Doing Business in Medellín, Colombia (Expat Founder Story) 🎙 The Nearshore Cafe Podcast

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I'm your host, Brian Samson, and we have a really interesting show for everyone, especially if you're an entrepreneur And you're looking at doing business in Colombia, building a business in Colombia. We've got Chad Smalley, but before I welcome Chad, let me thank our sponsor, Plug Technologies, plugg.com. Great way to connect talent from all over Latin America to growing US companies. Chad, welcome, man. Great to see you.

So happy to be here, Brian. Appreciate the invite.

Yeah. So Medellín, that's, that's where you're, you're dialing in from today, right?

Yep. Currently Medellín, Colombia, sometimes Bogotá, and then sometimes now lately, uh, Mexico And then remind everybody, where did you grow up?

Texas.

Cowboy.

Texas. Okay. I love it. So I think everybody's just kind of dying to know, how does a cowboy from Texas end up living, working, doing life, building a company in Medellín? Can you kind of back us into the story here?

Yeah, sure. So expat life started in 2007 in Panama. So I moved to Boquete, Panama in 2007. I was there for about 4 years and then I met a lady from Colombia, as all men do, and I ended up moving to Colombia and then off and on here for about 12 years. I love Colombia. I love Latin America. It's so close to the United States, same time zone and everything else to visit family. So it's an amazing spot to live for sure.

Yeah. I want to dig into the Panama part first because, you know, not everyone, it's, it's quite rare, especially nowadays to hear expat stories. Usually there's, I mean, maybe now there's like this digital nomad trend, but I think more so you just hear about hiring local country managers and crossing your fingers. How did this whole Panama thing start? Like, what were you doing for work? What kind of job, company? How did this all flow into Panama?

Yeah, so we went there originally for, with my folks to look at real estate. Ended up loving it so much and meeting other entrepreneurs back in 2007, mind you. So this was a long time ago. And Basically, you know, I, it wasn't really doing much in the States, you know, graduated from university, was, you know, floating job to job, wasn't really happy. And then, you know, Panama just kind of ticked all the boxes. And then, you know, while I was there, you know, their whole real estate boom and all those big towers in Panama City, that was happening as I was there. And I realized that most of the real estate agencies and brokerages were using Excel sheets for their internal systems for, for client management, for lead management, for sales, for everything else. So. Ended up building a custom CRM system for them in Spanish and ended up raising some investment and opened up an office, hired like 15 people. And I think we had like 98% of all the real estate companies as clients as a SaaS software. Wow. In Panama. And then, uh, yeah, it was, it was an interesting experience because back then in Panama, they didn't really have, you know, what we have now where you just put in a credit card and they would just pay automatically per user per month. We had, we had 3 motorcycles out front waiting to do printed invoices to send to the real estate offices, like, write down payments. And it was always 120 days late, right? That's just a part of the culture thing, right? So it was an experience.

That's so funny. Now, I've actually never been to Panama, but like when I see pictures of it, it looks like it's Singapore, you know, big, beautiful high rises. It looks like it's Miami, you know, like hustling, bustling, lots of energy. Can you, for my benefit, for the audience's benefit that's never been there, just like what doing life like is, uh, is in Panama?

Yeah. Well, it's amazing because it is a US dollar, right? So it's probably 20, 30%, uh, you know, uh, less costly than the United States. You know, the city is very hustle and bustle. It's a, you know, it's very busy, but you can definitely leave the city, go to San Blas. You can go to amazing beaches, like 30, 30 minutes away. It's an incredible country, has a lot of diversity and a lot of business opportunities as well too, because of the free trade zone they have there for, especially like the area that we're going to be talking about today is like the TikTok shop, the D2C, the social commerce and e-commerce, and a lot of products flow through there from China because of the free trade zone, the Colón Free Trade Zone. So big opportunity there. Yeah.

What was it like? That's fascinating. You had the 15. Team members there, what was it like recruiting, hiring? How is it different from the States? How is it the same?

Well, you know, I had, you know, anywhere from 10 to 15 there and then also another like, uh, 8 or 9 here in Colombia. Um, really it's kind of the same. It's really based on, you know, the people that you hire. So all of them obviously spoke English perfectly because of the market and everything else. Um, you know, great due diligence, great work ethic, you know, you just, you kind of feel bad because, you know, they're working, you know, the typical 8 to 10 hours a day, but they're making, you know, a very low amount monthly, which is standard, right? And so you always kind of want to treat them well and give them bonuses and everything else, right? But, but it's, it's quite, it's not that hard. If you find a right team, you know, and you build that loyalty, there's a lot more emotional loyalty built in when, when working with teams here. Versus the United States where it's just kind of clock in, clock out. Here it's like, you know, you go to cantinas afterwards to have some beers or you go to the family's, you know, birthdays. Days are huge here in Latin America, right? You've got 30 cousins, you know, nephews and you're a part of that. So as long as you can realize that cultural differences, you can have this super loyal team for half the cost of the United States.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting just with the dollar because I think there's a lot of stress sometimes with volatile currencies. In Latin America. So that wasn't really part of your equation that you could just pay everybody in dollars.

