This week on La Frontera, we sat down with Benjamin Zehr, Co-Founder of Reciprocal, a venture platform focused on unlocking climate and nature innovation across Latin America and the Caribbean.

At first glance, this might sound like a climate episode.

It is. But like many of the conversations we keep coming back to, it quickly becomes something broader.

It is about how capital actually flows. About how narratives shape entire categories. And about why one of the most resource-rich regions in the world continues to receive a fraction of the investment it arguably deserves.

Ben and his team at Reciprocal are building toward a clear idea: that Latin America is not just a participant in climate innovation, but can become one of its primary engines.

And importantly, that shift is already underway.

Since recording this episode, Reciprocal has grown to a team of six and has raised a fund to invest directly into pre-seed and seed stage climate and nature tech startups across the region. They’ve also launched two specialized acceleration programs and are continuing their ecosystem work with support from heavyweights like Builders Vision and Breakthrough Energy. When Tom caught up with Ben in Mexico City this February, just before he traveled to Mérida for Foro Latinoamericano de Inversión de Impacto, it was clear that both the conviction and the execution behind the thesis are accelerating.

If you are an investor thinking seriously about climate, this is a conversation worth spending time with in full. We strongly encourage you to listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Many of the nuances, especially around how these markets actually function, come through best directly in the conversation.

🎧 Listen on Spotify HERE
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts: HERE
🎥 Watch on YouTube HERE

In Today’s Newsletter

• Why less than 0.5% of climate VC flows to a region representing ~8% of global GDP

• The structural advantages behind the “LatAm Climate Edge”

• Three investment theses with asymmetric upside

• Where the market is mispricing risk and why that matters

• Early signals from companies already building in the region

• Reciprocal’s role in bridging capital and innovation

• A closing reflection on building in climate, including Ben’s perspective on pace, balance, and long-term thinking

Reciprocal Studio

💰 Assets Under Management: $1m

🗽 HQ: USA

🌱 Stage Focus: Pre-seed and seed

🌍 Geographic & Thematic Focus: Latin America & the Caribbean; Working Land, Blue Economy, Nature Tech

🧾 Check Size: Typically around $70-100k (≈1%–2%)

⭐ Notable Investments: Satellites on Fire

🎯 Exit Strategy: Secondaries, strategic acquisitions

Who is Ben Zehr?

Ben’s perspective is shaped less by theory and more by proximity.

He grew up between the United States and India (and has lived in other places, like Chile), in an agricultural family, where climate was not an abstract topic but something visible in everyday life. Water scarcity, drought cycles, and the fragility of farming systems were constant realities.

That early exposure carried forward into his work. He later founded a hydroponics company in India, focused on controlled environment agriculture, and saw firsthand both the potential and the limits of technology when operating within larger systems.

Over time, his focus widened. Climate, as he describes it, is not a single problem but a network of interdependent systems that require coordination as much as innovation.

That perspective eventually led him to Latin America.

“We saw a tremendous amount of opportunity in the region, but it hasn’t been supported or invested in for the longest time. We see that as a structural mistake.”

What Reciprocal is Building

Reciprocal is structured less like a traditional fund and more like a platform designed to reduce friction across the climate ecosystem.

Their work spans three core areas:

• Supporting founders building climate and nature solutions

• Running programs that connect startups with real industry demand

• Bridging global capital into the region

At its core, the problem they are addressing is coordination.

“The idea is that Reciprocal can act as connective tissue between LATAM and the rest of the world.”

For investors, this matters.

Climate innovation, especially in areas like materials, agriculture, and energy, often requires longer development cycles and deeper integration with existing industries. The ability to connect startups with corporates, pilots, and capital is not a “nice to have.” It is a prerequisite for success.

The 0.5% Allocation Problem

The most important number from this conversation is also the simplest:

Less than 0.5% of global climate tech venture capital flows to Latin America.

Now contrast that with:

• 8% of global GDP

• 40% of global biodiversity

• 50% of the world’s primary forests

• 65% renewable energy penetration (vs 40% global average)

From an investor’s perspective, this is not just an imbalance. It is a mispricing of opportunity.

Capital has historically concentrated in the United States and Europe, where ecosystems are more mature and narratives are clearer. Meanwhile, Latin America has been more strongly associated with fintech, which has absorbed roughly 40–45% of venture flows into the region.

Climate has lagged.

Not because the opportunity is smaller, but because it is less clearly defined.

“There’s lots of talk of potential, but beyond that, it’s important to put data behind those stories.”

The Narrative Gap

One of the more subtle but important takeaways is that Latin America’s challenge is not just capital. It is narrative.

India, for example, is often framed as a single macro opportunity. Latin America, by contrast, is fragmented in how it is perceived. Investors tend to underwrite individual countries rather than the region as a whole.

That framing obscures a key advantage.

“One of the most underleveraged assets of the region is its interdependence.”

Across much of the region, there are shared languages, similar operating environments, and business models that translate across borders more easily than expected. (This theme echos a conversation we had with Luis from NAZCA)

For investors, this has two implications:

1. Markets may be larger than they initially appear

2. Companies can scale regionally with fewer frictions than assumed

This is where narrative and capital intersect. Without a clear story, capital hesitates. With one, it can move quickly.

The LatAm Climate Edge

To make that story more concrete, Reciprocal outlines four structural advantages:

Natural Capital

Latin America holds a disproportionate share of the world’s ecosystems, many of which are directly tied to climate outcomes and economic value creation.

Technical Talent at Lower Cost

High-quality engineering and scientific talent, often at significantly lower cost than in the U.S. or Europe, enables more capital-efficient R&D.

Market Maturity

Large, established sectors such as agriculture, energy, and industrials provide real environments for testing and scaling solutions.

Technology Readiness

With renewable energy already making up roughly 65% of the grid in many countries, the region is well positioned to adopt and integrate new technologies.

Taken together, this creates a dynamic where companies can be built efficiently, validated locally, and expanded globally.

Where the Alpha Is Emerging

Within that framework, several themes stand out from an investment perspective.

Biomass to X

Latin America produces significant agricultural and industrial waste. Converting that into higher-value products, such as materials, chemicals, or inputs, represents a large and underexplored opportunity.

Distributed Energy and Grid Optimization

As climate volatility increases, so does the need for resilient energy systems. Solutions that improve how energy is generated, distributed, and managed are becoming increasingly important.

“It’s not just about generating power, but how we use it.”

Land Use as a Primary Lever

Perhaps the most underappreciated insight:

“It’s the only region where land use, agriculture, and forestry contribute more than fossil fuels to emissions.”

This shifts the focus of climate investing in the region. Agriculture and land management are not peripheral. They are central.

Revisiting Risk

A common hesitation among investors is risk, often framed through the lens of infrastructure.

Ben breaks this into political, economic, and physical dimensions, and argues that much of the perceived risk is based on outdated assumptions.

“If you look at Latin American countries today, they seem remarkably mature in some ways.”

This does not mean the region is without challenges. But it does suggest that risk may be mispriced, and that mispricing can create opportunity for investors willing to engage more deeply.

Building the Missing Layer

Reciprocal’s role is to help close the gap between opportunity and execution.

Through programs focused on areas like the blue economy and agricultural decarbonization, they are working to connect startups with corporates and move them toward real commercial outcomes.

The underlying belief is simple:

Climate innovation requires coordination.

Capital alone is not enough.

A Closing Reflection on Building, Pace, and Perspective

Toward the end of the conversation, the tone shifts.

After discussing capital flows, market dynamics, and investment theses, the conversation turns to something more personal.

Ben reflects on the environments he grew up in and the long-term nature of the problems he is working on. Climate, by definition, is not a space where outcomes are immediate. Progress is often slow, nonlinear, and difficult to measure in the short term.

That reality shapes how he thinks about work.

There is an emphasis on sustainability, not just in the environmental sense, but in how people build and operate over time.

The work requires patience. It requires stepping back occasionally to maintain perspective. It requires an ability to operate without constant feedback loops or immediate wins.

There is also a recognition that some of the most important insights and decisions do not happen in structured settings, but in longer, deeper conversations, often away from screens and day-to-day noise.

In a space like climate, where timelines stretch over decades, that perspective becomes part of the strategy.

It is not just about moving fast. It is about moving deliberately, and being able to sustain that effort over time.

Closing Thoughts

Latin America occupies a unique position in the global climate landscape.

It combines natural resources, technical talent, and market readiness in a way that few regions do. At the same time, it remains significantly underrepresented in the allocation of venture capital.

That gap is not just a challenge. It is an opportunity.

For investors willing to spend time understanding the region, to move beyond simplified narratives, and to engage with the underlying dynamics, there is a case to be made that some of the most compelling climate opportunities of the next decade will emerge here.

We would strongly encourage you to listen to or watch the full conversation with Ben. Many of the nuances and perspectives come through most clearly in his own words.

Listen & Share

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This episode of La Frontera is a masterclass in execution.

We sat down with Nico Camhi, CEO and co-founder of Vambe, to unpack one of the most compressed scaling stories we’ve featured on the podcast: raising roughly $20M and scaling to ~$6M ARR in less than 2 years as a first-time founder in Latin America. This episode comes on the back of a $14M Series A announced in December 2025, led by Monashees.

But this isn’t a victory-lap conversation.

It’s a deeply honest look at what it actually takes to build a company from scratch in LatAm today: building AI systems before the playbooks existed, hiring with intention, navigating culture across countries, raising capital through relationships, and grinding through the parts of entrepreneurship no one posts about.

If you’re building in AI in Latin America—or thinking about it—this episode is required listening.

Shout out to Lucia from NAZCA for the intro! We are now 3/3 on great episodes with Nicos! (Shout out to Nico Yeppes, Nico Estrada)

Episode 19 Summary

• When AI Tackles Real Problems: How Vambe built AI-native agents that automate B2C commercial workflows—and why focusing on real pain unlocked explosive growth.

• A First-Time Founder’s Path: Nico Camhi’s journey from Chile to Berkeley and back, and how two startup cultures shaped his approach to building and scaling.

• Execution as a Competitive Advantage: Why discipline, fast decision-making, and a high-ownership team mattered more than perfect strategy.

• Raising $20M Without the Hype: How Vambe earned investor trust and raised roughly $20M in ~18 months through relationships and consistent execution.

• Why AI Has to Be Local: What Vambe learned about cultural nuance in AI—from prompting differences in Mexico vs. Chile to scaling across markets.

• What Scaling Really Takes: From expanding into Mexico to managing AI in production, a candid look at the resilience required to build through the hard parts.

Vambe: revolutionizing businesses through AI

🚀 Founded: 2024 in Chile
📈 Stage: Series A
💰 Total Funding Raised: $18.5m
🤝 Investors: Monashees, Cathay Latam, Atlantico, NAZCA, and more
🎯 Mission: To help companies scale and grow sustainably in today’s chaotic conversational economy through exceptional service and powerful AI technology.

What Vambe Does

Vambe is an AI platform that helps B2C companies easily use AI in their sales, marketing, and support. With fully customizable, no-code AI agents, teams can automate and connect everything from ads and lead conversion to checkout and support.

Vambe works with existing systems and quickly becomes part of the core revenue engine, boosting conversions by 70%+ and cutting sales/support costs by 30%+ in just weeks.

In less than 2 years, Vambe has grown from $0 to $6M ARR, serving over 1,700 companies in LatAm.

Nico’s Entrepreneurial Journey: Chile → Berkeley → Back Home

Nico’s path to founding Vambe didn’t start in Silicon Valley—it started in Chile, in an ecosystem that’s small, scrappy, and still finding its footing.

Growing up, entrepreneurship wasn’t the default path. But Chile’s startup culture—shaped by programs like Start-Up Chile and a growing local founder community—made building feel possible, even if not obvious.

That curiosity eventually took Nico to UC Berkeley, where he was exposed to a very different startup culture: faster feedback loops, bigger ambition, and a much higher tolerance for risk.

“Berkeley really changes how you think about what’s possible. You’re surrounded by people who assume they’re going to build something big.”

But importantly, Nico didn’t stay in the U.S. He brought that mindset back to Latin America—where the problems were more acute, the infrastructure weaker, and the opportunity arguably larger.

Starting a Company in Chile

Starting Vambe in Chile came with real constraints: smaller local markets, fewer experienced operators, less capital density.

But those constraints didn’t slow Nico down. He used them to his advantage.

You have to be capital-efficient. You have to hire carefully. You have to sell early.

“You don’t get many free shots. If something doesn’t work, you feel it immediately.”

The benefits of starting a company in Chile include a developed economy, early adopters of technology, and honest feedback

That being said, scaling across LatAm with Mexico and/or Brazil on the horizon has to be the goal from the start.

Raising Money the Hard Way: Relationships Over Rounds

Vambe’s fundraising story isn’t about hype—it’s about relationships.

In under 2 years, Nico and his team raised almost $20M, building trust investor by investor, conversation by conversation. Early capital came from people who believed in Nico as much as the product.

“Fundraising wasn’t one moment. It was dozens of conversations over time.”

Nico emphasizes that fundraising is not a transactional process—especially in LatAm. It’s about consistency, transparency, and follow-through.

Investors watched how the team executed between meetings. How they hired. How they shipped. How they responded to setbacks.

Capital followed execution—not the other way around.

Execution as a Culture: The Four Traits Vambe Hires For

When it comes to building teams, Nico is opinionated.

Vambe looks for four core traits when hiring:

1. Raw intelligence

2. Hunger

3. Integrity

4. Team players

This hiring philosophy isn’t aspirational—it’s operational. At Vambe’s pace of growth, one mis-hire can slow everything down.

Why In-Person Still Matters

Despite building an AI company, Nico is clear about one thing: Vambe is an in-person culture.

Not because remote work doesn’t work—but because speed, trust, and learning compound faster when people are physically together, especially early on.

“When you’re building from zero to one, proximity matters a lot.”

Whiteboard sessions. Overheard conversations. Fast feedback loops. These things are hard to replicate on Slack.

For Vambe, being in-person wasn’t about control—it was about velocity. They’re working all day, 6 days a week, side by side.

AI Is Cultural: Prompting in Mexico ≠ Prompting in Chile

One of the most fascinating parts of the conversation is how AI behavior changes across cultures.

Vambe learned quickly that agents operating in Mexico behave differently than agents in Chile—not because the model changes, but because language, tone, and expectations do.

“The same prompt doesn’t work everywhere.”

In Mexico, formality matters. In Chile, directness is valued. Even subtle differences in phrasing can change outcomes.

This is a massive insight for anyone building AI in LatAm: localization isn’t a feature—it’s the product.

AI Adoption in Latin America: Faster Than You Think

Despite infrastructure challenges, Nico is bullish on AI adoption in LatAm.

Why? Because the pain is real.

Manual processes are everywhere. Talent is expensive. Efficiency gains are immediately visible.

“If something saves time or money, companies here adopt it very fast.”

Vambe isn’t fighting skepticism—they’re often fighting demand.

Building AI From Scratch (Before the Playbooks)

Vambe didn’t start with off-the-shelf solutions. They built much of their AI stack from scratch—learning in real time how to deploy, monitor, and improve agents in production.

This meant building internal tooling, setting guardrails, and constantly iterating.

“AI isn’t set-and-forget. You have to manage it like a team.”

That mindset—treating AI systems as evolving collaborators rather than static software—has been critical to Vambe’s success.

The Reality of Entrepreneurship: It’s Just Hard

Toward the end of the conversation, Nico gets real.

Entrepreneurship is exhausting. Progress is nonlinear. Wins are rare. Doubt is constant.

“There are days where everything feels broken.”

What keeps him going isn’t motivation—it’s commitment.

Showing up. Fixing the next problem. Trusting the process.

Closing: Execution Is the Only Thing That Compounds

This episode is a reminder that there is no shortcut.

Not in AI. Not in fundraising. Not in building teams. Not in scaling across Latin America.

Vambe’s story isn’t about luck—it’s about relentless execution, cultural awareness, and resilience.

If you’re building in LatAm, this one’s for you.

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Follow Nico, because why wouldn’t you?

This week on La Frontera, we sat down with Andrew Endicott, GP at Gilgamesh Ventures and former co-founder and president of Petal—one of the earliest fintech companies to challenge traditional credit underwriting by using cash-flow data instead of credit scores.

It’s one of those conversations that looks like a fintech episode on the surface, but ends up being something deeper: a discussion about how people make decisions inside complex systems, how founders earn trust over time, and why Latin America continues to produce some of the most compelling fintech businesses in the world.

Andrew brings a rare mix of perspectives to the table. He’s a lawyer by training, a founder who built inside U.S. financial regulation, and now an investor who’s spent years developing pattern recognition across the U.S. and Latin America. He’s thoughtful without being academic, opinionated without being dogmatic—and refreshingly honest about what he doesn’tknow.

We talk about fintech complexity, regulatory tradeoffs, the capital cycle behind lending businesses, storytelling as companies scale, and the “light-bulb moment” that led to Gilgamesh’s LatAm thesis. We also wander into employee compensation, investor psychology, and why spending time away from screens might be one of the most underrated founder skills.

If you’re a founder building in fintech—or an investor trying to understand why some teams win and others stall—this episode is pure gold. 🏆

🎧 Listen on Spotify HERE
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts: HERE
🎥 Watch on YouTube HERE

In Today’s Newsletter

• Fintech Complexity — Why the best fintech founders think in layers, balancing systems thinking, speed, and regulation while understanding how financial infrastructure actually works.

• Petal Origins: Pioneering Cash Flow Underwriting — How Andrew and Jason, both lawyers, bet early on cash-flow underwriting in a post–financial crisis regulatory gray area and helped redefine how credit could be assessed.

• Raising Capital — The capital cycle no one warns founders about, where trust with early VCs unlocks debt markets and timing often matters more than valuation.

• Building Trust with Investors — Why relationships, advisors, and credible “sherpas” matter more than charisma when navigating high-stakes fundraising moments.

• Being on the Investor Side of the Table — Founders make daily decisions while investors make a few big ones, forcing founders to distill complexity into clear, narrative-driven takeaways.

• Storytelling Gets Harder as the Company Grows — How founder storytelling evolves from a blank slate to data-backed credibility as companies scale and face greater scrutiny.

• Origin Story of Gilgamesh — The lightbulb moment that emerged from long-standing relationships, Mexico expansion conversations, and realizing how fast fintech could scale in Latin America.

• Lending Businesses in LatAm — Why lending is harder to start but easier to win in Latin America, with stronger margins, less competition, and clearer paths to profitability at scale.

• Capital Structure & FX Reality — Why in balance-sheet businesses the product is capital itself, and decisions around equity, debt, and currency risk can determine outcomes.

• Cash vs Equity Compensation — Why stock options often fail employees in practice, and how higher cash pay and simpler ownership structures can better align incentives.

• Taking Time Away From the Screen — How disconnecting, spending time outdoors, and reading deeply helps founders maintain clarity and think long-term.

Gilgamesh Ventures

💰 Assets Under Management: $35m

🗽 HQ: NYC

🌱 Stage Focus: Pre-seed and seed

🌍 Geographic Focus: Global

🧾 Check Size: Typically around $500k (≈2.5%–5%)

📊 Portfolio: 40 companies

⭐ Notable Investments:

• Pomelo (featured on La Frontera 🌵)

• Xepelin

• Klar

🎯 Exit Strategy: Secondaries play a role, but the primary focus is IPOs

Why the Best Fintech Founders Think in Layers, Not Straight Lines

Fintech attracts a certain kind of person.

Not because it’s glamorous (it usually isn’t), but because it sits at the intersection of technology, regulation, capital, and human behavior. Andrew argues that what separates strong fintech founders from the rest isn’t a specific background—it’s an appreciation for complexity.

“Anytime you’re dealing with the financial system, there’s a lot of complexity. And complexity often favors people who can see things in multiple different ways.”

The best founders aren’t just product thinkers or technologists. They care about how things work at a basic level: where money actually flows, how incentives are structured, and why certain rules exist in the first place.

That mindset becomes especially important when you run into the core fintech tension: speed versus compliance.

Startups are rewarded for moving fast. Regulated industries punish shortcuts later. Navigating that tradeoff—without freezing progress or accumulating existential risk—is one of the hardest parts of building in fintech.

Andrew doesn’t pretend there’s a perfect answer. But he’s clear that ignoring complexity doesn’t make it go away. It just shows up later, usually at the worst possible moment.

Underwriting the Invisible: How Petal Bet on Cash Flow Before It Was Obvious

Petal started with a simple but contrarian question: What if credit scores don’t tell the full story?

Andrew and his co-founder Jason were both lawyers, not career bankers. That turned out to be an advantage. They were less attached to legacy frameworks—and more willing to question why things were done a certain way.

Coming out of the financial crisis, the regulatory environment had stabilized just enough to allow experimentation. There was more clarity than in the immediate post-2008 chaos, but still plenty of gray areas.

Petal’s key insight was to use bank account data—cash-flow underwriting—to assess creditworthiness, especially for people with thin or nonexistent credit files.

“There was all this information sitting in bank accounts that the bureaus just didn’t capture.”

At the time, this approach sat squarely in a regulatory gray zone. Partners cared deeply about compliance. Banks wanted to understand exactly how risk was being assessed. And infrastructure like Plaid was only just emerging.

The bet was that access to real financial behavior—income consistency, spending patterns, cash buffers—would be a better predictor of credit risk than historical bureau data alone.

Looking back, it’s easy to frame this as an “AI” or “data” story. At the time, it was simply a bet on better inputs—and a belief that regulation would evolve to accommodate them.

The Capital Cycle No One Warns You About: Equity, Debt, and Timing Risk

One of the most practical parts of the conversation is Andrew’s breakdown of how capital actually works in lending businesses.

Most founders think of fundraising as episodic. In reality, lending companies live in a continuous capital cycle.

You start with equity—often venture capital—to build the product, team, and initial proof points. Once you have traction, you approach debt investors to fund the balance sheet. As you scale, you raise more equity to unlock more debt. And the cycle repeats.

Each step comes with a different audience, different incentives, and different risk tolerances.

“Lenders can literally get fired for one bad investment. Their job is to not make mistakes.”

Equity investors are underwriting upside. Debt investors are underwriting survival.

The real risk isn’t just cost of capital—it’s timing. Markets change. Windows open and close. If you need capital at the wrong moment, your negotiating leverage disappears.

Andrew’s advice is implicit but clear: founders need to think about capital strategy as deliberately as they think about product strategy.

Climbing the Mountain With Sherpas: Why Credibility Beats Charisma

Early fundraising often feels transactional. Over time, it becomes relational.

Andrew emphasizes the importance of trust compounding—with investors, advisors, and networks that can guide you through moments you haven’t experienced before.

“You want people who’ve climbed the mountain before. Sherpas who can tell you where the cliffs are.”

This is where “blue-chip” investors matter—not for their logos, but for the signal they send to everyone else. Credibility reduces friction. It opens doors. It buys you time when things get messy.

The best advisors don’t just help you raise money. They help you tell the story correctly, anticipate second-order effects, and avoid mistakes you didn’t even know were possible.

In fintech especially, trust isn’t a soft asset. It’s infrastructure.

Founders Decide Every Day. Investors Decide a Few Times a Year.

One of Andrew’s sharpest observations comes from switching sides of the table.

Founders make high-stakes decisions every day. Investors make a handful of big decisions each year. That asymmetry shapes behavior more than most people realize.

As perceived complexity goes up, investor attention goes down.

“If it gets too complicated, people just start nodding their heads—and that’s not good.”

The founder’s job isn’t to explain every nuance. It’s to distill the business down to a few core truths that someone can carry with them after the meeting ends.

Andrew makes a broader point about human psychology: we are deeply narrative-driven. That’s not always ideal—but it’s reality.

“The world doesn’t function on stories. But people do.”

Founders who understand this don’t oversimplify—they clarify.

From Blank Slate to Burden of Proof: How the Founder Story Evolves

Storytelling changes as companies grow.

Early on, you have a blank slate. You can paint a bold vision. You can emphasize potential over proof. As long as the story is coherent, investors are willing to lean in.

As the company matures, the narrative tightens.

Growth investors scrutinize what you’ve actually done. Data replaces hypotheticals. Inconsistencies get exposed.

Andrew’s advice is pragmatic: stick to the facts—but choose which facts to emphasize.

Credibility then comes from alignment between story and reality.

The Lightbulb Moment: How Gilgamesh’s LatAm Thesis Came Together

Gilgamesh Ventures didn’t start as a fund with a predefined LatAm thesis.

It started with relationships.

Andrew and Miguel had known each other for years. Miguel invested in Petal. At one point, Andrew asked him for advice on how to tell the story of expanding into Mexico.

That conversation led to others—with founders at Klar and Neon. Those relationships turned into deep operating discussions.

And then something clicked.

The growth rates were higher. The paths to profitability were clearer. The competitive dynamics were fundamentally different.

Klar ended up being Gilgamesh’s first investment—done directly through an SPV.

Harder to Start, Easier to Win: Why LatAm Lending Scales Differently

Andrew draws a sharp contrast between the U.S. and Latin America.

In the U.S., it’s relatively easy to start a lending business. Infrastructure is mature. Capital is abundant. Competition is brutal. Margins get compressed.

In Latin America, it’s the opposite.

It’s harder to stand up the rails. Regulation is fragmented. Trust takes longer to earn. But once you reach scale, the economics can be compelling.

“You don’t have to fight as hard to make it profitable.”

Better margins. Stronger unit economics. Faster paths to sustainability.

Klar’s recent $190M Series C is a reflection of that dynamic—but also of how difficult it is to get there in the first place.

The Balance Sheet Is the Product: Equity First, Debt Second, FX Always

If you’re building a lending business in LatAm, your balance sheet is the product.

The sequencing matters. You typically start with equity, then layer in debt. And currency choice is critical.

Raising capital in local currency reduces risk. Raising in dollars often requires hedging FX exposure, which adds real cost.

“Those basis points matter.”

Andrew is clear: many businesses look great on paper until FX volatility exposes fragile assumptions.

Founders who understand this early build more resilient companies. Those who don’t often learn the hard way.

The Broken Promise of Stock Options (and What to Do Instead)

Toward the end of the conversation, Andrew takes a sharp turn into employee compensation—and doesn’t pull punches.

In theory, equity aligns incentives. In practice, U.S. stock options often put employees in impossible positions: short exercise windows, large cash outlays, and asymmetric information.

“You’re asked to make a meaningful financial decision very fast, with almost no information.”

His recommendation is provocative but practical: pay people fairly in cash. If you give equity, make it real ownership—and consider having the company bear the tax burden.

Incentives should empower employees, not stress them out.

Zooming Out to See Clearly: Nature, Reading, and Thinking Long-Term

We closed on something deceptively simple.

Andrew talks about getting outside. About Wyoming. About reading. About stepping away from screens.

“There’s a direct relationship between time not at a screen and being in a better mental frame.”

In a world obsessed with optimization, it’s a reminder that clarity often comes from distance.

Listen & Share

🎧 Listen to the full conversation and subscribe to La Frontera 🌵 for more founder and investor stories.

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Follow Andrew, because why wouldn’t you?

Thank you and our mission

To our readers, listeners, guests, partners and mentors – gracias!

When we launched La Frontera in February 2025, our dream was to build a community that bridges startup ecosystems across the Americas. We set out to spotlight founders building world‑class companies and to learn from the investors backing them. Your subscriptions, shares, and conversations have turned that dream into reality. We’re grateful for the founders who trusted us with their stories, the investors who offered candid insights, the operators who joined our events, and each of you who tuned in.

Our mission remains clear: connect North and Latin America’s startup ecosystems, highlight exceptional founders, and gather diverse investor perspectives. Together we’re building a cross‑border community that makes our region stronger.

Milestones

• Launch: Officially launched on February 20, 2025.

• Subscribers: Grew to ~800 subscribers across our newsletter and podcast.

• Events: Hosted three community events with hundreds of attendees in New York, Colombia and Mexico City.

• Podcast: Released 19 episodes – 11 founder conversations and 8 investor episodes – amplifying voices from across the region.

Episode highlights

Below is a summary of our 2025 podcast episodes. Each entry includes the guest and a brief description; click the title to read the full notes and find your preferred listening platform.

• Marcial González Fraga – Episode 19: Marcial González Fraga (Founder of Oss) shares his journey from launching Mercado Libre’s fintech arm to co‑founding a startup and leading 100+ investments at Latitud. Now a “fundraising sherpa,” he coaches founders to think like VCs and flip the fundraising power dynamic.

• Nicolás Estrada – Episode 18: Nicolás Estrada (CFO of VEMO) explains why he left Wall Street to join VEMO’s mission to build a vertically integrated electric‑mobility ecosystem. He describes rolling up EV fleets, charging networks and fintech‑like services, emphasizing that clean air and sustainable jobs are central to VEMO’s mission.

• Daniela Pacheco – Episode 17: Daniela Pacheco (Managing Partner of New Ventures Capital) explains how she built a $20 M fund focused on health, fintech, education and climate. She argues that impact and returns should collide and highlights how women’s health and youth underpin her thesis.

• Daniel Rodríguez – Episode 16: Daniel Rodríguez (Co‑founder & CEO of Adquiere) tells how a failed sale of his previous company inspired him to build a tech‑enabled marketplace that democratizes deals. He discusses why exits matter, the role of small and mid‑sized businesses and how cross‑border capital from the Hispanic diaspora can supercharge the ecosystem.

• Tomás Uribe – Episode 15: Tomás Uribe (Co‑founder & CEO of Mavity) recounts his journey from a musical upbringing in Bogotá to New York’s tech scene. He explains how his creative roots help him fundraise authentically and use AI to supercharge creative work.

• Remembering Ali Jamal – Episode 14: A tribute to Ali Jamal of First Check Ventures. Friends recall his humility, generosity and unwavering belief in founders; he quietly championed entrepreneurs long before others were ready to bet on them.

