The EmTech Colombia 2015 meeting on emerging technologies came to an end on Wednesday May 13, in which it became clear that the country has an innovative ecosystem that drives new ideas and new companies.

Forbes analyzes the global landscape to bring us a foretaste of the startups that are set to make their mark in the near future. These are the 25 companies that are on course to hit the highly-prized $1 billion ($1,000 million) mark next year. Here we highlight five of them.

One of the most important events on emerging technologies in the world takes place in Medellin, Colombia. For two days, it serves as a showcase for significant ideas in the field of entrepreneurship, technology, science and innovation. The first day dealt with issues such as the Internet of Things, 3-D printing, energy micro-networks and drones, among others. The debates raised by these talks throw up a series of new perspectives for reflection and work.

The best situation for a startup is to have at least two sections: a technological section and an administrator section, but both of them must have the same idea for the project. When they fail, even in the vision, their projects fail. Mario Alberto García Díaz, head of theBusiness incubator at the La Salle University, gives us some advice to start up an entrepreneurial project.

Knowing how your customers behave on the Internet can help you sell more or anticipate economic trends. That is why companies are devoting so much time and energy to creating teams of analysts who can interpret the vast quantity of data circulating on the Internet and create algorithms to identify new patterns of behavior adopted by consumers.

A Colombian startup was set up to help other entrepreneurs speed up their projects in the software creation stage. To do so, they have created a cloud platform to enable tailor-made developments, saving time and costs, and they sell it under the Software as a Service model.

This technology is performing operations to help financial institutions reduce costs as well as expedite and improve their transactions.

New methods of payments are arriving all the time, and after the revolution in online sales the next step is being able to transfer funds from your cell phone. In fact, this has been in the offing for some time now and is about to become a reality. But we like to stay one step ahead, and now that we know what is around the corner our eyes are set on what the future holds.

Last 16 April we hosted a session of the Innovation Club Colombia. The aim of this club is to share the best practices in innovation, and bring together innovation managers and executives from different areas who are in charge of heading innovation efforts in the most successful companies in Colombia.

Major companies are now genuinely committing to this technology and have already set out to bring about what was –until a short while ago– no more than science fiction.