Episode 75: Crowdstrike’s Fernando Quintero on Business Development in Latin America

In the global IT market, Latin America is lumped into the “rest of the world” category that contributes less than 10% of spending. Overall, the 48 Latin America countries and territories contribute less than 4% to global IT spending, making it a relatively small market.

Nevertheless, Latin America – a composite of South America, Central America and the Caribbean Islands – is a massive market opportunity. The region is home to more than 650 million people, two of the largest economies in the world – Brazil and Mexico, and $10.5 trillion in economic activity annually. The tremendous labor pool and abundant natural resources make Latin America a prime growth opportunity.

Doing business in Latin America isn’t easy, though. Political and economic instability, corruption, regressive import laws, complicated tax codes, high crime areas, and poor infrastructure makes Latin America look like a difficult – if not undesirable – place to do business.

Fernando Quintero, the vice president of Latin America at security vendor Crowdstrike, knows Latin America. A native of Venezuela, Quintero worked in around the Latin America market much of his career. He was a sales representative in Latin America and the Caribbean for Compaq, ran Latin American channels for McAfee, and oversaw Latin America as part of his role as the Americas channel chief at McAfee. Now, he’s developing the Latin America sales and channel go-to-market operation for Crowdstrike.

Quintero joins Pod2112 to share his insights and experiences in developing viable and thriving channel operations in the challenging but lucrative Latin America technology market.