Original post by Laura Baverman via UPSTART
Andres Moreno moved his startup from Venezuela to Silicon Valley in 2006, with hopes of raising funds and making it big. By all definitions, Open English has done just that.
With 60,000 Latin American people learning English on its online platform and $55 million in venture capital funds, Moreno is upending the traditional, time-intensive and costly bricks-and-mortar language education industry.
But it isn’t in Silicon Valley where the company thrives. It’s Miami.
Moreno moved Open English to Miami three years ago to take advantage of a multicultural talent pool and easy access to the countries he planned to target—Brazil, Colombia, Panama, his native Venezuela.
“People don’t understand the Latin American Hispanic market in the Bay area,” Moreno tells me. “They think of immigrants moving to the U.S., not a burgeoning LatAm middle class.”
