Getting a startup off the ground in Colombia is a lot easier than it used to be. Getting one to a Series A is a different story.
KPMG’s Colombia Tech Report 2025–2026 counted 2,295 active startups in the country last year, up 9.3% on 2024. Good news, mostly. But BBVA Spark went through the same report and worked out that only about one in ten Colombian startups goes from seed funding to a Series A within 36 months. The report puts a lot of that down to gaps in the funding cycle. Early money is hard to find, and there isn’t much liquidity around for reinvesting once it’s been found.
So what would get more companies past that point? That was more or less the brief for “Colombia and the Next Innovation Cycle,” a panel at the Horasis Global Summit in Medellín this week. Mike Hoey, Founder of Source Meridian, was one of the speakers, alongside a fairly mixed group from Colombia’s business and startup world.
Who was speaking
Andrés Arias came from the Medellín Chamber of Commerce, where he’s a director. Fernando Cárdenas is CEO of LIFT Growth & Innovation, and Said Navi Lamk Beltrán is executive director of RENATA.
Then there were the people actually running startups, Mario Alejandro Muñetón (co-founder and CEO of Wheelo), Angie Ortega (CEO and co-founder of Zentrack) and Camilo Tobón Villa, who founded SoloMode. Orion Vargas, who teaches law at Universidad de Medellín, chaired.
Two questions, and one that matters more
The organisers gave the panel two questions. What actually helps a startup go from experimenting to scaling? And how does Colombia become an innovation hub that can compete globally?
The second one comes up at a lot of summits. The first is more useful, and that one-in-ten figure is a good reason to keep asking it.
Horasis’s session notes list access to capital, digital transformation and innovation within specific sectors as the things that have helped the ecosystem so far. They also say sustainable scaling is now one of its biggest challenges, especially as innovation gets tied more closely to Colombia’s long-term development plans.
A broader conversation about Colombia’s innovation ambitions
Hoey’s participation brought an international business perspective to a conversation centred on Colombia’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. As founder of Source Meridian, he joined a panel that connected local ecosystem leaders and startup founders with the broader question of how Colombia can strengthen its position in the global innovation landscape.
The session formed part of the Horasis Global Summit, held in Medellín from November 10 to 12 under the theme “Building Tomorrow.” Co-hosted by the City of Medellín, the event brought together international business leaders, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and other participants for discussions on economic development, technology and social progress.
For Colombia, the questions raised by the panel point to a challenge that extends beyond startup creation.
Building a globally competitive innovation hub also requires an environment in which companies can develop and contribute to the country’s long-term economic priorities.
