Bogotá, August 2026. Founders of startups, entrepreneurs, investors and key players in the sector gathered in the first two days of GOFEST 2026. The ninth edition of the entrepreneurship and innovation festival of the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce (CCB), which takes place until August 29 at Ágora Bogotá – Centro de Conventions, began with a program of more than 90 knowledge spaces, between conferences, workshops, panels, masterclasses and competitions.

The agenda addresses key topics such as artificial intelligence, venture capital, product development, international expansion and new business models. Likewise, the festival has an exhibition area where startups are presenting their offer. commercial and technological solutions to attendees and investors.

In During the first days of the event, prominent experts come to share their Recommendations for those who are starting their entrepreneurial path:

· Jack Mardack, co-founder of Oyster, emphasized the need to conceive the social purpose of companies from the same idea. “Most companies are not designed with impact in mind; They try to bring it after being organized. It must be designed from a beginning. In our company, in addition to democratizing access to talent Globally, we create a social impact machine that brings benefits to people in parts of the world who would never have dreamed of having those jobs."·

· Álvaro Villar, commercial vice president of WeWork for Latin America, he pointed out the importance of focusing on real needs before accelerating technological developments. "The The advice I give to entrepreneurs is to try to fall in love with the problem. and that, before starting to create technology - which today is an easy part through of artificial intelligence—understand well what they are solving. The anxiety of creating something can lead to making mistakes."·

· María Artunduaga, founder and CEO of Samay, explained that perseverance in the problem allows the product to pivot until the appropriate solution is found. "The only thing one has to do like Entrepreneurship is becoming obsessed with the problem. One should not fall in love with technology, the product or the 'baby', because most of the time one Pivot and iterate a lot. The point here is to be very persistent and resilient. to look for what works."

· Nicolás Rojas, founder of Dapta, invited to project ambitious goals since day one. "Take the same time and the same energy to fight for a big dream as for a small dream. If one is going to choose to dedicate their time, effort and energy every day to something, There is no reason why it should not be a very big dream, even exaggeratedly so. big for many people."

· Felipe Novoa, creator of Unfuckable, dhighlighted the value of studying the mistakes in the ecosystem to accelerate learning. "Many times one believes that it is the first doing something, and I assure you that someone has already tried it. Go and learn of another's mistakes so that you do not repeat them, because it is the most quick and cheap to do."

GOFEST 2026 begins supported by Colombia's positioning on the global stage of innovation, climbing to position 35 in theGlobal Startup Ecosystem Index 2026(up 12 places compared to 2021). Likewise, the Colombian capital It is ranked 64th in the world ranking and as the 3rd hub of most important undertaking in Latin America, reducing its gap compared to Mexico City at a historic low of 0.6% and standing out globally in technical specializations such as Logistics (29th), Transportation (45th) and Foodtech (48°).