C’bean Dragons working towards becoming hub for start-ups to succeed | Local Business

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AFTER experiencing two failed businesses, Marc G Persaud, co-founder and director of Caribbean Dragons, sought to create a space where start-up business owners could gather the essential advice and knowledge needed for success.

Express Business spoke to the three co-founders of the company—Persaud, Rawle Annandsingh and Andrew Seepersad—to understand their motivation for securing the right mentors, resources, and advice tailored to the needs of start-up businesses, and how they aim to help these businesses thrive.

Persaud said this idea also emerged from his experience assisting Annandsingh with another project, the Tychon conference, where Annandsingh serves as chief executive officer.

“I was fresh out of the United Kingdom and prior to that, fresh from two absolutely failed start-up companies (2008 and 2012). When I went to the UK, I joined Google Campus and there was this amazing potential ecosystem where founders could access the first world, so when I came back and was with Rawle, I was on a journey of bringing that back to T&T and the region,” Persaud said.

To bring this vision to life, Persaud volunteered much of his time at various business chambers to host a small conference for start-up business owners and established companies that later became sponsors of Caribbean Dragons.

“Stakeholders in the marketplace like PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) were asking questions about the next step and that prompted me and Rawle to figure out what the Caribbean needed and why we’re so stuck as a region and that led us to examine an international programme that would develop the ecosystem leading to a lot of conversation. Although we didn’t get the funding for the programme in the end, we did get a lot of data,” he said.

Persaud mentioned that since he and Annandsingh had numerous ideas, the only remaining aspect of Caribbean Dragons was the planning phase, which is where Seepersad contributed.

“Andrew was able to take all of our ideas bubbling up and sort of help us codify them and really took us from the idea stage to how we can actually help, put this together and have a proper vision. What we realised was that the Caribbean in itself is very fragmented and what this does is create a mental ceiling for start-ups; they don’t think about scaling up and that is a problem because they don’t understand how large the market can be and investors won’t take them seriously since they would want to invest in scalable businesses,” he said.

Annandsingh added that while working on launching a pre-accelerator for start-ups in 2023, they gained valuable insights into the needs of the community.

“When we launched in 2024, we did so with a small three-part start-up community series being centred around storytelling—pitch deck deliver—community co-building and raising capital,” he said.

He said that start-up business owners had the opportunity to share their stories, worries, and concerns, receiving advice from mentors and successful entrepreneurs. This exchange allowed participants to express their expectations from the programme and identify how Caribbean Dragons could assist them. Additionally, it enabled participants to focus on raising capital through various means, such as equity, debt instruments, and angel investment.

“That initial start-up community series helped us to build our grassroots community and that gave us the community to start Ignite Start-Up Summit,” he said.

The summit was hosted on July 25 and 26 at the Hilton Trinidad and Conference Centre, Lady Young Road, Port of Spain.

Seepersad explained the components that went into the initial Ignite Start-Up Summit, emphasising the need to connect the entire ecosystem of players—entrepreneurs, government organisations, and regional funders.

He added that the intent is to establish a hub for the region where individuals can convene, exchange ideas, and create new businesses.

Asked about the accomplishments of the summit, Seepersad said, “On the one hand, you had these investors or folks interested in investing who have never convened or knew of each other but had never met. On the part of the entrepreneurs, you had people meeting others from across the region and there were peer-to-peer conversations; from this, there was even a sub-group created for mental health and to sort of help each other.”

He described the summit as two-fold in a way because there was also building and understanding as it relates to investors and their role in start-ups.

Seepersad added that hosting the summit was “very validating” because there were no passive positive comments, but rather in-depth comments that showed what they are offering is working and can boost the businesses and the economy overall.

But Persaud said he would describe hosting the summit as “revolutionary” given a summit like this has not happened in the Caribbean “in his mind”.

“In my mind, there are a couple of other conferences in the Caribbean, but nothing spoke to early-stage founders and put founders as the nexus of what we were trying to achieve,” Persaud said.

Persaud noted that following the investors’ workshop held before the summit, the formation of an association for venture capitalists had never been attempted before. However, Caribbean Dragons is now taking the initiative to establish one.

Annandsingh, however, aligned the summit with the word “accessible” because the summit was able to break down barriers of inaccessibility for start-ups.

He gave some examples of this and said, “One was with one of the COSTAATT students in attendance who wanted to learn more about living and working in Mexico and to possibly start a business in Latin America and I was able to connect her to a Trade and Investment Officer from the Mexican Embassy, they sat down, had coffee and a real conversation that lasted 45 minutes.”

He continued, “Another one was around a young national who runs a small physical education fund and we were able to connect him with venture capitalists in the UK and Canada and they chatted for about an hour.

Annandsingh added that those are real-world relationships and examples for start-up business owners to see what can be facilitated through Caribbean Dragons and create access for those who are unable to stand on their own.

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