The Local Software Market in Colombia Is Tough. Here's What Changed at ProjectApp When We Started Looking Outward.
The local market is still one of the most complex for selling custom software. What changes when you use Colombia as a base to reach international clients.
Project App
Engineering Team
I'm going to say something many Colombian founders think but few say publicly: the local custom software market is still tough. Not impossible — we've built real projects with Colombian companies and continue to do so. But decision cycles are long, the perception of software as an investment is still maturing, and there's structural resistance to paying well for technology that in more mature markets doesn't exist the same way. That didn't change with the #35 worldwide ranking. What did change is that we stopped seeing that as the only horizon. And that made all the difference.
Why the Local Market Is More Complex Than It Looks
It's not a demand problem — Colombian companies need software, they know it, and many are willing to invest. The problem is more subtle. There are three structural frictions that make selling custom software in Colombia different from doing it in more mature markets:
- Long decision cycles. A mid-sized Colombian company can take 3 or 4 months to decide on a software project that closes in 2 or 3 weeks in the US.
- Price comparison with generic tools. 'Salesforce costs X per month' is a phrase I hear frequently — without considering that Salesforce solves 40% of the problem.
- The footprint of bad previous experiences. Many Colombian clients already paid for software before and received something that didn't work, making trust harder to build from scratch.
Key Takeaways
Key Takeaways
- 1The Colombian local software market has real structural frictions — long cycles, price perception, historical distrust. Naming them isn't pessimism, it's strategy.
- 2The international opportunity for Colombian software teams is growing faster than the local opportunity.
- 3Selling internationally from Colombia requires concrete changes: solid English, documented methodology, results-oriented success cases.
- 4Colombia at #35 worldwide is a credential that opens international doors faster than three years ago.
ProjectApp continues serving Colombian clients. The local market didn't disappear and won't. What changed is that it's no longer the only horizon. Colombia as a base to build a software team serving companies in the US, Europe, or LATAM is one of the strongest value propositions the country's tech ecosystem can offer today. And at ProjectApp that's increasingly part of what we are.
If you have a company outside Colombia and are looking for a reliable development team in LATAM, or if you have a company in Colombia and want to understand how to access the international market, write to me.