Venezuela: The Most Exciting High-Risk Talent Market?

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I'm Brian Sampson, your host. Today we are going to dive into the highest reward, highest risk nearshore story out there. And that's Venezuela's reopening. Before I get into it, this podcast is sponsored by Plug Technologies, plugg.tech, a way to connect talent from all over Latin America with growing US companies. So we all know what happened January 3rd. Venezuela had their leader, Nicolás Maduro, captured undetected by the US military in, out, and we are looking at a sleeping giant. This is a country that for decades and decades was just poorly mismanaged. A small fraction of the population thrived and a huge percentage of the Venezuelans suffered. And I will come out and say that I am all for the capture of Maduro. I know there's a lot of debate online of, you know, was it our place to go in there or not? But if you ask the average Venezuelan, either those that are still there or those who have left, nearly everyone is complimentary, if not ecstatic about the prospects of new beginnings. Why was this such a big deal to Venezuelans? Well, let me tell you more about what the country looked like before the capture of Maduro, and then we're going to talk more about what it looks like post-capture and if you are looking to hire and grow, why Venezuela is a really exciting country to take a look at. So under Maduro, you've got a hardcore authoritarian regime, repression of civil rights, high prisoner counts. I mean, the condition of the prisons was terrible. No real rule of law. You know, a lot of things we take for granted in the US. Didn't really exist. And it's interesting when you look at countries that have very minimal resources, natural resources, like take Singapore, for example, or Japan, these countries are mega economic powers. They've got to import almost everything. I mean, even water in Singapore. And then you've got a country like Venezuela that has arguably the largest oil reserves in the world. And you know, depends on is it, you know, heavy crude or light or, you know, there's all different types of oil. But this was a massive opportunity for US companies a long time ago. But they had their, you know, you're looking at Exxon, Chevron, companies like that, and they had all their assets seized. They couldn't operate. They lost billions of dollars. You have these sanctions that the US has tried to put on. Kind of two different economies between dollarized elites in the broad public sector, massive infrastructure decay, just a really rough place. So you had people that were just suffering long, long breadlines, worthless currency. They didn't really have access to opportunities outside the country. Not everyone can leave. Not everyone can pack up their SUV and just move to a different country. A lot of people are kind of stuck there. Whatever cash they had has lost all its value due to rampant inflation. Think about, let's say you had $1,000 in the bank and over the course of 5 years, that $1,000 is now worth $2. That's kind of what it was like to be in Venezuela. We talk about the breadlines, we had people just scrapping for any kind of food they could find, eating out of dumpsters, just awful, awful, and afraid to say anything, afraid to protest. And it wasn't really a democratically run election. Maduro lost by all accounts, but retained power. So just a really, really rough place to be. And the interesting thing though is that, you still have all this highly educated talent that existed from prior decades. Venezuela has amazing English fluency, a sleeping giant of 28 million people, highly educated, eager to work. But again, they just couldn't get on these opportunities. And you know, you've got the geopolitics aspect of it. Russia wanted influence, China wanted influence, America wanted influence, but then it would use sanctions to try to get what it wanted. So just like a really complicated place. But about 6 weeks ago, as we talked about, this podcast is being recorded on February 18th. So this is about 6 weeks after the capture, and it is a new era. There's been prisoner releases. US aid is now coming in, medical shipments, military ships with hospitals, all sorts of supplies, trying to reignite the economy, trying to create an environment where oil companies and really any kind of company wants to reinvest. These are companies with enormous amounts of capital that they want to inject into the market. They want to build infrastructure, extract the oil, and these are things that you know, you might say, hey, you know, the US is only there for the oil, but you could also argue Venezuelans weren't getting any of the proceeds of that anyway. Now they have a free and fair shot at life to pursue happiness. And for the US's risk in all this, the oil companies, US oil companies will hopefully benefit. But remember, many of them lost billions of dollars when they were kind of kicked out. Excuse me. So as we start to think about this new beginning, this new opportunity, I think what's really going to happen is in addition to more and more opportunities with American companies and also Latin American companies deciding to invest, you're looking at modernization, more infrastructure, more technology, access to internet. Now we've got Starlink thanks to Elon Musk and different things there. We also have more investment in infrastructure, food systems, agriculture, machinery, logistics, ports, grids. There's a lot that takes a country to run, and a country like Venezuela where they just weren't investing, everything was decaying. This is a chance for new life, and there's something exciting about that because, you know, even when I think about Asia right now, in many cases they leapfrogged a lot of the old technology. You know, like Vietnam seemed to go from bicycles and no technology to now this young, thriving country where everyone's got a mobile phone, mobile apps, and you know, they're, they kind of skipped all the need for maintenance and decay and reviving the infrastructure because they didn't have it to begin with. It's kind of like where, where Venezuela could be. You could kind of fast forward and skip and just be the beneficiary of all these brand new technologies today. All right. So we talked a lot about infrastructure, which is very, very much required for a thriving society. But I also want to hit on just the talent. Oh my gosh. You've got the BPO industry is ripe, perfect time zone. We talked about the bilingual capabilities. Venezuela is very close to the States as well. So it's a little more Americanized. They understand American culture. They can go off script, outside the box. They're problem solvers. Remember, when a population is facing really rough conditions, they learn to be flexible, adaptable, scrappy, and amazing problem solvers. Who doesn't want that? That's what the Venezuela population has right now. Of course, software and IT, there's so many strong engineers there. And as long as you can figure out ways to get them paid, I think you're going to have a very eager opportunity there. And then even with manufacturing, you know, we talk a lot about software engineers, but how about all the other engineers? Petroleum engineers, geothermal engineers, manufacturing, mechanical, industrial, electrical. There's going to be a huge opportunity there. And remember, the education has already been regarded as one of the best in all of Latin America. The time zone is really compatible with Eastern time zone. So think, you know, if you're a company in Florida, New York, Boston, Virginia, you've just turned the switch on a massive labor market, a massive talent market. And if you've been paying attention to this podcast, you've been paying attention to Latin America overall, How does Venezuela compare with some of the others? You know, Mexico is still the country to beat when it comes to manufacturing. It's really replaced China, you know, quite a bit. Colombia is really amazing for services, engineering. Costa Rica, you know, higher stability, higher costs, so you're kind of playing with the arbitrage there. Argentina has always had amazing talent. It's probably the best comparison to Venezuela, you know, where you've got top-tier talent that was held down by an overbearing and incompetent government. And then obviously Brazil, which is the big beast, it's got everything, but you know, you're also dealing with the most regulated, complicated place to do business with. So in closing, I would say this is the most exciting, high-risk, high-reward talent market out there. I highly encourage you to take a look at Venezuela. If you are interested in learning how to tap into this, how to recruit some of this talent, how to contact some of this talent, how to pay some of this talent, Plug, our sponsor, is there. And Plug can help you operate in this country and access the talent and give you enormous value. Because that's why we're all here. If you want the cheapest talent in the world, I'll always refer you to Asia. But if you want the most valuable talent in the world, Latin America, Venezuela, this is a really exciting time. Thanks again for listening to the Nearshore Cafe podcast. Again, I'm Brian Sampson, your host, and this podcast is sponsored by Plug Technologies, plugg.tech. Great way to connect talent from all over Latin America. With growing US companies. Thanks again.