When Janma Bardi talks about herself, she doesn’t start with Volcano Summit. He talks about his faith, his family and a word that appears again and again during the conversation: serve. He says he always found satisfaction in helping others, long before he thought about building businesses or communities.
He also talks about sports. He grew up playing as a team and believes that there he learned one of the lessons that has most marked his career: important things are rarely built alone.
That way of looking at the world, she says, was born long before she became an entrepreneur. She grew up surrounded by entrepreneurial grandparents and parents, working since she was a child in the family businesses and understanding that a company could also be a way to create opportunities for other people. But starting out of necessity completely changed that outlook.
At the age of 17, following personal situations, Janma had to start generating income to support her family. What began as an act of survival ended up becoming the experience that would define the purpose of his life.
From entrepreneurship for survival to entrepreneurship with purpose
Janma often says that fire brings out the best colors in people. His first company failed when he was 19 years old. He had already started a business, was studying at university and, at the same time, carried the financial responsibility of his family. Looking back, he admits that for a long time he only thought about surviving.
“My star was raising my family. My whole life was dedicated to thinking about economic survival”
Over the years he built a group of companies and achieved stability, but something remained incomplete. The answer came during a master’s degree in entrepreneurship.
There he discovered the concept of Start With Whyby Simon Sinek, and understood that many of the companies he had built were not aligned with his purpose.
He made a radical decision. Return to Guatemala, sell or close most of your businesses and start again.
“When I connected with my purpose I said: I’m going to go back and sell most of my companies to build only projects aligned with that.”
That purpose was summed up in a phrase that Volcano guides today: Transform lives and societies through inspiration and collaboration.
Build an ecosystem, not just an event
Months after that decision he met Yossi Vardi, one of the promoters of Israel’s technological ecosystem. He had been helping build innovation communities around the world for decades, but had not yet worked in Latin America.
Janma saw an immediate opportunity. I didn’t want to bring an international event to the region. I wanted to build a meeting point for Latin America. This is how Volcano Summit was born.
• What did you want to build with Volcano Summit?
“We wanted a neutral place where all of Latin America and the rest of the world will meet. A space where a conversation could become a partner, an investor or a new project”
Six editions later, he assures that the meeting has facilitated more than 6,000 connections between founders, investors, corporates and technological leaders, mobilizing more than US$1.50 million in investment opportunities for the region. But for Janma, the numbers are not the most important thing. The important thing is to build trust.
“It is not competition that is going to take us far. It is collaboration”
That conviction also explains why Volcano Summit is held in Guatemala. More than a geographical decision, it was a symbolic commitment: to create a space where North America, Central America and South America could meet on equal terms.
The next decade of Latin America begins with confidence
If Janma could summarize the biggest challenge of the Latin American ecosystem in a single word, it would be trust.
He cites a World Bank study that shows that only one in ten people in the region trust another person in their same environment. For her, this trust deficit is one of the main barriers to economic development.
“Social capital is the economic infrastructure that we need to build”
That’s why insists that the future of Latin America will depend less on competing between countries and more about learning to collaborate as a region.
He is also optimistic about the technological moment that the continent is experiencing. Consider that artificial intelligence democratized access to building companies and that there has never been a better time to start a business…
…especially in industries like fintech, agtech and edtech.
• What would you say today to someone who is starting out?
«Get started. Make a mistake. Today technology has democratized access so much that there has never been a better time to build something.”
When he imagines Volcano in ten years, he doesn’t first talk about stages or assistants.
Talk about a million connections between people. From founders who found a partner, investors who bet on a Latin American entrepreneur or companies that were born because two people coincided in a conversation.
For Janma, that is the true impact of building an ecosystem. Not organizing an event. Create a space where the future of Latin America can begin with a conversation.