Yeah. Well, in Panama, yeah. But here in Colombia, it's different. It really impacts you. Like lately it's been going down, the Colombian peso to the dollar, so that can impact you.

Yeah. Yeah. Before we move on to Colombia, any advice, best practices that you picked up from your time running the business in Panama?

You know what, I would say get a good accountant, right? Because there, you know, you have to pay to fire people if they don't do well, you know, so there's a lot of things that most expats probably wouldn't know unless you had a really good accountant that was on your side to handle all of that, you know, handle the firing and hiring and benefits and Social Security. And, you know, you can definitely get taken advantage of there if you don't do your due diligence. For sure.

Yeah. Yeah. So the office, you had the office in Panama, the office in Colombia for that CRM company. How did you decide on different companies?

Different companies.

These are different companies. So you met the, um, the lady, the Colombian lady in Panama and then moved to Colombia.

Yeah. Moved to Colombia. We, you know, we had the CRM business for about 4 years in Panama and then we exited that and then I ended up starting something new in Colombia, starting fresh, you know, I was pretty burnt out after 4 years running that business, ended up in Colombia with her and then ended up creating some new businesses, uh, in, in efforts and just being an entrepreneur, you know, just trying to, because, you know, when you moved here in 2010 in Colombia and Bogota and, uh, you know, technology is always about 4 or 5 years behind the States back then. When I was there, do you remember the Groupon phase? The buy one, get one free? Of course. Everybody was building a replica of Groupon here. And in Bogotá specifically, it's kind of like riding the wave, right? Groupon was already successful, like 1 to 2 or 3 years in. And so 3 years after Groupon was successful, a lot of entrepreneurs started building replicas and a lot of them sold to Groupon for a lot of money after being only up for like 1 or 2 years. One year, but that just kind of shows you like here in Colombia, it's like, you know, there's a lot of entrepreneurism. There's a lot of great developers, a lot of great tech, especially in the fintech space, but it's always kind of 3 to 4 years behind, which creates opportunity, creates difficulties and challenges, but also creates opportunities as well too.

Interesting. Yeah. I remember hearing about, I want to say it was like the Anwar brothers or something from Germany that seemed to duplicate every, every tech company coming out of the States. But I actually didn't know that was going on in, uh, in Latin America too.

Yeah.

That was a big thing.

And then under the, under the on the radar as that was happening, last mile delivery apps were being built, like, you know, like Rappi, of course. So Rappi started at the same time around 2010, 2011, like a couple of guys out of a house, you know, doing deliveries on a bike by themselves before they raised all the funding. Now they're just a multi-billion dollar company, right?

Incredible.

You know, so it's kind of like different layers from the, you know, from the Groupon buy one get one free to the last mile delivery apps and just kind of Nowadays it's all about fintech and cross-border payments.

Yeah. I want to spend a lot of time on Medellín, but before we go there, tell us about living in Bogotá, you know, like daily life, doing business there, you know, what was the scene like?

Yeah, it's great. I mean, there's a lot, there's a great expat community there. There's a lot of business-oriented people there. It's the capital. So a lot of money, a lot of investments happen there. It's a big city. Massive city, a lot of international companies have set up there, you know, for all of Latin America, you know, it's, it's a great opportunity, you know, a lot of English speakers there. So really depends on what your, what your goals are. If you're looking to start a business in Latin America, that's the place to be. You can get, find amazing people, amazing team, 100% English speaking, you know, pretty much everything you need, but it's much different than Medellín. So Medellín is more kind of You know, the paisas is more kind of laid back, tranquilo, you know, it's everything's kind of slow here. And it's funny because everyone has like the Bogotás are like the rolas and then the Medellín is like the paisas and they don't particularly like each other. Right. Just kidding. Just kidding. You know, here, and there's also big climate differences like Bogotá, it's, you know, beautiful mountain ranges, you know, but much colder, much higher elevation and a lot of rain where here in Medellín it's. Yeah. you know, sunny and, and, you know, perfect climate, like 70 degrees all year round. It doesn't really change.

So yeah, I've heard it described as the eternal spring in Medellín. Yeah.

