‘Region’s startups need venture capital boost’

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Caribbean en­tre­pre­neurs need more than pitch com­pe­ti­tions and short-term pro­grammes if the re­gion is se­ri­ous about pro­duc­ing com­pa­nies ca­pa­ble of cre­at­ing jobs, at­tract­ing in­vest­ment and di­ver­si­fy­ing their economies.

That is the think­ing be­hind the ex­pand­ed Ig­nite 2026 pro­gramme be­ing de­vel­oped by Caribbean Drag­ons, which has moved from com­mu­ni­ty mee­tups and oc­ca­sion­al founder events in­to a struc­tured ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing pro­gramme cov­er­ing train­ing, coach­ing, a sum­mit and six months of men­tor­ship.

The pro­gramme will cul­mi­nate in the Ig­nite 2026 sum­mit in No­vem­ber and has al­ready at­tract­ed a co­hort of 170 star­tups, which will progress through the pro­gramme over the next eight months.

For Caribbean Drag­ons co-founder and di­rec­tor Marc Per­saud, the shift rep­re­sents a ma­jor change in the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s three-year jour­ney and is in­tend­ed to cre­ate a more sus­tain­able pipeline of high-growth busi­ness­es.

“So I start­ed with a cap­stone that hap­pens every year, and made it the cap­stone of a much larg­er, longer, broad­er pro­gramme of ca­pac­i­ty build­ing for founders,” Per­saud told Busi­ness Guardian on Thurs­day evening.

The pro­gramme now in­cludes class­es every Thurs­day night, a coach­ing week, the sum­mit and six months of men­tor­ship. Per­saud ex­pects the cur­rent struc­ture to be built over the next 12 to 18 months.

The ex­pan­sion has been sup­port­ed by CaribEquity, which Per­saud cred­its with giv­ing Caribbean Drag­ons greater ca­pac­i­ty to or­gan­ise its work.

“In the three years, this is def­i­nite­ly a rev­o­lu­tion­ary year for us, it’s a big year,” he said.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s ac­tiv­i­ties in­clud­ed com­mu­ni­ty mee­tups, an am­bas­sador net­work, we­bi­na­rs and pod­casts. The new struc­ture, he ex­plained, is de­signed to make those ac­tiv­i­ties more or­gan­ised and de­liv­er greater im­pact.

The scale is al­so chang­ing. Per­saud said com­mu­ni­ty co-build ses­sions pre­vi­ous­ly at­tract­ed about 50 en­tre­pre­neurs at a time, three times a year. Un­der the new pro­gramme, the 170-start­up co­hort will be fol­lowed each year for the next three years.

Out­side the core Cat­a­lyst pro­gramme, he ex­pects an­oth­er 50 to 100 en­tre­pre­neurs a year to be reached through we­bi­na­rs, pod­casts, hackathons and oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties.

Cap­i­tal re­mains the fu­el

While founder ed­u­ca­tion and men­tor­ship are im­por­tant, Per­saud be­lieves the Caribbean can­not build a high-growth start­up ecosys­tem with­out de­vel­op­ing the re­gion’s ca­pac­i­ty to fi­nance those busi­ness­es.

That means at­tract­ing in­vestors, but al­so teach­ing in­vestors how ven­ture cap­i­tal works.

“We need in­vestors on two lev­els. We need in­vestors to run pro­grammes like this. And then the fu­el re­al­ly for high growth com­pa­nies is cap­i­tal,” Per­saud said.

Ven­ture in­vest­ing is still rel­a­tive­ly un­fa­mil­iar across the Caribbean. Per­saud dis­tin­guish­es it from the pri­vate eq­ui­ty ac­tiv­i­ty that is more es­tab­lished in the re­gion, ar­gu­ing that more work is need­ed to de­vel­op in­vestor ex­per­tise around back­ing high-po­ten­tial star­tups.

That in­cludes help­ing in­vestors un­der­stand the dif­fer­ent risk and time hori­zons in­volved in ven­ture in­vest­ing, as well as de­vel­op­ing pri­vate ven­ture cap­i­tal funds and oth­er ap­pro­pri­ate in­vest­ment ve­hi­cles.

Per­saud wants the Gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor to make it eas­i­er for cap­i­tal to flow in­to star­tups.

