A significant technology-based entrepreneurship event was held in Valledupar this Friday, April 19, iTech 2024, in the Consuelo Araújo Noguera auditorium of the Departmental Library; an innovation and technology event that had the purpose of contributing to the strengthening of the ecosystem of actors, educational institutions, incubators, SENA, managers, trainers and entrepreneurs of a cutting-edge sector in the business world today.
Important experiences were presented, from those developed by mining companies, Drummond for example, in the Cesar mining corridor and in Magdalena municipalities neighboring the railway, the Sena in its entrepreneurship programs to develop the new headquarters of the Canal de Panama (the 44th) and the initiatives that are developed in faculties such as Systems Engineering at the UPC.
It was interesting to hear the investor’s approach, in this case Luis Felipe Giraldo, from the firm Velocity, which invests in new technology-based companies. He explained why one should invest and how there are associative schemes, which must be ‘sold’ to wealthy people in the region so that they lose their fear of new ventures. It is true that you can lose, but with information you can also minimize risks in scenarios in which the returns are immense. Let’s think of a ‘unicorn’, a Colombian company whose value exceeds US 1,000 million like Rappi. Expected returns, investment policies and investment types were known.
Probable local ‘champions’ of success were also presented here, such as Carlos Castilla’s company DevZeros SAS and VinApp of the renowned entrepreneur Angelys Manjarrés López. Women can play a great role and training is not as difficult as it is believed.
With this event, it is expected that in 2025 it will once again bring us a much better version and “that the opportunity will be given to other entrepreneurs and visionaries who live in this territory rich in knowledge, purpose and resilience.”
EL PILÓN has offered to energize these projects and hold continuous events with young people within its Forum strategy and to make these new ventures visible as it is also a way to attract companies and energize existing traditional ones in the real sector of the economy. All these companies require innovation, science and technology and training but especially a ‘cluster’ of entrepreneurship crowned, like all businesses, with fewer failures than resounding successes. It is also a commitment by a city and a leading department in the areas that make progress today. It is no coincidence that today, among the top 10 companies worldwide, almost all are technology and innovation companies.
BEFORE YESTERDAY’S MARCHES, WILL THE GOVERNMENT RECTIFY?
“If the government continues to isolate itself, believing that what happened today is just a lament by the elite and consequently does not rectify it, its biggest problem in 2026 will be the harsh judgment of the left. His maximalism will end in a languid opportunity for lost change” (Humberto de la Calle). Is a historic opportunity for democratic and progressive change going to be lost? Will a social-democratic alternative for Colombia be stopped, which develops the configuration of the Social State of Law, projected in the current Political Constitution of 1991?