Yeah. But it's growing fast. You know, the, the whole digital nomad has really taken off here. And unfortunately with that, it's a good thing and a bad thing. Unfortunately with that, you know, everything's gotten really expensive, like rent and food and restaurants. You know.

Yeah.

So that's the only negative, but I mean, it's good. It's great for tourism. It's great for the economy. But, you know, it doesn't really help the local people living here because everything kind of goes up as well.

Yeah. Yeah, sure. What was the difference? So you talked about culturally, which is really fascinating, you know, the kind of laid back, tranquilo in Medellín. Did that seem to apply to like hiring and finding talent, leading them, you know, like some of the differences between those cities? 100%. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, the team I had in Bogotá, so I was a regional director for a company called CleverTap right before the pandemic. And we did hugely successful there. So it's a SaaS platform that is an API and SDK for mobile apps. And, you know, I was flying around from Mexico to Chile with our office and WeWork in Bogotá. And we just killed the numbers for them. And it's a company out of San Francisco, pretty large company. And we were meeting with all the top mobile-first companies in Latin America. And the team I had was great. We had like 6 or 7 people, one other salesperson, including myself, and we just crushed the numbers as far as MRR and ARR for their tool and really opened up this market for them. But we were able to do that with like just a really small staff because of the work ethic they had. But also the same token, because of the technology, like a lot of these mobile-first companies based in Latin America needed this technology about retention and engagement and data and analytics about how their mobile app was doing and everything else, like Rappi and other, you know, delivery apps and everything else. But I don't think I could have done that here in Medellín just because probably, I don't know, I haven't tried. I don't have a team here, but I think just it's very kind of slower paced, right? There's a lot of great companies based here, but I think you'd find more opportunity in Bogotá for, yeah, for, you know, how would you, um, How would you hire?

Is it like a LinkedIn place or do they have their own, um, like special city, country, job boards and stuff?

Yeah, LinkedIn works really well here. Uh, definitely works well, but you know, this was back in 2018 and 19. You know, LinkedIn is just now starting to kick off here in Latin America, just now, 2026, right? But back then, if you posted a job, you wouldn't really get much. So it was more about making referrals, making friends, getting referrals of really good people. I think there was like a job placement startup in the same WeWork we were in. So we went, we became friends and they helped us find good people. Right. But here, you know, if you're a foreign company, like out of California or United States, it's better to hire one of these mid-level companies that does the hiring and pays the Social Security. And so you pay them and then they employ the individuals under them, under their contracts. And so you don't have to— so foreign companies don't have to set up a Colombian entity per se, right, to avoid all those legal nightmares.

Yeah, yeah. I was going to ask about— so, you know, my, my expat experience was in Argentina, and I'll say in the early days I really had to work hard to gain enough credibility because I, I was an unknown guy, an unknown company. So there's a lot of like skepticism. And I think that's kind of innate in that Argentine culture, right? Did you experience that in Colombia? Like, did people— yeah, were people kind of skeptical of who's this guy?

Well, it goes both ways. It goes— does my— it goes both ways. So it's like, you know, that's the goal here in Latin America. If you have a startup, you want to give away for free your product to one of the biggest brands and make sure they're make sure they're happy and they're using it well, because I guarantee you the next client that you want to get, one of their friends, cousins, or nephews works there. And then, you know, oh, you work for, you have these guys as a client? Okay, absolutely. Come on in. Right. It definitely works that way. Very cultural based, very referral based, you know, very brand case study specific. But if you can acquire a couple of big brands in that niche, in that industry first, And you do a well, you do a good job, you're just, you're going to explode. It'll just be like referral after referral after referral. Because everybody needs this technology and, and, you know, typically it's like the companies here in Latin America, again, nothing wrong with the same companies providing the same service that are from Latin America, based in Latin America, you know, a lot of these larger enterprise level companies just prefer the technology that's provided in the United States. Yeah. The challenge is, is that. There's no local offices here that can provide onsite support. It's not in Spanish or Portuguese. Yeah. Majority of the time, some are, but majority of the time it's, there's a language barrier there on training and onboarding of the platforms, of the tools. So if a company in the United States actually solves those problems, you could do, it's a massive market, unlimited market here in Latin America, specifically for SaaS platforms.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

Yeah. I wanted to also just kind of hitting this cultural element of, you know, I've spent a lot of time in Asia and I think there's still this mindset of like the big companies, the prestige. So a lot of the university talent wants to work for the prestigious companies, you know, where like other parts of the world, there's this more like, it's kind of fun. I'm young. I want to work for startups and, you know, do that. And any comments on what you saw personally in Colombia with that regarding like tourists and expats wanting to work for local companies or? Yeah. Like, like, was there energy and excitement around like little startups or is it still culturally more common for people to want to work for the larger prestigious brands?

