in­vestors and ven­ture cap­i­tal firms.  

The most promis­ing grad­u­ates, An­nands­ingh high­light­ed, may al­so re­ceive di­rect in­vest­ment from the ac­cel­er­a­tor’s own fund, Founder Cap­i­tal, which tar­gets the top 0.5 per cent of star­tups emerg­ing from its glob­al co­horts.

Fur­ther, the di­rec­tor not­ed that while the in­sti­tute is in­dus­try ag­nos­tic, its mod­el de­mands a growth-ori­ent­ed, tech­nol­o­gy-en­abled ap­proach. It is not de­signed to sup­port lifestyle busi­ness­es or tra­di­tion­al “mom and pop” op­er­a­tions.

He said, in­stead it tar­gets founders aim­ing to build scal­able ven­tures that can com­pete for cap­i­tal on the glob­al stage.

Al­ready, he said the in­au­gur­al Caribbean co­hort in­cludes a range of ven­tures, in­clud­ing So­ka Mock­tails, a bev­er­age com­pa­ny found­ed by a Trin­bag­on­ian en­tre­pre­neur now based in At­lanta. “While the prod­uct it­self is phys­i­cal, the founder’s use of tech­nol­o­gy in her pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion, and go-to-mar­ket strat­e­gy is what made the start­up a fit for the ac­cel­er­a­tor,” he ex­plained.

An­nands­ingh em­pha­sis­es that tech­nol­o­gy doesn’t just mean apps or Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence; it’s about ap­ply­ing sys­tems, soft­ware, and dig­i­tal process­es to scale faster, smarter, and fur­ther. It’s al­so about ac­cess­ing in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets and op­er­at­ing ef­fi­cient­ly in the face of one of the re­gion’s most per­sis­tent ob­sta­cles: for­eign ex­change fric­tion.

Forex crunch

He stressed that the in­abil­i­ty to move mon­ey across bor­ders quick­ly and af­ford­ably con­tin­ues to suf­fo­cate re­gion­al busi­ness growth, and Caribbean founders face dai­ly chal­lenges pay­ing in­ter­na­tion­al sup­pli­ers, sub­scrib­ing to glob­al plat­forms and re­ceiv­ing in­ter­na­tion­al pay­ments.  

“In many ju­ris­dic­tions, for­eign ex­change ac­cess is re­strict­ed, de­layed, or over­priced. These sys­temic in­ef­fi­cien­cies crip­ple star­tups that are oth­er­wise glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive.”

To ad­dress this, An­nands­ingh is ad­vo­cat­ing for the adop­tion of sta­ble­coins across the Caribbean, not spec­u­la­tive cryp­tocur­ren­cies, but reg­u­lat­ed, fi­at-pegged dig­i­tal cur­ren­cies that could elim­i­nate the de­lays and costs as­so­ci­at­ed with cross-bor­der pay­ments.  

He is call­ing for re­gion­al gov­ern­ments and Cari­com bod­ies to move to­ward the cre­ation of a Caribbean sta­ble­coin, backed by cen­tral banks and in­ter­op­er­a­ble across ju­ris­dic­tions.

In his view, any mean­ing­ful sup­port for in­no­va­tion must in­clude in­vest­ment in fi­nan­cial in­fra­struc­ture that re­flects the de­mands of mod­ern busi­ness. While some na­tion­al ef­forts, such as T&T’s ex­plo­ration of dig­i­tal cash, are un­der­way, An­nands­ingh warns that un­less these ini­tia­tives scale be­yond do­mes­tic bor­ders, they will fail to meet the needs of glob­al­ly-mind­ed star­tups.

His rec­om­men­da­tions for the up­com­ing na­tion­al bud­get and for Cari­com pol­i­cy more broad­ly are un­am­bigu­ous: fund the ecosys­tem, fix the in­fra­struc­ture and leg­is­late for scale.

He said that means tan­gi­ble fi­nan­cial sup­port for ecosys­tem builders: ac­cel­er­a­tors, in­cu­ba­tors, ven­ture stu­dios, and tech­ni­cal hubs that nur­ture ear­ly-stage founders. With­out them, the re­gion’s tal­ent pool is left with­out struc­ture, men­tor­ship, or ac­cess to cap­i­tal.

He men­tioned that this means up­dat­ing leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works to sup­port sta­ble­coin (cryp­tocur­ren­cy) adop­tion, cross-bor­der pay­ments, dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty sys­tems and start­up-friend­ly tax codes.

Glob­al­ly, An­nands­ingh stat­ed that start­up ecosys­tems are seen as crit­i­cal dri­vers of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, job cre­ation, and ex­port growth. In mar­kets like Kenya, Viet­nam and Colom­bia, State-backed ini­tia­tives are now close­ly in­te­grat­ed with pri­vate ac­cel­er­a­tors to scale lo­cal tech sec­tors and he ar­gues that the Caribbean needs to fol­low suit  quick­ly.

Fail­ure to act, he lament­ed, will on­ly pro­long a pat­tern that has al­ready cost the re­gion bil­lions in lost GDP, in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and tax rev­enue. Every start­up that ex­its the Caribbean be­fore it scales is an­oth­er missed op­por­tu­ni­ty to gen­er­ate em­ploy­ment, for­eign ex­change and in­dus­try lead­er­ship with­in the re­gion it­self.

“For now, Founder In­sti­tute Caribbean is mov­ing for­ward, build­ing mo­men­tum, on­board­ing men­tors, and re­cruit­ing founders. The long-term vi­sion is to run two co­horts per year, grad­u­at­ing 80 star­tups an­nu­al­ly, with the aim of cre­at­ing a pipeline of in­vest­ment-ready, re­gion-root­ed com­pa­nies that can com­pete glob­al­ly,” the di­rec­tor said.

He added that the Caribbean can no longer af­ford to lose its best founders to for­eign ju­ris­dic­tions. It can no longer af­ford to let its cap­i­tal and cre­ativ­i­ty be ex­tract­ed be­fore it com­pounds. And it can no longer af­ford to think small.

“The start­up ex­o­dus must end. The in­no­va­tion econ­o­my must be­gin, and it must be­gin here.”