Back in February Duncan described Spanish language Sonico as “the biggest social networking site you’ve probably never heard of”. At the time, Sonico had raised to an Alex rank of 167 after just 6 months in operation. And with over 8 million users, it was also a top 50 site in several Latin American countries including Colombia, El Salvador, Bolivia, and Mexico.
Fast forward about four months and Sonico has signed up almost 17 million users (although its Alex rank has dropped a bit to 297). The Argentine startup has also decided to raise its first round of institutional funding – $4.3 million from London-based DN Capital and private investors that include OLX’s Fabrice Grinda and Alec Oxenford, and FON’s Martin Varsavsky.
Sonico is among several Spanish and Portuguese-speaking social networks that have established themselves in Latin America – including Orkut, Hi5, and Wamba – but face increased competition from mainstream American social networks like Facebook and MySpace.
It looks good, too bad there’s no english version.
WOW! That’s fast growth.
There is no way that Facebook will prevail in Latin America without acquiring Sonico or Hi5……that also goes for Google’s Orkut.
No different from eBay getting into Latin America via strategic investment in Mercado Libre.
Mark, do you know how much % of the company they give for the $4.3M?
I’m told by my Mexican Colleagues that they’ve been around since July 07. Not bad growth for 11 months.
Amazing venture and team. Congrats!
Here in Peru the #1 is Hi5… few people (less than 5%) use Facebook, MySpace or Sonico.
Great team and execution. Growing this fast in such a short time is extremely difficult (even more from LatAm). This investment will give them the international exposure needed.
Way to go Sonicos! Congrats Rod and all the team.
i did not see sonico in the top 20 soc.sites. migente.com is there in the top 20, MiRaza.com is also a latino social site that is up and coming.
Congratulations to Rodrigo and all the team. Another demonstration of the high quality projects that are being created from Argentina.
Congratulation Rod! I always knew you were going to do it!!!
And this is just the beggining!!! I am sure the next round will be way bigger and a mayor players like G or M are going to be behind!
I’ll see you next time I am BA for the brindis!! Congratulations!!
Sebastian
If *everyone* agrees Alexa data is worthless, can you stop using it as if it means anything or acting surprised when it’s data doesn’t sync with other information.
Srsly, it’s time for TC to give up the bad habit.
Congratulations to the entire team, I know how hard you are working to make Sonico the biggest Social Network in Latam, that’s why I’m grad to hear the good news.
CONGRATULATIONS ROD!
WELL DONE! I wish you and all the team the best of the best! you guys deserve it.
Sonico is a great idea well executed.
Congrats to the team!
We can tell you are working very hard and you deserve the very best.
Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sonico may be popular now as it had a good 6 month headstart on facebook in LA. But unless it starts innovating in some form it’s going to left behind.
We pay very little attention to the Americas in the U.S. and that will change as we awaken to the business opportunity that lies there. China is all the rage. India was all the rage. But we have some sleeping giants in our own backyard (e.g. Brazil) and scant attention is paid to them.
I for one am quite happy that not much attention is being paid because the Americas represent “virgin territory” for American entrepreneurs of all flavors. Of course we may need to learn the language but that should not dissuade us. It is typical for Europeans to be fluent in several languages but we tend to be myopic when it comes to foreign cultures.
I know that this may come as a news flash but the global economy includes the rest of the western hemisphere.
Great job guys, congrats!!!
Keep developing a great product and paying attention to your users, I’m sure you’ll continue to do great!
Arrington, here http://www.info...no-su-fundacion , you can find more info in spanish!
C.
I believe the hype on Sonico are a bit exaggerated. First its not the first player to try and unite the Americas via the web. Players with deep funding that even IPO’d blew up. “Mercado Libre”while a survivor of the web 1.0 era still today is a marginal player in the region. Amazon kicks their butt constantly without a local presence.
The concept of being a “Me too” facebook in spanish does not assure their long term survival. Latin America has various levels of social complexities that are well manifested in how people in that region use the web or “socializes” in it. Sonico could well be a great local SNS instead of a pan regional one and of-course that will be a non-player in the USA Latin Market. Where there is another set of complexities to deal with.