• Juan Fantoni – Episode 13: Juan Fantoni (Co‑founder & CCO of Pomelo) explains how a big fintech infrastructure problem led him from Mastercard to co‑founding Pomelo. He discusses scaling from Argentina across the region, navigating regulation and raising one of the region’s largest Series B rounds.

• María Gutiérrez Peñaloza – Episode 12: María Gutiérrez Peñaloza (Co‑founding Partner of Nido Ventures) outlines why nearshoring trends could make the next decade Mexico’s golden age. She describes how her Silicon Valley supply‑chain experience shaped Nido’s thesis and how the fund channels U.S. capital into B2B startups transforming legacy industries.

• Marinella Piñate – Episode 11: Marinella Piñate (Co‑founder & CEO of Zumma) shares how her all‑female founding team pivoted from a personal finance app to an AI‑powered “WhatsApp CFO” for businesses. She reflects on her globetrotting background, resilience and community‑building in LatAm fintech.

• Luis Andrés Enríquez Arias – Episode 10: Luis Andrés Enríquez Arias (Co‑founder & GP of Bridge Latam) details why LatAm’s tech market is poised for massive growth. He identifies sectors ripe for disruption, discusses cultural nuances and founder dilution and shares lessons from his transition from founder to investor.

• Andrés Londoño Botero – Episode 9: Andrés Londoño Botero (Co‑founder & CFO of Monet) traces his path from public policy to fintech and explains how Monet gives first‑time borrowers access to credit. The team uses behavioural data to build credit models and aims to close the credit gap in Colombia.

• Susana Espinosa de los Reyes – Episode 8: Susana Espinosa de los Reyes (Partner at Dux Capital) recounts her unconventional path into VC. As one of Mexico’s first female GPs, she co‑founded Mujeres Invertiendo, invests across the U.S. and LatAm and advocates for more women on the cap table.

• Nico Yepes – Episode 7: Nico Yepes (Co‑founder & COO of Moffin) explains his transition from Wall Street to building Moffin, a fintech infrastructure startup that turns fragmented data into real‑time underwriting pipelines.

• Ángel Cisneros – Episode 6: Ángel Cisneros (Founder & CEO of Saptiva AI) bootstrapped an SMS startup in Mexico and later sold it to Twilio. He’s now building Saptiva to give LatAm its own AI infrastructure so the region becomes an AI creator, not just a consumer.

• Alejandro Troll Bouroncle – Episode 5: Alejandro Troll Bouroncle (GP at BVC) shares insights from building the Lima startup ecosystem. He discusses differences among Brazil, Colombia and Peru, how BVC builds trusted deal flow and educates Japanese LPs.

• Courtney McColgan – Episode 4: Courtney McColgan (Founder & CEO of Runa) moved to LatAm for love, scaled Cabify from $20 M to $1.5 B and founded payroll startup Runa. She shares lessons on scaling across the region, raising capital and hiring talent while emphasising LatAm’s untapped potential.

• René Lomelí Ojeda – Episode 3: René Lomelí Ojeda (Partner at 500 Global) has been building the ecosystem from day one. He discusses the evolution of 500 Global’s LatAm operations, the changing landscape for startups and angel investors and why he remains bullish despite liquidity risks.

• Valentina Valencia – Episode 2: Valentina Valencia (Founder & CEO of Vaas) is transforming private‑debt markets in LatAm. She recounts her journey from Silicon Valley to Colombia, raising funds from a16z before having a product and tackling inefficiencies in Mexico and Colombia’s structured‑debt systems.

• Cristóbal Perdomo – Episode 1: Cristóbal Perdomo (Co‑founder & GP of Wollef VC) explains what it takes to build a top venture fund in LatAm. He talks about raising his first fund, the differences among LP bases and the challenges of exits and liquidity.

Event highlights

We loved bringing the podcast community together in person. Below are highlights of our 2025 events!

NY Tech Week – Coffee Social with Pygma: Our first event during New York Tech Week brought together founders, angels and VCs over Colombian coffee. Co‑hosted with Pygma, this casual meet‑up sparked serendipitous cross‑hemisphere connections. (June 2025 at La Rubia, NYC)

Colombia Tech Week – Live Podcast with Vaas: We recorded a series of live episodes with Valentina Valencia of Vaas at Colombia Tech Week. The energy in Bogotá’s tech scene was electric and the in‑person Q&A added depth to the conversation. (August 2025 at Universidad EAN, Bogotá)

Mexico City Tech Week – Breakfast with Migos, Moffin and AWS: An early‑morning gathering in Mexico City with Migos, Moffin and AWS. We connected with many friends, old and new, along with quite a few previous La Frontera guests. Shout out to Isa at Migo Bagels for the delicious, NY style bagels! (October 2025 at AWS, CDMX)

Looking ahead to 2026

We’re just getting started! In 2026 we’re lining up conversations with Andrew Endicott (Gilgamesh Ventures), Adolfo Blasco (NAZCA VC), Nico Camhi (Vambe AI) and many more founders, operators and investors across the hemisphere. We also plan to host more IRL events in Mexico City and New York – stay tuned for details.

Co‑host updates

• Tom Barrett: Tom finished his MBA at Kellogg and joined Vaas to spearhead the company’s U.S. expansion (hear more about Vaas in Valentina’s episode). He’s relocating to Mexico City in January 2026 – reach out if you’re there!

• Cyrus Bakhshi: Cyrus is working on acquiring small businesses (now on his second) in the U.S. to build a portfolio of operator‑led companies.

Both of us remain passionate about connecting with founders and investors. Whether on the podcast or over coffee, we’re always up for a conversation.

Thanks for listening and stay connected

Thank you for being part of La Frontera. We couldn’t have achieved this without your support. If you haven’t already, please subscribe on your preferred platform and share the podcast with friends who care about building a vibrant, inclusive startup ecosystem across the Americas.

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We hope this recap inspires you to continue building, investing and connecting across borders. ¡Vamos juntos!

We sat down with Marcial González Fraga, the Founder of Oss, to unpack how startup founders can raise capital on their own terms. Marcial shares his journey from launching Mercado Libre’s fintech lending arm to co-founding a startup, to leading 100+ investments at Latitud, and why he ultimately leapt from venture investing to become a “fundraising sherpa” for founders.

We dive into how Marcial helps entrepreneurs think like VCs when fundraising, crafting narratives and “signals” that flip the usual power dynamic between founders and investors. Marcial explains why even the best founders need a coach and how re-framing the fundraising process can keep leverage in the founder’s hands. We also discuss his contrarian take on venture capital norms (like whether VCs should reserve follow-on capital or go all-in), and the importance of building a startup ecosystem where founders have support in their corner.

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Episode 19 Summary

• Thinking Like a VC: Founders often pitch too small. Marcial breaks down how to adopt an investor’s perspective by showing the billion-dollar vision and massive upside VCs need to see, not just the modest wins of today.

• Power to the Founder: In the fundraising dance, leverage usually tilts toward VCs. Marcial shares how founders can flip the script with thorough preparation, strategic storytelling, and running a tight process, so investors compete for your round.

• Everyone Needs a Coach: Even elite entrepreneurs have blind spots. Marcial sees himself as a coach for top founders, akin to an Olympic trainer, helping great CEOs sharpen their edge and shave off those “0.1 seconds” that make the difference between silver and gold.

• Contrarian VC Insights: Marcial isn’t afraid to challenge venture norms. From questioning follow-on investments (he argues VCs should be all-in from the start) to prioritizing alignment over optionality, his hot takes aim to better align investors with founders.

• From VC to Sherpa: Marcial’s non-linear path – MercadoLibre, founding a startup, Latitud VC, inDrive advisor – all led to Oss. He candidly shares how personal passion and a few “aha” moments (including seeing a star founder still need help) drove him to build a company devoted to founder success.

In Today's Newsletter

• La Frontera 🌵 Podcast, Episode 19 - Empowering Fo …

  • Episode 19 Summary

    • Oss: Fundraising Sherpas

    • Flipping the Fundraising Script

    • Think Like a VC

    • Founder Leverage 101

    • Everyone Needs a Coach

    • Contrarian VC Takes

    • A Life by Design

• Thanks for reading!

Oss: Fundraising Sherpas

🚀 Founded: 2024 in Argentina
📈 Stage: N/A
💰 Total Funding Raised: N/A
🤝 Investors: N/A
🎯 Mission: Oss helps founders strategize, prepare, and execute fundraising processes, from Series As onward. Their goal is to eliminate errors and create leverage for the founders

Notable Oss clients include fast-growing startups like inDrive, TaxFlow, Cashea, Melonn, and Pulppo, many of which have gone on to close significant rounds.

Flipping the Fundraising Script

When you think of fundraising, you might imagine founders chasing VCs.

Marcial Fraga wants to flip that script. After building Mercado Libre’s fintech arm, co-founding a startup, and leading 100 investments at Latitud, he founded Oss — a boutique advisory that helps Latin American founders raise capital with confidence, clarity, and control.

“My goal is to tilt the leverage in favor of founders. They carry the risk, so they should own the process.” - Marcial Gonzalez Fraga

Think Like a VC

Founders often pitch too small. Marcial coaches them to see the world through investors’ eyes and to pitch the billion-dollar story.

Investors are ultimately asking: “Could this be a billion-dollar company?” Marcial walks us through the VC math that founders should understand.

Imagine a $300M fund; they need a 4× return overall. This means they need 1 or 2 of their ~24 bets to truly “knock it out of the park.” That one winner must have multi-billion dollar potential to make the fund’s model work. As Marcial puts it, “We started… thinking about this company doing two, three million ARR… And on the other side, VC is thinking, can this company go to $2 billion in ARR?”. You need to show hints that you and your company have that potential.

He notes many founders take VC rejections too personally, when often “VC is not broken. It just knows most companies go to zero and can only invest in those with tremendous upside,” Marcial says. An investor would rather bet on a crazy-ambitious idea than a steady grower.

The takeaway? Frame a bold vision. Don’t just seek an “A+ on the report card” of past performance; paint the picture of an outlier future. As Marcial bluntly summarizes, “All of this to say your pitch is not crazy enough. And that’s why I’m passing.” Founders need to sell the dream of the massive outcome or risk a polite “no, thanks” from VCs.

“If you pitch only what you’re doing now, it’ll seem niche and too limited. VCs need to see you can think big.” - Marcial Gonzalez Fraga

He teaches the Problem → Solution → Scale framework: start with a painful problem, show proof your solution works, then zoom out to the massive opportunity ahead.

Founder Leverage 101

For Marcial, fundraising is a psychological game as much as a financial one. Preparation and precision flip power dynamics.

Fundraising often feels like a game stacked in VCs’ favor, but Marcial is determined to flip that script. He recalls meeting an outstanding founder and company, who nonetheless entered investor meetings with slumped shoulders and apologies, even thanking VCs “for [their] time”, basically giving up all the leverage from the start. Marcial’s mission with Oss is to empower founders to take back control of those conversations. He dives deep into a startup’s story and metrics so that when the founder walks into pitch, they exude confidence instead of deference.

With his dual perspective as a former VC and a founder, Marcial arms entrepreneurs with insider knowledge. “I have such a strong understanding of what goes on in the kitchen when a VC is analyzing a deal… if I can knowledge-transfer that and put it in the hands of founders, then I’m going to create leverage for them,” he explains . “In this dance, this fundraising dance, the leverage is usually tilted towards the VCs. But if I can turn that in favor of founders, [they get] a fair chance to fight.” Marcial essentially embeds with the company as a head of fundraising, helping founders run a disciplined process: from crafting an “IPO-worthy” narrative early to building a world-class data room, mapping the right investors, and orchestrating the timing of outreach.

By running the raise like a pro, founders can set the terms, instead of scrambling to react. Marcial’s community-driven approach means he often leverages introductions between founders and specific investors (knowing exactly who in each fund would “get” their business), tilting the odds in the founder’s favor. The result is a power shift: founders maintaining scarcity and control in their round, rather than feeling at the mercy of VC whims.

Oss helps founders run tight processes — from investor mapping to data-room readiness — so that VCs chase them, not the other way around.

Everyone Needs a Coach

Marcial compares founders to Olympic athletes — driven, talented, and still in need of coaching.

Marcial believes that even the best founders need coaching. He laughs at the idea some VC’s have that “the best ones don’t need help”.

“Tennis players, even the best ones, have coaches. Skiers have coaches. Michael Phelps had a coach.” - Marcial Gonzalez Fraga

His sessions aren’t about doing the work for founders, they’re about tightening storytelling, sharpening strategy, and elevating performance under pressure.

Contrarian VC Takes

Marcial isn’t afraid to challenge VC orthodoxy, and his view on follow-on investments is a perfect example. Most funds reserve 50–60% of their capital to double down on winners. Marcial’s take? That approach dilutes conviction and strains founder relationships.

“If you’re a seed fund, go all in on your first check” - Marcial Gonzalez Fraga

A Life by Design

Amid the strategy and hot takes, Marcial’s north star is deeply personal. He calls Oss “a life project, not a business.” The name itself comes from his Japanese father-in-law, a karate master who often says “oss”, a word meaning “to endure under pressure.” For Marcial, it symbolizes unwavering support. “When I tell a founder ‘oss,’ I’m saying they can count on me to endure with them,” he explains.

“Oss isn’t just a company — it’s a way of designing a life where family, work, health, and spirituality come together.” - Marcial Gonzalez Fraga

Listen & Share

This episode is for founders re-thinking how they raise and for investors re-thinking how they back them.

🎧 Listen to the full conversation and subscribe to La Frontera 🌵 for more founder-first stories.

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Follow Marcial, because why wouldn’t you?

Hey everyone,

If you’ve been reading along with La Frontera 🌵, you’ve heard stories from the people redefining what’s possible in Latin America — from building modern payments infrastructure to reinventing how M&A gets done across borders.

But did you know you can listen to those stories too?

Join our subscribers from organizations such as 500 Global, Accion, Propel, Pomelo, and more.

Here’s our ask 🙏 It would mean a lot to us if you’d:

1. Give us a listen on your favorite platform (Spotify, Apple, YouTube)

2. Subscribe to hear more great stories; and

3. Leave a 5 star review if you enjoy what we do

Links to your favorite podcast platform are below 👇

Thanks for your support!

Listen on Spotify

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Interested in listening to some recent podcasts?

Here are a few you might have missed:

• 🎧 Nicolás Estrada, CFO of VEMO — on electrifying Mexico’s transportation and the long game of building infrastructure.

• 🎧 Daniel Rodríguez, Co-Founder & CEO of Adquiere — on democratizing M&A for Latin America’s small and mid-sized businesses.

• 🎧 Daniela Pacheco, Managing Partner at NVC — on redefining impact investing and building sustainable returns in emerging markets.

• 🎧 Juan Fantoni, Co-Founder of Pomelo — on how modern infrastructure is powering the next generation of fintechs across LatAm.

• 🎧 Luis Enríquez, Co-Founder & Operating Partner at Bridge LatAm — on founder-to-founder investing and why relationships are everything in venture.

Each episode dives deep into the realities of building, funding, and scaling across borders.

See you on La Frontera.

— Cyrus and Tom 🌵

Thanks for reading!

Be sure to share La Frontera with your network if you enjoy our newsletters!

We sat down with Nicolas “Nico” Estrada, CFO of VEMO, to explore how this Mexican company is accelerating the transition to electric mobility across Latin America. Nico shares his journey from Colombia to Wall Street to Mexico City — and why he leapt from investment banking to become the first non-founder hire at VEMO.

We dive into how VEMO built a one-of-a-kind clean mobility ecosystem by rolling up multiple companies and combining electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, and fintech-like solutions under one roof. Nico explains why tackling every piece of the EV puzzle simultaneously was the only way to spark an electric revolution in LatAm, and how VEMO’s mission goes beyond tech – it’s about cleaner air, sustainable jobs, and giving more people a chance to own the future.

We also discuss VEMO’s recent $250 million fundraise (one of the largest in LatAm this year), what it means for the company’s next phase of growth, and the lessons he’s learned guiding a startup through hypergrowth as its CFO.

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Episode 18 Summary

• Betting on Team & Vision: Nico gave up a lucrative finance career to join VEMO in its infancy, all because he believed in the co-founders and their audacious idea.

• All-In-One EV Ecosystem: Building an electric mobility business in LatAm meant tackling everything at once. Nico breaks down VEMO’s unique model: a “vertically integrated” platform combining EV fleets, charging stations, and tech leading to their acquisition of 5 startups to solve the chicken-and-egg problem of EV adoption.

• EVs for Economic Inclusion: VEMO isn’t just about tech, it’s tackling a social challenge too. Many ride-hailing drivers in Mexico can’t afford a car or qualify for credit. VEMO’s Impulso program offers lease-to-own electric vehicles, so gig workers can earn income and eventually become EV owners. This approach creates jobs and opens access to a better livelihood (while putting more clean vehicles on the road).

• Partnering to Scale: From day one, VEMO has been partner-driven. A partnership with Uber helped launch its EV taxi fleet, solving Uber’s car supply gap while giving VEMO immediate demand; a strategic partnership with China’s DiDi soon followed. On the vehicle front, most of VEMO’s EV fleet comes from Chinese manufacturers like BYD, because affordable sub-$20k models were key to electrifying Mexico.

• A $250M Charge Forward: Despite a cooling funding climate, VEMO secured a massive $250 million round in 2025 — one of the year’s largest in LatAm. Nico emphasizes that with big capital comes big responsibility: his priority is to invest it wisely in core areas (expanding charging networks beyond Mexico City, growing the EV fleet to new cities, and upgrading tech capabilities). The goal: scale up fast but sustainably.

In Today's Newsletter

• La Frontera 🌵 Podcast, Episode 18 - Inside VEMO’s …

  • Episode 18 Summary

  • VEMO: Pioneering Clean Mobility in Mexico

  • From Banker to Builder: Taking the Leap into Start …

  • Building an EV Ecosystem from Scratch

  • Driving Financial Inclusion through EVs

  • Partner-Driven Growth: Uber, DiDi, and China’s EVs

  • The $250M Milestone & What’s Next

  • Wrapping Up

  • 📢 Listen to the full episode here.

VEMO: Pioneering Clean Mobility in Mexico

🚀 Founded: 2021, Mexico City
📈 Stage: Growth capital - private equity backed, so not following the traditional series/rounds model
💰 Total Funding Raised: Over $500M USD (combination of equity and debt)
🤝 Investors: More than US$350 million in equity from investors including Riverstone Holdings (initial backer) and Vision Ridge. Over US$150 million in debt from global lenders like Orion Infrastructure Capital, and local entities like BEEL, PROMECAP, Covalto, and Kapital.
🎯 Mission: To accelerate the adoption of clean mobility by building an integrated ecosystem of electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, and fleet technology that delivers environmental, social, and financial impact.

VEMO accelerates the adoption of clean mobility technologies through a unique and pioneering integrated solution that combines electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, and fleet management technology, forming a comprehensive clean mobility ecosystem. With the vision of being a transformative force in urban mobility, VEMO seeks to fight climate change, enable cleaner air, create high-impact sustainable jobs, and promote greater financial inclusion.

From Banker to Builder: Taking the Leap into Startups

Nico’s path has been anything but linear. He grew up in Colombia, studied in Texas (while playing collegiate soccer!), and launched his career as a management consultant in the U.S. After pivoting to investment banking back in Colombia (where he advised on energy and infrastructure deals), he found himself craving a more hands-on role. In 2021, a friend told him about a nascent electric mobility startup in Mexico that was looking for its first CFO. Intrigued by the opportunity to help launch an EV venture in LatAm, Nico flew to Mexico City and met VEMO’s co-founders — Roberto Rocha and Germán Losada — and everything clicked.

As Nico recalls, the founders’ passion and personal values sealed the deal for him. He was also attracted by the sheer ambition of VEMO’s plan. After years of advising companies from the sidelines, he was ready to build something himself. The complexity of VEMO’s model didn’t deter him, it motivated him. “When complexity doesn’t scare you and you’re willing to go that step further… that’s when you start seeing the magic and beauty of the thesis,” he says. In other words, tackling a hard, unproven idea (like electrifying transportation in an emerging market) can be an edge, not a drawback, if you have the right team and enough courage. Betting on VEMO’s vision (and the people behind it), Nico leapt from banking into the startup world — and never looked back.

“When complexity doesn’t scare you and you’re willing to go that step further… that’s when you start seeing the magic and beauty of the thesis,” - Nico Estrada

Building an EV Ecosystem from Scratch

In Latin America, EV adoption faces a classic chicken-and-egg problem: few electric cars, and few places to charge them. Government incentives and charging infrastructure that exist in the US or Europe weren’t present in Mexico. VEMO’s founders realized that to jumpstart a clean mobility revolution, they’d have to create an entire ecosystem themselves. So instead of launching with a single product, VEMO began by acquiring five different companies and combining them into one platform. Each piece of the puzzle was addressed, from vehicles, to charging stations, to the software that ties it all together.

Today, VEMO operates as a vertically integrated EV company: it runs its own electric taxi fleet, finances EVs for other fleets and independent drivers, and builds out charging stations across Mexico City and beyond. This all-in-one approach gave VEMO control over its destiny. “If you are pushing all the pieces of the puzzle and you’re not depending on anyone else, you have more control into how you can actually make this a reality,” Nico notes , explaining VEMO’s decision to tackle everything at once. By investing in both the cars and the chargers simultaneously, VEMO ensured that supply and demand for EVs could grow in tandem — a strategy that simply wouldn’t have been feasible in a more mature market, but was perfect for the blank-slate environment in Mexico.

The result? In just four years, VEMO has built one of the largest EV fleets and charging networks in Mexico, effectively creating the market that it now leads.

Driving Financial Inclusion through EVs

One of VEMO’s most impactful innovations is VEMO Impulso, Latin America’s first EV lease-to-own program. Why was this needed? In Mexico, many people who want to drive for Uber or DiDi simply can’t afford a car, and traditional banks won’t finance gig-economy workers. VEMO stepped in with an alternative: it leases EVs to qualified ride-hailing drivers with no down payment, allowing them to pay off the vehicle over time using their earnings. At the end of the term, the driver owns the car outright . For many, it’s the first car they’ve ever owned and a ticket to steady income. This model doesn’t just put more EVs on the road; it turns hardworking drivers into owners and entrepreneurs, while making urban transport cleaner in the process.

VEMO applies a similar philosophy to corporate fleets. Businesses that want to decarbonize their delivery vans or service vehicles often don’t know where to start. VEMO offers fleet-as-a-service: a company can lease electric vehicles and even have VEMO install private charging stations at their facilities. VEMO’s software platform ties everything together, giving clients real-time visibility into vehicle performance and charging data. By lowering the barriers to EV adoption — whether for an individual driver or a large enterprise — VEMO accelerates the transition to clean mobility while generating stable revenue streams. It’s a win-win for both the environment and the participants: drivers get economic opportunity, companies get a turnkey solution to go green, and cities get reduced emissions.

Partner-Driven Growth: Uber, DiDi, and China’s EVs

Partnerships have been part of VEMO’s DNA from the start. In fact, one of the companies VEMO acquired had an existing deal with Uber to provide vehicles to drivers. Building on that, VEMO launched an all-electric ride-hailing fleet in Mexico City in collaboration with Uber — branding its own EVs under “VEMO Conduce” and hiring drivers to operate them. This fleet (now 600+ EVs strong) has been serving Uber riders for the past few years. It’s a symbiotic relationship: Uber gets more drivers (and a greener option for riders), while VEMO gets guaranteed demand for its vehicles. If you’ve taken an Uber in Mexico City recently, there’s a good chance you’ve ridden in a VEMO-powered EV without even knowing it!

VEMO struck a similar alliance with China’s ride-hailing giant DiDi, and today both apps feature VEMO electric cars ferrying passengers. Another key partnership is on the supply side: sourcing the cars themselves. Mexico’s EV market was tiny in 2021 (only ~500 EVs were sold nationwide that year, and most were luxury models >$100K). VEMO turned to Chinese automakers to import more affordable EVs by the hundreds. Brands like BYD and others provided lower-cost electric models (some under $20K) that made an EV taxi fleet financially viable. Embracing Chinese EV technology was a bold move, but it gave VEMO the inventory it needed to scale up fast. As of now, the majority of VEMO’s vehicles are made by Chinese manufacturers, a trend that may continue as long as they offer the best value for money.

By being partner-driven, from global ride-hailing platforms to overseas manufacturers, VEMO accelerated its growth far faster than it could have alone.

The $250M Milestone & What’s Next

This past summer, VEMO announced a landmark $250 million investment led by Vision Ridge Partners, a U.S. sustainable infrastructure fund. It’s one of the largest funding rounds in Latin America this year, especially notable amid a general tech investing slowdown. This raise brings VEMO’s total funding to over half a billion dollars, giving the company a significant capital base to fuel its expansion .

So what will they do with all that money? Nico outlines a clear roadmap. First, expand the charging network beyond Mexico City into other major regions (so EV drivers everywhere have reliable places to plug in). Second, grow the EV fleet for both ride-hailing and commercial clients – including launching VEMO’s programs in cities like Guadalajara and Monterrey. And third, double down on technology: enhancing their software and data systems to optimize fleet management and customer experience at scale. Throughout it all, Nico’s mantra as CFO is discipline. “We got to be very disciplined… [to] invest this money in a very disciplined way to translate this into scalable impact,” he says . In other words, it’s time to charge ahead, but responsibly.

VEMO’s five-year goals are ambitious: they aim to deploy over 20,000 charging connectors and 50,000 EVs across Mexico in the coming years . If achieved, that would truly transform the country’s urban mobility landscape, and position VEMO as a dominant player in Latin America’s clean transport future.

Wrapping Up

Our conversation with Nico was a reminder that scaling something as complex as VEMO takes both precision and heart. His story highlights how disciplined execution, trust, and long-term thinking can turn an ambitious idea into a regional force for change.

After we stopped recording, Nico shared one more story that we couldn’t leave out. Around the time he became CFO, he also became a father for the first time. Between doctor visits and investor calls, he was learning to balance two kinds of responsibility at once, at home and at work.

He credits his wife as his “superpower” and says her support, along with that of the VEMO team, made it possible. “They had my back when I needed it most,” he said. “That’s what makes VEMO special, we show up for each other.”

Now, with a second child on the way, family remains his motivation. “My family are my drivers. I want my kids to grow up proud of who I am and of what we’ve built at VEMO.” It was a grounded and relatable moment that captured what leadership really looks like: not just building a company, but building a life and legacy worth being proud of. 

“My family are my drivers. I want my kids to grow up proud of who I am and of what we’ve built at VEMO.” - Nico Estrada

Enjoyed the episode? Here’s how you can support us:

1. Listen to the full conversation with Nico Estrada on your favorite platform (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube). His passion really shines, don’t miss it.

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Follow Nico, because why wouldn’t you?

And check out VEMO as they continue to pioneer clean mobility in Mexico.

VEMO: Simplificamos la transición a la movilidad limpia.

Daniela Pacheco

We sat down with Daniela Pacheco, Managing Partner of New Ventures Capital (NVC), to explore how impact investing can drive both social change and solid returns across Latin America. Daniela shares how her family’s entrepreneurial legacy and global experience led her to build NVC’s $20M fund (backed by Switzerland’s Botnar Foundation) focusing on early-stage startups in health, fintech, education, and climate. We dive into why women’s health and youth are at the core of NVC’s thesis, how Daniela’s team actively hunts for founders in overlooked places, and how she balances philanthropic purpose with venture-scale ambition.

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Episode 17 Summary

• Impact + Returns, Not Either/Or: NVC was born to bridge a gap between philanthropy and venture capital in LatAm. Daniela reveals how impact investing and high returns aren’t mutually exclusive — they “should collide” to fuel scalable solutions for youth and women . By co-designing a $20M fund with a Swiss foundation, NVC proves you can do good and do well.

• Healthcare’s Untapped Opportunity: Only <5% of VC funding in Latin America goes to healthcare , yet the region faces massive healthcare gaps. Daniela launched LatAm’s first women’s health fund and mapped 400+ startups, finding huge needs (and markets) in areas like telemedicine, diagnostics, and reproductive health. Women make 80% of healthcare decisions but hold just 4% of leadership roles, a disconnect NVC turns into opportunity .

• Finding Founders Off the Beaten Path: Unlike many VCs waiting for pitch decks, Daniela’s team hustles to source deals proactively by speaking with ~1,000 companies a year via cold calls, LinkedIn, and on-the-ground networking . This aggressive approach led NVC to back unconventional winners like a last-mile internet startup taking on telecom giants. Where others saw risk, Daniela saw resilience (and outsized returns).

• Team & Grit over Hype: Daniela stresses that a startup is only as strong as its founding team. She uses the “Three Rs” framework — Roles, Rewards, Relationships — to evaluate founders’ fit and commitment. Red flags (like a CTO with only 2% equity) can predict breakups. “Co-founding a startup is like a marriage, sometimes even harder than being married!”. NVC looks for teams with true chemistry, complementary skills, and ‘ride-or-die’ determination to weather the startup storms.

• Disciplined Growth in a New Market Reality: In an era of tighter capital, Daniela advises founders to ditch blitzscaling myths and focus on fundamentals. Growth is great, but unit economics must work from day one. As she notes, “The best returns come from companies that prioritize unit economics and move at a manageable pace. Scaling with discipline rather than speed alone often earns founders the right to grow – and investors the right kind of upside.” In short, sustainable growth > hype-fueled burn.

