Indigo Financiera

Mexico-U.S. hometown clubs and social networks

Liz Ryan blogs on Indigo and Tierra Natal in her October posting of "Mexico-U.S. hometown clubs and social networks.

She writes about the growing hometown association movement:

"I say politically active, because the formation of HTAs is a grassroots movement awakening to the huge amount of power it has. Mexican-Americans send more than $23 billion a year to Mexico, mostly through individual and family ties. The HTAs or Clubs de Oriundos, by consolidating some of that money, are gaining political power. We'll see in the next few years how blogs and social network software will help that process. Other countries may also begin using social software to make the power of their remittance economies more transparent."

A Platform for HTAs - Tierra Natal

While this blog has been somewhat dormant, my efforts toward creating new models for productive investment through hometown associations (HTAs) have not.  One of the outcomes of the behind-the-scenes work is my involvement with a new social networking startup called Tierra Natal.

Tierra Natal is the brainchild of Liliana Miranda Townshend.   Liliana and her family are originally from Jocotopec, Jalisco, Mexico.  She has spent most of her life in California and her background includes high tech entrepreneurship.  Her parents are part of the active Jocotopec community in California and she initially built a website, www.jocotopec.com so her parents could communicate with the larger Jocotopec diaspora.

Northern Californian Jaliscan HTAs welcome Governor of Jalisco in Silicon Valley

It's been a bit of a whirlwind week in Silicon Valley for the Northern Californian Federation of Jaliscan Clubs.  This emerging umbrella organization of hometown associations, in partnership with Hispanic-Net and TierraNatal, hosted representatives from the governor's office of the state of Jalisco.  The prestigious law firm of Fenwick & West was kind enough to provide the venue for Tuesday evening's kick off presentation.  Over 60 club presidents plus governor's entourage and Hispanic-Net members gathered for the largest HTA meeting of its kind in Northern California. 

Tierra Natal and HTAs

I had the opportunity to witness the formation of the Northern California Federation of Jaliscan Clubs at the invitation of Liliana Miranda Townshend, board member of the Jaliscan federation, a Jocotopec HTA president and founder of Tierra Natal, an online social networking site for HTAs and their members.  I've known Liliana for almost 8 years now, having incubated her first startup, Tuzona, when I ran the Women's Technology Cluster (now known as Astia).

Hometown Associations Organize in Northern California

On a quiet Saturday morning, over 15 HTA leaders from Modesto to Eureka, Sacramento and the East Bay travelled to meet at the law offices of McDermott Will & Emery in Palo Alto to form the new Federacion of Jaliscan Clubes de California Norte.  Over fresh fruit and juices provided by the HTA presidents, lawyers from McDermott set up Powerpoint presentations as they educated the audience on the ins and outs of non-profit incorporation, technology, email, websites and the internet.

Why Hispanics Don't Use Banks - Part 2

 

In my work on Indigo and  m-Via, I often run into the received wisdom that Hispanics don't trust banks. It has become the catch-all reason to explain product failures in financial services. Why did Bank of America withdraw their SafeSend product? Well, you know, Hispanics just don't trust banks. The other assumption is that, 'well, Hispanic immigrants aren't very financially literate.' If they were smarter, it would be obvious to use banks. And while there is an element of truth to both assumptions, it doesn't tell the whole story and it may cause you to give up too soon. After all, it's much easier to blame the customer than to acknowledge that your product design or market strategy was in error.

A Matter of Dignity

Recently a friend shared a recent banking experience.  My friend, Clara,  is an undocumented worker who makes her living cleaning houses.  Her current employer is a wealthy woman with an 8 bedroom mansion in an exclusive suburb in Silicon Valley.   

Her employer recently paid her by check before leaving town.  Clara and her co-worker, the other cleaning woman (it takes two women to clean this house every week), went to the local bank from which the check was drawn thinking that would be the most efficient way to get their money. 

New Horizon Investment Club

In my previous post I discussed the vision of small groups organized as hometown associations becoming the source of investment capital for their communities of origin.  This summer I had the pleasure of meeting José Francisco Ávila, a Hondoran immigrant who is the founder of the New Horizon Investment Club, a group composed of Afro-Caribean Honduran immigrants who have pooled their capital to make productive investments.

A Vision of Grassroots Venture Capital

When I was a venture capitalist, I was often asked what it would take to create a venture capital industry in Mexico or Indonesia or just about anywhere outside of Silicon Valley.   There were often many very good reasons why it couldn't or hadn't happen - deal flow, amount of money that needed to be invested, cost of managing a fund, a service provider ecosystem, etc. 

2. Vision and Mission

Our Vision

• Create a for profit solidarity branded, high volume, low cost financial services company for unbanked diaspora communities

• Create a non-profit micro-equity venture fund that makes successful and profitable investments in microfinance institutions and small and medium size enterprises founded or managed by transnational workers or entrepreneurs in their communities of origin.

Our Mission

• To transform transnational workers from passive senders of money to active grass-roots micro-investors for their home countries.