Well, as far as like hiring and employment.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So hiring employment, obviously the citizens here want to make as much as they can and they'll definitely make probably more working with an established company.

Yeah.

Startups typically, depending on the size of the startup, if they raise any funding, you know, you know, salaries probably be on the lower end with not the same benefits. I mean, but if you're, you know, if you're looking for expats to come from the United States to live in Latin America and work for you and have much more skills and are, you know, are willing to be paid Latin American wages more for the lifestyle and the fun. And then, you know, maybe potentially even equity, you know, that's a huge opportunity there. I see that happening quite a bit more, like, especially here in Medellín, you've got like, You know, young Gen Zers that are trying to start the, you know, a new, a new app or a new concept. The entire crew moves to Medellín, rents a house and just vibe codes out of a house. Right. And lives the lifestyle at half the cost of the United States with their startup, which kind of makes sense because, you know, living in the States is getting expensive. And, you know, if you're trying to do a startup, you're trying to survive, you're trying to, you know, I've been there.

You've been there.

Sometimes like setting up shop in another country while you're building your startup. Could enhance your success quite a bit because of the cost, right? The run rate.

Totally, totally. Well, I want to pivot this to your business focused on influencer marketing. Can you just give like a broad, you know, why is this so exciting right now and what you're particularly doing?

Yeah, sure. So, you know, the whole influencer marketing space, UGC space is booming in the United States. Led on by TikTok Shop specifically, right? Now everybody's trying to keep up with TikTok Shop, like Amazon, Instagram, Shopify. Social commerce is massive. Last year, Black Friday, TikTok Shop did $500 million in one day on just TikTok Shop, right? And what it is, is the social commerce element of it is basically allowing people to, to satisfy their instant gratification by scrolling. Seeing a product they like from a specific person they trust in a community, one of their, one of the influencers that they follow, right? Seeing something that they recommend, whether beauty products, sports product, supplements, whatever, you inherently trust that person because you're in their community, right? And you just trust them. The ability just to simply tap on a button and being able to purchase that product within that video experience and have it at your door the next day. Instead of clicking a link, going to a Shopify webpage, that's the new e-commerce path we're moving forward, you know? And so this whole, you know, this whole industry of influencer marketing, affiliate influencer marketing, UGC marketing, right? UGC creators. So we're going to be, we're actually launching the first platform that connects global brands with Latin American influencers. So what that does, that allows global brands that want to get into the Latin American space to increase their GMV, to increase their client base. Like normally it's just a non-starter because it's so challenging for product delivery, for cross-border payments, for marketing in Spanish or Portuguese, for finding influencers. And we're trying to help solve that challenge through our SaaS platform that we're going to be launching in the next month. So it's trying to tick off, tick a lot of boxes and challenges of finding credible creators, being able to communicate with them if you don't speak Spanish or Portuguese, if you're a brand in the United States or Canada or Europe, right? Or Asia. You know, fix that challenge of communication, fix the trust issues of knowing that these creators know what they're doing. Because remember what I said earlier, everything's about 3 to 4 years behind. There's so many creators here that have a million followers that have great content, but they have no idea how to monetize their channel. They're just starting to learn influencer marketing and UGC, right? It could be life-changing money for them. So our platform is built to help educate them to take courses, gamification, certification. So the brand knows they've been educated, right? And then allow them to, you know, find and communicate with those creators and then build campaigns and then be able to do product delivery and cross-border payments. So we're trying to solve all those big cross-border challenges that have been existing for decades, right?

Yeah, this is super interesting. Your primary customer is US companies that are looking to market in Latin America?

Correct, yeah, looking to expand into Latin America, but A, doesn't want to have to set up a legal entity, B, doesn't want to have to set up a retail shop. Here, like in Mexico City or Bogotá, whatever, would like to rely on the fulfillment, on the last mile delivery fulfillment using TikTok Shop's new fulfillment center in Mexico and Brazil, and Colombia will probably be open up here next year or this year, right? And so, and then, you know, being able to just quadruple their GMV, their gross merchandise value sales by this untapped market here in Latin America of people who want to buy American products or Canadian products or European products. Right now, just give you an example, you know, living here off and on for 12 years, you look, you, you know, as an expat, you would have to, you know, you'd have to buy or pay for a Miami PO box, buy stuff from Amazon, have it shipped from Amazon to the Miami, then the Miami would ship it here because there was no direct to your door. Amazon direct to your door just launched 2 months ago and here in Colombia, just to show you like, like, yeah, for a couple years.