In Today's Newsletter

• La Frontera 🌵 Podcast, Episode 17 - Why Sustainab …

  • Episode 17 Summary

  • New Ventures Capital (NVC): Disrupting Impact Inve …

  • Bridging Two Worlds: Impact Meets Venture Capital

  • Healthcare’s Big Gap = Big Opportunity

  • Hunting for Hidden Gems: Proactive Sourcing & Cont …

  • The “Three Rs” of Team Success

  • Wrapping Up

  • 📢 Listen to the full episode here.

New Ventures Capital (NVC): Disrupting Impact Investing Across Latin America

💰 Assets Under Management: $20M (Fund 1, backed by Botnar Foundation)
📍 HQ: Bogota, Colombia
🎯 Stage Focus: Pre-seed and Seed
🌎 Geographic Focus: LatAm - with deals done in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and now expanding to Central America.
📊 Check Size: $100K–$350K initial, with follow-on up to $500k
🏆 Portfolio: 14+

🚀 Notable Investments:

• Smartbeemo is leveling the playing field, creating a world where the entrepreneurial dreams of Latin people of all walks of life become a reality.

• Plenna transforms the way young women access healthcare. Its mission is to accompany women throughout their lives, from adolescence to motherhood, by providing high-quality, specialized, and comprehensive care.

• Fibrazo evaluates and analyzes marginalized regions and neighborhoods where there is no broadband internet access and provides a unique solution by extending fiber optic internet to neighborhoods in need.

Unique Model: VC with a focus on impact on youth generations in LatAm.

Exit Strategy: Typically M&A and secondaries with IPOs remaining the holy grail.

Learn more here: www.nvcapital.vc

Bridging Two Worlds: Impact Meets Venture Capital

Daniela Pacheco is on a mission to prove that impact-driven startups can deliver venture-level returns. NVC itself was founded as a bridge between traditional donors and the startup ecosystem: it emerged when a group of family offices and foundations sought “more sustainable solutions for their impact”. Partnering with Fundación Botnar (a large Swiss foundation focused on youth), Daniela co-created a $20M early-stage fund to invest in market-based solutions to social problems. The message was clear: philanthropic capital can catalyze scalable businesses addressing health, education, climate and more.

At NVC, impact isn’t a box to check, it’s central to the investment thesis. Daniela disagrees that investors must choose either impact or profit. “A lot of people believe you can’t do both. At NVC, we believe differently; these are two worlds that should collide,” she says. At NVC, she shows that you can do both — backing companies with clear social benefits and high growth potential. Daniela’s team also helps startups articulate and measure their impact (through custom “impact empowerment” workshops). One windfall of mission-driven companies is that the mission can help with hiring, by inspiring young employees and building loyal communities of users. In Daniela’s view, diversity and inclusion aren’t just nice to have: “the data speaks for itself… it just makes business sense”. Investors worldwide (from development banks to BlackRock) are pushing for more diverse teams because it leads to better outcomes.

NVC’s gender lens highlights this philosophy. By investing with a focus on women and youth, Daniela targeting underserved markets. Women control consumer decisions in Latin America, especially in health, so backing women-led solutions is smart business. “Women are incredible consumers… diversity is a competitive advantage,” Daniela notes, pointing out that bringing more women into leadership will unlock even better returns.

“If you really want your company to build that next unicorn, the biggest advice is hire people who are different than you, who are gonna question you – not yes-people… It’s an incredible tool for success.” 

 Daniela Pacheco

Healthcare’s Big Gap = Big Opportunity

One sector where NVC’s impact-focus and contrarian approach shines is healthtech. Latin America’s healthcare system is riddled with challenges and ripe for innovation. Only about 5% of VC funding in LatAm goes into health, a tiny slice compared to fintech’s ~50% share. The common refrain was “not enough health startups,” but Daniela’s experience says otherwise. In fact, NVC helped launch the region’s first women’s health fund, mapping out 400+ healthtech companies in the process.

What they found was eye-opening: huge gaps in access and a misalignment between who needs solutions and who builds them. “I think the main problem in healthcare is access. ~170 million people in LatAm have no access to healthcare – 70% of them are women,” Daniela notes. Yet women are dramatically underrepresented on the provider side: “only 4% of [health sector] managerial roles are women, while 80% of healthcare decisions are made by women”. This was a “big aha moment” for her team. The disconnect between the female consumer base and mostly male-led startups presented a massive opportunity to invest in solutions that truly understand the end-user.

Daniela’s Empodera accelerator and “Health Heroes” program shone a light on this. They showcased women’s health startups to investors and discovered many had “80% of their clients as women and no women on the tech or product team”. For savvy investors, this spells upside. NVC’s bet is that founders who bridge that gap – by building products for the actual users (often women) and hiring talent who represent those users – will win big. It’s already backing startups doing exactly that: for example, Brazil’s HUNA AI, which uses AI on blood samples for early breast cancer detection without expensive mammograms. Or Plenna in Mexico, providing a one-stop, female-focused healthcare platform. These companies tackle critical needs (like affordable diagnostics or comprehensive women’s wellness) that incumbent systems ignore, while unlocking profitable new markets.

Crucially, NVC isn’t just writing checks, it’s also exploring innovative financing models to fuel these solutions. Daniela discusses framing some health investments as revenue-based or debt deals rather than pure equity, since traditional VC models don’t always fit social businesses. The goal is to catalyze impact on a sustainable, scalable basis, whether via venture rounds or alternative funding. Impact with integrity, but also with ingenuity.

Hunting for Hidden Gems: Proactive Sourcing & Contrarian Bets

Daniela’s approach to investing can be summed up in one word: proactive. Coming up through Endeavor (the global entrepreneur network), she learned early the value of pounding the pavement to find great founders. At NVC, that ethos is core. While some VCs wait for warm intros, Daniela’s team “actively look[s] for companies and deals”, often in unsexy or overlooked corners of the market. NVC analysts have a mandate to reach out to at least two new companies every week, and the firm isn’t shy about cold emails or LinkedIn messages. The result: 3–4 people screening around 1,000 startups a year, giving NVC a shot at gems others might miss. “You have to get out there because the best deals are competitive. Sometimes you have to fight your way to win,” Daniela says of the hustle. It’s a strategy that requires hustle and curiosity, but it pays off in both deal flow and community building.

A great example is Fibrazo, one of NVC’s more notable investments. Fibrazo is a Colombian startup bringing fiber-optic internet to underserved coastal communities. Many investors passed on Fibrazo, wary of the operational complexity and the prospect of competing with incumbent telecom giants. But Daniela saw what others didn’t: an essential service in huge demand, and founders with the grit and experience to pull it off. The Colombian telecom market is an oligopoly with lousy service in smaller markets. Fibrazo offered flexible, affordable plans to folks big companies ignored: “democratizing internet access in neighborhoods where the big players would never bet”. Importantly, the founder’s background impressed NVC: “he had worked in Africa and other continents, understood the technical side and the business model. Where others saw risk, we saw resilience, and that made all the difference.” Today, Fibrazo is thriving and has become one of NVC’s best-performing deals, validating this contrarian bet.

The takeaway for investors? Great opportunities often lurk where consensus says “too hard.” By remaining curious and building relationships everywhere (even a casual “who built your website?” can lead to meeting the next Rappi), Daniela has created an edge for NVC. For founders, her advice is to leverage your networks too: “Founders know the best founders”, so those warm referrals from fellow entrepreneurs can be golden. And if you’re tackling a tough, meaningful problem that others overlook, the right investors (like NVC) will value your vision and tenacity.

The “Three Rs” of Team Success

When evaluating startups, Daniela puts people above all. “I think one of the biggest reasons startups fail is team cohesion,” she says. In 2020 - 2021, LatAm saw a surge of new startups, sometimes with co-founders that barely knew each other. NVC witnessed the fallout: “We’ve had two companies break up because of [founder conflict]. It’s like a marriage, even harder than being married sometimes.” Now, Daniela rigorously diligences founder dynamics before investing. She credits a professor from her USC master’s program for a framework she uses, the “Three Rs”: Roles, Rewards, Relationships .

What does that mean in practice?

• First, Roles — does each founder have a clear, necessary role, and do they cover the key skills between them? (Beware of ambiguous titles like co-CEOs or missing expertise.)

• Second, Rewards — is equity split fairly relative to contributions? If a crucial tech lead only owns 2%, that’s a red flag (a likely “flight risk” who might not stick around).

• Third, Relationships — have the founders worked together before or been through challenges as a team? Startups are a gauntlet, and founding with a total stranger can be a recipe for blow-ups. NVC favors teams who have “immense skin in the game” and personal trust – for example, Fibrazo’s founders were longtime colleagues who even moved countries together to build the business. That kind of bond signals resilience.

Daniela also emphasizes founder coachability and openness. As part of diligence, NVC will probe how entrepreneurs react to feedback and tough questions. Are they transparent with data? Do they admit what they don’t know? “The most talented people are super open… they have nothing to hide,” she observes. A bit of ego is expected in founders, but too much ego — the kind that “won’t pivot when they have to or won’t listen to anyone” — is dangerous. For investors, the lesson is to double-click on team dynamics, not just the deck and metrics. For founders, it’s a reminder that self-awareness and humility can be as important as hustle. As Daniela puts it, you ultimately want a leader who will “ride or die for that company” and still be willing to learn and adapt.

Wrapping Up

Daniela’s insights come at a pivotal time for the LatAm startup ecosystem. As the funding frenzy cools, her focus on purposeful, sustainable growth feels especially timely. Rather than chase the next hype cycle, Daniela is betting on founders who truly understand local problems and who are in it for the long haul. It’s a reminder that building in LatAm is a marathon, not a sprint, and that impact-driven entrepreneurs (with the right support) can create both profit and progress.

For our La Frontera community, this conversation was a powerful nudge to double down on what matters: solving real problems, staying close to your customers, and surrounding yourself with people who challenge you to be better. We hope you found these notes as inspiring as we did!

Enjoyed the episode? Here’s how you can support us:

1. 🎧 Listen to the full conversation with Daniela Pacheco on your favorite platform (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube). Her passion really shines.

2. 💌 Subscribe to the La Frontera 🌵 newsletter for more founder stories and investor insights from across the Americas. Join our community and never miss an update!

📢 Listen to the full episode here.

Follow Daniela, because why wouldn’t you?

And check out NVC as they disrupt impact investing across Latin America.

www.nvcapital.vc

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Daniel Rodriguez

Last February, we sat down with Daniel Rodriguez, the Mexican serial entrepreneur behind Adquiere.co, a new tech-enabled M&A platform aiming to unlock much-needed liquidity in Latin America’s startup and SMB ecosystem. Daniel’s story comes at the perfect time – nearly every VC and founder we talk to has the same concern these days: “Where are the exits?” 

In this episode, we dive into why M&A matters now more than ever in LatAm, and how Adquiere is tackling the region’s exit gap head-on. Daniel shares how a failed acquisition of his last company sparked the idea for Adquiere, why small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) may hold the key to a virtuous cycle of reinvestment, and how connecting cross-border capital (think the Hispanic diaspora) can supercharge the ecosystem. This conversation is packed with insights on building in public, democratizing acquisitions, and preparing early for an exit – whether you’re a startup founder or an SMB owner, you won’t want to miss these learnings.

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Episode 16 Summary

• Liquidity gap: LatAm is ~1% of global M&A vs ~50% in the U.S., so even small exits matter to recycle capital and fuel growth.

• Daniel’s path → Adquiere: 13+ years as a founder (incl. a delivery exit) and a failed sale of Axented exposed M&A friction—sparking Adquiere.

• Democratizing deals: Launched 2024; MVP built in 2 weeks with no/low-code to make buying/selling businesses accessible beyond elite banked processes.

• Fixing LatAm’s blockers: Family-business reluctance, limited acquisition financing, and messy books; Adquiere pushes verified data, cleaner processes, and better matching.

• Who’s buying & why SMBs win: Angels, search funds, some PE/corporates; investors favor cash-flowing SMBs over small stakes in risky startups.

• Cross-border flywheel: Tapping Hispanic diaspora capital (U.S., Spain, etc.) to invest back home, starting with Spanish-speaking markets.

• Scaling with automation: Adding AI/automation to valuations, KYB/KYC, and diligence to compress timelines from 6–12 months toward 1–3 months.

• Founder takeaway: Start exit prep early—clean financials, signed contracts, operational discipline—so your company is easy to buy.

In Today's Newsletter

• La Frontera 🌵 Podcast, Episode 16 - Democratizing …

  • Episode 16 Summary

  • Adquiere: Tech-Enabled M&A Marketplace for LatAm

  • 🚀 From Serial Founder to M&A Champion

  • ✨ A Failed Exit Sparks a Startup

  • 🌎 LatAm’s M&A Landscape: The Exit Gap

  • 🌐 Building Adquiere: MVP in 2 Weeks & Building in …

  • 💸 Who’s Buying? Why SMB Exits > Startup Exits

  • 🇲🇽 Connecting the Diaspora: Cross-Border Vision

  • 🤖 The Road Ahead: Automation, AI & a True Marketp …

  • ♻️ The Virtuous Cycle: Why Founders Should Prep fo …

  • 📢 Listen to the full episode here.

Adquiere: Tech-Enabled M&A Marketplace for LatAm

🚀 Founded: 2024 (Monterrey, Mexico)
📈 Stage: N/A - Bootstrapped
💰 Total Funding Raised: $0
🤝 Investors: N/A
🎯 Mission: Adquiere’s mission is to democratize M&A in LATAM by making it simple, transparent, and accessible to anyone looking to buy, sell, or invest in businesses.

Adquiere is the marketplace where vetted Hispanic businesses connect with trusted buyers. Companies can quickly list their business, get an instant valuation, and securely share information through automated NDAs and LOIs. By simplifying and bringing transparency to a complex and unclear process, Adquiere helps deals move faster, safer, and with greater confidence.

🚀 From Serial Founder to M&A Champion

Before he ever thought about building an M&A marketplace, Daniel Rodriguez was living the founder life in Mexico for well over a decade. Born and raised in Monterrey, he started his career at Microsoft but soon felt the pull of entrepreneurship. “If I can’t sell, I can’t be an entrepreneur,” he figured – so he left his cozy tech job after 6 months to test his mettle in sales and startups.

Over the years, Daniel co-founded multiple ventures across industries: an early app for discovering local experiences (way before Google Maps and Yelp were big in Mexico), a software development studio (Axented), a telehealth startup, a proptech platform, and even a food delivery business that went head-to-head with giants like Rappi and UberEats. Not every venture thrived – in fact, Daniel jokes that he and his co-founders “made every mistake in the book (and added a few new ones!).” But each experience taught him invaluable lessons and even yielded one successful exit (selling that delivery startup after battling the big players).

Importantly, running a dev shop like Axented gave Daniel a front-row seat to other founders’ journeys as well. His team built products for startups and large corporations alike, across different countries. This exposure helped him see what worked and what didn’t in various businesses. By the time 2024 rolled around, Daniel had amassed a rare combination of tech know-how, sales chops, and a deep network in the Mexican startup scene. He was known as an operator who could speak the language of both engineers and investors – the kind of person who might just be crazy enough to tackle LatAm’s hardest problem: the lack of exits.

✨ A Failed Exit Sparks a Startup

The idea for Adquiere was born out of frustration and “what if” questions. In 2020, amid the pandemic, Daniel’s company Axented started getting acquisition interest from U.S. firms looking to buy Mexican software studios (to expand via nearshore talent). Intrigued, Daniel and his partners engaged in talks and even brought on an M&A advisor to explore a sale. After months of negotiation, they came within inches of a signed deal – only for the buyer to back out at the last minute. It was a heartbreaking near-miss.

Yet, in that setback lay the seeds of a new venture. The would-be advisor from the failed deal (now Daniel’s co-founder at Adquiere) helped him ponder big questions: Why is it so hard to find another buyer? Where do you even look? How can you trust they’re serious? Daniel remembered a U.S. site he had registered on – Acquire.com (formerly MicroAcquire) – a startup marketplace connecting buyers and sellers. If something like that works in the U.S., what about Latin America? He surveyed the landscape and saw only fragmented solutions: a niche e-commerce business marketplace in Chile here, a small classifieds site for mom-and-pop shops there. Nowhere was anyone addressing M&A for the mass of Latin American businesses – especially the SMBs and micro-businesses that form the backbone of local economies.

That lightbulb moment had Daniel on the phone with his former advisor the very next morning: “Send me your bill for the last deal, but I still want to talk – I have this idea.” They agreed the opportunity was real. Why should selling your company be limited to the well-connected or the wealthy?

❝  

“M&A shouldn’t be for a chosen few with money or connections. Any company should be able to sell, and any company should be able to raise.”

 - Daniel Rodriguez

In mid-2024, Daniel and his co-founders set out to democratize mergers and acquisitions in LatAm. They envisioned Adquiere as part M&A advisory firm (to guide deals) and part online marketplace (to open up deal flow). Unlike traditional brokers or banks that jealously guard deals, Adquiere would be an open platform where “everyone can sell, everyone can invest, everyone can buy.” And they’d even invite the traditional brokers to join rather than fight – offering partnership programs so brokers and small M&A firms could list deals and tap into a broader pool of buyers.

🌎 LatAm’s M&A Landscape: The Exit Gap

To understand Adquiere’s mission, you have to grasp the stark reality of exits in Latin America. As Daniel told us, roughly 50% of global M&A activity happens in the US, while LatAm accounts for only ~1%. Yet Latin America is not 1% of the world – it’s a region of 650+ million people and vibrant emerging markets. That huge gap signals an underdeveloped exit market. And it’s not just a statistic – it’s a pain point felt by founders and investors alike. Venture capital in LatAm boomed over the last decade, but sustainable growth requires liquidity (i.e. investors eventually getting returns). With IPOs rare (Mexico and Brazil have stock markets, but they’re relatively illiquid), acquisitions are the main hope for VCs to get paid back.

So why aren’t more acquisitions happening in LatAm? Daniel ticked off a few familiar challenges:

• Family-Owned Mindset: Many businesses in Mexico and across LatAm are family enterprises passed down through generations. Owners see them as personal legacies, making them emotionally reluctant to sell. It’s hard to part with “the family jewel,” even if selling might make financial sense.

• Lack of Reinvestable Capital: In Silicon Valley, when a founder sells their company or goes public, they often become angel investors or start new ventures – creating a virtuous cycle of reinvestment. In LatAm, that cycle barely starts because exits are so scarce. Fewer exits ⇒ fewer cashed-out founders and early employees ⇒ fewer angels writing new checks. It’s a vicious circle (or círculo vicioso, as one might say).

• Financing & Support Gaps: The US has things like SBA loans that help buyers acquire small businesses (because keeping a business alive and growing is good for jobs and the economy). Latin America has no equivalent support. Banks offer only limited traditional loans for acquisitions, and there aren’t robust government programs to encourage buying businesses. If you want to buy a company, you’re largely on your own to find capital.

• Informality and Transparency: Especially at the SMB level, many LatAm businesses have tangled or informal finances. Personal and business accounts mix, contracts might be “handshake deals,” and bookkeeping can be… creative. These issues scare off buyers or bog down due diligence. (One of Daniel’s crusades is urging sellers to clean up their books and sign proper contracts well before trying to sell – more on that later.)

All these factors contribute to a kind of M&A logjam. And that’s exactly what Adquiere aims to break. By connecting the right buyer with the right seller more efficiently, Daniel believes many deals that never would have happened can now happen. Maybe a small manufacturing company in Guadalajara would never find the niche buyer in Madrid who’s eager to expand to Mexico – but on a platform, they can connect. Adquiere doesn’t expect to suddenly usher in $5B mega-deals, but a steady stream of $1M, $5M, $10M transactions can start to thaw the market. Even modest exits put money in entrepreneurs’ pockets that can flow back into new startups or investments.

Daniel likens it to turning that vicious cycle into a virtuous one: get even a trickle of exits going, and new wealth and confidence will circulate through the ecosystem. Investors and founders are watching closely – and rooting for this vision, because liquidity is the missing puzzle piece for LatAm’s startup future.

🌐 Building Adquiere: MVP in 2 Weeks & Building in Public

With the idea in place, Daniel and his co-founders didn’t waste any time. In true hacker fashion, Daniel – who does not have a formal coding background – challenged himself to build the first version of Adquiere in just two weekends. How? By leveraging no-code and low-code tools (and a whole lot of coffee). It was a scrappy prototype, but it worked. In fact, much of that original MVP still underpins the platform today. “It wasn’t pretty at first – one co-founder literally laughed at the UI,” Daniel recalls, “but function mattered more than form. We slapped on a nicer coat of paint, and off we went!”

The team made a conscious decision: build in public and launch fast. Instead of stealthily perfecting the product or worrying someone might copy the idea, they pushed Adquiere live to see if the need was real. Daniel’s view: execution > ideas. If someone else tried to clone it, so be it – the real challenge is doing it right and building trust in a community that hasn’t seen this before.

Adquiere’s early growth has been largely organic, powered by Daniel’s network and LinkedIn presence and by his co-founder Roberto’s existing Rolodex of M&A contacts. They migrated Roberto’s traditional brokerage clients onto Adquiere and used those initial deals to attract buyers. Every week, more users signed up, gave feedback, and saw the platform improve almost in real-time. Daniel actively solicited input: which features matter, which processes could be smoother? True to the “public build” ethos, if a tweak made sense, they’d deploy it ASAP.

This agility – possible because Adquiere is a tech product at heart, not a static advisory firm – is a key edge. Traditional M&A advisors aren’t iterating on software every week; Daniel’s team is. And their tech-centric approach also means verification and due diligence can be partially automated. For instance, Adquiere encourages every seller to go through a verification process. They use a mix of tools (KYC/KYB for identity and financial verification) and manual checks to vet listings. Buyers don’t get direct contact with sellers until certain checks are done, which weeds out unserious actors. It’s still early and not everything is fully automated – Daniel admits not everything in LatAm is as easily verifiable via API as in the US – but the platform is steadily adding more trust layers to give buyers confidence (and to coach sellers on how to become “deal-ready”).

Perhaps most importantly, Adquiere treats its user feedback as gold. In these first months, they have deliberately kept the scope broad – allowing various sizes and types of companies on the marketplace – to learn where demand is strongest. Are startups actually going to sell here, or is it mostly cash-flowing traditional businesses? Which buyers show up most, and what are they looking for? This open discovery process is happening in public. As Daniel puts it, “we’re still in a learning stage… trying to really understand who needs this the most and why, and build for them.” That’s a refreshingly humble approach for a founder: rather than assuming a solution, Adquiere is evolving in response to the market’s signals.

💸 Who’s Buying? Why SMB Exits > Startup Exits

Eight months into Adquiere’s journey, some interesting trends have emerged in the types of buyers and deals happening:

First, about half of the investors signing up are individual angels or high-net-worth individuals – people investing their own money to acquire businesses (often aiming to operate them for profit). There’s also a healthy showing of search funds and private equity players sniffing around for opportunities. In fact, Daniel notes that the majority of actual offers made on the platform so far have come from search funds and PE firms. These are folks with capital in hand, actively looking to buy solid businesses. A smaller slice of users are from family offices and corporates, and even other SMB owners looking to acquire competitors or extensions to their business.

One clear finding: SMBs are a hotter ticket than early-stage startups right now. For an investor, the proposition of paying (say) $1 million to buy 100% of a profitable business is often more attractive than putting $1 million into a high-risk startup for a 10% equity stake. The math is straightforward – with the SMB, you can start earning cash flow Day 1 after acquisition, and you control the asset. With a startup, you might wait 7-10 years and still end up with nothing if it fails. As Daniel succinctly puts it, many investors would rather own “an entire operation versus a very small slice.”

This doesn’t mean startups aren’t welcome on Adquiere. They are – and some are listing – but the buyer pool’s appetite leans toward companies with proven revenues and positive EBITDA. It’s part of a broader trend in the economic climate: with venture funding tighter, entrepreneurship-through-acquisition is having a moment.

On the sell-side, the range is wide. There are tiny startups doing a few thousand dollars a month in sales, all the way up to established companies with $5M+ USD in annual revenue listing on the platform. Daniel shared that they even have one business doing about $50M a year considering options on Adquiere – a sign that larger deals might eventually flow through as trust builds. But he’s equally excited about the smaller deals: for example, a local restaurant chain doing ~$1M in sales with a couple of locations. A business like that might be invisible to traditional investment banks, but it’s an ideal target for a rising entrepreneur to acquire and grow (two locations today… four tomorrow, improve margins, etc.). Adquiere wants to serve all these segments, from the scrappy SaaS startup seeking an acqui-hire, to the family business ready to cash out after decades.

All of this signals a new mindset taking root: exits don’t have to be unicorn-scale to be worthwhile. A founder selling their small company for $2M-$5M may not make headlines, but it can change that founder’s life – and perhaps turn them into an angel investor who fuels the next new venture. Meanwhile, the buyer gets a running start with a proven business. It’s a win-win that the ecosystem needs more of.

🇲🇽 Connecting the Diaspora: Cross-Border Vision

One of the most exciting angles we discussed is Adquiere’s potential to act as a bridge between Latin America and its diaspora. There are millions of Latin Americans abroad – in the U.S., Canada, Spain, and beyond – who have gained education, skills, and capital and are looking for ways to “pay it forward” back home. Daniel has sensed a strong desire among many expatriate or second-generation Latinos to reconnect with their roots through investment. Buying a business in your home country (or your parents’ home country) can be both emotionally fulfilling and financially smart if you see growth opportunities there.

Adquiere is intentionally positioning itself to tap this cross-border capital flow. In fact, the platform is currently only in Spanish (the name Adquiere itself means “Acquire” in Spanish). This is by design – Daniel’s team chose to focus first on Hispanic investors and markets rather than try to cater to everyone globally in English. As he explains, they’re not trying to compete with U.S. marketplaces, but rather complement them by linking the Spanish-speaking world. If a big U.S. buyer wants to acquire a company in Mexico, Adquiere can facilitate that. But more often, it might be a successful Latino professional in New York or Miami who wants to buy a business in Mexico City, or a Spanish company looking to expand to Colombia, etc.

❝  

“We realized there’s a big opportunity to connect the Hispanic community in the U.S. and enable them to invest in businesses in the region.”

 - Daniel Rodriguez

The historical ties are strong: Mexicans and other LatAm diaspora in the States, Spaniards with Latin America, Brazilians with Portugal, and vice versa. Adquiere wants to be the hub where these connections translate into deals. Already they’ve had firms from Spain, the U.S., and across Latin America engage on the platform. Daniel hints that while Mexico is their beachhead, they’re quietly working on transactions that touch those cross-border “veins” – e.g., a foreign buyer for a Mexican company or expanding the marketplace’s reach to new countries.

In practical terms, building this bridge means navigating multiple jurisdictions, languages (Portuguese for Brazil will come into play), and regulatory environments. It’s a long game, but the vision is compelling: a Pan-American marketplace for private companies, where a business in Bogotá or Monterrey can as easily find a buyer from Los Angeles or Madrid as one from the local scene. Such connectivity could unlock new sources of capital for LatAm businesses and give international investors a smoother entry into opportunities that were previously hard to access.

For now, Adquiere is taking it step by step. The focus remains on nailing the experience in Mexico and for Spanish-speaking users, proving the model, and building that trust. As Daniel said, they’re not excluding U.S. or global participation, just sequencing their growth. He knows that in time, embracing English and broader markets will make sense – especially as the largest M&A market in the world (the U.S.) inevitably takes interest in LatAm’s emerging opportunities. But leading with the Hispanic diaspora strategy gives Adquiere a culturally resonant, focused community to serve first.

🤖 The Road Ahead: Automation, AI & a True Marketplace

What does the future hold for Adquiere? Daniel paints a picture of a platform that becomes ever more efficient and intelligent in facilitating deals. Today, Adquiere is part human-driven service, part marketplace. Daniel’s team actively advises on some deals, and not every process is automated – which is normal for an early-stage startup. But as they scale, the plan is to build more of the “machine” to simplify M&A.

One area of exploration is AI-driven tools for tasks like valuation and due diligence. Around the world, there’s a surge of startups using AI to crunch financials, analyze companies, even draft deal documents. Daniel is not looking to replace M&A professionals outright, but he acknowledges that adopting AI tools can drastically reduce the manual grunt work. Imagine an algorithm that can quickly analyze a company’s QuickBooks data (when available) and spit out a valuation range, or flag inconsistencies in financial statements, or even compare the company’s metrics to industry benchmarks to assist buyers and sellers in negotiations. These kinds of tools could speed up what is typically a painfully slow process.

Daniel noted that everyone building AI is essentially aiming to eliminate some jobs. Investment banking analysts are no exception – their hours of building Excel models might be largely automatable. Adquiere sees AI as a means to augment what they do: “a tool to superpower yourself,” Daniel says. If their platform can handle 80% of a valuation analysis automatically, the team can focus on the nuanced 20% and on actually closing the deal. The end goal would be a platform where a lot of the heavy lifting (sourcing buyers, vetting companies, initial valuations, even matching the right opportunities to the right investors) happens seamlessly in the background. Human expertise will always play a role – relationships and trust are at the heart of M&A – but those humans could be much more productive with smart tech behind them.

Another key part of the roadmap is continuing to build partnerships with traditional players. Rather than viewing local M&A boutiques and brokers as competitors to crush, Adquiere wants them as allies feeding into a larger marketplace. Think of it this way: the old-school broker with a Rolodex of 10 buyers is no match for a platform that can reach 1,000 – so why not plug those 10 into the 1,000? If Adquiere becomes the central exchange, everyone can benefit from greater liquidity. This cooperative approach can help overcome skepticism and get more deal flow onto the platform, as well as scale Adquiere’s reach without having to hire an army of bankers in-house.

