The lesson is that tech now underpins everything, which means talent is now everywhere. JL
Silvia Sam reports in Medium:
Love and a desire brought Lennon to Ica,
a rural city 4 hours from Lima. Lennon’s wife owned an onion export
business in this city and in 2013, its demand started growing
exponentially. Ica (had) constant power outages and low bandwidth, (its) economy supported by agriculture. He was obsessed with the idea that you don’t need to live in a big city to build a company, so started building creating (his) own network. Today, he is the CEO of one of Peru’s leading software companies.
Almost 4 years ago, Lennon Shimokawa had a stable and successful career — he was an Engineering professor at one of the best universities in Peru. Suddenly, he made a huge and unexpected move.
He quit his job and moved away from Lima, the tech mecca of Peruvian software companies.
Farewell.
Love and a desire to have a brighter future brought Lennon to Ica, a rural city 4 hours from Lima. Lennon’s wife owned an onion export business in this city and in 2013, its demand started growing exponentially. It was a great opportunity that she couldn’t miss and Lennon supported her journey.
Upon his arrival, he realized he had been living in a tech bubble. Ica was totally different. It was place with constant power outages and low internet bandwidth, but with affordable housing. He didn’t have luxuries anymore.
“My life changed completely when I moved to Ica.”
I had to start all over again and unfortunately, I had no support. The tech community was almost nonexistent. I knew I had to do something about it, so I started building creating my own network,” says Lennon.
Innovation starts anywhere at anytime
Lennon didn’t want to be the only person in the room talking about startups and tech. Just like a real entrepreneur, Lennon was trying to find solutions. He was obsessed with the idea that you don’t need to live in a big city — San Francisco or Lima — to build a great company. If you hustle, growth hack, be resourceful, and find talented people to work with, you have a chance to win. You have to be relentless. The path to create devAcademy was difficult; the odds weren’t favorable.
Lennon was obsessed with the idea that you don’t need to live in a big city like San Francisco or Lima to build a great company.
Slow internet, slow providers, slow government
“How can you even solve this?,” I asked Lennon. It seemed like the optimal solution was to get OSIPTEL — the Peruvian government telecommunication entity — involved. “The state has to stop giving us extra obstacles to become entrepreneurs. They need to create more agile processes. It took us a more than a month to finalize all the paperwork needed to start a business. That’s a long time that we wasted. Thankfully, Startup Peru is an exception. They’ve contributed with connections and mentorship.”
The company has been hiring slow and firing fast. Unfortunately, the academic level in local public universities is low and on the private side, corruption rules. Thus, devAcademy had to train their new hires from scratch.
“There’s a lot of potential and talent, but [people] need to have the right mentality to work.”
“We’ve been able to hire over 15 developers and most of them are now taking leadership roles. Kattya Cuevas, our CTO, has been a judge and speaker at AngelHack Peru, GDC Lima, and RubyConf Colombia.”
Though he faced all these adversities, Lennon managed to thrive. Today, he is the CEO of one of Peru’s leading software companies. They offer software development courses and services including companies in the United States and local universities.
What’s Next for Ica and the devAcademy team?
The company is looking to transform Ica’s tech scene. The city’s economy is mainly supported by agriculture. Through devAcademy’s vision and team, they’re determined to build the next generation of great developers in Ica and exporting this talent to the world through software.
devAcademy is looking to transform Ica’s tech scene.
“It is known that building a company outside of Silicon Valley is hard. For us, it’s even harder. But we believe that complaining won’t get us anywhere. We are now improving the digital infrastructure of our economy,” ends Lennon
As a Partner and Co-Founder of Predictiv and PredictivAsia, Jon specializes in management performance and organizational effectiveness for both domestic and international clients. He is an editor and author whose works include Invisible Advantage: How Intangilbles are Driving Business Performance. Learn more...
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