Building the Silicon Valley of Latin America

Impressions from my trip to Prospera

Startup cities are coming to shake up the world.

If governance was an industry, it would be $32 trillion per year (40% of global GDP).

Startup cities offer governance-as-a-service, on a competitive basis. You choose which set of rules and regulations is best for you.

This can make the product better, cheaper and the people that offer it more accountable.

Sounds utopian? It already exists.

The name of one of the first ever startup cities is Prospera.

Prospera is a semi autonomous zone in Honduras, and is building a sustainable economic hub, with tech-enabled good governance as its competitive advantage.

And what better place to do it on than a paradise Caribbean island, Roatan / Honduras.

The idea is compelling. But I wanted to see it with my own eyes.

So I organised a trip for entrepreneurs from around the world. 14 people from Singapore, Germany, the US, Guatemala, Honduras, and Hong Kong made it.

We spoke to the locals about the controversies and opportunities; we presented ideas to Erick A. Brimen, the CEO, and some of those have already started implementation; we walked the building sites of future apartments and pilots of modular buildings.

We ended the information gathering with a pitch competition. 11 people pitched their ideas, including a liquid funding model for monuments and public works (a “physical NFT”), a ATM for buying property, a bitcoin education center, a local taxi app, an upskilling edtech platform, a subscription service for meat deliveries and many more.

The future ecosystem of Prospera is in the making.

And the possibilities are wild!