MercadoLibre and Why South America Shouldn’t Settle for Quick and Easy

Back before Brazil was the darling economy of Latin America, all eyes were on Argentina—or at least the dot com “eyeballs” were. In the late 1990s, when VCs, private equity houses and wealthy individuals where throwing Internet money around the globe, Argentina got more than its fair share. The relatively small country was home to the fifth-largest number of registered Internet domain names in the world, and in early 2000 the now-defunct Industry Standard estimated that some 50% of the Latin America’s Web startups were concentrated in Argentina. Of course, when the Nasdaq crashed, most of those global investments did as well. Just like in India , investors bailed on funding commitments happy to write off their far-flung bets and move on. Left in a lurch, most of these Latin American companies went out of business, many others sold, and one— just one —went public on the Nasdaq.