Maximiliano González Kunz, CEO of Neutrón, spoke with PRESENTE about the positive impact of technology on everyday life, the benefits that the passage of the Knowledge Economy Law will bring, and the mentoring and acceleration of innovative start ups with promising futures.
How was Neutrón formed and what does it do?
I am the founder of several technology companies. I have always been involved in entrepreneurship, innovation, technology and services. I believe Neutrón is the synthesis, or the evolution, of everything I have done in my career, because it came about naturally. The truth is that, being something of a technology reference in Mar del Plata, where I was born and where most of my companies are headquartered, entrepreneurs or acquaintances with an idea or a start up would always come to me asking for an opinion or to see whether I wanted to contribute in some way. I had been doing it in a more amateur, less organized way, and one day I thought about putting together something bigger. This is related to several factors. On the one hand, for some time now, many entrepreneurs and business people from Mar del Plata and I have been promoting it as the city of the knowledge economy. In fact, the Mar del Plata City Council is very close to approving what will become the technology district, like the one in Parque Patricios in the City of Buenos Aires and many others across the country. It is an ordinance that will give Mar del Plata a whole ecosystem, since it will be a knowledge economy city, with five universities offering technology degrees. Here we have CONICET, with more than a thousand researchers, many incubators related to biotechnology, audiovisual companies, and more than 80 ICT companies that make up Aticma. All of this will create an environment that will generate momentum and give strength to Mar del Plata and the entire region to attract the talent that is here. There should be room for everything: from degree programs to the possibility of having the qualified human resources that may be lacking today, and from there projecting ourselves to the world. So, tied to that project, which is a reality, tied to what I have always done, plus what I mentioned earlier about my opportunities to invest in or help some entrepreneurs, Neutrón was born as an incubator and accelerator. We call it that because the dynamics lead us to generate some incubations. It was created in the same building, in a separate space, but within the whole environment around the Grupo Núcleo headquarters building, and in a location inside what will be the technology district. Today it has 900 square meters, which we will most likely expand to 1,800 this year. And that would be the visible side of Neutrón. In reality, it is much more. But that is what gave it the most visibility.
Do you offer mentoring services?
It is a place where we are accelerating entrepreneurs and mentoring many of them, or “synergizing“. It is a collaborative space: they are given a space that includes their workstation, infrastructure, meeting and training rooms, but where they also build synergies with a whole ecosystem. Since we have contact with the big technology brands — we have signed agreements with Google, Amazon, Intel and Lenovo — synergy and support develop for these small start ups, in addition to all the know how I have gained over these 20 years of organizing companies, creating business plans, working in technology, being able to go a bit further. Sometimes there is a very good idea and a very good entrepreneur, but building a company has other dimensions. It means building teams, a long-term vision, synergies with other players. And that is where I think we add value. But the reality is that today we are accelerating companies that are not physically at Neutrón, many that are not in Mar del Plata, and we are analyzing and forming alliances with companies in Argentina and elsewhere in the world. It is like creating a lighthouse that sheds some light on entrepreneurship from here, because we love our city, because we believe it has enormous potential for the knowledge economy, but it goes beyond that.
What benefits do you think the Knowledge Economy Law will bring to the sector?
It is obvious that the law is very important for Argentina: the export potential it brings, which is exponential and could be bigger than Vaca Muerta, and the number and quality of jobs that can be created with this law and everything that now needs to be done. But I think it is important that the law now starts to filter down to the provinces, the cities, and the many hubs across the country, because a lot of provinces are betting on the knowledge economy. It should be a comprehensive plan and, since we always talk about a federal Argentina, this sector is where that can best be demonstrated. Hubs can be created like the ones in Mar del Plata, Tandil, Mendoza, Misiones and Córdoba, and in many other places where young people might not have to leave.
How do you think we can boost the knowledge industry?
In Mar del Plata and in cities in the interior, it often happens that young people end up leaving because there are no opportunities for them, no jobs, so they end up leaving. I think that in our case we have a beautiful city to live in, with many assets like the sea, good access and good connectivity by both road and air. It has many facets that give it great potential. And if we manage to create an environment where these young people can have suitable degree programs, find quality jobs, have an idea and someone to support them so they can take their product to the world, that will help places like this and regional economies grow. The good thing about this sector, unlike agriculture for example, is that you don't need to be there. You can really build a technology hub anywhere; what you need is talent, degree programs, and to make kids see from an early age that there are job prospects in this field. That they come closer, find out more, perhaps move away from traditional careers because today they may be saturated with professionals or have fewer job openings, and see that this market has plenty. In fact, it is a market that, in Argentina and worldwide, has a great need for this talent and offers many jobs. That is the challenge of the knowledge economy law. Besides generating value and the export dollars the country needs so much, it can create a very important federal economy.
