This New Coworking space is trying To quick-monitor São Paulo’s Startup Scene

today, a new coworking area that will host 250 individuals or up to 50 tech startups inside of its 50,000 square feet launches in São Paulo, Brazil.

Cubo targets to make São Paulo—Brazil’s biggest city and the economic capital of Latin the us—into a startup hub to rival Silicon Valley with the aid of fostering entrepreneurs with the same perks American startup founders enjoy, like a detailed-knit neighborhood, get entry to to buyers, and what Cubo’s founders are calling the “serendipity” which is so very important to making connections in industry.

achieving those serendipitous encounters implies that the sheer extent of entrepreneurs in a single situation has to be high. Entrepreneurs among São Paulo’s 20 million individuals are scattered everywhere and not using a major hub like Silicon Valley’s Menlo Park, says Cubo venture lead Flavio Pripas.

Cubo used to be born out of a three-pronged collaboration from Pripas, the São Paulo-based totally web entrepreneur and CEO of Bitinvest; Brazil’s greatest financial institution, Itaú Unibanco; and Redpoint e.ventures—a partnership between Menlo Park-headquartered Redpoint Ventures and San Francisco’s e.ventures.

“if in case you have a place to drive those connections, then that ecosystem can flourish,” says Pripas. “that is precisely what we are doing here. we now have been listening to quite a bit prior to now couple of years that, ‘hi there, the following fb or Twitter will come from some rising cities,’ and this is not happening. So we do consider that by way of doing this, we can lend a hand succeed in something like that.”

but which is not to say that São Paulo is not already an entrepreneurial pressure to be reckoned with. Brazil is a rustic full of extremely engaged web and social media customers, and with its huge inhabitants and a GDP of more than $450 billion, São Paulo is accountable for so much of that activity. consistent with Anderson Thees, founding associate of Redpoint e.ventures, the town bills for 30% of Brazil’s high-boom businesses, while Brazil’s subsequent-greatest metropolis, Rio de Janeiro, bills for simplest eight%.

In a latest learn about from Compass—the business-information management instrument—São Paulo ranked as the twelfth best metropolis for tech startups. A Google Campus, which also deals a group for startup founders and hopefuls, is about to open in São Paulo this year.

Pripas simply hopes to move the needle from No. 12 on Compass’s tech startup record to the top, within the company of top-rating hubs like Silicon Valley, Boston, and Tel Aviv. the top 4 spots on this yr’s list are presently occupied with the aid of American cities. São Paulo is the only Latin American city within the top 20.

With its attribute white walls and architectural glass, Cubo undoubtedly looks like one thing that was once born in Silicon Valley. positioned in the Vila Olímpia space of São Paulo, Cubo is slightly over a mile far from the companies that make up 80% of the town’s present entrepreneur ecosystem, Thees says. Going ahead, the coworking house will supply as a minimum one experience daily, says Pripas, like rooftop socials and ability share periods, ceaselessly with special guests from the tech entrepreneurship world. Startups inside Cubo can pay a market rate to make use of the gap and is not going to have a point in time imposed on their stay.

Funding isn’t guaranteed to these working in the neighborhood, but the get entry to to investors through Redpoint e.ventures provides Cubo credence with startup founders as well as the opportunity of investment. And while Silicon Valley is a mature setting the place an idea can be matched with angel traders right away, São Paulo isn’t so developed, Pripas says. Thees says that in Silicon Valley, firms invest in or gather a success startups, however the São Paulo business scene is not slightly there yet. Cubo is as a minimum meant to lend a hand the city skip in advance a few steps on its solution to development as an entrepreneurship hub, he says.

“We consider our involvement and our hyperlink to Silicon Valley will assist ferment the participation of the ecosystem—no longer simplest of the residents but of the community at large,” Thees says of São Paulo. “talking to avid gamers in the Valley, a number of them say that we’re similar in lots of the right way to their ecosystem 15, 20 years in the past. What we really need to do is be sure we close the gap quicker. The elements are here.”

[Images: courtesy of Cubo]