Yeah.

So massive opportunity aspect too.

Yeah. Can you compare and contrast influencer marketing that you see in the States already with maybe like how it might be a little bit different and how it's done in Latin America?

Well, it's going to be huge here because like what I said earlier about the whole cultural family, friends, trust, right? Yeah. So influencer success is not only based on the content they promote, but the communities they build, right? The brands that leverage the influencers, influencers that have large communities that nurture those communities, the selling potential is unstoppable, is enormous, right? So even more here in Latin America where there's very much an emotional decision when making purchases, right? You know, making purchases online with a credit card, which is quite new, right? And having it delivered to your door the next day or the two days, you know, that's a whole new experience as you're starting here. But I think, you know, if influencers really do well and love the brand and use it all the time and create content about it, all of their followers will buy that brand as well too, because that, that cultural friends and family, that connection that they have here.

Yeah. If you're comfortable, could you comment a little bit on the unit economics? Like, is it influencers on like an impression per impression basis or units sold basis or GMV basis? Is it similar, you know, kind of per capita states versus Colombia or?

Yeah, great question. So, so we offer two campaigns. We offer UGC campaigns and we offer affiliate influencer marketing campaigns for brands, right? And just let you know, we're also like getting inundated with Latin American brands too that want to use influencers, right? So it's not just, you know, USA and cross-border brands. It's also Latin American brands too. But basically two campaigns, UGC campaigns where USA companies would hire creators here in Latin America. To create video content about their products, and then they would pay them per video. And then those brands would use those Spanish and Portuguese videos on their own channels themselves. Right? So that's kind of what UGC, you know, our campaigns are. I know there's a lot of different definitions, but that's how we frame it. And the value prop is the fact that a Spanish-speaking UGC creator in like Miami or Texas, which would charge like $100 to $200 to $300 per video. Where UGC creators here would charge $10, $20, $30 per video.

Interesting.

More authentic Spanish because they're here and everything else, right?

Sure.

The affiliate influencer side works the same way as the United States where, you know, a brand would create a campaign. They would hire 4 or 5 different creators as affiliate influencers. They'd give them the scripts. They would do product seeding where they would send them a free product, right? And say, okay, you know, but allow them creative freedom to post whatever they want as much as they want on their own social channels. And then they'll give them a 15 to 20% commission on whatever they sell.

Right.

Got it. That's kind of how it works.

Interesting.

Cool.

As we start to wrap up a little bit, I want to just talk about your personal favorite things to do in Medellín, you know, Saturday, Sunday, where can we find you? What are, what are some of the hotspots?

Man, so I'm an old man. So it's like my, my party days are over. The beautiful thing about like being here in Colombia and being in Latin America in general is that you could take a $30 flight and go to Cartagena. You can go to Santa Marta. My favorite thing is scuba diving. So I'd love to take like a weekend trip, just go diving, see some beautiful corals, some beautiful fish, you know.

Yeah.

Diving is super economical, super affordable here. Like you rent all the equipment and everything else, just basically chilling on a beach, right? You know, and renting an Airbnb on a beach for a weekend and just flying back. That's kind of my recharging. Charging batteries that I love.

And how about food? What are, what are some must-have things for people that go to Medellín?

So there's a lot of amazing restaurants. Like, I think, honestly speaking, I think Bogotá has a better selection just because it's larger and there's a lot of international restaurants there for a better selection. But you can't go wrong with the, you know, the, the typical Colombian foods here. Like, you know, pay $8 and get your sancocho soup. You got your arroz, carnes, Pollos, you know, and salada, huge plate of food that normally would make you fat, but the food is so good here. It's like, it's kind of like sushi, you know, it doesn't stick around and you're hungry about an hour later because the food is so natural and it's like, it doesn't have any preservatives or GMOs, you know?

Yeah.

You know, so you don't really see too many fat people here, which is, which is interesting, but you eat a lot. That's great.

Uh, Chad, if people want to get in touch with you. How can they find you?

Yeah, better on my LinkedIn. I'm sure you'll have my LinkedIn on the profile. It's best to contact me there, uh, email, what have you. If you're, you're looking to hire influencers here in Latin America or UGC creators, I'd love to set up a call with you, explain how everything works. It's a very new thing. So there's a lot of kind of trial and error, maybe distrust, but it's a huge opportunity for those risk averse.

Awesome. Chad, a real pleasure having you on the show. Thanks for sharing your story. And thanks to our sponsor, Plug Technologies, plugg.tech. Great way to connect talent from all over Latin America with US companies. This is the Nearshore Cafe podcast. We'll see you next time.