Technologically, Adquiere is gearing up to evolve from that no-code MVP to a more robust “version 1.0” platform. Daniel hinted that a more code-heavy rebuild (let’s call it version 0.5 on the way to 1.0) is in progress to handle increasing volume and add new features. They’ve proven the concept; now they need to ensure the product can handle many concurrent deals and users, securely and smoothly. This involves typical growing pains – optimizing the marketplace UI, implementing better analytics, tightening security and verification processes, etc. It’s the unglamorous but critical work that will determine if Adquiere can truly scale into the default M&A marketplace of LatAm.

Ultimately, success for Adquiere will be measured by how many real acquisitions they can facilitate and how much faster and easier they can make the process. Daniel’s moonshot (said half-jokingly) is to get to a point where they can say, “we’ll sell any company within a month.” Today, that’s not realistic – even with Adquiere’s help, most deals still take 6-12 months due to due diligence, financing, etc. But maybe they can compress that to 3-6 months, then 1-3 months for certain standardized transactions. If they achieve even a fraction of that efficiency gain, it would be revolutionary for the ecosystem.

As we wrapped up, Daniel emphasized that he’s in it for the long haul. “We can take a decade to build this, but it has to happen,” he says of jumpstarting LatAm’s exit engine. The patience and persistence in that statement underscore that Adquiere isn’t a flip project – it’s aiming to fundamentally change how a region’s private market operates. And by doing so, potentially unlock tremendous value.

♻️ The Virtuous Cycle: Why Founders Should Prep for Exit Early

Our conversation left us with a sense of cautious optimism. Yes, LatAm’s liquidity problem is big and complex – but it’s solvable, step by step. Daniel believes that even a steady drumbeat of small exits will start converting today’s vicious cycle into a virtuous cycle. When founders see peers selling companies (even modestly) and re-investing or starting new ventures, the mindset shifts: building a company with an eye toward an exit becomes normal, not a fantasy. Investors gain confidence that there is a path to liquidity, which in turn attracts more capital to the region. Over time, this can snowball – perhaps slowly at first, but picking up momentum with each success story.

For current founders and SMB owners, Daniel’s parting advice was clear: begin with the end in mind. If you might want to sell in 1-3 years, start acting now to make your business sellable. This isn’t about dressing it up superficially, but doing the real work: organize your financials (separate those personal expenses and keep clean books!), secure your key customer or supplier contracts in writing, streamline any “family business” quirks that a new owner wouldn’t want to inherit. Essentially, put yourself in a buyer’s shoes – they’ll pay a premium for a company that’s well-run, transparent, and growing.

And even if you’re not actively looking to exit, having a well-run company is never a bad thing. It gives you options – maybe you raise capital, maybe you acquire another business yourself, or maybe when the time is right, you have an attractive asset to sell. As Daniel noted, exits don’t happen magically or overnight. The sooner you prepare, the smoother the process will be when the opportunity comes. With platforms like Adquiere emerging, founders have new resources to guide them, but the fundamentals still matter.

La Frontera started this episode asking why M&A matters now. The answer we found is both pragmatic and hopeful: M&A is the missing link to make the LatAm startup ecosystem truly sustainable. Liquidity unlocks value, rewards risk-takers, and recirculates capital to the next generation of ideas. And it takes pioneers like Daniel Rodriguez to step up and tackle the problem in an innovative way.

It won’t be easy – cultural change and market development never are – but if Adquiere and similar efforts succeed, we might look back on the mid-2020s as the dawn of LatAm’s “exit era.” As Daniel said, it might not become a massive snowball overnight, it might take a decade – but it has to start somewhere. After hearing his story, we’re convinced that start is already underway. ¡Salud to that, and to the virtuous cycle ahead!

❝  

“If we start getting some of these exits rolling, hopefully we’ll get some liquidity back – turning that vicious cycle into a virtuous one.”

 - Daniel Rodriguez

📢 Listen to the full episode here.

Follow Daniel, because why wouldn’t you?

And check out Adquiere.co as they continue to spark the market for acquisitions in Latin America.

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider sharing La Frontera 🌵 with your friends and colleagues. Let’s continue building a cross-border community of innovators! 🚀

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Tomás Uribe

We’re thrilled to finally welcome Tomás Uribe to La Frontera. His unconventional path, unique style and perspective is a refreshing one, and his journey has a bit of everything: from a childhood steeped in music and the arts to a leap from Colombia to New York City. He shares hard-won lessons navigating the U.S. immigration maze and building a startup that’s caught the attention of investors like Pharrell Williams and Morgan Stanley. In this episode, Tomás shares how his creative roots give him an edge in tech, why being authentic helped him fundraise, and how he’s using AI to supercharge creative work.

If you’re a founder from an unconventional background, an immigrant entrepreneur, or an investor interested in the creative economy, this conversation is packed with golden insights.

Tomás was kind enough to share a special discount code for 15% off Mavity just for La Frontera readers.

You can find the code at the bottom of this newsletter!

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Episode 15 Summary

• From Bogotá to NYC: How Tomás’s musical upbringing and love for New York set the stage for his founder journey.

• Music & Tech – A Creative Edge: Why a background in music composition became Tomás’s secret weapon for problem-solving in business.

• Early Pivots & “Necessary” Mistakes: The early false starts and painful lessons that ultimately shaped Mavity’s direction.

• Authenticity in Fundraising: Tips from Tomás’s fundraising playbook – be yourself, prioritize good design and storytelling, and sweat the details.

• Creativity Meets AI: How Mavity leverages AI tools to free up creators’ time and why human creativity remains “the most important currency” in the age of automation.

• Navigating the Visa Gauntlet: Tomás’s advice for immigrant founders on doing your homework with U.S. visa options, finding sponsors, and building networks to achieve the American startup dream.

• Building Community & Giving Back: Why Tomás engages in policy advocacy and how his Latino heritage influences Mavity’s inclusive culture.

In Today's Newsletter

• La Frontera 🌵 Podcast, Episode 15 - The Creative …

  • Episode 15 Summary

  • 🎨Mavity: Modern Creative Operations, Powered by A …

  • 🎶 From Classical Composition to Startup CEO

  • 💡 Early Pivots, Hard Lessons

  • 💰 Fundraising with Authenticity and Design

  • 🤖 When Creativity Meets AI

  • ✈️ Cross-Border Founder: Navigating Visas and Immi …

  • 🌍 Community, Culture, and Paying It Forward

  • 🧠 Wrap-Up: Key Takeaways for Founders

  • 📢 Listen to the full episode here.

🎨Mavity: Modern Creative Operations, Powered by AI

🚀 Founded: 2022 (New York, NY)
📈 Stage: Seed
💰 Total Funding Raised: ~$2M
🤝 Investors: Techstars, Black Ambition (Pharrell Williams), L’Attitude Ventures, Google, Morgan Stanley, among others
🎯 Mission: Empower go to market teams with fast, easy and scalable creative asset orchestration

Mavity is an AI-powered platform that orchestrates the creation, management, and delivery of go-to-market (GTM) assets like one-pagers, sales decks, social content, and ads, through a multi-format asset builder that ensures all assets are interconnected and consistently up to date. It integrates directly with CRM and sales tools to turn customers and deal data into personalized, performance-optimized creative. Mavity matters because GTM teams need to move fast and scale content across multiple channels, but traditional creative workflows are slow, fragmented, and expensive. Today, they have a team spread across New York, Colombia, and beyond, all working to “supercharge creative operations” for businesses and brands.

🎶 From Classical Composition to Startup CEO

Tomás’s path to tech founder is anything but typical. Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia in a highly artistic family, Tomás was immersed in music from a young age. By seven he was learning instruments, and in his teens he even formed a band – which, in true entrepreneurial fashion, he and his bandmates incorporated as a company to sell music for ads and build custom audio equipment for other musicians. This early mix of art and business planted the seed for his future startup life.

But it was Tomás’s love of New York City that ultimately pulled him north. Fascinated by NYC’s creative energy and diversity, he set his sights on studying there. He applied (to exactly one school!) and earned a spot in Parsons’ media technology program, moving to New York in 2013. That move kicked off a decade-long adventure: from building a music-tech app with his now co-founder, to marketing stints at the UN and a Brooklyn startup – all while moonlighting in the city’s music scene. The common thread? Tomás was constantly at the intersection of creativity and technology, whether hacking on a music discovery app or managing creative projects in advertising.

It’s no surprise, then, that when Tomás started Mavity, he approached it with a creative mindset. He sees clear parallels between composing music and building a business.

“He’s just using his music and his way of being creative to channel different ideas and solve problems. And that’s literally what music is… you’re solving a problem at every single measure,” Tomás says, referring to Nine Inch Nails frontman-turned-tech executive Trent Reznor as an inspiration.

  Tomás Uribe

In Tomás’s view, writing a song and running a startup both boil down to continuous problem-solving and iteration, you’re always refining, adjusting, and improvising to get to a harmonious result.

That creative edge gives Tomás a unique perspective as a founder. He admits he’s “more of a creator than an executioner” at heart, brimming with new ideas. One of his favorite sayings is “the worst thing that can happen to one idea is another idea.” In other words, focus is key – a challenge for any creative person. Tomás has had to learn to balance that imaginative flair with the discipline to see an idea through. As he puts it, creators often fall in love with the next shiny concept (whether it’s the best song ever or a new product feature), but success comes from doubling down on the rightidea long enough to make it real. It’s a lesson in persistence that any founder can relate to.

Finally, Tomás believes creative people have never been more important in tech. With AI on the rise (more on that later), human originality is a priceless asset.

❝  

“Human creativity is the single most important currency from here onwards”

  Tomás Uribe

He emphasizes that ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking are what will differentiate companies in an age where so much can be automated. As a founder who straddles both art and tech, Tomás embodies that principle, and encourages more folks from artistic backgrounds to dive into entrepreneurship. The startup world, he insists, needs creative perspectives now more than ever.

💡 Early Pivots, Hard Lessons

Mavity’s vision didn’t spring forth fully formed. Tomás is refreshingly candid that the journey was messy and full of mistakes, each one a learning experience that shaped the company.

“We could stay here forever talking about mistakes,” Tomás laughs. “In retrospect, it was like a necessary evil to get to where we are” he says of the bumps along the way.

  Tomás Uribe

One of the earliest forks in the road came during Mavity’s time in Techstars. Back then, the startup was focused exclusively on agencies. The team assumed creative agencies would love a platform to manage freelance creators. Spoiler alert: they didn’t. “Complete crickets – nobody cared,” Tomás admits of that initial hypothesis. They had poured time into building features for agencies, only to realize the real demand was elsewhere.

Fortunately, being in an accelerator helped Mavity find its true North Star. Other founders in Tomás’s Techstars cohort started clamoring for creative help: pitch decks, marketing assets, you name it. Unlike agencies, startups desperately needed a reliable way to get these things done. The lightbulb went off – Mavity pivoted to serve startup and small business customers, not agencies. That pivot was a turning point: suddenly Mavity had paying clients and a clearer value prop. But new mistakes were made in the process, too.

Tomás recounts another early misstep: spending too much effort on the creative “supply” side of the marketplace. In trying to please the freelancers on Mavity, the team built out robust dashboards and features for creatives – only to later scrap much of it. Why? Because the priority had to be the paying customers’ experience. Mavity learned the hard way not to over-engineer for one side of a marketplace at the expense of the other.

“We spent a lot of time and resources building for [creatives], rather than the end customer… It’s painful, but it’s not there anymore.”

  Tomás Uribe

The takeaway: focus on delivering value to whoever pays the bills (and in a marketplace, avoid “happy ears” that lead you to build stuff people say they want, rather than what they’ll actually use).

Another lesson from the trenches was around hiring. As a first-time CEO, Tomás admits he made some hiring mistakes – bringing on people who looked perfect on paper but weren’t the right fit in practice. Early on, he was slow to address those mismatches. Now, he’s quicker to act. Firing fast is never easy, but it saves the whole team pain in the long run. Tomás has learned to trust his gut if something feels off in the first few weeks with a new hire – and to make the tough call before a minor issue becomes a major drain.

From botched product ideas to personnel dilemmas, these experiences underscore an encouraging point: mistakes are part of the process. Tomás doesn’t shy away from them; instead, he views each stumble as fuel for growth. Founders, take note – even a “necessary evil” of a mistake can push you toward clarity if you’re willing to adapt. As Tomás reflects, every pivot and hard decision at Mavity ultimately led to a stronger business. The key is maintaining humility and staying responsive to feedback, no matter how far off-course you might find yourself.

💰 Fundraising with Authenticity and Design

When it comes to fundraising, Tomás Uribe has an unorthodox playbook. How many founders do you know that begin pitch presentations with a cat video? Tomás does. (You read that right.) As a former musician, he’s no stranger to winning over tough crowds – and he brings that performer’s flair to pitching investors. During workshops he gives on fundraising, Tomás likes to open with a famous meme-worthy clip of a cat trying (and hilariously failing) to jump between two roofs. Why? It’s his tongue-in-cheek way of telling founders: take all advice with a grain of salt. “As an entrepreneur, you have so many people telling you, ‘do this, do that’… I always tell them, anything you hear in my workshop, just take it like the cat,” Tomás says – in other words, no single formula guarantees success. Ultimately, you have to make the leap yourself, adjust on the fly, and learn from the falls.

That philosophy underpins Tomás’s top fundraising tip: be unapologetically yourself. For him, that meant embracing his creative identity rather than trying to play the stereotypical tech CEO.

“I’m a musician… I tried [wearing] the suit because I thought it would be easier to fit in… then I realized it’s not me, it’s not authentic.”

  Tomás Uribe

He emphasizes that authenticity must be tempered with awareness (know your audience and don’t completely alienate them), but it’s crucial not to pretend to be someone you’re not. Early-stage investors, after all, are betting on the founder as much as the idea.

“Especially at pre-seed and seed, they’re really investing in who the person is… VCs can cut through the BS. So don’t try to be anything you’re not.”

  Tomás Uribe

Another pillar of Tomás’s approach is good design and storytelling. As a creative, he has a keen eye for aesthetics – and he adamantly rejects the notion you sometimes hear in VC land that “design doesn’t matter.” “That’s BS. We consume everything through our eyes,” Tomás says plainly. In his experience, a well-designed pitch deck that crafts a compelling narrative will always beat a dull memo full of facts. Investors are human: an ugly, typo-ridden deck is an easy way to signal a lack of care. “The devil is in the details. People will notice when you’ve spent time to make sure all those blood, sweat and tears you’ve put in are correctly represented,” Tomás insists.

So what does a Tomás-approved pitch look like? It’s visually engaging, authentically you, and tells a story end-to-end – who you are, why you’re uniquely positioned to solve this problem, what your product does, and where it’s headed. Tomás also recommends founders build a system for their raise: do your homework on which VCs to approach, leverage warm intros where possible, and keep potential investors updated on your progress (he’s a fan of tools like Visible.vc for managing investor outreach and updates). Essentially, treat fundraising like another product: iterate, optimize, and market it well.

Tomás’s own results speak to the effectiveness of this approach. Mavity’s cap table includes a mix of notable backers like Techstars, Pharrell Williams (via his Black Ambition fund for Black and Latino founders), L’Attitude Ventures(focused on Latino-led startups), Google, and even Morgan Stanley. It’s an eclectic group that reflects Tomás’s ability to resonate with different audiences, from traditional finance to celebrity investors, by leveraging his story.

🤖 When Creativity Meets AI

One of the most fascinating parts of Mavity’s story is how it sits at the intersection of creative work and artificial intelligence. Tomás and his team are leveraging AI not to replace creatives, but to empower them. The platform is rolling out AI-driven features that handle the boring, repetitive stuff – generating draft designs or social media copy, organizing project assets, even suggesting talent matches – so that human creators can focus on the high-level creative thinking.

Interestingly, Tomás points out that music has long been a sandbox for new tech, including AI. He reminds us that many major tech shifts started in the music industry. Think about it: digital files (MP3s) disrupted music before any other medium, Napster pioneered peer-to-peer sharing via songs, and even early AI experiments – like algorithms that recognize chord patterns or generate melodies – found a home in music tech.

❝  

“Creative industries, particularly music, have long been the guinea pig for any big innovation.”

  Tomás Uribe

In fact, Mavity’s CTO Kristian is an example of this crossover: he did his Master’s thesis on AI chord recognition in music years ago. That same technology is now mainstream, underpinning all kinds of content recommendations and generative AI models. The takeaway? Creativity and technology evolve together, each pushing the other forward. What starts in a music studio might end up changing how we all work.

At Mavity, the integration of AI is very intentional. Tomás’s vision is to “democratize access to high-quality creative services by integrating AI with on-demand teams.” The AI handles scaling the service efficiently, while the humans ensure the output is original and tailored. In practice, this could mean a small business owner uses Mavity to get a logo designed; behind the scenes, an AI might generate several rough logo concepts and pull a shortlist of vetted designers, then a human designer polishes the chosen concept to perfection. The client gets fast, affordable results without sacrificing quality. And for the creatives, AI becomes a collaborative tool – taking away tedium (who really wants to resize 50 images in Photoshop manually?) and even sparking ideas. Tomás notes that we’re already seeing a “new era of creatives” who are tech-savvy and use AI in their workflow. These creatives aren’t threatened by automation; they wield it as another instrument in their arsenal.

✈️ Cross-Border Founder: Navigating Visas and Immigration

Starting a company is hard enough on its own. Now imagine doing it while contending with visa expiration dates, immigration interviews, and ever-shifting legal requirements. That’s the reality Tomás faced as an immigrant founder in the U.S., and in our interview he opened up about the challenges and lessons from that journey. His story offers a playbook (and some cautionary tales) for international entrepreneurs pursuing the American dream.

For Tomás, coming to the U.S. was a long-held goal – one inspired by his mother’s academic ambitions and a personal infatuation with New York’s creative scene. But getting here and staying here was no simple feat. He arrived on a student visa (F-1) for his master’s program, which allowed a year of work authorization after graduation (known as OPT). The clock was ticking to find an employer sponsor for a longer-term visa. Tomás didn’t originally plan on immediately launching a startup; he first took a job and went through the H-1B lottery, the traditional route for skilled foreign workers. He was lucky to get an H-1B visa (it truly is a lottery – only ~85,000 are granted out of hundreds of thousands of applications). But even that was just the beginning.

Tomás shared that he did his homework on every possible visa path – and advises other founders to do the same. The U.S. immigration system is complex, full of “loopholes” and lesser-known options. “I’ve heard a lot of people say, ‘I didn’t know that visa even existed,’” Tomás notes, reflecting on how many peers simply aren’t aware of programs that might help them. In his case, after the H-1B he transitioned to an O-1 “Extraordinary Ability” visa, a category often used by artists, researchers, or entrepreneurs with notable accomplishments. Tomás’s unique background in music tech helped him qualify – as he puts it, “I had some press mentions and an award… I could make a case for [the O-1]”. Still, even the O-1 was nerve-wracking; it’s subjectively evaluated, and at one point a renewal was nearly denied. (He actually received a green card in the mail one week after an immigration officer had initially moved to reject his O-1 renewal – talk about a close call!) The takeaway for aspiring immigrant founders is to explore every avenue: student visas, work visas, O-1s, and newer startup visa programs if available. And importantly, build a network of contacts who can support you – professors, employers, even university programs that sometimes sponsor visas for entrepreneurs.

Despite the headaches he went through with immigration, he firmly believes the opportunities in America outweigh the drawbacks. He pointed out a few reasons: access to a huge domestic market, a relatively more flexible business environment, and even things like lower taxes compared to parts of Europe (yes, the U.S. has its high taxes, but Tomás humorously notes places like Italy take 68% of income in tax versus ~30% federal in the U.S.). For an ambitious entrepreneur wanting to scale globally, the U.S. is still a very attractive launchpad.

That said, Tomás doesn’t sugarcoat the personal challenges. The visa grind is stressful. It can dictate your life choices – when to found a company, whether you feel free to leave a job, etc. He acknowledges the mental toll it takes: “If [your visa falls through], you might have to drop everything here, go back to your home country and start over…that’s something that’s not talked about enough,” he empathizes. For him and many others, securing permanent residency (a green card) was the ultimate relief and turning point that allowed 100% focus on the startup without fear of being forced to leave.

Tomás’s advice for fellow immigrant founders boils down to this: be proactive and persistent. Work every angle – use university programs or big company jobs as stepping stones if you must. Stay informed (immigration laws change, new visas pop up). And don’t be afraid to ask for help; lots of schools and accelerators are beginning to assist international founders with visa guidance. It’s not an easy path, but as Tomás’s own success shows, it is navigable with enough determination. The United States is far from perfect on immigration policy, but for those who can weather the storm, it still holds unparalleled upside.

🌍 Community, Culture, and Paying It Forward

Beyond building his company, Tomás Uribe is deeply committed to building community. In our conversation, it became clear that his identity as a Colombian immigrant and a creative professional drives him to uplift others in those communities. He’s not just focused on Mavity’s bottom line; he’s equally passionate about advocacy and mentorship to make the startup ecosystem more inclusive.

One way Tomás gives back is through policy advocacy for underrepresented founders. A few years ago, he got involved with a non-profit in Washington, D.C. called Engine, which champions startup-friendly policies. Tomás was invited to join an “entrepreneur fly-in” – basically a day of meetings on Capitol Hill where founders share their experiences with lawmakers and regulators. He flew to D.C. (Engine literally “flew him in”) along with other Latino, female, and immigrant entrepreneurs to make their voices heard. In one meeting, Tomás found himself sitting down with officials from the SEC to discuss updating the accredited investor rules. It might sound wonky, but this policy has real implications: loosening the definition of who can invest in startups could unlock generational wealth for more middle-class and minority investors.

“There’s a ton of people, say first- or second-generation immigrants, who have built wealth… but they don’t even have a clue that [being] an accredited investor exists.” 

  Tomás Uribe

Opening up investment opportunities beyond the ultra-rich could both empower those individuals and channel more funding to diverse founders. Tomás lent his perspective to encourage these changes.

In another meeting, Tomás met with representatives from USCIS, the immigration agency, to advocate for a startup visa. The U.S. notably lacks a straightforward founder visa (something many other countries offer). “We talked about the entrepreneur visa… this thing that has been ongoing for I don’t know how many years and still hasn’t gone through,”Tomás says with frustration. By sharing his own visa saga, he hoped to underscore how current policies often force promising founders to leave the U.S. or never come at all. These conversations are slow-moving, but Tomás believes they’re worth it. “If solved or improved, it can apply to a ton of different people,” he says, recognizing that even minor policy tweaks could help thousands of future immigrants and entrepreneurs. Not many startup CEOs take the time to speak to government, but Tomás sees it as part of his duty to “pay it forward” for the next generation.

Closer to home, Tomás also fosters community within Mavity and his personal network. He actively mentors younger founders and creatives, often telling them to reach out if they need guidance. Being a Latino CEO in tech, he’s conscious of being a role model. His Colombian heritage is a source of pride and perspective. Tomás deliberately keeps Mavity’s operations connected to Colombia – the company has team members in Medellín, and he finds ways to support the entrepreneurial ecosystem there.

“My Latino identity influences my business by fostering connections with Colombia and supporting its ecosystem… It also shapes our company culture, emphasizing inclusivity and understanding different work styles.” 

  Tomás Uribe

In practice, that means Mavity’s culture values diverse voices and adapts to a globally distributed team. Whether someone’s in New York or Bogotá or Barcelona, the company strives to be flexible and culturally aware. Tomás believes this inclusive ethos makes the team stronger and more creative, too.

Finally, Tomás is balancing startup life with family life – another area where values shine through. He mentions that despite the grind of building Mavity, he prioritizes time with his young son and wife. That hint of personal balance (or at least striving for it) reflects a grounded attitude: success isn’t just measured in dollars raised or revenue, but in the well-being of those around him. It’s a refreshing reminder that founders are human, and sustaining your mission long-term means keeping sight of what matters most.

All these facets – engaging in policy change, celebrating his cultural roots, mentoring others, and caring for family – paint a picture of a founder who leads with empathy and purpose. Tomás is building more than a company; he’s building community capital. And as La Frontera listeners know, that’s very much in the spirit of our cross-border, inclusive innovation ethos.

🧠 Wrap-Up: Key Takeaways for Founders

Tomás Uribe’s story is a testament to the power of blending worlds: art and technology, Latin America and the U.S., creativity and business execution. As we wrap up, let’s distill a few key lessons from his journey that any founder or operator can apply:

• Embrace Your Unique Edge: Rather than seeing his non-traditional background as a liability, Tomás turned it into an advantage. Your experiences – whether in music, art, or any field – give you a perspective that can differentiate your startup. Lean into that. Authenticity isn’t just a buzzword; it builds trust. As Tomás demonstrated, being yourself (tattoos, cat videos and all) can actually attract the right investors and partners who believe in you. In a world of copycat entrepreneurs, let your originality be your superpower.

• Design & Storytelling Matter: Don’t underestimate the impact of a well-crafted story and a beautiful presentation. Whether you’re pitching investors or recruiting a teammate, how you communicate is crucial. Take the extra time to refine your deck, polish your demo, and eliminate errors. It shows respect for your audience and confidence in your vision. Remember, humans are visual creatures – as Tomás said, we process with our eyes and love a good narrative. Make your company’s story compelling at first glance.

• Learn Fast from Failure: The road to product-market fit is paved with wrong turns. Tomás’s ability to pivot Mavity (multiple times) and kill ideas that weren’t working was key. He treated each setback as a chance to iterate. The sooner you acknowledge a mistake, the sooner you can fix it. Create a culture where it’s okay to mess up, talk about it, and move on. As Tomás joked, we could spend forever swapping mistake stories – the point is to make new mistakes, not the same ones. Iteration is the name of the game.

• Build Your Tribe: From visa struggles to fundraising, Tomás benefited from networks and community. He tapped professors, accelerators, and fellow founders for help. So build your tribe. Surround yourself with mentors and peers who will open doors (or occasionally fly you to DC to meet a senator!). And be that ally for others when you can. The startup journey is hard enough; having a support system can make all the difference – and it’s rewarding to lift others up as you climb.

• Think Globally and Long-Term: Tomás maintains roots in Colombia while scaling in the U.S., showing that startups today can be truly global from day one. He also looks beyond his company to the broader landscape – getting involved in policy and community initiatives that may only pay dividends years down the line. Founders who zoom out to the big picture often spot opportunities and pitfalls that others miss. Yes, focus on executing your business, but don’t get blinders on. Keep an eye on industry trends, regulations, and global talent pools. As Tomás implies, playing the long game and contributing to something bigger than yourself isn’t just altruistic – it’s savvy.

In Tomás Uribe’s own words: “Be obsessed with solving the problem you’re passionate about… embrace the process and stay committed to your vision.” It’s advice he lives by. From the music studio to the startup board room, from Bogotá to NYC, Tomás’s journey shows that when you mix passion, creativity, and grit, remarkable things can happen.

📢 Listen to the full episode here.

Follow Tomás, because why wouldn’t you?

And check out Mavity if your team could use a creative boost.

Mavity: Orchestrate your GTM assets on one single platform.

🚨 La Frontera discount code for Mavity: FRIENDS15 🚨

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Ali Jamal

Hey folks,

Cyrus here.

This week’s episode is unlike any we’ve done before.

It’s a tribute to Ali Jamal, founding partner of First Check Ventures, who passed away suddenly in July. Ali was more than an investor — he was a quiet force in the Latin American startup ecosystem. The kind of person who led not with bravado, but with conviction, generosity, and an unwavering belief in founders long before others were ready to bet on them.

I first met Ali at Colombia Tech Week last year. Technically, we officially met about 15 minutes before we were crammed into an Uber together, headed to an event he said I should come to. That kind of energy was classic Ali.

We never did get to record the episode he and I had discussed. But in the weeks following his passing, I reached out to founders and VCs who knew Ali and asked them to share their stories as a way to preserve our memories of Ali. Everyone had a story, and every story had the same themes: humility, authenticity, generosity, and conviction.

• Mike Ma (Sidecut Ventures) recalls how Ali “just opened up his playbook” without expecting anything in return—and how every LatAm founder seemed to already know him.

• Andres Cano (Pygma) shares how a single 30-minute call with Ali shifted the entire trajectory of their firm’s strategy.

• Martin Tobias (Incisive Ventures) remembers how Ali always said “yes” to everything—poker nights, co-investments, and founders with nothing but a dream

• Juan Sebastian Jaramillo (Pari) reflects on how Ali didn’t just back the company, he backed the human first.

• Ihar Mahaniok (Geek Ventures) calls him “the only one who could find future YC founders at $2M valuations.”

• Alex Zorychta (Not Yet Ventures) describes how Ali became a model for staying authentic in a world that often rewards polish over principles.

• Ivan Montoya (NuMundo Ventures) highlights the role Ali played as a true first check in ecosystems that desperately needed one.

You can listen to this special episode via your preferred platform below.

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This episode isn’t everything, but it’s something. A way to remember and to carry forward the energy Ali brought into every room. I hope it inspires us all, in some small way, to show up for others the way he always did.

Thanks for listening.

The shuttle to Daniel’s finca

Ali and Andres

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Juan Fantoni

We finally got Juan Fantoni on La Frontera after a serendipitous connection – Tom first reached out to Juan, a fellow Kellogg MBA alum, via a cold email while searching for internships (Pomelo doesn’t do internships, FYI, but Juan did agree to appear on the podcast as our FIRST EVER confirmed interview — which happened a year later).

Juan is the Argentine co-founder and CCO of Pomelo, and his story has a bit of everything: spotting a massive fintech infrastructure problem, leaping from corporate life to startup execution, racing across Latin America’s markets, and raising one of the region’s largest Series B rounds during a tough funding environment.

If you’re building or investing in Latin America, this episode is packed with lessons on identifying opportunities, building in regulated industries, and scaling a fintech startup from 0 to 1 (and well beyond). FOUNDERS — this interview is pure, golden insight provided by one of the premier founders in the region; please enjoy, and apply the lessons learned, responsibly.

