This is the first of a new series about foreigners doing business in Brazil, since the economy has grown and diversified in the last few years.

Today we’re going to look at James Crane-Baker, the founder and CEO of a start-up based in Rio de Janeiro. After working on Wall Street for ten years, James traveled to Brazil and loved it so much he decided to move there. He spent two years in Rio, and later moved to California. While living in Rio, he started a classifieds website for fun, but after returning to the US, decided to make it into a business. He anticipated the stagnation of the US economy and decided he wanted to invest in the Brazilian market by focusing the site there.

Today, RedeParede.com is a major classified site in Brazil and Latin America, with around 150,000 users and 750,000 unique visitors per month, after only two years of existence. To differentiate the site from competitors, James designed the site based on both aesthetics and user friendliness. Unlike other classified sites, RedeParede allows you to add friends and contacts to your network, and to rate users after doing business transactions with them.

Even though RedeParede.com is now in more than 20 countries in the Americas and Europe, the main market for the site is Brazil. James hired a Rio-based team to monitor, promote, and market the site throughout the country.  He hopes to expand his business in the next few years by partnering with other classified sites.

For more information, see here and here.