The following is StartupDigest‘s fourth edition of “Your Guide to the Startup World” with Bedy, Diego, and Yuri, who I met at the Startup Weekend Sao Paulo.

Why should a startup thinking about moving to a new place choose Brazil?

It’s very clear that the Brazilian economy is a huge global opportunity. Brazil is part of the BRIC nations,  it has 80,000,000 internet users, 200,000,000 inhabitants, and the economy is growing at 8.8% per annum (one of the highest rates in the world).

And even with this huge opportunity the economy here is virtually untapped by foreign and national entrepreneurs. It’s unique culture, language dominated by Portuguese, and lack of investment makes it a difficult market to reach initially.

But Brazil is currently being  looked at heavily by outside VC’s, hedge funds, and PE firms. People and capital want to know what is going on inside Brazil and take advantage of the opportunities here.

What are some examples of successful companies that were started here?

	VideoLog was the first video sharing platform in the world, even before YouTube.

What are some of the organizations that are big supporters of the Sao Paulo startup community?

Brazil Innovators – Links together Silicon Valley founders and Brazilian founders through events, tours, and initiatives. This group is also the one who organized the Startup Weekend here in Brazil.

Aceleradora – A mentor network in Brazil who advises tech startups on early stage funding and product development.

FGV – A University where all of the top executives of public companies come from. They started an entrepreneurship center in 2004 which has been influencial in brings angels into the conversation in Brazil.

Sebrae – A national insititution, dedicated to supporting entreprenuership of all types.

Endeavor – Is the Kauffman Foundation for the rest of the world. They work with emerging economies all around the world and help high growth entrepreneurs within them.

What are the best startup events in Sao Paulo?

3 events were repeated over and over again as the best ones in Sao Paulo. They are:

1. Campus Party – A huge event bringing 6,000+ geeks together to celebrate, hack, and work.
2. “Startup Meetup” – Held in every major city of Brazil. It brings together one famous founder to speak to a crowd of 200+ inspiring entrepreneurs.
3. Startup Weekend – A 54 hour event to experience startup life firsthand. The event here (going on right now) brought together founders from 20+ states in Brazil all to work and build for an entire weekend.

If a group of founders moved to Sao Paulo tomorrow, who are the first 5 people they should meet?

If you could wave a magic wand and change one specific part about your startup community, what would it be?

While the Brazilian economy has huge opportunities it also has big challenges. Here are the 3 points our interviewees, Bedy, Diego, and Yuri, said they would change.

1. The culture to accept more acceptance of risk
2. A permanent place or area to hack and work together. Because of Sao Paulo’s size its hard to get a concentration of startup activity on a continuous basis
3. Not going for the easy money in services but to go for the big opportunity. It’s easy to make several million dollars a year in services here with the large population but it’s hard to build a true global product business.

The following is StartupDigest‘s third edition of “Your Guide to the Startup World” with Linda Lukas, who organized the Aalto Goes to Silicon Valley trip bringing out 50+ Finland startups and entrepreneurs on a tour of Silicon Valley.

Why should a startup thinking about moving to a new place choose Helsinki?

Finland is the epicenter of early open source: companies like MySQL and Linux originate from these northern latitudes. The startup culture here is as transparent and honest as the Finns themselves. For a founder, it’s easy to look for help and resources: Finnish taxpayers gladly support the public funding system and we have a stellar education system with an emphasis on R&D, providing talent-base from cleantech to hightech.

The long holidays, miserable weather and good flight connections to Russia and Asia might also be among the reasons why startups arise from the slush.

What are some examples of successful companies that were started here?

What are some of the organizations that are big supporters of the Helsinki startup community?

Aalto Venture Garage is the hub for entrepreneurs and startups throughout the Baltic Rim.Located on Aalto University’s campus near Helsinki, this 700 sq meter industry hall is an open workspace where entrepreneurs get support from experiences coaches. Bootcamp, run four times ayear, gathers up the best early stage startup founders to learn from the best serial entrepreneursand investors from the region.

ArcticStartup is the journalistic hub for all things entrepreneurial in the Nordic region. It’s thebiggest technology website reviewing and reporting on tech startups and growth entrepreneurs inthe Nordic and Baltic countries.

Vigo is a new type of acceleration programme designed for high-growth startups. The backbone ofthe programme is formed by the Vigo Accelerators, carefully selected independent companies runby internationally proven entrepreneurs and executives. The Accelerators are not consultants –they are co-entrepreneurs who invest in the companies they work with to guarantee common goalsand passionate development effort.

What are the best startup events in Helsinki?

Slush is the number one event of the year. Organised for the third time Slush gathers entrepreneurs around Europe to experience the cold weather, cool keynotes and crazy can-do spirit.

Other events can be found in ArcticStartup – Finland sports an impressive array of meetups rangingfrom Garage DemoDay to Ruby on Rails meetups, MobileDevCamp to Summer of Startups programme. The student entrepreneurship societies are especially active in organising events and nowadays there’s something happening weekly.

If a group of founders moved to Helsinki tomorrow, who are the first 5 people they should meet?

If you could wave a magic wand and change one specific part about your startup community, what would it be?

The most talented students still see a career in a big corporation such as Nokia or public sectorfar more tempting than a one in startup. This is what the Helsinki startup ecosystem is fighting to change.

The following is StartupDigest‘s second edition of “Your Guide to the Startup World” with LA’s own Matt Sandler, Curator of the LA StartupDigest, Project Manager at CitizenNet, and Founder of Chromatik Music, which seeks to revolutionize music learning on the web.

Why should a startup thinking about moving to a new place choose LA?

Los Angeles offers a great deal, both in terms of business opportunities and lifestyle awesomeness. Southern California companies are second to only Silicon Valley in raising venture capital, there are three major universities to recruit talent – UCLA, Caltech, and USC – and a thriving startup community to mingle with. Not to mention the great weather, beaches, and beautiful people.

What are some examples of successful companies that were started here?

What is one organization that a big supporter of the LA startup community?

CoLoft! Run by Cameron and Avesta, CoLoft is a great co-working space by day, and startup hub by night (and early morning, if you’re making waffles for everyone).

What are the best startup events in LA?

It’s been my experience that the more focused and intimate events far ‘out-perform’ (however you’d like to characterize it) the mega-conferences. To name a few – LA Lean Startup, DigitalLA, StartupLA, and DealmakerLA.

If a group of founders moved to LA tomorrow, who are the first 5 people they should meet?

Is there anything else that makes the LA startup community unique?

The LA startup scene isn’t a community that you could (or should) make analogous to the Silicon Valley, as much as some people may try. Los Angeles is a hotbed of creative activity, and not always in the traditional sense. Likewise, the startups coming out of LA aren’t just the ones you see in TechCrunch – there are independent production companies and underground record labels (just to name a few) that are leading innovation in ways that the traditional “startup community” doesn’t always recognize. It’s a pretty incredible vibe down here.