As more and more foreign investors and entrepreneurs “discover” Latin America, interest has grown in the concept of entrepreneurship within the region.  Never a traditional career path in Latin America, entrepreneurship has become virtually its own academic discipline within the study of business.  The global organization known as Entrepreneur Week has sponsored numerous events worldwide to promote the cause of entrepreneurship, and next week’s conference in Rio promises to both educate Latin American entrepreneurs and highlight the region’s growth.

Conference schedule

The five day conference will initially concentrate on its host country, Brazil.  Speakers from successful Brazilian companies, including Rodolpho Gurgel of Peixe Urbano, as well as several governmental supporters of entrepreneurship in Brazil, will discuss topics including women entrepreneurs, organizational culture, and youth education.

The remaining four days will be split between social business (with speakers including the co-founder of Idea.me, a company we’ve covered before here), finance (including speakers from McKinsey, New Ventures Brazil, and Papaya Ventures, marketing (featuring presentations from 21212, PagPop, and Boo-box), and a pitch contest from up and coming new companies.

Entrepreneur Week speaker: trending startups in LatAm

I asked Amazon Web Services marketing director, Juliano Tubino, who will be presenting and judging the pitch contest, what type of businesses are trending amongst AWS’ Latin American customers.  Tubino told me that their startup customers are quite diverse, including “e-learning (like Caellum), social (VOSTUS), mobile (easytaxi)…”

Tubino said that of the top 5 customers overall for AWS in Latin America, 4 are former startups in business for less than 5 years.  E-commerce was one area, both in the B2B and B2C areas, that is experiencing significant growth, and Tubino highlighted Peixe Urbano as one company that “graduated” from startup status using AWS to become a powerful company and leader in its market segment.

LASB plans to provide some additional coverage from Entrepreneur Week as it happens, with some highlights and recaps of the various events.  Keep watching this space!

More information on the conference is available at www.entrepreneurweek.net