Sao Paulo, Brazil and the San Francisco Bay Area are many miles apart, both literally in terms of distance, and figuratively in terms of culture. But one tech startup called Predicta is taking on the challenge of bridging the gap.
The Sao Paulo-based company, which makes a technology platform to help brands and small and medium businesses build optimized websites for different visitors, this week opened its first office in San Francisco as a hub to sell its SiteApps platform here in the United States. Predicta, which has 150 staffers in Brazil and expects to ramp up to some $60 million in revenue in the next few years (its 2011 sales were reportedly $12 million), is one of the buzzier companies in the Sao Paulo tech landscape.
Overall, it seems that we keep hearing more and more about the heating up of Brazil’s startup scene, from Silicon Valley venture capitalists focusing on the space and razor-sharp entrepreneurs emerging from the area. So we asked Predicta’s co-founder and chief innovation officer Philip Klien to stop by TechCrunch TV while he was in town this week to talk about all that’s going on.
Watch the video embedded above to hear about why a startup like Predicta would invest the time and money to planing a flag here in California, how the American entrepreneurial attitude differs from Brazil’s (failure is much more of an option here), what regulatory issues should be tackled to let Brazilian tech really flourish, and more.