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Episode 13 Summary

• From Mastercard to Fintech Founder: How Juan’s career in payments (ex-Mastercard) opened his eyes to Latin America’s outdated card infrastructure, inspiring the founding of Pomelo in 2021.

• Regional from Day One: Why Pomelo started in Argentina but with a Latin American vision from the get-go.

• Building in a Regulated Space: The playbook for innovating in heavily regulated industries – from securing licenses to navigating country-by-country regulatory nuances without slowing down.

• Hypergrowth Across LatAm: Pomelo’s blueprint for rapid multi-country expansion – leveraging networks to hire local talent and seizing strategic opportunities.

• Fundraising Through Boom and Bust: Lessons from raising a $9M seed (2021’s frothy times), a $35M Series A, and a rare Series B in 2023 – how Pomelo approached fundraising in different market cycles and why they raised more than they initially planned.

• Valuation, Dilution & the Long Game: Candid thoughts on managing dilution and valuation expectations – Juan explains why focusing on building a big business often requires willingness to dilute.

• Advice from the Trenches: Hard-won insights for founders – from the value of domain expertise to the importance of choosing supportive VCs and maintaining sanity while building in the tumultuous fintech space.

In Today's Newsletter

• La Frontera 🌵 Podcast, Episode 13 - From Argentin …

  • Calling all VC’s…

  • Episode 13 Summary

  • 🍊Pomelo: Modern Fintech Infrastructure for LatAm

  • 🚀 Building Fintech Infrastructure from 0 to 1

  • 🌎 Regional Vision from Day One

  • ⚙️ How to Build in Regulated Industries

  • 🌐 Scaling Across Latin America: Speed, Strategy, …

  • 💸 Fundraising Across Cycles: Seed, Series A, and …

  • 📉 Thoughts on Dilution, Valuation, and Raising Wh …

  • 🧠 Wrap-Up: Lessons for Founders from the Trenches

  • 📢 Listen to the full episode here.

🍊Pomelo: Modern Fintech Infrastructure for LatAm

🚀 Founded: 2021 (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
📈 Stage: Series B
💰 Total Funding Raised: Over $100M
🤝 Investors: Kaszek, Monashees, Index Ventures, Insight Partners, QED Investors, Section 32, TQ Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst
🎯 Mission: Driving financial innovation for those who dare to challenge the status quo.

Pomelo is the modern infrastructure layer for fintechs and banks in Latin America. Its modular, API-first, cloud-native platform enables the issuance, processing, and management of credit, debit, and prepaid cards across the region. With a single integration, clients can launch compliant financial products in multiple countries, leveraging Pomelo’s regional licenses with Mastercard and Visa to accelerate go-to-market – all without losing control or customization.

🚀 Building Fintech Infrastructure from 0 to 1

Like many great startups, Pomelo began with a glaring problem that the founders knew all too well. Juan’s “aha moment” struck during his time at Mastercard, where he worked with non-traditional issuers (early fintech players). He saw innovative fintechs trying to launch cutting-edge products, but they were all stymied by the same thing: ancient card-processing technology that hadn’t changed in decades.

“No matter how innovative you were, if the underlying infrastructure is built on 50-year-old technology, it’s very hard to innovate.”

  Juan Fantoni

Juan recalls how legacy systems were holding Latin America’s fintech boom back. This pain point was massive – and Juan sensed an opportunity to build a better way.

So, in the thick of the pandemic lockdowns, he put his ideas into a pitch deck. With decades of collective experience in payments and tech (Juan had been Director of Fintech at Mastercard, co-founder Gastón former CEO of Argentine neobank Naranja X, and Hernán a veteran of MercadoPago), the trio had the credibility to get investors’ attention quickly.

In early 2021 they quit their jobs and officially founded Pomelo to build Latin America’s next-gen fintech-as-a-service platform. They didn’t even have a product yet – just a clear vision and a strong founding team – but that was enough to secure a $9M seed round on basically a PowerPoint. In fact, Juan knew he was onto something when early conversations yielded instant validation:

❝  

“One of the fintech CEOs I shared the idea with told me, ‘If you build this, I’ll be a client.’”

  Juan Fantoni

That vote of confidence (plus some initial checks from savvy VCs) gave Pomelo the green light to start building.

Instead of rushing to code in a vacuum, Pomelo lined up a design partner for their MVP. Juan recounts how their very first client – Argentina’s crypto-enabled wallet Belo – signed on before they’d written a line of code. Developing the product alongside an eager early user was key. It meant immediate feedback, real-world testing, and proof to future clients (and investors) that Pomelo could deliver. This approach paid off: after about 9 months of building, Pomelo launched with Belo and proved that even a small team in Argentina could stand up a modern card issuing & processing platform in record time.

From day one, Pomelo’s value prop was clear and bold – a fintech backbone for LatAm that would let any fintech or bank issue cards and manage payments faster and better than the old incumbents.

Source: bloomberglinea.com

🌎 Regional Vision from Day One

Pomelo might have been born in Argentina🇦🇷, but its ambitions were unapologetically regional from the start. In practice, that meant architecting the product for multi-country support, and pitching a vision to investors of a pan-regional platform rather than an Argentina-only business.

This strategy wasn’t just hype for VCs – it was a necessity. Argentina provided an ideal launchpad (with its deep pool of fintech talent and early adopter clients), but Juan knew that to build a truly big company, they’d need to expand to the biggest markets in LatAm, Brazil🇧🇷 and Mexico🇲🇽.

“Especially if you want to build something big in Latin America, you need to touch Brazil and Mexico – one or both, ideally. That’s a must if you want to build a VC-backed company.”

  Juan Fantoni

Growing only in Argentina (or only in, say, Colombia🇨🇴 or Chile🇨🇱) wouldn’t cut it long-term. The team had internalized a mantra that many Argentine founders hold: think regional from day zero. This mentality resonated with investors, too. Juan recalls that some VCs specifically pointed out how Argentine entrepreneurs tend to “think about a regional or global company from scratch…that mindset is something they want to hear”, and it gave Pomelo an edge when fundraising.

So what did “regional from day one” look like in practice? For Pomelo, it meant that right after proving the concept in Argentina, they sprinted toward other markets. They kept a close eye on opportunities beyond their borders (more on that in the Scaling section 🌐) and made sure their story was always about solving problems across Latin America. Even their seed pitch deck framed Pomelo as a LatAm solution, not an Argentine niche play – which helped them raise a much larger seed round than they initially aimed for.

The result: within months of founding, Pomelo was already preparing launches in multiple countries, setting the stage to become a true regional player.

⚙️ How to Build in Regulated Industries

Fintech infra is not for the faint of heart – and when your product involves moving money and issuing cards, the regulatory complexities multiply. Juan stresses that from the outset, Pomelo treated regulation as a first-class priority, not an afterthought or necessary evil.

“Our industry is very regulation-heavy, so we always started with a regulatory scan of each country. We invested heavily in a great legal and compliance team. Every time we went to a market, we knew exactly how to operate under the local regulations.”

  Juan Fantoni

In practice, Pomelo hired seasoned lawyers and ex-bank compliance experts who could navigate the intricacies of financial licenses, central bank rules, and data privacy laws across different countries. Before writing code or signing clients in a new market, they’d map out what licenses were required, what partnerships (with banks or networks) they’d need, and how long approvals might take.

This upfront investment in compliance proved to be a strategic advantage. It allowed Pomelo to move faster than competitors who might be hobbled by regulatory surprises. For example, when expanding to Mexico, the team discovered the regulator there had effectively banned certain Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) models. Because Pomelo’s team did their homework, they adjusted their approach to ensure they could still operate within the rules – essentially finding a workaround that satisfied regulators while delivering for clients. Every country in LatAm has its own maze of financial rules, and Pomelo’s view is that you must respect those differences rather than assume one-size-fits-all.

“Each country has a different regulatory framework and product offering… You have to know what you need a license for, and what you can do without a license.”

  Juan Fantoni

Despite the heavy lifting on the legal side, Juan’s philosophy is that being in a regulated industry shouldn’t mean moving at a snail’s pace. Fintech startups can still innovate quickly – if they are smart about sequencing and partnerships. One tactic Pomelo used was leveraging existing licensed institutions when possible: for instance, partnering with sponsor banks or using Pomelo’s own entities in certain countries to help clients launch faster under Pomelo’s regulatory umbrella. This “license piggybacking” model is part of Pomelo’s secret sauce, enabling a young startup to offer services across multiple countries legitimately and rapidly, whereas a client trying to do it alone would spend years getting approvals.

The takeaway for founders in any regulated space: embrace the rules, bring in the experts, and turn compliance into a competitive edge.

🌐 Scaling Across Latin America: Speed, Strategy, and Hiring

With a solid core product and a big chunk of seed capital in hand, Pomelo pressed the gas pedal on expansion, launching in six countries in just a few years! Juan candidly shares that their Series Seed was far larger than expected (they raised $9M when they initially thought maybe $2M), and they deliberately used that war chest to blitz into new markets.

“Our initial seed round was five times bigger than what we expected… so we decided to use this to make our regional plans go faster… Probably if we had more limited resources, we’d have started with one country first. But when you have a big amount of capital, you’re able to move very fast.”

  Juan Fantoni

And move fast they did.

Pomelo’s expansion playbook combined careful groundwork with bold opportunism. Step 1 was always ensuring the regulatory path was clear (as mentioned in the previous section). Step 2: hire an A+ local team in the target country. Here, the founders leaned on people they knew and trusted.

“When you see the first hire of each country, it was probably someone that has worked with us before – at Mastercard with us or at MercadoPago with us.”

  Juan Fantoni

By recruiting former colleagues and friends from their fintech networks, Pomelo instantly had on-the-ground leaders who not only understood the local market but also were culturally aligned with Pomelo’s mission. This approach de-risked a lot of the typical challenges of opening a new country office. Instead of unknown hires, they had extension-of-family hires running Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, etc., who could hit the ground running and attract other talent.

Even with planning, luck and timing play a role. 

Juan shares a pivotal story from early 2022:

Just a couple months after launch, Pomelo saw an opportunity in Mexico that was too good to pass up. Two local players were attempting something similar to Pomelo; one was a bank, the other a tech startup. The tech startup’s attempt hit a wall when regulators denied their license, leaving a bunch of Mexican fintechs suddenly in need of a card issuance partner. Pomelo pounced. Juan and Hernán literally got on a plane to Mexico City to seize the moment. They quickly secured a major client deal and hired a country manager (a former colleague from MercadoPago) to build out the team there. Within a short time, Mexico became Pomelo’s #1 market.

As Juan puts it, “There were a lot of regional players that, when we told them we could solve the region for them, we were a no-brainer.” In other words, offering a one-stop solution across LatAm is incredibly appealing to customers who operate regionally themselves. “One plus one was more than two in this case,” Juan says of multi-country expansion. “We saw a lot of value in expanding very fast into new markets.”

Of course, scaling at this pace wasn’t easy. Each country meant new complexities – different languages, cultures, banking partners, and competitors. Brazil, Juan notes, was especially challenging, with a fintech scene ~5 years ahead of other countries and very high product expectations. But the team believed that if Pomelo could succeed in a tough market like Brazil, it would set them up to win everywhere. So they charged into Brazil with the same speed, knowing it was a long-term play.

Today, Pomelo’s regional footprint (Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and counting) is one of its biggest advantages. The company built a regional infrastructure moat that would be hard for any newcomer to replicate quickly.

The lesson for founders eyeing multi-country expansion: move swiftly when strategic opportunities arise, but underpin your expansion with trusted people and a clear value prop for being regional. If you do it right, each new country adds momentum (and revenue!) to your startup’s flywheel.

💸 Fundraising Across Cycles: Seed, Series A, and a Rare Series B

Raising capital is part art, part science – and Pomelo’s journey offers a crash course in how to do it across wildly different market climates. Their Seed round in 2021 was timed perfectly: liquidity in venture was at an all-time high, and global investors were eager to back LatAm fintech stories (especially ones with a team of seasoned execs). Juan and team took advantage of that. They raised $9 million seed – an unusually large seed for Latin America – essentially on the strength of the idea and the founding team’s reputation. Importantly, they pitched Pomelo as a Latin America play, not just an Argentina play, which helped unlock big checks. The result was one of the region’s largest seed rounds at that time, including a host of local and international investors.

That seed round gave Pomelo runway to aggressively build and expand, and as we saw, they didn’t sit still. By the time they went out for Series A, they had real traction and a compelling story of multi-country operations. They ended up raising $35 million in Series A (co-led by Index Ventures and Tiger Global), and a $15M extension in 2022 at a time just before the venture market flipped from boom to bust. In Juan’s words, they closed the A “a couple months before the market shut down.” Suddenly, by mid-2022, capital became scarce as tech stocks crashed and VC sentiment cooled worldwide. Pomelo had been fortunate to load up the bank account right before this downturn.

When 2023 came around, many expected Pomelo would hunker down and stretch their Series A cash. Surprisingly, they did the opposite – they raised Series B in late 2023 for ~$40M (led by Kaszek Ventures with participation from existing investors like QED and Insight Partners). Why raise in the middle of a venture slowdown? Juan’s perspective here is instructive. The company could have survived without new funding, but they had big plans and didn’t want to lose momentum.

Source: endeavor.org

The team believed that “good companies will always be able to raise”, regardless of macro conditions. They focused on building a strong business – and indeed, by 2023 Pomelo had solid revenues, healthy margins, and a marquee client list – which gave investors confidence even in a tighter market. Kaszek leading the Series B (one of the only big LatAm fintech Series B rounds that year) was a vote of confidence that Pomelo could be the regional winner in its category.

Juan also shares a thoughtful take on how they approached the amounts to raise in each round. Pomelo knew from day one that infrastructure fintech is capital intensive – you need significant resources to build the tech, acquire licenses, and expand geographically. They sat down early and tried to project how much funding they’d need at minimum to reach certain milestones. The seed number was far above that minimum (since the money was available, they took it), and the same happened with Series A. They grabbed what they could when the getting was good, aware that “easy money” might not last. By Series B, they calibrated to raise roughly what would sustain 2–3 years of runway.

Juan’s takeaway for founders: raise when you can (on favorable terms), not just when you absolutely need to, because markets can turn quickly. But also have a clear plan for the capital. Pomelo wasn’t hoarding cash for vanity – they had a roadmap for how to deploy it in product and expansion, and they communicated that plan to investors.

📉 Thoughts on Dilution, Valuation, and Raising What You Need

Money in the bank is great, but it comes at a cost: dilution. Many founders fret over giving up equity – especially in the era of mega-rounds and soaring (sometimes unrealistic) valuations. Juan’s stance on this is refreshingly pragmatic. Having raised three rounds in three years, Pomelo’s founders certainly saw their ownership percentage go down along the way. Are they worried? Not really. “We knew it would be a capital-intensive company from the beginning, so we knew we’d have to raise a lot. Dilution was not our main worry,” Juan says matter-of-factly. Their north star was building a massively impactful company, even if that meant owning a smaller slice of a much bigger pie.

“You have to be comfortable with dilution if you want to IPO or be a big, successful company… You have to decide what kind of company you want to be – are you aiming to get acquired, or to IPO, etc.? If you’re swinging for the fences, dilution comes with the territory.”

  Juan Fantoni

That’s not to say Pomelo was careless about terms. In fact, Juan notes that their early rounds were very founder-friendly (2021’s frothy market meant high valuations, lower dilution). By Series B in 2023, terms normalized a bit – the round was still great, but not as sky-high as the 2021-22 era might have offered. In the end, though, it balanced out. The important thing was selecting investors who support the founders. Juan highlights that good VCs will ensure you’re not left over-diluted in the long run.

❝  

Good investors will help you re-capitalize in the next round if you get diluted a lot in a certain round. Good investors will just give you capital and let you work.”

  Juan Fantoni

Another aspect Juan touches on is valuations and expectations. Chasing the highest valuation can be a trap – if the number gets too far ahead of fundamentals, it can backfire later. Pomelo seems to have raised at fair (even generous) valuations, but always with an eye on being able to grow into those valuations. The focus was on raising what they needed to hit the next milestones, not simply to boast a unicorn status overnight. Juan observes that in the current climate (post-2022), many startups are actually raising less money or at flatter valuations because they prefer not to carry the pressure of an inflated price tag. In his view, that’s fine – a “down round” stigma is less relevant than building a sustainable company.

Again, it comes back to what kind of company you want: Pomelo’s choice was to grab capital when available and use it to build a market-leading business, not to optimize for the prettiest cap table. And with $100M+ raised and a real business in motion, it’s hard to argue with the results.

🧠 Wrap-Up: Lessons for Founders from the Trenches

Four years in, Pomelo is not just a fast-growing company; it’s a repository of hard-earned wisdom on startups, especially in Latin America. We wrapped up the conversation with Juan reflecting on some broader lessons and mindset tips for fellow founders and operators:

• Domain Expertise is Incredibly Valuable: Fintech infrastructure isn’t something you can hack together in a weekend. Juan attributes a lot of Pomelo’s success to the deep industry knowledge that he and his co-founders accumulated in their previous careers. In a space handling people’s money, you can’t afford to “move fast and break things” the way you might in a pure software startup. “You can’t do testing when you’re managing people’s money. You need to have a strong thesis and build towards it – if you’re wrong, it’s an expensive test,” Juan says, noting that fintech founders tend to skew older for a reason. They simply have had more time to learn the nuances of the value chain. So his advice to aspiring fintech entrepreneurs (or any complex industry) is to do your homework: work in the industry, talk to experts, maybe even partner with an industry insider, because the learning curve is steep and the stakes are high.

• Leverage Your Network (Give Before You Take): Juan’s journey underscores the power of community and network in building a startup. Pomelo’s early hires and clients came largely through relationships. Juan himself is known in Buenos Aires for helping out up-and-coming founders, making introductions, and sharing advice. That goodwill often circles back. For instance, Pomelo’s first client, Belo, was run by a founder friend willing to take a bet on them. Their country managers were former colleagues eager to join a project led by people they trust. The LatAm startup ecosystem might seem large, but it’s actually a tight-knit community – reputations matter. Juan’s approach is to pay it forward: he’s active in fintech events, he mentors younger founders, and even when Pomelo hires, they often look for referrals from trusted contacts. The lesson: build your network before you desperately need it. It can become your moat.

• Choose Investors, Not Just Money: We’ve touched on this, but it bears repeating as advice. Pomelo was deliberate in picking investors who bring more than cash – whether it’s credibility, strategic guidance, or simply a supportive philosophy. Juan gives a shout-out to how minimal their VC interference has been. “Our experience with VCs has been very positive; they’ve had minimal interference… they let us run our company and make our decisions,” he says, adding that the good ones open doors when asked: making intros to potential clients, helping with partnerships (Pomelo’s investors have connected them with other portfolio companies that became customers), and even recruiting. His rule of thumb: “Good VCs will just give you capital and let you work.” So, for founders raising money, remember that each investor you bring on is a long-term partner. Optimize for those who trust your team and are aligned with your vision, not those trying to drive their own agenda.

• Keep Learning and Stay Humble: Despite his impressive resume, Juan radiates humility and a willingness to learn. One of the funniest nuggets he dropped was about his stint in consulting early in his career. “I don’t wish a consulting career on anyone, but I recommend it to everyone,” he jokes. The grind of consulting taught him discipline, analytical thinking, and how to handle tough clients – skills that proved useful in startup life, even if the consulting lifestyle wasn’t for him long-term. The broader point is that no experience is wasted if you draw lessons from it. Juan encourages young folks to gather diverse experiences and not be afraid of some hard yards early on (even if it’s in a big corporation or consulting firm), as long as you carry those lessons forward.

• Mental Resilience and Mission: Finally, building a startup is a rollercoaster anywhere, but perhaps even more so in Latin America where macroeconomic swings and regulatory surprises can whiplash even the best-laid plans. Juan’s advice here is implicit in Pomelo’s story: be mission-driven and resilient. The team’s passion for “driving financial innovation for those daring to challenge the status quo” (Pomelo’s mission) isn’t just a poster on the wall – it’s what kept them going through insane hours, myriad challenges, and the occasional setback. Having co-founders you trust (so you’re not alone in the fight) and celebrating small wins along the way help maintain sanity. The trenches are tough, but that’s where true builders are forged. And judging by Pomelo’s trajectory, Juan Fantoni has come out of those trenches with wisdom to spare and a fintech platform that’s only just getting started. 🚀

📢 Listen to the full episode here.

Follow Juan, because why wouldn’t you?

And check out Pomelo as they continue to build fintech infrastructure Latin America.

Pomelo: Building Better Cards

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If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider sharing La Frontera 🌵 with your friends and colleagues. Let’s continue building a cross-border community of innovators! 🚀

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Maria Gutierrez Peñaloza

In this episode, we sit down with Maria Gutierrez Peñaloza, co-founding partner of Nido Ventures, to explore why Mexico may be entering its “golden decade” for tech and cross-border innovation. Maria shares how her background working in supply chain in Silicon Valley shaped Nido’s investment thesis, and why they’re backing B2B startups transforming legacy industries. We dive into nearshoring trends turbocharging Mexico’s economy, the specific industries ripe for disruption, and how Nido bridges two worlds – mobilizing U.S. capital to seize opportunities south of the border.

From her days managing Apple’s supply chain to launching a VC fund with a fellow engineer, Maria’s journey offers a masterclass in leveraging operational expertise in venture capital. She breaks down the “arbitrage opportunity” she sees in Mexican tech, how Nido navigates tariff turbulence and geopolitical shifts with a long-term lens, and why engineers-turned-investors can spot and scale the next wave of industrial innovation in Latin America.

We were introduced to Maria by our friend Renata (Nido’s boots-on-the-ground in CDMX – gracias, Renata!). We knew we had to talk to Maria after hearing about Nido’s product-driven approach and bold cross-border thesis. This conversation didn’t disappoint – it’s packed with candid insights and actionable takeaways for investors and founders alike, from scaling B2B startups to building community around venture.

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Episode 12 Summary

• Engineers to Investors: How Maria and her co-founder Ana Carolina leveraged their technical backgrounds at Apple and LinkedIn to carve out a unique edge in Mexico’s VC ecosystem (dominated by finance folks).

• Mexico’s “Golden Decade”: Why Nido believes the next 5–10 years will be Mexico’s financial golden age for tech, as nearshoring and economic shifts unlock a $800B+ opportunity.

• Long-Term > Short Shocks: How Mexico’s new leadership (shout-out to a PhD president) is calmly navigating tariff wars – and why Nido plays the long game, focusing on fundamental trends over transient headlines.

• Industries Ripe for Reinvention: From supply chain and fintech infrastructure to mining, energy, and even insurance – the massive legacy sectors where tech innovation can create outsized impact (and returns).

• Bridging Two Worlds: Nido’s cross-border strategy to mobilize US capital into LatAm startups – being based in California and Mexico City means access to Silicon Valley networks while staying deeply plugged into the local scene.

• Multiple Exit Routes: The evolving landscape of exits in LatAm – with more secondaries and M&A opportunities emerging well before IPO, early-stage investors can win without waiting a decade.

• Building Community: How Nido’s content platform “ConteNIDO” educates 13,000+ readers about Mexico’s tech ecosystem, bridging a knowledge gap and inspiring the next generation of founders.

In Today's Newsletter

• La Frontera 🌵 Podcast, Episode 12 - Investing Acr …

  • Episode 12 Summary

  • 🪺Nido Ventures: Transforming Foundational Industr …

  • 🧠 From Stanford to Startup Thesis – The Origin of …

  • 💰 Mexico’s Golden Decade: The $800B Opportunity

  • 🏗️ Industries Ready for Disruption

  • 🌉 Engineers at the Helm: Nido’s Cross-Border Edge

  • 🚨 No More Copy-Paste VC: Adapting to LatAm Realit …

  • 📊 Exits on the Horizon: Secondaries, M&A, and IPO …

  • 📣 ConteNIDO: Bridging Knowledge Gaps in Venture

  • 📢 Listen to the full episode here.

    • Follow Maria Gutierrez Peñaloza, because why would …

    • And check out Nido Ventures as they continue to ba …

• Thanks for reading!

🪺Nido Ventures: Transforming Foundational Industries Through B2B Innovation

💰 Assets Under Management: $7M (Fund I)
📍 HQ: Los Angeles & San Francisco, with team in Mexico City
🎯 Stage Focus: Pre-Seed and Seed
🌎 Geographic Focus: U.S./Mexico corridor (selectively broader LatAm adjacency)
💵 Check Size: $100K–$200K initial; selective follow-ons via SPVs
🏆 Portfolio: 23 B2B startups in fintech, compliance, industrial tech, logistics, healthcare, and AI

🚀 Notable Investments:

• EFEX – B2B banking infrastructure for fintechs & marketplaces in international trade

• Arkham – Enterprise data & AI platform connecting fragmented operations

• Desteia – Real-time trade tech with AI-driven freight visibility and customs automation

• Telepatía – AI co-pilot improving healthcare efficiency and reducing physician burnout

• Buo – Predictive people analytics platform for workforce-driven profitability

• Mekan – Sales acceleration platform for auto parts dealers in Latin America

🔧 Unique Model: Founded by engineers with deep operator experience, Nido takes a product-driven lens to investing. The team specifically backs founders modernizing “boring” legacy industries with high-friction workflows, where technical edge and early commercial traction matter most.

📈 Exit Strategy: Structured for long-term ownership, but opportunistic about liquidity via M&A or secondaries by Series B/C (no waiting 10+ years for an IPO to cash out).

(Learn more at nido.ventures)

🧠 From Stanford to Startup Thesis – The Origin of Nido

Maria and her co-founder Ana Carolina first met as engineering students at Stanford, never imagining they’d one day run a VC fund together. Post-college, Maria managed supply chain operations for Apple (yes, the iPhone supply chain!), while Caro was writing code at LinkedIn and leading engineering at a Mexican startup. They both dreamed of launching a startup, but while brainstorming ideas they stumbled on a different opportunity: investing in the kinds of companies they wished they could build.

In 2020, the duo started angel investing and quickly found their niche. With backgrounds in hardware and software, they could spot technically solid founders and assess products in industries they knew inside-out. This gave them an edge to get into high-quality cap tables early. By 2022, they launched Nido Ventures around a clear thesis: back B2B tech startups transforming traditional sectors in Mexico and the U.S. cross-border space – areas they not only understand, but where their experience can meaningfully help founders go from 0 to 1.

“We brought the technical and tangible expertise as operators… The rest of the ecosystem was mostly coming from financial backgrounds. We were the perfect complement. I think even today we’re pretty much the only GPs with these backgrounds in Mexico.” 

 Maria Gutierrez Peñaloza

Armed with engineering know-how and on-the-ground experience, Maria and Caro set out to be the kind of investors they wished they’d had as founders – rolling up their sleeves, debugging problems alongside startups, and focusing on solving real industrial pain points. That tech-operator DNA remains Nido’s secret sauce in sourcing deals and helping portfolio companies scale.

💰 Mexico’s Golden Decade: The $800B Opportunity

If you ask Maria “Why Mexico, why now?”, be prepared for some eye-opening numbers and historical context. Latin America’s second-largest economy is on the cusp of a major tech-driven boom – and Nido doesn’t want to miss it.

Mexico today enjoys unprecedented tailwinds: global manufacturers are “nearshoring” operations to Mexico at record rates (thank you, strained U.S.–China relations), and the U.S.–Mexico trade corridor is a whopping $800 billion market that’s not slowing down. Yet tech investment is still relatively tiny compared to the opportunity, which spells upside. Maria argues that over the next decade, Mexico’s tech ecosystem could mature rapidly, delivering outsized returns to those who get in early.

“I think the next five to 10 years are gonna be our financial golden age. Capital markets will come back and give rise to amazing companies – and also give returns to investors so they keep putting money into the ecosystem.”

 M.G. Peñaloza

Crucially, Mexico’s macro stability and leadership are bolstering this optimism. While headlines often focus on political noise or U.S. tariff threats, the reality on the ground is confidence: Mexico’s likely next president (Claudia Sheinbaum, a PhD in energy) is signaling pragmatic, pro-growth policies. When a recent U.S. tariff tantrum hit, Sheinbaum responded with calm and contingency plans “A through F” rather than panic. Nido’s take? Don’t sweat short-term turbulence.

“I don’t think we’ll be in a tariff situation a year from now – it’s not a long-term problem. The time to invest is when others are retreating, because that’s when arbitrage opportunities come into play.”

 M.G. Peñaloza

In other words, contrarian investing 101: when nervous money pulls back, smart money leans in. By focusing on Mexico’s strong fundamentals – a huge young population, rising internet adoption, industrial resurgence – Nido aims to capitalize on the gap between perception and reality. The bet is that global VC dollars will inevitably correct upward to reflect Mexico’s true potential. As Maria puts it, “If everyone else is fearful, we’re greedy.”

🏗️ Industries Ready for Disruption

Nido’s thesis isn’t just macro theory – it’s very specific about where innovation (and investment) can have the biggest impact. Maria lights up when talking about the unsexy, “old-school” industries that keep Mexico (and the world) running: manufacturing, logistics, construction, energy, agriculture, mining, you name it. These sectors share two things: they’re critically important and they’ve lagged in tech adoption. Perfect recipe for disruption.

Some areas Nido is particularly excited about in the next 5–10 years:

• Horizontal Plays: Foundational tech that cuts across sectors. Think supply chain management, financial infrastructure, or B2B logistics platforms – tools that every industry can use to modernize (and that create network effects across the economy).

• Deep Vertical Opportunities: Specific sectors that are enormous in Mexico. For example, mining (Mexico is a top global minerals exporter), energy (especially if the sector opens up to more private innovation), construction, auto manufacturing, and agriculture. Each of these has massive inefficiencies and “analog” processes ripe for a digital overhaul.