He is call­ing for tax in­cen­tives for high-net-worth in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­ly of­fices to in­vest in star­tups, along­side ve­hi­cles such as ven­ture cap­i­tal funds or spe­cial pur­pose ve­hi­cles that can be reg­is­tered and man­aged eas­i­ly in lo­cal ju­ris­dic­tions.

On the founder side, he wants con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in en­tre­pre­neur­ial sup­port or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­cu­ba­tion projects and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties that pro­vide star­tups with the re­sources need­ed to scale.

Reg­u­la­to­ry re­form is an­oth­er pri­or­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in high­ly reg­u­lat­ed in­dus­tries such as fin­tech.

“For us as an or­gan­i­sa­tion?” Per­saud said when asked about the chal­lenges Caribbean Drag­ons face. “So I think the first thing is we’re a bunch of vol­un­teers.”

That cre­ates its own chal­lenge: de­vel­op­ing a sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­el for an or­gan­i­sa­tion that is try­ing to build the wider en­tre­pre­neur­ial ecosys­tem.

Per­saud wants or­gan­i­sa­tions such as CaribEquity, the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank and the World Bank to fo­cus not on­ly on in­di­vid­ual en­tre­pre­neurs but al­so on the ecosys­tem builders sup­port­ing them.

He ar­gued that the eco­nom­ic im­pact can be sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater when sup­port is di­rect­ed to­wards busi­ness­es with the po­ten­tial to grow rapid­ly.

“You can help one per­son with a small busi­ness as a cot­tage in­dus­try. But if you help a high-po­ten­tial, high-growth busi­ness, that per­son is go­ing to em­ploy 15, 20, 30 peo­ple in the next year,” he said.

The ob­jec­tive, there­fore, is not sim­ply to help more peo­ple start busi­ness­es. It is to help busi­ness­es ca­pa­ble of scal­ing, em­ploy­ing more peo­ple and con­tribut­ing more sig­nif­i­cant­ly to eco­nom­ic out­put.

Sophia Nadu­ra, a board di­rec­tor and in­vest­ment ad­vis­er to a num­ber of cli­mate funds and a men­tor to en­tre­pre­neurs, is among those sup­port­ing Ig­nite.

Nadu­ra brings ex­pe­ri­ence across law, con­sumer goods, in­no­va­tion, en­er­gy and cor­po­rate strat­e­gy. A Trinida­di­an who has built and scaled her own in­no­va­tion con­sul­tan­cy, she pre­vi­ous­ly worked with com­pa­nies in­clud­ing Nestlé, Dole and Wa­ha­ha in Chi­na, be­fore spend­ing five years at BP help­ing to co-cre­ate its glob­al elec­tric ve­hi­cle charg­ing busi­ness.

She now de­scribes her­self as be­ing in the “re­turn” phase of her life, af­ter years of learn­ing and earn­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“I be­lieve in life. You have three phas­es: learn, earn and re­turn. I’m in the third phase of my life, which is called re­turn,” Nadu­ra chuck­led.

She is drawn to Ig­nite for its role as a con­nec­tor with­in the in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem.

She be­lieves T&T does not suf­fer from a short­age of tal­ent but does need stronger con­nec­tions be­tween founders, banks, in­vestors, multi­na­tion­als, cor­po­rates and ser­vice providers.

“Ig­nite is a unique ecosys­tem be­cause it’s not try­ing to do every­thing, but it’s try­ing to be the glue,” she said.

For Nadu­ra, that ecosys­tem-build­ing role is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant as Trinidad and To­ba­go seeks to di­ver­si­fy be­yond its tra­di­tion­al de­pen­dence on oil and gas.

She be­lieves the coun­try can draw on its in­dus­tri­al base while de­vel­op­ing new busi­ness­es in ar­eas such as con­sumer goods and new en­er­gy.

But she is al­so urg­ing cor­po­ra­tions to re­think what it means to sup­port star­tups.

The first step, she be­lieves, is be­com­ing a start­up’s cus­tomer.

“How can I make these young com­pa­nies, how can I be their first cus­tomer?” Nadu­ra asked.

A cor­po­rate pur­chase can pro­vide far more than rev­enue. It can give a young busi­ness val­i­da­tion, im­prove cash flow, pro­vide a recog­nised cus­tomer ref­er­ence and help open doors to fu­ture in­vestors.

