Newsflash

Brazil Economy Brazil America Ventures - International Business Development and Venture Capital Advisory Services

  • Brazil is the 5th largest population in the world with a population of 200 million people.
  • Brazil recently edged past China to become the largest emerging market in the world (Morgan Stanley Capital Int’l Emerging Markets Index September 10, 2008)
  • Newly discovered and massive off-shore oil fields led to an invitation for Brazil to become a member of OPEC
  • In 2009 Wal-Mart will invest $1B in Brazil
  • The famed Silicon Valley venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson partnered with a leading Brazilian venture capital firm FIR Capital in Belo Horizonte with an initial capital contribution of $40M
  • Brazil is an undisputed global leader in clean and renewable energies with a concentrated emhasis on BioFuels.

Brazil Internet Usage

  • Google made Brazil their center for all South American and Latin American operations with most of its software development and engineering to be based in Belo Horizonte
  • Brazil leads all of Latin America and South America in the number of Internet users, well ahead of both Mexico and Argentina
  • Brazil is Google’s fastest growing market outside of the U.S. generating an estimated $500 million per year in revenues.
  • Brazil has the second largest user base of Google Gmail e-mail accounts
  • Brazil has the third largest number of broadband users in the Americas, behind only the U.S. and Canada. 
  • Internet users in Brazil have doubled in each of the past three years
  • 47% of Brazilian adult citizens have Internet access which represents 59 million Internet users over the age of 16 according to a March 2008 survey conducted by DataFolha and commissioned by F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi.  The survey also found that 53% of the people surveyed regularly post content on the Internet.
  • The average Brazilian Internet users spends 30.2 hours online a month, substantially higher that Latin America (28.6 hours) and worldwide (25.7 hours)
  • Internet penetration in Brazil based on population is 26.1% and expected to grow by more than 300% over the next 3-5 years.
  • Brazil is the worldwide leader in online E-Government especially in the areas of e-participation, electronic voting, online tax filing and e-procurement.
  • In 2007 more PC’s were sold in Brazil than TV sets

Brazil Mobile Usage

  • Mobile phone subscribers grew at an astonishing rate of 21% in 2007
  • Mobile subscriber penetration is 67% compared to 80% for the U.S.
  • Mobile subscribers in Brazil outnumber fixed line subscribers by more than 3 to 1     
  • Brazil is the 5th largest country for mobile phone penetration with China, U.S, Russia and India ahead of it.
 
Feb 6
Monday
Brazil America Ventures - International Business Development and Venture Capital Advisory Services
About Brazil America Ventures

Brazil America Ventures - International Business Development and Venture Capital Advisory Services

 

Brazil America Ventures with U.S. offices in Silicon Valley and Miami and Belo Horizonte and Recife in Brazil with plans for new offices in New York City and Sao Paulo was created to remove the friction that exists when emerging Internet and Mobile media companies attempt to expand internationally and / or raise venture capital financing.

 

 

James J. Geddes, Jr.

Senior Managing Director and Co-Founder 

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Mr. Geddes has enjoyed a memorable career as a high tech entrepreneur.  Prior to co-founding Brazil America Ventures with Mark Kalow, Jim was the founder and Pres / CEO of Say Hello Inc. (doing business as Jax Say Hello) the industry’s first advertiser supported mobile search voice portal. While at the helm of Say Hello Inc. Jim was responsible for writing the original business plan, investor presentation materials and raised the initial $2M in venture capital funding, while at the same time he recruited a world class engineering and development team consisting of three PhD’s in Computer Science; Artificial Intelligence; and Advanced Speech Recognition technologies along with seven prominent speech recognition software developers. The Jax Say Hello local market voice portal broke new ground by being the first Mobile Search Voice Portal with both Voice and SMS text message services for free Directory Assistance; Movie Theaters and Show Times; Weather Reports and Forecasts; Sport Scores; Lottery results; Driving Directions, Mobile Coupons, Horoscopes; Traffic Reports; Flight Schedules, Cheap Gas Station locator; and more.

 

Prior to Say Hello Inc. Jim was a Senior Managing Director with The Encompass Group; a $250M international business development and venture capital fund based in Silicon Valley.  The Encompass Group in partnership with its largest institutional investor Trans Cosmos Inc. made Seed and Early Stage venture capital investments over a 7 year period in more than 75 Internet, Online and Mobile technology and content companies. During his time with The Encompass Group the fund experienced 12 IPO’s on NASDAQ along with numerous M&A’s with companies such as AOL, Microsoft, Amazon, WebEx, CNET, Vivendi Universal and others. 

 

Jim is also an active investor in Springboard Capital II Fund. Founded in 2002, Springboard Capital is a private equity investment fund specializing in early-stage venture investments in Florida and the Southeast. 

 

Jim has been a frequent speaker at various industry events; most recently those involved in the Mobile Media and Advertising business sectors.

   

 

Fernando A. C. Castilho

Managing Director and Co-Founder

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http://www.estto.com

 

Fernando Castilho has a graduate a degree in Economics and an MBA from UNA in Belo Horizonte specializing in Management and Business Markets.  Fernando is also a Professor of graduate programs and studies as well as a marketing consultant.  He founded Vexo Market Solutions, a professional services company for planning integrated management of market and strategic management of innovation solutions.

 

Fernando has extensive experience with new market assessment and business development partnerships and strategic alliances, formation of economic groups, and a broad network of Brazilian business professionals in both public and private companies. In addition to Vexo Market Solutions, Fernando Castilho, is the CEO Estto, a company that specializes in funding and development of new businesses. Essto helps to identify new market opportunities and enables the achievement of these new businesses, finding and creating synergy between the various market players in Brazil.

 

Opening of markets, development of new businesses, innovation management, marketing research and planning, identification and preparation of business plans, these are the most requested topics for lectures and courses taught in various schools and businesses.

 

 

Mark Kalow

Managing Director and Co-Founder
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Mr. Kalow has also enjoyed an illustrious career as a high tech entrepreneur.  In parallel with Mark’s role with Brazil America Ventures he also serves as a Managing Director and co-founder of The Soquel Group, a Silicon Valley-based consulting firm specializing in Intellectual Property.

 

Previously, Mark was a Managing Director for The Encompass Group, the U.S. venture capital arm of Trans Cosmos Inc. – a global IT outsourcing and marketing chain management services company. While there Mark negotiated 15 venture investment transactions totaling more than $50M. He led investment rounds with companies such as SnapFish (online photo), Placeware (web conferencing) and several others.  As part of his responsibilities Mark also served on numerous Boards of Directors. He is also credited with the successful negotiations of several international joint ventures.  As a “heavy lifting” venture capitalist Mark acted on behalf of his portfolio companies as a management consultant for M&A; business strategy; budgets; financing; recruiting; corporate restructuring; and compensation.

 

Prior to his contributions with The Encompass Group Mark was the co-founder and COO / CFO of Live Picture Inc. where he managed multiple financings totaling more than $60M; two company acquisitions; and as CEO, the sale of the company to MGI Software. Live Picture’s imaging and Internet products won more than 30 industry awards and its technology and products were licensed to industry leaders such as HP, Canon, Kodak, Fuji Film and many others.

 

Mark is often asked to speak at numerous industry events and conferences pertaining to venture capital and digital imaging.

 

Mark holds a S.B. degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA with a concentration in Financial Management from the University of Chicago.  He also attended Director’s College at Stanford Law School, June 2006