• Under-the-Radar Gems: Maria even finds promise in areas others overlook. Case in point – insurance. Yes, insurance! It’s not flashy, but a startup bringing efficiency to the insurance market could unlock huge value in a region where risk is often mispriced or uninsured. “I never thought I’d say this out loud, but I’m excited about a company in the insurance space,” Maria admits. When even insurance gets an engineer excited, you know there’s upside!

• Healthcare (with a local twist): The health tech boom in the U.S. doesn’t automatically translate to Latin America – different systems, regulations, and patient needs mean U.S. solutions don’t fit LatAm. Nido sees an opening for localized healthcare startups that build from the ground up for Mexicans. “The U.S. products don’t translate to Latin America at all… so healthcare is something we’re excited about,” says Maria. Imagine telemedicine, patient records, or medical devices reinvented for the realities of emerging markets.

What’s common across these opportunities is that they’re huge markets hiding in plain sight. Many Mexican industries are dominated by a few incumbents or still run on literal pen-and-paper. A nimble startup with the right tech could rapidly become the go-to solution and establish a lasting moat. Nido’s already backing startups in several of these spaces (see Notable Investments above), from AI-driven freight logistics to enterprise data platforms.

As Maria notes, the ecosystem itself is maturing to support this specialization. Until recently, most Mexican VC funds were generalists, doing a bit of everything. Now, with funds like Nido, founders in say, an industrial IoT startup, can pitch investors who actually get their domain. That’s a positive sign for better founder-investor fit and ultimately better outcomes across the board.

🌉 Engineers at the Helm: Nido’s Cross-Border Edge

One of Nido’s distinguishing traits is literally being in two places at once. Maria and Ana Caro are based in California, while Renata (and many portfolio companies) are in Mexico City. This cross-border presence is very intentional. It allows Nido to tap into the best of both worlds: the vast capital and network of U.S. tech investors, combined with deep local knowledge and on-site support in Mexico.

“What we want is to make sure we’re bringing more capital from the US into Mexico. Being here [in the US] helps us mobilize that capital because we’re considered a local partner. We understand Mexico very well… we have the dual-market advantage.”

 M.G. Peñaloza

For U.S. investors (LPs) seeking LatAm exposure, Nido becomes a trusted bridge. Maria pitches Nido as the fund that knows how to pick winners in Mexico and navigate the nuances of doing business there – from cultural norms to regulatory hurdles – all while reporting and communicating in a Silicon Valley-savvy way. This pitch has resonated: many of Nido’s backers are U.S. venture funds or tech execs who want a foothold in Mexico’s growth story without going in blind.

On the flip side, being local in Mexico City keeps Nido grounded. The team can meet founders face-to-face, build relationships in the community, and source deals through trusted networks. (In fact, half of Nido’s deals are co-investments with U.S. investors, underscoring how they straddle ecosystems.) This boots-on-the-ground approach paid off when fundraising Fund I as well – despite starting in mid-2022 during a market downturn, Maria and Caro secured commitments in just 1–2 calls in many cases, thanks to years of relationship-building and a credible track record from their angel investing days.

In short, Nido’s cross-border strategy isn’t just a gimmick; it’s a competitive advantage. They can credibly sit in a boardroom in San Francisco and a factory in Monterrey and add value in both. That’s rare. And it means Nido’s portfolio companies get more than just a check – they get connectors who can open doors in both markets.

🚨 No More Copy-Paste VC: Adapting to LatAm Realities

A theme we’ve heard often on La Frontera is that you can’t copy-paste Silicon Valley’s playbook into Latin America and expect the same results. Maria wholeheartedly agrees. In fact, part of Nido’s thesis is that specialized local strategieswill outperform the old generalist approach.

One example: founder dilution. In Mexico, it’s common for founders to give away big chunks of equity early on (often well above 20% by Series A) because local capital was scarce and terms were steep. This can sap founder motivation and hinder companies later. Nido tries to combat this by writing smaller checks earlier (Pre-Seed/Seed) and then helping founders access more competitive (and sometimes international) follow-on funding so they aren’t forced to over-dilute.

Another difference: time to exit. The U.S. model assumes a 8–10+ year journey to an IPO or bust. But in LatAm, waiting a decade for the public markets might not be necessary (or wise). The rise of secondary transactions is creating earlier liquidity options. Growth-stage investors, from big international VCs to dedicated secondary funds, are eager to buy into promising LatAm startups around Series B/C – especially if they missed the initial rounds. For a fund like Nido, this means potentially selling a slice of their position in a winner to return capital early, while still holding equity for the long run. It’s a “have your cake and eat it” scenario that can de-risk portfolios.

Maria outlines three exit routes for early investors:

“One is secondaries, two is M&As, three is IPOs. We think we might actually get to go through the full cycle and see IPOs in our portfolio, which would be fantastic… but I think there’s been increased interest in secondaries in the region, and as a pre-seed investor there are scenarios where a Series C or D makes sense for me to exit.”

 M.G. Peñaloza

In plain terms: keep the IPO dream alive, but plan for sales earlier if the opportunity arises. And LatAm’s exit environment is maturing – more tech giants and even traditional corporations are starting to acquire startups (e.g. Nubank’s recent fintech acquisitions). Nido suspects this M&A trend will grow as successful startups from the last 5–8 years become acquirers themselves, creating a virtuous cycle.

The key is flexibility. By not rigidly following a Silicon Valley script, Nido can craft outcomes that work for Latin America. That might mean selling a stake in a Series C to a Tiger Global or SoftBank-type entrant eager for exposure, or guiding a founder to an acquisition that keeps a company alive and well integrated into a larger player. A win is a win, and returning money to investors in 5 years instead of 12 is a win-win for an emerging fund building its reputation.

📊 Exits on the Horizon: Secondaries, M&A, and IPO Dreams

Speaking of exits, Maria shared a refreshingly optimistic outlook for the LatAm ecosystem’s future. Unlike a decade ago when the only path to liquidity was essentially “hope for an IPO,” today early investors have multiple shots on goal.

Nido expects that by the time their Fund I companies reach maturity, some will indeed go public – but even before then, more secondary exits will materialize. We’re already seeing dedicated Latin America secondary funds popping up, offering to buy portions of an early fund’s holdings or direct stakes from founders/employees. For pre-seed investors like Nido, this could mean returning the fund off a single big secondary sale if one of their startups becomes a regional champion by Series C. That’s powerful, because it proves the model and frees up capital to recycle into new startups.

At the same time, M&A is heating up. As the first generation of LatAm unicorns (think Nubank, Rappi, MercadoLibre, Kavak, etc.) mature, they’re starting to acquire smaller startups to fuel their growth or fill product gaps. And it’s not just tech companies – even family-owned conglomerates in industries like banking, telecom, or retail are realizing they need to buy innovation if they can’t build it. Maria notes that historically, LatAm M&A was limited because incumbents were old-school or slow-moving, but that’s changing fast as global competition and digital transformation force their hand.

All this means Nido’s founders have more options down the road. Instead of raising round after round waiting for a far-off IPO, a great startup could potentially get acquired in year 5 or 6 for a solid outcome. Or founders can take some chips off the table via secondaries to avoid extreme dilution and keep morale high. Nido, in turn, can show returns without abandoning the companies’ future upside.

It’s a balancing act, but Maria’s stance is clear: invest early, help companies grow, and be ready to seize liquidity opportunities when they arise. The days of “hold forever for the billion-dollar exit or bust” are over – and that’s a healthy evolution for Latin America’s venture scene.

(Fun fact: When asked if international investors are showing more interest in LatAm secondaries as a lower-risk entry point, Maria acknowledged some early signs. While most global investors still prefer primary rounds, a few have reached out about buying stakes later. So don’t be surprised if your Series B includes a secondary component—founders and early backers both can win.)

📣 ConteNIDO: Bridging Knowledge Gaps in Venture

Beyond investing, Maria and her team are on a mission to educate and inspire. Early on, they faced a surprising problem: even their own families didn’t understand what venture capital is! There was a lack of Spanish-language content explaining the startup/VC world. So Nido decided to fill that gap with a newsletter and content hub they named “ConteNIDO” (a play on contenido, Spanish for content, with a nod to Nido).

What began as a simple blog to demystify VC terms in Spanish has blossomed into a 13,000+ subscriber community of readers around the world. Initially, the goal was to help Latin Americans (like their parents!) grasp concepts like equity, fundraising, or tech trends. But as it grew, Maria realized ConteNIDO could also counter the skewed perceptions many outsiders have about Mexico.

“We noticed there was no content about VC in Spanish… We started by translating venture concepts for a local audience. Then we thought, a lot of what we want is to make sure the rest of the world understands Mexico. Realistically, you won’t reach them by only writing in Spanish. So we switched to English – ConteNIDO is about giving people around the world a better picture of what’s happening in Mexico, and how Mexico’s not what’s on Netflix, but what you see every day living here.”

 M.G. Peñaloza

The result is a bilingual treasure trove of insights on Mexico’s tech scene – from explainers on nearshoring benefits, to profiles of up-and-coming Mexican startups, to analysis of policies affecting innovation. ConteNIDO has become required reading for many international investors evaluating LatAm opportunities (and apparently a few podcast hosts we know!). It’s also a smart marketing tool for Nido – showcasing their thought leadership and commitment to the ecosystem.

For Maria, however, the content initiative is personal. It’s about making tech and venture more accessible and inclusive. By writing in an approachable way and sharing knowledge freely, Nido is helping cultivate the next generation of founders and investors who will propel Mexico’s golden decade forward. The community feel is strong – people often reply to the newsletter with their own stories or questions, turning it into a two-way conversation.

In a region where trust and education lag in financial markets, ConteNIDO is a reminder that community-building can be as important as capital deployment. It’s not every VC firm that runs a mini-media arm on the side, but Nido’s doing it – and winning fans (and likely some deals) along the way.

Shoutout to our friend in CDMX, Jose Luis Sabau, the Editor and writer behind many enlightening ConteNIDO pieces!

📢 Listen to the full episode here.

Follow Maria Gutierrez Peñaloza, because why wouldn’t you want more updates from an investor-operator bridging two continents?

And check out Nido Ventures as they continue to back founders transforming legacy industries in LatAm.

Nido: Where startups find their wings

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider sharing La Frontera 🌵 with your friends and colleagues. Let’s continue building a cross-border community of innovators! 🚀

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Marinella Piñate

We finally got Marinella Piñate on La Frontera after Cyrus and her first discussed it back in the Q4 2024 – and it was worth the wait. Marinella is the Venezuelan-born co-founder and CEO of Zumma, and her story has a bit of everything: a globe-trotting background (60+ countries traveled solo!), an all-female founding team in fintech, and a pivot that turned a personal finance app into an AI-powered “CFO” assistant for businesses in LatAm. If you’re building or investing in Latin America, this episode offers a masterclass in finding opportunity, adapting when things don’t go as planned, and leveraging community to build something impactful.

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Episode 11 Summary

• From Venezuela to Wall Street to Fintech Founder: How Marinella’s journey (Caracas → Florida → Goldman Sachs → MIT) set the stage for building Zumma, a startup tackling Latin America’s financial pain points.

• Opening Your Mind Through Travel: Why exploring 60+ countries gave Marinella the insight (and courage) to solve meaningful problems back home.

• Pivoting from B2C to B2B, Powered by AI: The story of Zumma’s major shift from a personal finance app to an AI-driven “WhatsApp CFO” for businesses, and how listening to users revealed a bigger opportunity.

• Resilience & Mental Health in Startup Life: Lessons on founder burnout, staying mentally healthy, and how growing up in Latin America can forge an entrepreneurial superpower (resourcefulness under chaos).

• No CTO, No Problem: Marinella’s take on hiring great engineers and why a non-technical founding team can build a cutting-edge fintech – if you find mission-driven talent with “skin in the game.”

In Today's Newsletter

• La Frontera 🌵 Podcast, Episode 11 - From Budgetin …

  • Episode 11 Summary

    • ✈️ Opening Your Mind Through Travel

    • 🧭 Finding Your Meaning

    • 💆 Founder Mental Health

    • 💪 Resiliency of LatAm Founders

    • 🇻🇪 Venezuela’s Tech Ecosystem

    • ⚙️ Traits of Good Startup Operators

    • 🔄 Major Early-Stage Pivots: B2C to B2B

    • 🎯 Keys to Effective Customer Discovery

    • 📢 Stakeholder Engagement and Regular Updates

    • 🙅‍♂️ Do You Really Need a CTO?

  • 📢 Listen to the full episode here.

  • Follow Nella, because why wouldn’t you?

• Thanks for reading!

Zumma: AI Finance Assistant for LatAm Businesses

🚀 Founded: 2023 in Mexico City (by three female co-founders)
📈 Stage: Seed (Techstars ’23 alum)
💰 Total Funding Raised: $500k
🤝 Investors: Outside VC, Techstars, MIT, GG Capital and angels.
🎯 Mission: Zumma’s mission is to create a future where every business runs on an intelligent financial operating system — powered by AI to simplify, automate, and optimize financial workflows.  

Zumma is building the financial operating system for companies in Latin America by creating AI agents and the infrastructure to automate financial workflows — starting with expense management and invoice automation. Each year, companies lose over 20% of revenue to inefficiencies and missed tax deductions caused by manual processes. Zumma helps them reclaim that time and money, powering finance teams across the region. With over 400 customers, Zumma supports companies like Latin America's largest restaurant group and provides invoicing infrastructure for leading corporate card providers. 

✈️ Opening Your Mind Through Travel

Marinella’s entrepreneurial spark was lit by a passport and a backpack. In her early 20s, she traveled solo for six months, visiting dozens of countries. Experiencing life in places where “things don’t work” (think power outages in her native Venezuela or monsoon floods in Thailand) opened her eyes to problems that most people in the U.S. never even see. She realized that big opportunities often hide in plain sight in emerging markets, because what might be a minor inconvenience in a developed country can be a life-changing improvement elsewhere.

Marinella references the memoir Shoe Dog (about Nike’s early days) and how travel inspired Phil Knight’s big idea. She felt the same: seeing the world showed her where she could make a difference. If you want to be an entrepreneur but don’t have an idea, she suggests you get out, talk to people, and observe how things work around you.

“I’ve met a lot of people that say, I want to be an entrepreneur, but I don’t have an idea. I tell them: you have to go and see the world… Get out of your house and ideas will come.”

  Marinella Piñate

🧭 Finding Your Meaning

After growing up in Florida and following a pretty traditional path (engineering degree, good job on Wall Street), Marinella felt that something was missing. “It was always like: find a good job, work 9 to 5, have work-life balance,” she recalls. But a conventional career wasn’t fulfilling her; she craved a deeper purpose. That’s when she pinpointed her meaning: using her skills to make people’s lives better financially, especially in LatAm.

Marinella firmly believes entrepreneurship requires meaning, a guiding mission that sustains you when the going gets tough. Nowhere is this truer than in Latin America: “You’re not gonna work 9 to 5, you’re not gonna have a big salary or health insurance… especially in a place like LatAm, you have to find meaning because the journey is harder.” For her, that meaning is empowering others through financial education and tools. When asked directly “What is your meaning?”, she answered: “For me it’s giving a little grain of salt to the world, how can I make someone’s life better through the work that I do? As long as I’m seeing that, I think that’s enough for me.”

“You’re not gonna work 9 to 5, you’re not gonna have a big salary or health insurance… especially in a place like LatAm, you have to find meaning because the journey is harder.”

  Marinella Piñate

This point on finding your “meaning”, your purpose, your mission is pertinent advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. Building a company from scratch is not easy. You’ll hear “no” more times that you can count, you’ll have to push through tough times when you want to take a break but can’t step away from the company, you’ll have to interface with customers (some of which may not be happy), and you’ll have a hand in hiring (and firing) employees. None of that is easy and it’ll take a higher purpose to keep you motivated and dedicated to building and growing what you started.

💆 Founder Mental Health

Building a startup is exhilarating and exhausting. Marinella doesn’t shy away from discussing the toll entrepreneurship can take on mental health. As a founder, she felt the pressure to always be “on” and project confidence. “You have to be out there pretending everything is going great,” she says — even to your own team — “because if I’m not, they’ll lose faith in the business and in me.” But behind the scenes, she admits, “I’m an honest person… you ask how I am, I’ll tell you all the problems I have with Zumma.”

Early on, her co-founders gave her some tough love: “Nella, you cannot tell all your problems to everyone you meet.” Marinella laughs about it now, but it was a lesson in balancing transparency with leadership. She learned to confide in a close support network – other founders, friends, or even a therapist – rather than bottling it up or dumping it on her team. The key is having people who’ll listen without judgment, so you can vent, process, and reset.

She’s also a big believer in taking breaks before you hit a wall. As a driven founder, stepping away felt counterintuitive at first, but she learned it’s necessary: “When I’m working 24/7, I get so into the weeds that I can’t see the bigger picture. I’ve had moments where I felt stuck, not knowing where the company was going. It took me taking two days off to clear my mind, come back, and say, okay, this is what we need to do.” Now she encourages her team to do the same:

“As entrepreneurs and startup operators we’re always told, you have to be working 24/7, move fast, execute. But you do need that time so you can come back and really execute, and not go on autopilot. When you go on autopilot, that’s when your creativity shuts down.”

  Marinella Piñate

Marinella’s advice? Prioritize your mental health like any other asset. Take that day off, go for that walk, talk to someone you trust — it’s not a luxury, it’s part of the job. A clear, refreshed mind will make you a better founder in the long run.

Our advice? Find an investor that understands what it’s like to be a founder and understands the toll building takes on your mental health. Preferably, they are a “friendvestor” (shoutout to Ethan at Outside VC).

💪 Resiliency of LatAm Founders

If there’s one thing Latin American founders have in spades, it’s resilience. Marinella jokes that in LatAm, entrepreneurs become experts at “making wine out of water.” Unreliable infrastructure, economic volatility, political instability – you name it, LatAm folks have lived through it. Rather than breaking their spirit, these challenges forge a special kind of startup toughness.

“I think we [LatAm founders] are more resilient, which is a trait all founders need to have,” Nella says. Having grown up in Venezuela, she’s no stranger to volatility – the power might go out, the currency might crash, basic services might fail, and you just have to find a way. That upbringing instills a scrappiness and adaptability that serve founders well: when things go wrong (as they inevitably do in startups), LatAm entrepreneurs don’t panic, they improvise.

She gives a vivid example: one of Zumma’s engineers, originally from Venezuela, is now in Spain. On a Monday, the entire country of Venezuela lost electricity. His reaction? No big deal. “I’m used to it,” he told the team – and kept right on working, unfazed by a nationwide blackout, because he’s seen worse. As Marinella puts it, “It was not his first rodeo.” This kind of grit and hustle is a common thread among founders from the region.

🇻🇪 Venezuela’s Tech Ecosystem

On the subject of resilience, Venezuela deserves a special mention. Marinella hails from Caracas, and while Zumma operates from Mexico and beyond, she keeps a close eye on the tech ecosystem in Venezuela. Her take? “If LatAm is hard, Venezuela is harder.” Yet she speaks with admiration and hope about the startups rising from her home country.

Marinella has immense respect for the founders actually building in Venezuela right now. The deck is stacked against them – economic crisis, unstable infrastructure, limited funding – and yet, opportunity abounds precisely because so much is broken. “Opportunities are endless,” she says, pointing out that it’s like going back in time: so many basic services and products are missing, which presents a blank canvas for innovators.

She gave us some examples, including a friend that’s creating a digital ticketing system for the old-school “busetas” (minibuses) that people rely on for transportation – something that doesn’t exist yet in Venezuela. Other startups like Cashea (fintech) and Yummy (delivery) are doing extremely well, partly because giants like Rappi or Uber have stayed out of the Venezuelan market. In essence, local players have near-monopolies and room to run, since international competitors are wary of the risks.

Of course, the flip side is the challenges are huge. Everything is harder, from getting paid to reliable internet, and that’s why Marinella stresses: you need truly resilient founders there. Despite the hardship, she notes that the ecosystem is “thriving” more than one might expect. There’s a burgeoning entrepreneurship hub in Caracas, and when she visited a year ago, even she was surprised by the momentum. It’s a testament to Venezuelans’ spirit: “This is our situation; we need to make the most of it and build companies anyway.” And interestingly, many of those companies aren’t just viable in Venezuela, they’re building products that could expand throughout LatAm.

⚙️ Traits of Good Startup Operators

What makes someone a great startup operator or co-founder? Marinella has a favorite (if slightly unorthodox) expression for the #1 trait she looks for. In Venezuelan they say, “me pica el culo.” The literal translation? “My butt itches.” 😂 It’s slang for someone who can’t sit still – they always have to be moving, doing something, making progress. In other words, hustlers.

Whether she’s hiring an early employee or sizing up a potential co-founder, Marinella is basically asking: Does this person have that itch? Are they naturally proactive and restless to achieve something, or are they content to coast? In her experience, the best startup people share this restless energy — they’re self-starters who won’t wait to be told what to do. They’ll find problems and solve them. They get antsy when things aren’t advancing.

In Zumma’s case, Marinella feels lucky to have co-founders (Fernanda and Daniela) who definitely have that trait. All three are very different personality-wise, but they share that core hunger to build something meaningful. It creates a team chemistry where everyone is pushing forward, and no one needs to be dragged along.

Zumma Co-Founders

🔄 Major Early-Stage Pivots: B2C to B2B

One of the biggest decisions in Zumma’s journey was a pivot that, in hindsight, saved the company. Originally, Zumma launched in early 2023 as a B2C personal finance app – an AI-powered financial coach to help young Latin Americans (especially women) save and invest. The app, featuring their friendly virtual assistant “Zummi,” gained solid traction. In fact, Marinella and team amassed over 100,000 downloads, and users loved it. They were so fond of their consumer product that they even made a little Zummi teddy bear mascot. By mid-2023, things looked pretty good on the surface.

But then came a surprise: they noticed a significant chunk of users were repurposing the app for business finances – tracking expenses, asking for help with invoices, etc. Latin American entrepreneurs were basically hacking the personal finance app to manage their company money. This was a lightbulb moment. Marinella and her co-founders started digging in and realized there was a much larger pain point here: small businesses drowning in manual financial admin (especially invoicing, more on that in a second). Virtually no one was addressing it in an easy, modern way.

Still, the idea of pivoting was daunting. They had poured their hearts into the B2C product. “We were all in love with our B2C product and solution,” Marinella admits. They even had that plush Zummi – you don’t make a teddy bear of your product’s mascot unless you’re really attached. “The first thing they tell you is don’t fall in love with the solution, fall in love with the problem,” she says. “But when you’re a founder, it’s very hard not to fall in love with the solution.”

Ultimately, data (and the team’s gut) won out. In late 2023 they decided to pivot to B2B – transforming Zumma into a finance operations platform for SMEs (small and mid-sized enterprises). They didn’t completely kill the B2C app (it still exists, just not actively developed), but they shifted all focus to the new direction. It wasn’t easy emotionally, but it was absolutely the right move. Marinella puts it bluntly: “We decided to focus on this new route… It ended up being the best decision because otherwise we would’ve died probably.”

“It was a very hard conversation for us to have and decide to pivot, because we were in love with the product. We even had a teddy bear of Zummi! But focusing on the new B2B route ended up being the best decision – otherwise we probably would have died.”

  Marinella Piñate

So what is this new product exactly? In short, Zumma became a “WhatsApp CFO” for businesses. They observed that in LatAm, every company (even one-person freelancers) has to generate facturas (electronic invoices) for expenses to claim tax deductions. It’s an incredibly tedious process in countries like Mexico: you buy something for your business, then you must go to the vendor’s website (or phone them) to request an official invoice, which you later give to your accountant. One or two invoices is fine – but if you have 100 expenses a month, this becomes a nightmare, often eating 20+ hours monthly. Many people just give up, losing money by not claiming half their expenses.

Zumma set out to automate this. Marinella describes how they built a solution where a user can simply snap a photo of a receipt and send it to “Zummi” on WhatsApp. The AI backend fetches the official factura and returns it to you (and your finance team dashboard) within minutes, no human effort required. It’s like magic for anyone who’s suffered through the old way. They focused on WhatsApp as the interface because, in LatAm, that’s where business gets done – everyone already uses it, so no one has to learn a new tool. “We realized in LatAm, people don’t want to get rid of their current tools and processes,” Marinella explains. “It’s harder to tell them to change, than to integrate.” By integrating with WhatsApp, Zumma meets users where they are, lowering friction to almost zero.

To validate this new B2B idea, the Zumma team did something smart: they tested manually before writing code. Marinella said that early on, they were literally doing the invoice process by hand behind the scenes for a small set of pilot customers. This was to make sure people would actually pay for the service. “If the pain is big enough, people will pay for it,” she figured – and she was right. Those early customers were willing to pay, and that was the green light to invest in building the full AI automation.

Today, Zumma’s B2B product is gaining traction. They’ve reported strong growth on the invoicing feature and extremely low churn, validating that this pivot hit a nerve in the market. Moreover, the pivot showcased the team’s adaptability – a crucial trait for any startup. Marinella stayed transparent with stakeholders throughout (more on that in a bit), which helped maintain support during the strategic shift. In sum, pivoting away from their beloved first product was tough love, but it’s led Zumma to a far more scalable opportunity (and likely saved the company). A great reminder that in startups, falling in love with the problem, not the product, is key – and being willing to change course can make all the difference.

🎯 Keys to Effective Customer Discovery

How did Marinella and her team realize a pivot was needed in the first place? And how did they decide what exactly to build next? The answer lies in disciplined customer discovery. Marinella shared some of her playbook on validating ideas and understanding customer pain points, and it’s pure gold for early-stage founders.

First off, she’s a fan of the book The Mom Test, which teaches founders how to ask unbiased questions (your mom will lie to not hurt your feelings – so will potential customers, unless you ask the right way). Zumma’s team initially fell into a common trap: asking people if they would use a hypothetical product. “When we were doing the first iteration (B2C), a lot of the questions we were asking were, ‘If we build this, will you use it?’,” Marinella admits. Not surprisingly, most people said yes – but that didn’t mean much. Of course someone will tell a friendly entrepreneur “sure, sounds cool,” but that doesn’t predict actual behavior.

With the pivot, they flipped the script. They focused on open-ended questions about the problem, not the solution. Instead of “would you use X,” they asked things like, “What’s your process for handling expenses and invoices? What’s frustrating about it? How much time do you spend? What happens if you don’t do it?” This gave them unfiltered insight into how painful the problem really was (turns out, very painful) and what workaround solutions businesses were currently hacking together.

Crucially, they didn’t take people’s word at face value. Marinella’s rule: Don’t believe what customers say; believe what they do. Someone might say “Yes, I’d pay $X for that,” but will they actually open their wallet? To find out, Zumma tested the value prop in the real world. They manually provided the service (fetching invoices) to a pilot group and asked those businesses to pay a small fee. When businesses actually paid for a scrappy manual service, that was strong evidence of real demand. If they had balked, it would mean the pain wasn’t severe enough or the pricing was off.

“If you ask customers what they want, they’ll say a faster horse – they’ll never say a car. But if you focus on the problem, then it’s your job to figure out the right solution.”

  Marinella Piñate

Marinella loves that Henry Ford analogy (people would’ve asked for faster horses instead of imagining a car). It underscores that customers are experts in their problems, not the solutions. By deeply understanding the invoice pain point, the Zumma team could envision an automated solution that customers themselves might not have articulated initially.

Finally, once you think you have a solution, test willingness to pay early and empirically. Marinella emphasized the question “How much would you pay for this?” as a gauge – but even better, as she demonstrated, is to actually charge (even a little) and see if the credit card goes through. Actions speak louder than words in customer discovery.

For founders reading, Marinella’s approach is a textbook example of lean validation:

1. Talk to users – but ask them about their life and problems, not your idea.

2. Focus on pain & frequency – is this a hair-on-fire problem or a nice-to-have?

3. Prototype manually if you can – don’t build anything expensive until you’re sure.

4. Get people to pay (or sign a contract) as the ultimate validation.

These steps helped Zumma confidently pivot in a new direction, essentially de-risking the move. It’s a great reminder that no amount of genius product vision replaces actually listening to your users and watching their behavior. Good things happen when you build with and for your customers, not in a vacuum.

Why WhatsApp is the Platform for LatAm Finance

Zummi, Zumma’s virtual assistant, lives in WhatsApp – helping users track spending and send invoices in a simple chat interface.

One of the smartest design choices Zumma made was to meet users where they already are. In Latin America, that place is WhatsApp – the ubiquitous messaging app used for everything from chatting with friends to coordinating business. “We realized early on that to build a sticky product, we didn’t want to replace the tools people were already using,” Marinella explains. “People in LatAm don’t want to get rid of their current tools and processes. It’s harder to tell ’em to change than to integrate.” So instead of requiring users to learn a new app from scratch, Zumma leveraged WhatsApp as its interface.

Practically speaking, this means a user can manage their finances as if they were chatting with a friend. Have a business expense? Snap a photo of the receipt with your phone and send it to Zummi on WhatsApp. Within minutes, Zummi processes it and replies with a properly formatted factura (digital invoice) for that expense . Need to know your cash flow? Just ask Zummi via voice note or text, and it will fetch the summary. In the background, Zumma’s system logs all the data in a dashboard that a company’s finance team can access for reports, reimbursement tracking, etc., but many small business owners can accomplish everything through simple WhatsApp messages. By automating these tedious workflows, Zumma is saving users serious time and money – an average of 20+ hours a month previously lost to chasing invoices, and thousands of dollars in tax deductions that would have been missed . And because it’s all done in a familiar chat format, customers don’t feel like they’re adopting some complicated “enterprise software”; it feels as easy as texting, because it is texting. Marinella notes that they had experimented with WhatsApp in their early B2C days and saw strong engagement, so it was a no-brainer to carry that over to the SME solution . In a region where trust in new apps can be low, using a platform people already trust (and have always-open on their phones) has been key to Zumma’s growth.