Nadu­ra al­so wants com­pa­nies to al­low em­ploy­ees to spend time en­gag­ing with en­tre­pre­neurs so they can bet­ter un­der­stand the chal­lenges of build­ing a busi­ness.

The third area is cap­i­tal, al­though she does not be­lieve every form of cor­po­rate sup­port has to in­volve eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment.

Work­ing cap­i­tal as­sis­tance, over­drafts, pref­er­en­tial terms and longer pay­ment pe­ri­ods can all help young com­pa­nies man­age cash flow while they grow.

She al­so sees an op­por­tu­ni­ty for cor­po­rate ven­tur­ing, where larg­er com­pa­nies in­vest in, part­ner with or even­tu­al­ly ac­quire small­er high-po­ten­tial busi­ness­es.

Vashtie Dook­iesingh, se­nior spe­cial­ist with In­ter Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank Lab, al­so sees ecosys­tem de­vel­op­ment as a crit­i­cal part of the work.

IDB Lab us­es non-re­im­bursable grants to sup­port projects de­signed to strength­en in­no­va­tion ecosys­tems, in­clud­ing train­ing, ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices and con­nec­tions for in­no­v­a­tive com­pa­nies.

Its in­vest­ment ac­tiv­i­ties al­so in­clude ven­ture cap­i­tal funds, pri­vate eq­ui­ty place­ments and lend­ing.

In T&T, Dook­iesingh said the or­gan­i­sa­tion has so far fo­cussed on lend­ing, in­clud­ing fi­nanc­ing for fin­tech and mi­cro and small busi­ness­es.

IDB Lab re­cent­ly pro­vid­ed fi­nanc­ing to Odele­bao, a lo­cal­ly de­vel­oped e-com­merce fa­cil­i­ta­tor that han­dles ser­vices in­clud­ing col­lec­tion, con­sol­i­da­tion, de­liv­ery and pay­ments.

Dook­iesingh be­came in­volved with Caribbean Drag­ons af­ter see­ing its ear­li­er, less for­mal ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing pitch com­pe­ti­tions and founder mee­tups.

She saw val­ue in build­ing a com­mu­ni­ty around en­tre­pre­neurs and giv­ing founders op­por­tu­ni­ties to learn from each oth­er.

“When the CaribEquity, which is a Caribbean re­gion­al pro­gramme, came on stream, they in­vit­ed what they call busi­ness sup­port or­gan­i­sa­tions that re­al­ly could make a dif­fer­ence with­in their coun­tries to ap­ply in T&T,” she ex­plained.

Two or­gan­i­sa­tions were se­lect­ed in T&T: Caribbean Drag­ons and the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, which is launch­ing an ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence lab to help small busi­ness­es use AI.

Dook­iesingh be­lieves in­no­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy can have an im­pact be­yond in­di­vid­ual com­pa­nies.

She point­ed to an IDB-sup­port­ed telemed­i­cine ini­tia­tive in Guyana, where tech­nol­o­gy is be­ing used to con­nect re­mote com­mu­ni­ties with health­care ser­vices. A sub­se­quent pro­pos­al for med­ical drones could re­duce the time re­quired to trans­port med­i­cines and med­ical sup­plies to re­mote health posts from as much as two days to about 90 min­utes.

For Dook­iesingh, that il­lus­trates why in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem in­vest­ment mat­ters.

The chal­lenge for this coun­try is now to turn its pool of cap­i­tal, tal­ent and cor­po­rate ex­per­tise in­to greater in­vest­ment in the re­al econ­o­my.

She ar­gues that sig­nif­i­cant amounts of cap­i­tal al­ready ex­ist lo­cal­ly, but much of it is in­vest­ed con­ser­v­a­tive­ly or placed over­seas.

“There is, I think, a lot of cap­i­tal here in T&T,” Dook­iesingh said. “I mean, we have a lot of mon­ey sit­ting down, earn­ing very lit­tle.”

In­vest­ing in star­tups car­ries risk, she ac­knowl­edged, but be­lieves suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es can gen­er­ate re­turns while cre­at­ing em­ploy­ment and op­por­tu­ni­ties across the wider econ­o­my.