Brazil FWIW is estimated to have approximately 5 million businesses with fewer than 100 employees according to the IBGE. That's like 99.5%+ of the businesses in country or something like that.
The developing world has an extreme power law distribution curve. Almost all the large businesses are capital intensive. Things are probably more skewed in Brazil than in other countries due to a risk-free rate of ~11%, meaning that any business with high working capital can't rely on outside capital if it doesn't want to end up handing over all its revenue to the banks.
Firm size in Brazil is probably more related to capital costs than transaction costs. High capital costs "hollows out" the middle. Capital is often used to reduce rising transaction costs within a firm once the firm size surpasses approximately Dunbar's number. However those businesses at that are mid-sized instead of large don't have enough scale to justify the investment of capital to reduce transaction costs. Many smaller mid-sized companies will hobble along with high internal transaction costs as a result, much higher than would be tolerated in the US.
Because of this, SaaS products are likely to have a transformative effect on Brazilian businesses. There is a lot of unmet demand because traditional transaction cost reducing solutions have required too much capital to implement.
A lot of small businesses doesn't necessarily mean there's a lot of independent subcontractors, as we know it in the west. In South Korea there's a lot of independent "software consultants", however, these are employed by a single firm. It makes it easier for the firm to pay them less and be able to fire them at will.
True, but independent contractors like this are a target market just like any other. Look at any successful software developer in the US and you'll find that they pay a couple of hundred to one or two thousand in SaaS services each year.
No. Stick to HN. Trust me. Most domestic portuguese language forums are inevitably full of bike shedders. Most of those that want a higher level of discourse stick to HN and IRC channels for their respective technology. This results in a vicious cycle of brain drain in the domestic forums, suppressing the level of discussion further.
My suggestion is to stick to HN and intl technology channels on IRC and Github and keep an eye out for telltale signs of a Brazilian by the name or other identifying info and reach out to them one by one. You may want to try out HackerNewsers to seed the network initially. http://hackernewsers.com/
Also, get in contact with Diego Remus of Startupi and Diego Gomes of EverWrite.
The developing world has an extreme power law distribution curve. Almost all the large businesses are capital intensive. Things are probably more skewed in Brazil than in other countries due to a risk-free rate of ~11%, meaning that any business with high working capital can't rely on outside capital if it doesn't want to end up handing over all its revenue to the banks.
Firm size in Brazil is probably more related to capital costs than transaction costs. High capital costs "hollows out" the middle. Capital is often used to reduce rising transaction costs within a firm once the firm size surpasses approximately Dunbar's number. However those businesses at that are mid-sized instead of large don't have enough scale to justify the investment of capital to reduce transaction costs. Many smaller mid-sized companies will hobble along with high internal transaction costs as a result, much higher than would be tolerated in the US.
Because of this, SaaS products are likely to have a transformative effect on Brazilian businesses. There is a lot of unmet demand because traditional transaction cost reducing solutions have required too much capital to implement.