The choice to build on WhatsApp also illustrates something deeper about product-market fit in LatAm. Entrepreneurs in the region have learned that success often requires adapting to local user behavior, rather than importing Silicon Valley playbooks verbatim. As Marinella puts it, WhatsApp was simply “the way” to get people to actually use the service – removing friction and lowering the barrier to trying a new financial tool . That cultural insight (integrate, don’t overhaul) is paying off: since pivoting, Zumma’s invoice product has been growing double-digits month over month with almost no churn, validating that they’ve hit a nerve. And Zumma isn’t stopping at invoices; by embedding more AI into the chat assistant, they aim to automate a whole suite of financial ops tasks for businesses. It’s fintech built in WhatsApp, and it feels like a very LatAm kind of innovation.

📢 Stakeholder Engagement and Regular Updates

Marinella believes feedback is a gift — and she lives it by sending frequent, candid updates to investors, mentors, and even friends. These monthly emails share Zumma’s wins, challenges, and specific asks, turning her network into an active “village” of supporters.

❝  

“The more we share our progress, challenges, and asks, the more help we get.”

  Marinella Piñate

This openness paid off during Zumma’s pivot from B2C to B2B: instead of surprising investors, Marinella kept them looped in the whole way, turning potential skeptics into cheerleaders. Over time, her updates transformed stakeholders from passive observers into engaged allies, often leading to unexpected intros and advice. It’s a reminder that transparency isn’t just good ethics — it’s a growth strategy.

🙅‍♂️ Do You Really Need a CTO?

While many insist a startup must have a technical co-founder, Marinella proves otherwise. Zumma began with three non-coders, yet still built an advanced AI fintech product by hiring “founding engineers” who acted like co-founders in commitment and vision.

“Do you need that technical co-founder? It’s better if you do… but we were able to build an AI product with engineers who weren’t co-founders but had skin in the game.”

  Marinella Piñate

Their approach? Deep product understanding, clear vision, and attracting passionate engineers hungry to build. By empowering these early hires with ownership and trust, they filled the tech gap without an official CTO.

📢 Listen to the full episode here.

Follow Nella, because why wouldn’t you?

And check out Zumma as they continue to enable financial management for SMBs in Latin America.

Thanks for reading!

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Share La Frontera 🌵

La Frontera

Thank You 🙏 

We want to kick things off with a sincere thank you to every single one of you who came out to our very first La Frontera 🌵 event during NY Tech Week. Folks came from all over NYC and the world and your presence made all the difference.

A special shoutout to our co-hosts at Pygma, our coffee sponsor Bright Cup Coffee, and our location, La Rubia, for making this event not only possible but genuinely a lovely time with folks. This community is what made it feel special and it’s what powers everything we build (with more exciting things coming in the future).

☕ Series B(ean): Our First IRL Coffee Chat

We hosted our very first in-person event, Series B(ean), at La Rubia in New York City, and it was a hit. We had over 100 people signed up with folks stopping by throughout the morning to share tasty coffee, delicious bites, and good music (check out our curated playlist) with other amazing founders, operators, and investors.

For many, it was the first time we met in person after LinkedIn DMs, email threads, and Google Meets. There was even a popular IG Reel made at the event — proof that there’s something special in bringing great folks together.

We learned a lot, laughed even more, and left inspired to do this again. And we will. If you’re interested in co-hosting a La Frontera 🌵 event in your city (👀 Miami, SF, Bogotá, CDMX), let us know.

In the meantime, you can connect with us on Instagram, LinkedIn, or through subscribing to our newsletter.

🌵What is La Frontera, Anyways?

If you’re new here (bienvenido!), here’s the quick version:

La Frontera 🌵 is a podcast and newsletter about the people shaping Latin America’s startup and venture capital ecosystem. We spotlight founders, investors, and community builders from across the region through candid, English-language conversations that educate global investors and empower local entrepreneurs.

But why the name?

For our non-Spanish speakers, La Frontera translates to “the border” or “the frontier”.

To many outside the region, Latin America still feels like it’s “across the border”: unfamiliar, distant, and misunderstood. But we see it differently.

To us, it represents a frontier — one of innovation, global significance, and untapped potential. Our goal is to make that frontier more familiar, more accessible, and more connected to investors in the United States and beyond.

Our mission is to:

• Elevate Latin American founders and investors through storytelling and context.

• Connect them with international capital in a smart and sustainable way.

• Build a supportive community around the fact that LatAm is worth betting on.

🎙️If You’re Just Joining Us, Start Here

In our first three months we’ve published nine (9!) conversations with some of the most interesting minds in LatAm tech. These are a few we recommend starting with:

• Andrés Botero (Monet) — On co-founding a leading pay-advance fintech and navigating regulatory complexity in Colombia. 🎧 Listen here

• Nico Yepes (Moffin) — On modernizing the way companies receive and process credit scoring data in LatAm. 🎧 Listen here

• Cristobal Perdomo (Wollef VC) — On building a VC fund and understanding the lack of exits in LatAm. 🎧 Listen here

• Courtney McColgan (Runa) — On raising money and scaling as a foreign founder in Mexico. 🎧 Listen here

• René Lomelí (500 Global) — On angel investing, ecosystem design, and lessons from 500 Global. 🎧 Listen here

• Valentina Valencia (Vaas) — On raising from a16z and modernizing private debt in LatAm. 🎧 Listen here

You can listen to all of these episodes, and future ones, on your favorite streaming service.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple

Listen on YouTube

👋 Who’s Behind La Frontera 🌵?

Cyrus Bakhshi

Investor and former FinTech operator with experience across VC, product, and operations in both the US and Mexico City. He speaks a bit of Spanish and enjoys acquiring small businesses (ask him about his equestrian facility).

🔗 Connect with Cyrus

Thomas Barrett

MBA candidate at Kellogg with a background in capital markets and experience in VC. He now operates LatAm-based FinTech startups. He has spent time working or studying in Mexico City and Buenos Aires, and speaks fluent Spanish and intermediate Portuguese.

🔗 Connect with Tom

📣 We’d Love to Hear From You

We’re building La Frontera 🌵 with our community in mind. If you have feedback, guest recommendations, or topics you’d like us to cover, please let us know.

📬 Shoot Cyrus an email with your thoughts.

Thanks for being part of this journey. We’re excited for what’s ahead, and grateful to have you with us.

Vamos!

— Cyrus & Tom

Thanks for reading!

Be sure to share La Frontera with your network if you enjoy our newsletters!

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Luis Andrés Enriquez Arias

In this episode, we sit down with Luis Enriquez, co-founder and GP of Bridge Latam, to explore why now is the moment to invest in Latin America's booming tech scene. Luis breaks down the $1 trillion opportunity, the industries primed for disruption, and how Mexico's cultural nuances shape startup culture. We also dive into the challenges (and opportunities) of Series B liquidity, secondaries, and founder over-dilution—key issues shaping the future of venture in the region.

From his 13-year journey building Cultura Colectiva into one of Mexico's largest digital media platforms (30M+ users, 60M+ social followers) to co-founding Bridge Latam, Luis brings a refreshing founder-turned-investor perspective to Latin America's evolving startup ecosystem.

We were introduced to Luis by a former Bridge associate, Fran Garcia, who also runs an awesome podcast called “Levantando.” Shout out to Fran! We knew we had to talk to Luis for his unique perspective and innovative investor mindset, especially after reading his original, published commentary on the startup ecosystem in LatAm. This conversation didn’t disappoint — it’s full of invaluable intel and learnings for investors and founders alike.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple

Listen on YouTube

Episode 10 Summary

• From Math Olympian to Media Mogul: Luis's journey from competing in International Math Olympics to building algorithms that predicted viral social media content—and scaling Cultura Colectiva to become the "Buzzfeed of Latin America."

• The $1 Trillion Opportunity: Breaking down why LatAm's tech market cap (2% of GDP) has massive room to grow toward global standards—and what that means for investors.

• Industries Ripe for Disruption: From telecommunications (where Mexico pays the highest data costs globally) to B2B financial credit and auto lending.

• Bridge Latam's Thesis: How copying the US VC model doesn't work in LatAm, and how Bridge’s innovative approach leads to consistent returns.

• Founder Dilution Crisis: Why LatAm founders are some of the most diluted in the world by Series A (above 15% average).

• Cultural Barriers to Growth: How Mexican culture's stigma around failure is evolving with the help of former founders like Luis himself.

In Today's Newsletter

• La Frontera 🌵 Podcast, Episode 10 - Bridging the …

  • Episode 10 Summary

  • Bridge Latam: A Fund by Founders, for Founders

  • 🧠 From Math Olympiad to Missed Exit

  • 💰 The $1 Trillion Opportunity That Everyone's Mis …

    • 🏗️ Industries Ready for Disruption

    • 📈What happens when VC funds DO get it right in La …

    • 🚀 Let’s double-click on Bridge’s series B exit mo …

  • 👥 The Cultural Shift: From Failure Stigma to Foun …

  • 🤝 Founders Backing Founders: Bridge’s Secret Sauc …

  • 🌎 From Carlos Slim to David Vélez: LatAm’s Next F …

  • 📢 Listen to the full episode here.

  • Follow Luis, because why wouldn’t you?

• Thanks for reading!

www.bridgelatam.com

Bridge Latam: A Fund by Founders, for Founders

Note: Since recording this interview, Bridge Latam has completed a merger with NAZCA VC. We will cover the specifics of this monumental partnership in an episode next month. For now, please check out this article for more information.

💰 Assets Under Management: $15M+ (Fund 1, launched 2021) Recently merged with Nazca to combine $300M+ in assets
📍 HQ: Mexico City with operations across Latin America
🎯 Stage Focus: Pre-seed and Seed
🌎 Geographic Focus: Mexico to Argentina, including Brazil
📊 Check Size: $200K–$500K initial, with follow-on capacity
🏆 Portfolio: 30+ investments across Fund 1 & Fund 2

🚀 Notable Investments:

• Aplazo lets users split any purchase into five biweekly payments with no credit card required.

• Aptuno streamlines the home rental process in LatAm with tech-enabled, end-to-end service for both tenants and landlords.

• Desteia uses specialized AI to automate cross-border trade, offering clean data, real-time freight tracking, and seamless customs handling.

• EFEX is building a better cross-border payment solution tailored to the needs of small and mid-sized businesses in Latin America.

• Elenas empowers women in LatAm to launch online businesses via a social commerce platform optimized for WhatsApp, Facebook, and more.

• Hackmetrix offers the first comprehensive cybersecurity and compliance SaaS platform built specifically for LatAm SMEs.

• Koywe provides a simple, reliable crypto on/off-ramp for LatAm businesses and users managing FX and blockchain transactions.

• Kukun blends boutique hotel charm with the flexibility of short-term rentals to deliver immersive stays in Mexico.

• Plenna is reimagining women’s healthcare in Mexico through tech-driven, personalized, and holistic health services.

Unique Model: Founder-led fund with unicorn founders as venture partners.

Exit Strategy: Focus on Series B secondary sales.

Learn more here: www.bridgelatam.com

🧠 From Math Olympiad to Missed Exit

Luis Enriquez didn’t set out to be a VC. He was a math prodigy who built algorithms before AI was cool—literally running social data through Excel to predict what would go viral. That hustle became Cultura Colectiva, a digital media company that skyrocketed to 60M followers and 30M monthly users.

Then came the first fork in the road.

“Televisa offered to acquire us for $25 million. I said no. That was a mistake.”

  Luis Enriquez

Instead of cashing out, Luis took $5M in VC funding—at the same valuation. The company expanded into the U.S., but later hit major turbulence: a hacking incident, bad press, and a collapse in revenue that forced him to lay off 200 people.

That moment reshaped him. He lived the founder highs and very real lows. And it taught him two things:

1. The traditional VC model doesn’t always fit LatAm

2. Founders need other founders in their corner

So he teamed up with LatAm startup veterans to build Bridge Latam, one of the first institutional VC funds led by founders, for founders.

💰 The $1 Trillion Opportunity That Everyone's Missing

Luis' most compelling thesis centers on a stark data point: Latin America's tech companies represent only 2% of the region's GDP, compared to 70% in the US, 30% in China, and 20% in India.

"The thesis is that LatAm will go from 2% to 15% in the next 15 years. That opportunity is a $1 trillion opportunity of tech value generated in the region."

  Luis Enriquez

The Math Behind the Opportunity:

LatAm GDP: ~$6 trillion

Current tech market cap: ~2% of GDP

Target: 15% of GDP (matching emerging market standards)

Potential value creation: $1 trillion

But what's driving this massive opportunity?

Three Key Factors:

1. Oligopolistic Market Structures: Industries like banking, telecommunications, and automotive are dominated by a few players, making disruption both necessary and highly rewarding to disruptors (i.e. NuBank)

2. Regional Homogeneity: Unlike India (20 languages, 13 religions), LatAm speaks primarily Spanish (with the exception of Brazil), shares Catholic heritage, and has similar colonial history—making regional expansion easier.

3. Asymmetric Information: Global investors see violence and narco-trafficking headlines, avoiding the perceived risk, resulting in less investor capital chasing opportunities in the region.

“I believe when you have this asymmetric information, then you have an under underserved market, and then every, dollar that you put here performs better than other regions.”

  Luis Enriquez

🏗️ Industries Ready for Disruption

Part of Luis’ thesis of the opportunity in LatAm lies in the sheer number of huge, legacy industries with the potential to be disrupted. Not only that, but once you establish dominance in an industry, because of the oligopolistic nature of businesses there, you can create a moat for years to come.

Which industries does he think are the most ripe for disruption over the next 5-10 years?

1. Telecommunications

“For me, telecommunications for sure. I think in Mexico we pay the most amount of dollars per giga or per mega in data, and I can't have a phone call through internet if I'm in the street because it doesn't work.”

  Luis Enriquez

2. B2B Financial Credit

• Natural product-market fit for lending in the region

• Some great consumer lending companies, like Monet

• Several unicorns already emerging in B2B space

3. Automotive Industry

• Both lending and selling sides ripe for disruption

• KAVAK success story shows the potential

🚨 Why the US VC Model Breaks in LatAm

Despite the massive opportunity, Luis argues that even many local funds are going about investing the wrong way. Most LatAm funds copy the US playbook: invest in seed/Series A, hold for unicorn exits. Luis argues this is fundamentally flawed for the region.

The Problem:

• LatAm gets only 1% of global VC money (should be 3.5% based on GDP)

• No deep capital markets post-Series B

• No local IPO markets (Mexico hasn't had an IPO in 5 years)

• Requires 8-12 year hold periods for exits

Bridge's Hypothesis:

"What we believe is you have to Latin Americanize the VC model. You have to invest earlier, pre-seed almost all the money, and then start to get your money out in Series B."

  Luis Enriquez

The Strategy:

1. Invest early: Pre-seed and seed rounds

2. Exit early: Sell secondaries at Series B when rounds are oversubscribed

3. Return capital fast: Investors see returns in 3-4 years instead of 10+

📈What happens when VC funds DO get it right in LatAm??

According to a 2024 report by Atlantico, VC funds in LatAm consistently outperform those of other regions, along with public investment benchmarks.

“If you get the best half of the funds in Latin America, they will be performing as the top quartile in the world.

This means that in general VC in LatAm outperforms VC worldwide. And then if you get the best quartile in LatAm, you'll be in the top decile worldwide.”

  Luis Enriquez

Source: Atlantico 2024 LatAm Digital Transformation Report

🚀 Let’s double-click on Bridge’s series B exit model*:

• Scarcity = Demand:
  There aren’t many high-quality startups reaching Series B in Latin America. But when they do, they’re hot. These rounds are often oversubscribed.

• Growth Investors are Starved for Deals:
  Growth-stage investors want in, but they have trouble securing allocations against big-name U.S. and regional funds (think Kaszek). That creates demand for secondary shares from early investors like Bridge.

• Founders Want Secondaries Too:
  By Series B, LatAm founders are highly diluted (more than in other regions). They often push new investors to allocate some of the round to secondaries, giving Bridge a liquidity path.

Bridge isn’t doing this alone. Their LPs like this structure:

• LPs get exposure to ~30 pre-seed bets via Bridge.

• They know ~5 may make it to Series B.

• Instead of chasing allocations with big growth funds, they can invest indirectly via Bridge, then get liquidity when Bridge exits via secondaries.

• It’s like a free option—LPs get capital returned early, but still keep upside.

*Note: this strategy worked for smaller checks in Bridge’s angel syndicate structure — they’re still waiting to prove it out for larger investment sizes.

📊 The Founder Dilution Crisis

One of LatAm's biggest structural problems: founders are among the most diluted in the world by Series A, higher than the global average of 15%.

Why This Happens:

• Most local funds focus on seed/Series A stages

• Higher perceived risk leads to larger equity stakes

• Limited competition among investors

The Secondary Solution:

"When Series B comes and a fund wants to put a lot of money, there's an incentive for founders to put a little bit of the money in secondaries because they don't want to get diluted anymore."

  Luis Enriquez

This creates a win-win: founders reduce dilution, growth investors get access to competitive deals, and early-stage funds like Bridge can return capital to LPs.

👥 The Cultural Shift: From Failure Stigma to Founder Networks

Mexican culture traditionally discourages discussing failures, but that's changing rapidly.

“If you're having a bad time, you don't talk with anyone, you keep it to yourself. I mean, if you go to a psychologist, you're like a crazy person.”

  Luis Enriquez

Kind of sounds like the Sopranos, doesn’t it? But Luis says this culture is changing.

The New Reality:

70% of Bridge's deals come from second-time founders (vs. 30% 5 years ago), and founder-to-founder mentorship networks are emerging with unicorn founders being active in the ecosystem.

Luis thinks empathy is crucial in advising founders. His experience as a founder and opening up and being vulnerable is a key tenant of Bridge’s value prop.

“When I tell my founder story to other founders, they see that I know how it feels to cut 200 people and everyone is screaming, I’ve felt that guilt, thinking because it was my fault, everything that happened.

So opening up and telling that to, to other founders, they open up as well and they actually tell me their worst fears. Then we get to the part where we help them address those fears.”

  Luis Enriquez

🤝 Founders Backing Founders: Bridge’s Secret Sauce

Bridge isn’t just another VC fund—it’s a collective of builders. When Luis and his partners launched their first institutional fund, they didn’t follow the typical “venture partner” playbook. They flipped the model.

“Instead of giving a carry slice per deal, like most venture partner structures, we give a slice of the entire fund—but only to partners who commit real skin in the game.”

  Luis Enriquez

Bridge's Founder Network:
The fund's venture partners include active executives who provide real-time advice:

• Daniel Vogel (Bitso CEO) for crypto/fintech

• Federico Ranero (former Kavak COO) for marketplace dynamics

• Eduardo Paulsen (Ben & Frank CEO) for consumer brands'

Here’s how the Bridge model works:

Exclusivity:
Bridge’s unicorn founders must share all deal flow first with Bridge. No side investing. No cherry-picking.

Founder-led Due Diligence:
When a crypto startup pitches Bridge, it’s not just an analyst on the call—it’s Daniel Vogel, CEO of Bitso, asking the tough questions. That’s real operator insight—not spreadsheet vetting.

Skin in the Game:
Founders don’t just show up—they invest. Bridge GPs put in 7% of the fund’s capital (vs. 1–2% at most funds).

Hands-On Help:
Every founder contributes 2–4 hours/month to support the portfolio. And it pays off.

“One crypto startup lost all its bank accounts overnight. Bitso had just been through the same. Daniel stepped in, gave the founder a playbook, and solved the crisis in days.”

  Luis Enriquez

This isn’t VC theater. This is real-time problem-solving from people who’ve lived it—and that’s Bridge’s edge.

🌎 From Carlos Slim to David Vélez: LatAm’s Next Founder Generation Is Here

Something big is shifting in Latin America—and it’s not just macro trends. It’s mindset.

“Today, 49% of university students in LatAm want to start a company. Just a few years ago, it was under 20%.”

  Luis Enriquez

That generational leap isn’t just statistical—it’s symbolic.

Young Latin Americans aren’t dreaming of becoming Carlos Slim, the region’s traditional business titan. They’re looking to David Vélez (Nubank), Simón Borrero (Rappi), and Federico Ranero (Kavak)—tech founders who scaled ideas into unicorns.

“These are their idols now. And they want to follow in their footsteps.”

  Luis Enriquez

Luis sees this shift as the cultural foundation of a coming tech boom:

• Second-time founders are launching new ventures with real playbooks.

• First-time founders are starting younger, faster, and bolder.

• Tech is becoming aspiration—not anomaly.

And the transformation isn’t just personal—it’s economic.

“20 years ago, the most valuable companies in the U.S. were oil & gas. Now they’re all tech. Brazil has Nubank. Argentina has MercadoLibre. But Mexico? Still stuck with the same top 10 from two decades ago. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Luis Enriquez

That’s the opportunity—and the call to action.

Investing in LatAm VC today isn’t just a bet on startups—it’s a bet on a cultural and economic reinvention.
And for Luis, that makes it both a smart move and a meaningful one.

“Maybe it’s a romantic way to think about the ecosystem, but I really believe this: VC in LatAm is investing in a new future for the region.”

  Luis Enriquez

The Bottom Line: Luis and Bridge Latam are betting that Latin America is entering its iPhone moment—where existing infrastructure and talent converge with new technologies to create exponential value. For investors willing to understand the regional nuances and adapt their strategies accordingly, the $1 trillion opportunity isn't just a projection—it's an inevitability.

📢 Listen to the full episode here.

Follow Luis, because why wouldn’t you?

And check out Bridge & NAZCA as they continue to invest in and support Latin founders.

Building Bridges Newsletter

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Be sure to share La Frontera with your network if you enjoy our newsletters!

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Andrés Londoño Botero

We first met Andrés last summer in Bogota during Colombia Tech Week as we were on a shuttle (courtesy of the folks at Wagon) on the way to Daniel's finca (a finca is a farm or estate for our non-Spanish speaking friends) for a fun get-together to close out an incredible Tech Week.

Andrés was sitting in front of Cyrus and as they were talking, Cyrus mentioned the podcast. Nine months later, we’re excited to finally make this episode happen, especially after Monet hit major milestones recently!

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A little announcement before we dive in…

🎉 We are hosting our FIRST EVER EVENT during NY Tech Week (June 2-6)! 

Come join us for a cup of coffee ☕️ (provided by Bright Cup Coffee), some light bites, and good conversations. RSVP via the Partiful link below 👇 and make sure to share this with your friends and network. Let’s make this HUGE 🙌

Series B(ean): an IRL Coffee Chat for Founders, Angels, and VCs - #NYTechWeek

La Frontera 🌵 is partnering up with Pygma to bring you delicious Colombian coffee and light bites. Come mingle with other Founders, Angels, and VCs!

partiful.com/e/t66e31CfpDvqWnLfhwTz

Episode 9 Summary

🔁 From Public Sector to Payday Pivot – How a government economist became a fintech founder and why Monet's original payroll model didn’t scale.

💸 First Loan, First Chance – Why Monet focuses on giving first-time borrowers access to credit—and how they built trust in a segment banks ignore.

📊 Scoring the Invisible – With 350+ behavioral features and no credit bureau data, Monet built its own ML credit model from scratch.

🌍 Why LatAm, Why Now – Andrés Londoño explains why half of LatAm adults still can’t get credit—and how Monet is filling that gap.

🇨🇴 Colombia’s Startup Moment – The rise of fintech, policy tailwinds, and why Andrés believes Colombia is ready for breakout success.

💥 YC, Valuations & the Venture Squeeze – What Andrés learned from fundraising during the 2021 boom, and why Monet’s cap table now leans international.

In Today's Newsletter

• La Frontera 🌵 Podcast, Episode 9 - Open Banking f …

• A little announcement before we dive in…

  • 🎉 We are hosting our FIRST EVER EVENT during NY T …

  • Episode 9 Summary

    • Monet: Credit Access for the 99%

  • 🎓 From Public Policy to Payroll Lending

  • 🧁 The Founding Story: Not a Straight Line

    • 🧬 How It Works: Open Banking + Behavior-Based Ris …

  • 📈 Building Credit Models on Real Data

  • 🌎 Lending in Latin America: An Underserved Giant

  • 💸 Fundraising and the YC Effect

    • ✅ Positives of Y Combinator for Monet

  • 💡 IPOs and the Missing Middle

  • 🚀 What’s Next for Monet

  • 🤝 Shoutouts: Zulu, Mural, and Pygma

  • 📢 Listen to the full episode here.

  • Follow Andrés, because why wouldn’t you?

• Thanks for reading!

Monet: Credit Access for the 99%

🚀 Founded: 2020 in Colombia
📈 Stage: Series A
💰 Total Funding Raised: Over $10M (equity and debt)
🤝 Investors: Y Combinator (S21), K5, River Side Ventures, and others
🎯 Mission: To democratize access to fair, fast credit in Latin America by leveraging data and technology to serve the financially invisible.

Monet is a Colombian fintech company that provides instant, interest-free cash advances to underbanked consumers with recurring income, including gig workers, freelancers, and those with poor or no credit history. In a market where traditional lenders often overlook large segments of the population, Monet uses open banking data and AI to assess risk based on real-time transactional behavior rather than outdated credit scores. Users can request loans in seconds, with disbursements typically ranging from 50,000 to 500,000 COP, helping them manage urgent liquidity needs without falling into predatory lending cycles.

🎓 From Public Policy to Payroll Lending

Andrés didn’t start in startups — he thought he wanted to be a politician.

“I studied economics, then got a master's in public policy, another in regional development. I thought I was going to work on economic inequality through the public sector.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

He spent four years in government, working at Colombia’s Ministry of Finance and DIAN, the national tax authority. That gave him an inside look at how formal systems worked — or didn’t.

But like many LatAm founders, it was a chance conversation that sparked his pivot into tech.

“I met Leonardo, now our CEO, through a mutual friend. We clicked right away. I brought in my cousin as our third cofounder. We started exploring an idea that was completely different.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

🧁 The Founding Story: Not a Straight Line

Monet didn’t start as an open banking company.

The first version of Monet was modeled after U.S. earned wage access products — essentially payday loans tied to payroll that were repaid via automatic salary deductions. While the concept made sense, it proved unscalable in the Latin American context for several reasons:

1. Employer-by-employer integration: Each partnership required negotiating directly with employers.

2. Fragmented HR systems: Many companies used legacy or non-cloud-based HR software, making integrations complex or impossible.

3. Limited reach: The model excluded informal workers, freelancers, and gig economy participants — a huge share of the LatAm workforce.

“You have to negotiate with every employer… and many HR systems had no cloud infrastructure. Connecting was impossible.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

The two co-founders pivoted. Today, Monet offers short-term, interest-free loans ranging from 50,000 to 500,000 COP — typically to first-time borrowers who can’t access traditional credit.

"You can apply in seconds. If you’re approved, the money hits your account right away. There’s no interest — just a small flat fee. And we structure the repayment to match their income flow."

  Andrés Londoño Botero

They’ve already granted well over one million dollars in loans and served more than 700,000 customers, building traction in a demographic most lenders ignore.

In 2021, Monet launched a digital wallet with the BaaS model, in partnership with Bancolombia, connected to current and savings accounts, which allows using Bancolombia QR codes to make purchases and check balances.

 Colombian credit fintech Monet looks to expand into Central America

Continue reading to figure out how they got there… 🤔

🧬 How It Works: Open Banking + Behavior-Based Risk

Monet combines in-house infrastructure with third-party APIs like Belvo to access users' bank accounts and digital wallets. Instead of relying on credit scores or HR data, Monet evaluates real-time financial activity to underwrite loans — especially for customers with no formal credit history.

Every loan is underwritten based on:

• 📊 Recurring income patterns — gig economy payouts, informal business earnings, or other detectable inflows.

• 💸 Cash flow health — including balance trends, volatility, and buffer days.

• 🧾 Spending behavior — categorized expenses help assess affordability and financial discipline.

• 🛑 Early fraud or anomaly signals — pattern breaks or new device/account behavior.

“Defaults were higher in the beginning. But now we’ve stabilized losses, even in months like January or mid-July where seasonal factors weigh in. The key was learning how people behave.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

📈 Building Credit Models on Real Data

Monet recognized a gap in relying on data from traditional credit bureaus in Colombia — only about 30% of their target users would have been eligible for loans. Their users are often thin-file or invisible to existing systems, and credit bureaus don’t capture real-time behavior: Bureau data lacks transactional detail on income flow, spending, and liquidity patterns — especially critical for small, short-term loans. Unfortunately, Moffin is not yet operating in Colombia 😉 (click here to read about how Moffin is building data infrastructure for credit providers in Mexico).

Understanding this, Monet built an internal scoring system powered by machine learning and open finance data.

Using their large loan book, Monet developed a probabilistic model trained on over 350 features, including:

• Account balances, inflows/outflows, and transaction types

• Behavioral activity over time (e.g., salary patterns, payment habits)

• Enriched insights from categorized financial data

The model was trained using XGBoost and validated with AUC and KS metrics, delivering a 20%+ reduction in defaults.

“The credit market in LatAm is almost infinite — and the supply of credit solutions is nowhere close to meeting it.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

🌎 Lending in Latin America: An Underserved Giant

Why build a lending company in LatAm? Because the opportunity is massive and the potential for positive social impact is equally vast.

“More than half of adults in Mexico and Colombia have never had access to formal credit.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

Traditional lenders are conservative, slow, and data-poor. Most won’t even consider gig economy workers — even if they get paid weekly.

