Episode 5: Courtney McColgan, Founder and CEO of Runa, Tech for Small and Mid-Cap Businesses - when to de-risk and when to rebuid

Fiftyfaces Focus - The Last Frontier: Diverse Founders and VCs

In this special episode - part of our Latin American voices series, we return to our discussion with Courtney McColgan, for a new discussion. We spoke in June 2023 about her role as founder and CEO at Runa, a Mexico City based firm that offers a complete cloud-based HR and payroll software solution designed for small to medium-sized companies in Latin America. You can listen to that here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7ljfcVwBTMyrN9q5Z48Uej?si=966c37e4aaa84199
I wanted to ask Courtney back now, two years later, to discuss what has changed in the intervening period and to provide a snapshot of the state of technology in Latin-America at present.
We check in as to the impact of the last few years, the persistence of inflation and the uncertainty of today's geopolitics on Mexico and small and mid size companies in particular.
She reflects on the explosion of AI over the last two years and the experience of being a founder during uncertain times. She discusses this de-risked approach to raising money and the reminder that all money raised has to be returned.