Something we recently launched with Neutrón was an Esports team called eBro, whose main manager is Juan Sebastián Verón. Let's say it is an alliance we achieved with “la bruja”, a leading figure from La Plata with an enormous sports and management track record; we managed to make Mar del Plata the team's home base. Beyond creating this project in a different area, which is the gaming revolution the world has seen recently, we want to reach young people. It is a way to bring the young people of our city closer to technology. We want this to bring them closer to Neutrón, to technology, and perhaps they will end up enrolling in a programming degree or one of the other fields. A concrete case: we are looking at moving forward with the first acceleration of some young people about to graduate as video game programmers from the Da Vinci school, who brought us a proposal for a game they have almost finished, to see if we could help complete and commercialize it. And this came out of the eBro initiative. The reality is that the knowledge economy has so many interesting facets that I believe it can be very important for Mar del Plata, but also for every city and for the country. It has been shown that salaries in the knowledge economy are well above average, that there is also a great need for this type of work today, and that there is the possibility of exporting these offerings. Everything I mention are initiatives that come from being close to entrepreneurs whom the State may not reach, and from the private side, in a public-private partnership, something can be created that may end up revolutionizing a given industry. We are currently analyzing 10 companies of different kinds.
Do you think the current situation accelerated technologization?
With the Knowledge Economy Law, the country presents itself to the world as a country that believes in the knowledge industry. Some things are concrete and tangible, and some have to do with perceptions. For an entrepreneur or a technology company, being in a country that does not believe in this industry is not the same as being in one where there is a nationwide political direction to support it and to believe that the future lies there. That creates momentum, investment and bets on an industry that can grow. Then there are the real things. All the incentives in the law, the tax exemptions supporting entrepreneurs, are things that make Argentina and the companies based here competitive with the rest of the world. There are still some issues to settle, because we compete against the world and each country has different incentives for this industry. But the good thing is that the entire political and business spectrum now knows there is an important industry to develop and support. In addition, many actions are being taken by both the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Production, which are launching many programs to support entrepreneurship. One is Innova Space, which is essential for a small start up. Having access to mentoring, support and financing is very important. From there, if we can get the provinces and municipalities on board, as is the case of Mar del Plata, with training programs so young people study these degrees, all of that creates synergy between the public and private sectors. On its own, if there is a political direction for schools and municipalities to develop talent and encourage young people to study these degrees, and there are career plans for those young people, there are incentives for entrepreneurship; that is, a law that, while you invest, hire staff and provide training, gives you tax incentives and programs to grow your companies. The private sector makes its investment, its bet, which always carries risk, but that is part of what we in the private sector have to do; if that is achieved, I believe Argentina has an impressive future.
What projects do you have this year with the companies Neutrón brings together?
One company we are accelerating is Deitres, in the IoT field, which has two products. It is a company that has been on the market for a couple of years and, unlike others, already has its products launched and growing according to its business plan. It has a device that replaces the traditional home alarm panel and creates a private communication network that makes communication with the alarm monitoring center more efficient and lowers communication costs; on top of that, a complete app was developed for the end user that gives them a connected environment for their home. This creates a smart home where you control the cameras, the light sensors, the door openings. And this can be done with your own control or through traditional monitored alarm providers. This product has been on the market for a couple of years, and we are now taking its business plan to Latin America. It has already launched in Colombia and Mexico, and will launch in the rest of the countries in the region. The previous milestone was building this app and, unlike traditional approaches, creating something where users can actually experience the technology solution. Because sometimes there are great solutions that users have no reason to understand, and they are not user-friendly. Here they achieved a one hundred percent user-friendly product. Deitres' big launch for 2021 is a smart meter that would replace the traditional household electricity meter and create a private communication network, giving both the user and the electric utility consumption information for smart energy use. Lots of features and information, which is where the world is heading, and which can create a smart home and make energy use efficient, something extremely important for Argentina and the world. That is one of the important companies we are accelerating, with a lot of potential this year.
We are also accelerating Andrómeda, a software company. It already operates in Argentina and Latin America. In fact, it already has offices in Miami, Buenos Aires, Tandil and Mar del Plata. It already has very important private clients in the banking system. It has a biometric engine that streamlines the entire banking onboarding process. As a collaborative project during the pandemic, it launched a platform called “Testeate“, created to help. For example, it was donated to the Municipality of Mar del Plata to support testing and everything related to video calls and remote medical care, in order to manage the growth of potential COVID infections. And it has many solutions. It is a highly developed software factory with its own product that is beginning to build synergies with the other companies. For example, one of Neutrón's launches this summer is BlackID, an app that brings modernity to the food service and entertainment industry, and it was developed by a team of Neutrón entrepreneurs together with Andrómeda on the software side. This drives development in nightlife. These developments are very important in the current context because they bring organization, but I believe they are also very relevant for future development.
Source: https://presenterse.com/neutron-la-tecnologia-como-forma-de-vida/