My hat off to the pitch team that got the funding for this high, high risk Latin American venture. Best of luck.
Sorry to water the party but I don’t see a future for Sonico. Not by a long shot.
Most people here in Colombia are already on Facebook and have never heard of Sonico (same goes for most other major Latin American markets). There is such a thing as social network fatigue or saturation. Sure, some people may join Sonico because they got an invite from a friend, but those memberships will likely get abandoned as all roads eventually lead to Facebook or Myspace. I mean, in open social networks BIGGER IS NECESSARILY BETTER.
Also, what’s the added value of Sonico? I mean, Facebook is already in Spanish and has all kinds of applications and everyone and their mother has already joined. Why would anyone join Sonico?
Let me put this in perspective…. what would everyone say if suddenly someone came out with an ‘instant messenger for hispanics’ ? Everyone would say ” WTF? Hispanics can just use MSN or Y! messenger”. Exactly, it’s the same with social networks… we are no different from the rest of the world, we can just use FB or Myspace.
I agree with the previous comment (#20) … Sonico is one high-risk venture. I feel sorry for those VCs.
Regards from Colombia and thanks to Mark for covering startups from south of the border.
I do not like Sonico, they are spammy.
Each country in South America has its own social networking flavour – Peru = Hi5, Brazil =Orkut, Venezuela = Badoo and so on.
When tech commentators talk about South America they talk about it in terms of it being a single country with a single market, this is wrong. It is very fragmented!
http://www.fabr...inda.com/?p=379
Why I invested in Sonico
I first met Sonico at BarCamp in Buenos Aires last September. They were by far the most interesting company. Alec and I met Rodrigo, the CEO, and his team in person a few days later and we were blown away. It’s hard to put my finger on what it was exactly, but they just got it. They were fantastic people – all close friends from San Andres University in the mid to late twenties – and we loved their approach to business
They already had great traction and we were convinced we could do great things together as the things they were struggling with were exactly things we could help them with (structure of the company, fund raising, etc.).
We decided we had to work together and set about fund raising and restructuring the company (making it a Delaware C Corp, etc.). It ended up being much more difficult than expected. The company continued to grow extremely rapidly reaching nearly 17 million users in less than 9 months of operation! However, Argentine politicians seemed bent on making the country less appealing to investors. They increased their agricultural export tax (one of the worst policies possible to begin with) which led to riots by the farmers. They let inflation runaway and it’s now nearing 25% per year! Several American VCs were put off by the macroeconomic environment in Argentina.
In the end, the team and the story were compelling enough and Rod just succeeded in raising $4.3 million from DN Capital and a few investors. The project remains risky given the competitive nature of the market. Facebook effectively enters market through the expat community and sometimes takes off dramatically as it did in Turkey and Columbia in the past few months.
Despite the threat, I bet on Sonico because I believe that they will find a way to succeed given their single mindedness, extreme focus, doggedness and passion!
Rod, Alvaro, Tom, Gustavo, Alejandro and Anton: it’s all in your hands now, go kick some butt!
I enjoyed the post on Sonico, but was disappointed that you didn’t mention Fotolog as one of the established social networks in Latin America. With 18 million members in Europe, Latin America and the United States – and more than 4 billion pageviews monthly – Fotolog is one of the ten most actively-used social networks in the world.
We’re growing at 7 percent per month in Latin America, and we’re bigger than Google and Yahoo in some South American markets. After a couple years of this kind of growth, we figured that we should stop joking that we were the “biggest social network no one had ever heard of!”
-andrew
Andrew Cohen
GM, Fotolog.com
holA
I am from Australia, so the language barrier is a problem…but here is my challenge to all. 10 leaders in South America can change the lives of millions. Our team at CTWT is doing this in so many parts of the world, we are different, we are helping and making a massive change to so many. Take a look at the attached link and if you are up to the challenge, come and join us, you can make a difference to so many people’s lives.
spammico again?
This social network is nothing but spam. Check the comments:
http://www.tech...rd-of/#comments
Testing Facebook Connect!
why sonico is not in English?
more than a year later and i’d just stumbled across this. i’m going to check this out to see if it measures up to Facebook!