CubaTrade-April2017-FLIPBOOK

I have potential here.
These days in Cuba
there are a lot of
opportunities
Photos on both pages by David Ramos Casin
The New Wave: Bernardo Romero, founder of the IT startup InGenius
Startup: The InGenius workshop in Havana
years ago, Romero has added one more employee and expanded
his office. Thanks to a new wifi hotspot, he gets reception in his
office and no longer has to run to the park to communicate with
clients. Still, the majority of his customers are smaller companies
“because of the conditions we have [here]—the payment method
and slow internet,” said Romero. “Small businesses have more
flexibility to work within our limitations.”
Romero was also a winner of 10x10k, a competition by the
Cuba Emprende Foundation and #CubaNow that brought a
group of ten startups to the U.S. for a two-week accelerator program.
His new project, Cubazon, is an online marketplace that
allows people outside of Cuba to order items produced by the
Cuban entrepreneurs, for delivery anywhere on the island.
The Internet Throttle
Insiders are quick to point out that programmers and coders
don’t need the internet to do their jobs. But the lack of connection
limits entrepreneurs, who are the ones creating the need for
a local tech industry. When Cuba Emprende and #CubaNow
co-sponsored their 10x10k contest to support tech startups, they
were flooded with proposals for apps and websites geared toward
the service industry: advertising platforms, B&B finders, cultural
guides, platforms to connect freelancers with clients, “all kinds of
stuff that you’d see in a developing economy,” said McIntire.
But the developing economy can only grow as fast as it’s
communications system. “The poor people in the Airbnb,” Caulfield
told Cuba Trade. “It’s very frustrating [for] them because
they have to go out into the park every day to see who’s registered,
and they’re often running into problems where they get
double booked because they can’t be online all the time.”
If the government wanted to provide Cubans with internet
access, “they could do it tomorrow,” said Caulfield. “They could
certainly purchase the technology, and there’s plenty of people
offering it to them. It’s just that so far they are reluctant to go
there.”
The Cuban government understands the economic necessity
of improving communications, “but they’re very worried,” Caulfield
told Cuba Trade. Because internet access undermines the government’s
monopoly on information, “They’re constantly back and
forth between opening it up a little [and] kind of restricting it.”
Growing Pains
As Cuba emerges from a completely state-controlled economy to
one with a stronger private sector, there will be inevitable growing
pains as the old methods give way to the new. It is a two-stepforward,
one-step-back process of evolving economic models. As
part of this process, one of the challenges faced by the high-tech
entrepreneurs of Cuba is just how public they can make themselves
as independent, private businesses.
“Unfortunately, as soon as something gets a lot of international
publicity, that the government is not running itself, it
causes problems,” Caulfield told Cuba Trade. “This is just part of
the reality of living in Cuba.”
If the government wanted to provide
Cubans with internet access, “they
could do it tomorrow
John Caulfield, co-founder, Innovadores Foundation
Last August, for example, a much-anticipated startup weekend
organized by the Merchise Startup Circle was shut down a
day before the event, all of the hotels suddenly claiming “technical
problems.” Earlier that spring Stripe Atlas, a U.S. firm that
helps internet businesses get started, announced it was partnering
with Merchise to help Cuban entrepreneurs gain access to bank
accounts and accept payments from all over the world.
The deal gained considerable international attention, and
President Obama even mentioned Merchise during a speech
in Havana. But following this burst of international attention,
Merchise was erased from Cuban media.
On the other hand, Cuba’s underground railroad of digital
entertainment—El Paquete (the packet), a collection of video and
music transferred by flash drives—has for years been distributed
across the island without government interference. At last year’s
eMerge technology conference in Miami, one of the Paquete’s
founders said this tolerance was based on the absence of anything
political in the content.
It’s not certain what this means for young entrepreneurs
who are learning how to brand themselves, or for the new waves
of students graduating from such academic powerhouses as the
Universidad Tecnológica de la Habana José Antonio Echeverría,
named after the famed student leader who died during the
Revolution.
“Most of the entrepreneurs that we work with are the ones
that are willing to be a little more public in what they’re doing,”
Matusky said of the Innovadores interns. “So a lot of them are
kind of developing apps, are developing websites, and are deliberately
generating press and generating a little bit of attention.”
It’s a “much riskier proposition,” said Matusky, as opposed
to working under the table in the grey market—but it is happening.
“I’m seeing guys that were doing just the independent
software development, and now they’re seeing that other people
are being successful trying to make apps, and they’re able to talk
about it, the government isn’t shutting them down. And so I
think that now people are starting to take a little bit more risk
and try new things.”
So far the mission of the Innovadores Foundation, which is
to foster onshore businesses and create a reason for talented graduates
to stay in Cuba, seems well aligned with the interests of the
government. “That’s why I think we’ve been allowed to operate
as we are,” said Matusky, “and why we’re still hopeful about our
program and our internship.” H
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