Private investment in public infrastructure can be encouraged when there are multiple avenues to capture and to share the value created by such a project. Gains in the market value of land adjacent to projects are not customarily channeled back into defraying the original capital cost of the project-but they can be. This case uses irrigation, agriculture, land values, and an arrangement between the local government in northern Peru and the privatizer firm to accomplish the irrigation of vast areas of land, leading to jobs and GDP growth in the state, based on a combination of fees for water, auction price for raw land, investment in enabling infrastructure, and market value increases for irrigated land. The mechanics of this three-component deal (land company, water distribution company, construction company) are tracked on a pro forma multi-year cash flow basis with the ability to make and test a variety of different assumptions. The choice of an agricultural setting with one possible use case (farming at ground level) leads in to more complex value capture analyses. Real estate, for example, can have more dimensions (more floors allowed) and more use cases (retail, housing, office) than does agriculture. The local government can accomplish hundreds of millions of dollars of construction without advancing any funds to do so.
IguanaFix is a rapidly scaling Latin American startup that provides an online platform that connects consumers with home improvement contractors. The founders have acquired customers through both B2C and B2B methods. But in seeking to grow and scale the business, they now must make decisions about the relative emphasis on building their consumer brand or its B2B partnerships, and the implications for product offerings and marketing methods ranging from search engine marketing and Facebook ads to sales and account management.
Paez, an Argentine start-up fashion brand, sold traditional alpargatas, a sleepy shoe category that suddenly woke up when U.S. company TOMS borrowed the traditional alpargata design, covered it with fashionable colors and prints, and tied it to a social cause. Paez's founders were keenly aware of the present and future challenges they faced due to the resources and capabilities of their well-capitalized and marketing-savvy competitor. How could a small brand compete against a company that had captured the hearts and minds of consumers? Which brand positioning concept should Paez choose to best capture consumers' attention and interest and compete against TOMS? How would the choice of positioning affect the rollout of Paez' distribution strategy and its product line strategy?
Unique accelerator fund in Latin America, facing challenges on how to keep growing, including development of venture capital fund and leveraging of entrepreneur ecosystem.