LatPro in a Nutshell

Dreamed up in December 1996, this business was first named Inbox Communications, then became The MindExchange, then Latin America's Professional Network, then The LatPro Professional Network, and finally LatPro, Inc.

The planning began while Eric and Carolina living in Charlotte, NC and Eric jumped into business full time after moving to Cincinnatti, OH in June of 1997. Then Chiquita Brands moved Eric & Carolina to Guatemala in May of 1998.

Eric finished the programming to begin charging job-seekers in August of 1998, took a wild guess on pricing and posted a miami po box address on the websiter for sending checks. They started arriving. Eric's stated goal in August of 1998 was to bring in enough to pay the business expenses plus their apartment rent, in total about $1,100 per month by the end of the year. Thanks to a credit card payment option added in October, the revenue not only exceeded his expectations by leaps and bounds but allowed Carolina to quit her job in March of 1999 and begin working with Eric full time.

home office in Guatemala  

In the first week of January 2000, Eric & Carolina moved in with Paul & Beth at Cooldog Technologies to plan the new dynamic LatPro website. Nate Clement joined them shortly thereafter and they all worked like mad scientests in the basement office at Judith road pictured here.

Nate Clement, COO, man from singapore.

In February of 2000, Nate, Eric and Carolina moved to Plantation, FL into a house with a cable internet connection big enough to be a makeshift office.

A month later LatPro's angel, Fred Perkins invested $1 million and the company moved into suite 404 of the Mortgage.com building at 8751 W. Broward Blvd.

In Delaware, the development team began working on a scaleable replacement application for the home-spun microsoft access application which Eric had built to manage the resumes and job listings.

The team grew to include (top row from left to right in the foto) Steve Gomolski, Tina Hession-Rowley, Michael Lecuyer, Jon Tulk, Pete Bowman, (front row) Eric Snyder, Carolina Reyna, Paul Gumerman, Eric Shannon and Beth Fizell.

Meanwhile the Florida team grew:

Clark Golden, CFO, with 2 of his calculators. Otavio Fonseca, webmaster, demonstrating skill with mouse.

Dan Canning, Marketing Director, a hard act to follow.