“If you drive for Uber in Bogotá, a bank doesn’t consider that formal income. You can’t even open an account.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

Andrés believes this isn’t just a social problem, it’s an economic one. Informal workers, like any small business, need working capital to grow.

❝  

“We want to be the first loan someone ever receives. That’s the biggest opportunity.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

By targeting unbanked and underbanked users, Monet avoids direct competition with banks who are focused on prime borrowers in a high-rate environment.

What are the factors making digital lending products successful in LatAm?

• Open finance frameworks (e.g., Mexico’s Fintech Law, Brazil’s Open Finance initiative) are expanding access to financial data.

• Widespread smartphone usage enables real-time credit products tailored to behavioral data — not traditional scores.

• Digital wallets (like Nequi in Colombia or Mercado Pago in Argentina) create infrastructure for instant disbursements and repayments.

• Governments increasingly support fintech innovation to improve financial access.

• Associations like Colombia’s FinTech Association advocate for friendly regulation and infrastructure development.

💸 Fundraising and the YC Effect

Monet went through Y Combinator in Summer 2021, during the peak of the LatAm fintech boom.

✅ Positives of Y Combinator for Monet

• Global Credibility – YC gave Monet instant exposure and validation, making it easier to raise capital (over 90% of seed investors were international).

• Access to a Top-Tier Network – Introduced Monet to a strong ecosystem of founders, operators, and potential partners.

• Execution Discipline – YC helped sharpen their focus on KPIs, go-to-market strategy, and rapid iteration.

• Signal to the Market – Being a YC company gave Monet stronger leverage with investors, talent, and collaborators.

• Fundraising Momentum – YC branding helped accelerate their seed round coming out of the program.

“YC was amazing. Great exposure, great network. The only downside is valuation.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

He’s referring to the standard YC push to raise at high valuations, which did backfire on some LatAm startups raising during the 2021 bubble.

❝  

“In the U.S., you have liquidity, growth capital, and exit pathways. A high valuation makes sense. But here? You raise at $20M, and suddenly your next round looks mispriced.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

Still, YC helped them raise their seed round quickly, with many international investors (funds and angels) represented in their cap table.

Since then, they’ve brought on a local family office, which has helped balance the cap table and strengthen their presence in Colombia.

🌐 The Geography of Capital

“In New York, most funds are super U.S.-focused. Outside of Rappi or Nubank, they’re not familiar with the LatAm ecosystem.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

Instead, Andrés sees most U.S. LatAm-focused capital concentrated in places like Miami, Texas, and Silicon Valley, where there’s more regional familiarity and diaspora-led investing.

He’s currently raising a debt facility and talking to investors focused on emerging markets — including at least one group actively seeking deals in Colombia.

🇨🇴 Why Colombia?

Andrés is bullish on the Colombian tech ecosystem, even with the well-known constraints. Colombia ranks 38th globally and 2nd in South America in the StartupBlink Global Startup Ecosystem Index 2024.

“We’re seeing good momentum — fintech associations, groups like Invest in Bogotá, people pushing for better regulation.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

The Colombia Early-Stage 100 list, published by Ivan Montoya and NuMundo Ventures, is helping shine a light on emerging talent in the region, and includes Monet! Colombia Tech Week, which takes place in late August, is another boon for the ecosystem and its growth has cast a spotlight on all of the startup talent present there.

But the biggest challenge?

“There aren’t enough Series A and beyond funds In Latin America. If you get past seed, there are very few firms who can lead. Brazil is the exception, but Brazilians invest in Brazil.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

💡 IPOs and the Missing Middle

“In the U.S., you don’t need to IPO. You can just keep raising in the private markets. But in LatAm, there’s no private market liquidity.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

That’s a real problem.

Without secondary markets or consistent exits, it’s harder to prove that venture capital is an asset class that can return profits.

“We need more M&As, more IPOs. The whole flywheel is stuck.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

That’s why Monet is planning ahead.

They’re looking to grow via partnerships in Colombia, then expand into countries with similar regulatory frameworks for open banking and digital payments.

🚀 What’s Next for Monet

Monet is laser-focused on:

• 📊 Building robust analytics and credit models

• 🧱 Expanding infrastructure and direct bank integrations

• 💵 Securing debt capital to scale lending

• 🌎 Growing into other markets with regulatory compatibility

Andrés is excited but clear-eyed:

“We have to continue to capture our target market Colombia before we think about scaling. But the opportunity is huge — and we know the need is consistent in other countries in the region.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

🤝 Shoutouts: Zulu, Mural, and Pygma

We couldn’t end this episode without highlighting a few fellow builders who came up in our conversation:

• 🌐 Zulu – tackling cross-border transfers and FX for SMEs.

• 💸 Mural Pay – building crypto-enabled remittances with seamless UX.

Andrés believes cross-border infrastructure will be the next frontier — especially with companies like Revolut launching in Colombia, and regulation in Europe mandating real-time transaction settlement by 2026.

• 🌆 Pygma – Andrés is helping lead efforts to grow the Latino tech founder community in NYC, even as the city remains light on LatAm-focused VCs.

❝  

“There’s a ton of interest in NYC, but still not many firms who understand LatAm. That’s why things like what Pygma is doing are important.”

  Andrés Londoño Botero

📢 Listen to the full episode here.

Follow Andrés, because why wouldn’t you?

And check out Monet as they continue to expand access to credit in Latin America.

Monet: Credito Para Todos

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Susana Espinosa de los Reyes

We first connected with Susy Espinosa through a cold LinkedIn message. From the beginning, she was warm, direct, and generous with her time. Susy is one of the first female venture capital partners in Mexico, and her journey into venture is as unconventional as it is inspiring.

From a cold email that launched her VC career to co-founding Mujeres Invertiendo, Susy has helped shape the venture ecosystem in Mexico and is now actively investing in and supporting Latin founders across both the US and LatAm through Dux Capital. This conversation pulls back the curtain on what it’s really like to fundraise in LatAm, what kinds of businesses are truly venture-backable, and how we can bring more women into investing roles.

Whether you’re a founder, investor, or someone interested in breaking into VC, this episode has a lot to offer.

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Episode 8 Summary

• Susy’s Unconventional Path into VC: From a cold email in college that landed her an internship to a six-year career at Angel Ventures, all before an MBA in Madrid.

• Founding “Mujeres Invertiendo”: How seeing zero female VCs in Mexico drove Susy to co-found an organization empowering women investors and eventually become one of the country’s first female GPs.

• Dux Capital’s Cross-Border Thesis: Why Dux bases itself between Austin and CDMX, investing in Latinx founders in the US to bridge markets, and how this strategy helps mitigate risk while tapping huge opportunities.

• Fundraising Challenges in LatAm: The lack of exits and secondary markets makes raising capital tough. Susy explains how limited exits have many local LPs waiting on the sidelines (and what that means for emerging fund managers).

• Hard Truths on Female-Founded Startups: Susy’s candid take on why many women-led businesses in LatAm don’t fit the traditional VC model - and why that’s okay. (Plus, how risk appetite and “impostor syndrome” play a role.)

• Bringing More Women to the Cap Table: From launching an angel investor academy to mentoring, Susy shares how we can encourage more women to become investors and write checks in the ecosystem.

• Mexico’s Startup Community Boom: The evolution of Mexico City’s startup scene – from a handful of founders in 2016 to hundreds of events at Tech Week 2025 – and how a vibrant, party-loving culture is building a tight-knit tech community.

In Today's Newsletter

• La Frontera 🌵 Podcast, Episode 8 - LatAm VC Trail …

  • Episode 8 Summary

    • Dux Capital: Investing in the next generation of f …

    • 📧 From Cold Emails to Partner at Dux Capital: Sus …

    • 👩 What Was Missing: Mujeres Invirtiendo

    • 🌉 Dux Capital’s Edge: Cross-Border, Latino, Boots …

    • 💰️ On Fundraising and LatAm’s VC Paradox

    • 🇲🇽 Mexico’s Startup Scene: Bigger, Busier, Bolde …

  • 📢 Listen to the full episode here.

  • Follow Susana, because why wouldn’t you?

• Thanks for reading!

Dux Capital

Dux Capital: Investing in the next generation of founders

💰 Assets Under Management: $4M+ across one fund
📍 HQ: Austin, TX with an office in Mexico City
🎯 Stage Focus: Seed and Series A
🌎 Geographic Focus: Mexico, Spain, and the US
📊 Check Size: $750K–$1.8M initial, with follow-on capacity
🏆 Exits: One exit with Zubut exiting to Mensajeros Urbanos

🚀 Notable Investments:

• Mozper (Mexico) — Mozper provides the first debit card designed for children managed by parents. The card allows control of expenses to promote financial education from early years, and teach young people to manage money.

• Cheddies (USA) — Cheddies is the first company to create a light, crispy, cheesy cracker produced with real regenerative cheddar cheese high in protein.

• Innovare (USA) – A Chicago-based edtech platform that empowers school and nonprofit leaders with data analytics tools.

• Trato (Mexico) – A legaltech SaaS platform that simplifies contracts so companies have better control and traceability.

• Fintonic (Spain) – A Madrid-based fintech company offering a mobile application that serves as a personal finance manager, allowing users to aggregate their financial accounts, monitor expenses, and receive personalized financial advice.

Learn more here: www.duxcapital.vc

📧 From Cold Emails to Partner at Dux Capital: Susy’s Path

Susy didn’t grow up dreaming of venture capital, she discovered it by accident after organizing TEDx talks at her university and becoming curious about startup founders and how they built their companies and raised capital.

“I saw all these success stories from my university and wondered: why do all my friends want to work at Goldman or Evercore? I didn’t want that life. I didn’t want to work 7 AM to 2 AM like my dad.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

After taking, and acing, a class with a few local VCs, she was frustrated when she didn’t get offered an internship. So, she emailed Hernán from Angel Ventures (and cc’d one of his LPs for good measure), offering to work for free.

“He wrote back: ‘Do you have a laptop? Come join my office.’ That’s how it started.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

She spent six years at Angel Ventures, rising from intern to portfolio manager, and only later pursued an MBA in Madrid. Still, she never saw another woman in a decision-making role. So, she co-founded Mujeres Invertiendo, a network for women in private equity and venture capital.

Today, Susy is one of the few women in Mexico to become a Partner in Venture Capital and she’s opening the door for others.

👩 What Was Missing: Mujeres Invirtiendo

In all her time at Angel Ventures, Susy never once worked with a female partner. So she co-founded Mujeres Invirtiendo, a network of women in VC and PE aimed at fixing the representation gap.

“There were no female GPs in Mexico at the time. None. So I figured, I can’t change my gender, and I can’t fast-forward 20 years of experience, but I can get an MBA from a top school. So I did.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

That MBA was at IE in Madrid. But before and after, she organized dinners, networking events, and advocacy efforts to encourage firms to bring in women, not just as analysts, but as decision-makers.

“We talked to GPs directly. If the data shows diversity improves returns, why aren’t you hiring women?”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

It worked. Now, she estimates that 36% of the startups in Dux Capital’s pipeline are female-led, even though Dux Capital doesn’t promote that as a mandate.

“We don’t say we invest in women — we say we invest in the best founders. But if you have women on the investment team, women founders come naturally.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

🌉 Dux Capital’s Edge: Cross-Border, Latino, Bootstrapped

Dux invests in Latino founders in the US, a niche with unique challenges and big opportunities. It’s a deliberate strategy: build bridges between Latin American talent and the US market, and unlock better paths to scale, exits, and liquidity.

These aren’t founders with elite networks or pedigree, they’re operators who have often bootstrapped to seven figures in revenue before raising capital.

The result? Lower risk, stronger fundamentals, and startups that can go the distance.

“Most of the Latinos we invest in didn’t go to Stanford. They didn’t have rich uncles. They had one shot to prove they could build something, and they did it.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

Susy argues that this model helps mitigate risk. Many of these founders already have traction, especially in B2B or overlooked markets.

“These are not pitch deck ideas. These are real companies with paying customers, and we’re coming in when the foundation’s already there.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

It’s also personal for her; she grew up spending time between Mexico and the US, with family split between both sides of the border.

“Half my life was in the US. Thanksgiving in LA. Summer camps in Boston. So a cross-border fund just made sense.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

👂️ Hard Truths About VC and Female Founders

With Susy’s experience starting and operating Mujeres Invertiendo, we were curious to get her thoughts on why more women-led businesses don’t get funded in LatAm, even when the percentage of women founders is higher in LatAm than in the US.

Susy doesn’t sugarcoat the reality: many women in LatAm run great businesses, but not all are a fit for venture capital. The reason, she explains, is that women often build stable, profitable companies that don’t scale exponentially. It’s not about capability, it’s about risk appetite and business model.

“There’s a risk tolerance difference. Women often build incredible businesses, restaurants, retail, event companies, but they’re not built for venture. And that’s okay.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

She described a pair of women in Mexico who make $20K per weekend selling fancy candy bars at weddings. No CapEx, low overhead, huge margins.

“They run a 20-person team. It’s a great business. But a VC has nothing to do there.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

She also called out impostor syndrome as a real factor:

“Men walk in and say they’re going to build the next Mars rocket. Women ask if their revenue’s high enough. That’s not a skills issue, that’s social conditioning.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

Now, let’s dive into the data. According to the Secretaría de Economía, about 1.6 million businesses, or 34% of all micro, small, and medium enterprises (“MSMEs”) are women-owned in Mexico. This share is higher than the LatAm regional average (some 44% of entrepreneurs in Mexico are women).

As Susy noted, most of these women-run ventures are very small. Over 99% of female-led businesses in Mexico are micro-enterprises.

As we shift our focus to the tech sector, we see something similar.

As Contxto reported: “According to a 2020/2021 report by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Latin America is the region with the highest female representation in the industry worldwide, with 24% of women’s ventures in early stages. But of the more than 40 unicorns we have identified in the region, only three were co-founded by women: Kavak, Nubank and iFood.”

💸 Bringing More Women to the Cap Table

If we want to grow the number of female-founders in tech, we’ll need to bring more women to the cap table. More women as investors. More women as board members. More women in the room when investment decisions are made. That’s how we build a more inclusive, and more effective, venture ecosystem.

With more women in positions to invest and advise others, along with a vibrant community of female investors and builders, female founder will have a strong network and community that they can lean on as they build and more leaders they can learn from and be inspired by.

But bringing more women to the cap tables doesn’t necessarily mean as simple VCs. This means bringing more women into investor roles in general: as angels, LPs, and future fund managers.

“We ran a pilot angel investor academy with Chava Ventures. It was amazing. We need more of that.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

The challenge, she says, is visibility. There’s very little data on how many women are angel investing in LatAm. Angels tend to keep their investments to themselves and rarely post about them online.

“Everyone keeps it private. So it’s hard to track progress.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

She wants to partner with angel groups like Angel Hub to build a pipeline, not just of female founders, but female check-writers.

“When women invest, they don’t just back women, they diversify everything. They see different markets, different needs.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

💰️ On Fundraising and LatAm’s VC Paradox

Raising capital in Latin America isn’t just hard, it’s structurally broken. Susy explains that many early LPs in Mexico are still waiting for liquidity from funds raised 8–10 years ago. Without more exits or a secondary market, those LPs hesitate to reinvest, stalling new fund formation across the region.

Dux Capital sidesteps some of this risk by investing in companies that can exit in the US, but Susy is clear: until the local ecosystem sees more exits, venture capital in LatAm won’t be sustainable at scale.

We’ve heard this before on the show, but Susy explained it with clarity and candor. The core problem in LatAm VC isn’t bad ideas, a lack of good founders, or a lack of capital — it’s a lack of exits.

“Funds raised in 2012–2015 still haven’t returned money. LPs are waiting. They like us, but they’re not reinvesting until they get liquidity.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

A quick aside: From our conversations, this is where we’d advise new and existing fund managers looking to attract new capital and LPs to be allocating more thought than the typical VC (especially those in the US) towards crafting their exit strategy and communicating it prominently in their LP materials. Their exit strategy should be clear, comprehensive, and reasonable to account for the uniqueness of the LatAm market.

One path that’s promising, and that some investors have been leveraging, is strategic partnerships with international growth capital funds (more on this in a future episode of La Frontera 🌵 🤫 ).

Coming back to our conversation with Susy, she explained that in Mexico, real estate is still the go-to investment.

“My grandma invested in real estate. And it worked. And now you can get 15% interest from a bank like NuBank. So why take a 10-year gamble on a VC fund?”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

This is why Dux is focused on US-based exits, where even sub-unicorn outcomes ($60M–$150M) can return the fund.

“There’s no active IPO market in Mexico. There’s no real secondary market. That’s why we look to the US — exits are real, and liquidity is possible.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

🇲🇽 Mexico’s Startup Scene: Bigger, Busier, Bolder

Back in 2016, Mexico’s startup scene was intimate, with a few dozen people who knew each other well (basically 10 analysts in a WhatsApp group, iykyk).

Today, it’s a deep lineup of WhatsApp groups, Tech Week events, and cross-border deals. Susy still sees plenty of room for improvement, but she’s proud of the momentum.

“We started with 60 events last year. This year? Over 200. There are pádel tournaments, yoga, marathons, all packed into one week.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

While she laughs about the chaos, she sees it as a net positive.

She points to the cultural strength of CDMX — its warmth, its density, its informality — as a major reason why founders and investors are moving there.

“We like to party. And that creates real community. People come to a dinner and leave with 3 intros and a new co-founder.”

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

We at La Frontera 🌵 can attest to that. While we were in CDMX last summer, we went to a Thursday night dinner hosted by a friend and left with at least five new friends, ear-to-ear smiles, and our stomachs full of incredible tacos.

❝  

Of course, it’s not San Francisco, but we don’t have to be San Francisco. We have to be our own best version of what’s happening in entrepreneurship here.

  Susana Espinosa De Los Reyes

We really enjoyed our conversation with Susy and we’re excited about the future of the startup and VC ecosystem in Mexico and throughout the rest of LatAm. We’re hoping we can not only be a part of the ride, but also be a part of the force behind it that helps the ecosystem flourish and attract investment dollars.

📢 Listen to the full episode here.

Follow Susana, because why wouldn’t you?

And check out Dux Capital as they continue to invest in and support Latin founders.

Dux Capital: Investing in the next generation of founders

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Nico Yepes

We met Nico Yepes during CDMX Tech Week serendipitously and re-connected via an intro from Accion Venture Lab. Sharp, knowledgeable, and fresh out of business school (but already sounding like he’s been running infra companies for a decade), Nico brings a rare mix of analytical depth and easy humor.

In this episode of La Frontera 🌵, he shares how he went from Wall Street and private equity to co-founding Moffin, a fintech infra startup based in Guadalajara that’s quietly powering the next generation of credit products in Mexico. His co-founders are engineers; Nico brings the investor lens, and together, they’ve built a platform that turns messy, fragmented data into real-time underwriting pipelines.

From startup branding with a muffin logo 🧁 to the realities of working with Mexican data providers, this one’s packed with insight, stories, and laughs.

Don’t miss it.

Listen on Spotify

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Episode 7 Summary

• 💳 From Wall Street to Guadalajara: How Nico Yepes transitioned from investment banking and private equity to co-founding Moffin, a startup making LatAm’s fragmented financial data usable for credit underwriting.

• 🧠 Building a Startup That Solves a Real Pain: Why most lenders in Mexico struggle to access reliable data, and how Moffin’s unified infrastructure solves the hidden engineering and compliance nightmare behind every credit product.

• 🔧 Engineering Credit Decisions in Hours, Not Months: How Moffin helps companies go from form to credit approval in seconds, including a car leasing client that replaced days of back-and-forth with instant decisions.

• 🌎 Infrastructure for LatAm’s Data-Driven Future: How Moffin fits into the broader story of LatAm’s improving data ecosystem, where APIs are finally becoming usable, but trust, coverage, and automation are still rare.

In Today's Newsletter

• La Frontera 🌵 Podcast, Episode 7 - The Muffin Tha …

  • Episode 7 Summary

    • Moffin: Modern Credit Infrastructure for Latin Ame …

    • 🧠 From Investment Banking to Impact Infrastructur …

    • 🧑‍💻 The Founding Story (or: How a PE Guy Joined …

    • ⚙️ What Moffin Actually Does

    • 🧬 The Infra That Powers It

    • 📍 Why Guadalajara (and Why You Shouldn’t Move The …

    • 🌐 The State of Data Infrastructure in Latin Ameri …

    • 🚀 What’s Next: Moffin as a Trust Layer

  • 📢 Listen to the full episode here.

  • Follow Nico, because why wouldn’t you?

• Thanks for reading!

Moffin: Modern Credit Infrastructure for Latin America

Moffin is a data infrastructure platform helping fintechs, lenders, and retailers in Latin America access, unify, and use diverse data sources to make better credit decisions. In a region where data is often fragmented, undocumented, or expensive to integrate, Moffin offers an end-to-end solution that simplifies underwriting — from pulling credit reports and invoices to automating decision rules — so companies can launch credit products in days, not months.

Founded: 2022
Stage: Seed
Total Funding Raised: ~$2.2 million
Investors: Accion Venture Lab, Semillero VC, Rally Cap, and various angel investors.
Mission: To enable inclusive, data-powered financial services across LatAm by building the infrastructure layer that makes trust, credit, and automation accessible to everyone.

🧠 From Investment Banking to Impact Infrastructure

“I knew I wanted to do something entrepreneurial,” Nico told us. "But first, I needed to get hard skills."

  Nico Yepes

Nico grew up in New Jersey and studied economics. He started on a traditional career path in finance — investment banking at Morgan Stanley, then growth equity at Creation Investments, where he focused on financial services in emerging markets. His interest in LatAm comes from his Colombian heritage along with various stints working and studying in the region.

It was at Creation that he started flying to Mexico City and São Paulo nearly every other week. And that’s where he noticed something interesting:

At Morgan Stanley, Nico worked with pristine public company data. But in LatAm growth equity, he was piecing together Excel models from family-owned lenders with no digital systems. That friction — messy data, legacy systems, and a total lack of scalable infrastructure — planted a seed.

🌱 Enter: Moffin.

🧑‍💻 The Founding Story (or: How a PE Guy Joined Two Engineers in a Guadalajara Café)

Nico didn’t actually start Moffin. Santiago Aceves and Víctor Díaz did — both software engineers based in Guadalajara. Santiago had led product at startups like SkydropX and Digitt, while Víctor was a self-taught engineer who started coding video games as a teenager.

They had worked together at a microlending startup where, like many before them, they burned half their seed round building core banking infrastructure from scratch.

❝  

"It turns out, building a lending platform is extremely hard," Nico said. "They were spending months — and tens of thousands of dollars — just to get access to the credit bureau."

  Nico Yepes

Nico met them during due diligence for an SME lender in Guadalajara. The firm didn’t acquire the company, but the connection stuck. When Santiago and Víctor lost their jobs after the deal fell through, they kept building. With early support from Jüsto founder Sergio Almaguer, they launched Moffin.

Still, it took a year and a half before Nico joined as co-founder; he brought the finance and business acumen to the table.

"I realized what they were doing was exactly what we needed across our portfolio. I saw it from the investor lens. They saw it from the fintech operator lens. And together, we could solve the problem from both sides."

  Nico Yepes

⚙️ What Moffin Actually Does

Imagine you're launching a fintech in Mexico. You want to offer credit. That means you need:

• Data from multiple sources (credit bureaus, tax authorities, judicial databases)

• Legal agreements and API keys for each one

• Engineers to integrate and normalize the data

• A decision engine to approve or deny loans

Now imagine you’re a non-technical founder, or a midsize business without a dev team. You're stuck.

That’s where Moffin comes in. ⚡

Moffin offers an all-in-one data infrastructure layer. With Moffin, companies can:

✅ Access 10+ data sources via a single API or no-code forms ✅ Automate credit decisioning using customized rules ✅ Store and organize customer data in one place ✅ Add biometric verification, fraud detection, and even invoice-based cash flow scoring

One customer — a car leasing company in Guadalajara — used to take days to process a credit application. Now it takes seconds.

"Their agents submit a form, Moffin pulls the credit data instantly, and we notify them right away if a client is approved. It saves hours per loan."

  Nico Yepes

🧬 The Infra That Powers It

Moffin integrates with both major Mexican credit bureaus, SAT (Mexico’s IRS equivalent), judicial records, blacklists, biometric databases, and more.

They even have an AI tool that checks for identity fraud by comparing a selfie's predicted age to the birthdate on an ID. 📸

For SME lending, they go deeper — pulling electronic invoicing data to assess seasonality, growth, and even sales concentration by product type.

All of this is piped through Moffin’s backend, then surfaced in simple dashboards or decisioning scripts.

Oh, and don’t worry if you don’t have engineers — Moffin’s team will write your rules for you. 🧑‍💼

"We want to make it easier to launch a fintech in LatAm. You shouldn’t need to raise a $10M Series A just to run credit checks."

  Nico Yepes

📍 Why Guadalajara (and Why You Shouldn’t Move There 😉)

Nico now lives in the same apartment building as his co-founders in Guadalajara. Moffin doesn’t have an office — their HQ is a café circuit with strong Wi-Fi and good tacos.

Guadalajara earned its "Agave Valley" nickname in the pre-AMLO days, when the state poured money into tech subsidies. Startups like Kueski and Wizeline came out of that wave.

"The tech talent here is amazing, and the quality of life is unbeatable"

  Nico Yepes

The city is also a university hub, producing thousands of engineers each year from places like Universidad de Guadalajara and ITESO. Oracle, HP, and other tech giants have dev centers there — but more and more talent is choosing startups.

Nico adds, “You can have face time with your co-founders, meet clients in person, and go hiking in the same afternoon. It’s the best kept secret in Mexico — and we’d like to keep it that way.”

We joked with Nico that he better be careful pitching Guadalajara, if the secret gets out, the demographic breakdown will start to look more like La Condesa (IYKYK).

Guadalajara, Jalisco, MX

🌐 The State of Data Infrastructure in Latin America

Latin America’s fintech ecosystem has made significant strides in recent years, yet the region still grapples with fragmented and outdated data systems. Many financial institutions rely on manual processes, disparate data sources, and legacy technologies, hindering efficient decision-making and scalability.

However, the tide is turning. Countries like Brazil and Mexico are leading the charge with open banking initiatives, fostering greater data interoperability and financial inclusion. Investments in digital infrastructure are also on the rise; for instance, Amazon Web Services announced a $4 billion investment in Chile to bolster cloud infrastructure, marking its third cloud region in Latin America after Brazil and Mexico.

In this evolving landscape, Moffin positions itself as a pivotal player by offering a unified platform that streamlines access to diverse data sources. By simplifying data integration and automating credit decision processes, Moffin empowers financial institutions to make informed decisions swiftly, thereby enhancing financial services across the region.

🚀 What’s Next: Moffin as a Trust Layer

Moffin’s vision isn’t just about credit. It’s about data.

Nico wants Moffin to become Latin America’s platform for organizing, orchestrating, and sharing trustworthy information. He imagines a world where anyone — a fintech, a startup, even a student — can:

1. Create or gather a valuable dataset

2. Upload it to Moffin

3. Allow others (banks, insurers, platforms) to subscribe to or use that data

Think: decentralized trust infrastructure for LatAm. 🔗

“Whether you're trying to offer a loan, rent an apartment, or hire a babysitter — it all starts with knowing who you're dealing with,” Nico says.

Moffin wants to be the layer that makes those interactions possible.

📢 Listen to the full episode here.

Follow Nico, because why wouldn’t you?

And check out Moffin to see if it’s something your team can benefit from.

Moffin: Valida el perfil crediticio de tus clientes en instantes

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Iguazu Falls, Brazil by Chris Schmid

Learning about a new region can feel overwhelming. So we thought it would be helpful to start with some broad context around the startup and VC ecosystem in Latin America (LatAm).

In this new series (we’re calling them “Deep Dives”), we’re combing through sources and data from all of the newest reports. This will be our first post in the series covering EVERY major hub in LatAm, from Brazil to Peru.

Enjoy!

— Cyrus & Tom

In Today's Newsletter

• Latin America's Startup Scene in 2025: Resilient, …

  • 🌎 Latin America’s Tech Journey: A Quick Recap

  • 🔥 Why Latin America Still Excites in 2025

• 💰 Venture Capital in LatAm: The 2025 Reality Chec …

  • 🧩 Sector Breakdown: Where the Money is Flowing

  • 🗺️ Country-by-Country: Where Ecosystems Stand in …

• 🏆 Case Study: Why Giants Like MercadoLibre and Nu …

  • 🛒 MercadoLibre: From E-Commerce to Everything

  • 🏦 Nubank: The Neobank That Ate Traditional Bankin …

  • 🧠 Why Winners Last Longer in Latin America

• 🌟 The Rise of Entrepreneurship Across Latin Ameri …

• 🤖 AI: Latin America’s Wild Card for 2025 and Beyo …

• 🛤️ What Needs to Happen to Keep the Momentum

• 🚀 Final Take: Latin America’s Tech Future Is Its …

• 📚 Sources:

• Thanks for reading!

Latin America's Startup Scene in 2025: Resilient, Redefined, and Ready 🚀

Over the last decade, Latin America’s tech ecosystem has been through a wild ride. From under-the-radar to red-hot, from boom to bust — and now, in 2025, into a new era of resilience and focus.

In 2015, tech optimists believed Latin America was about to "follow the Silicon Valley playbook": massive VC inflows, IPO waves, and global tech dominance. Instead, the region forged its own distinct path. Today, Latin America's startup scene is deeper, stronger, and more diversified than ever — but it’s also operating under new rules: 🧠 capital efficiency over blitzscaling, 🛠️ cross-country playbooks over single-market domination, and ⚡ AI-fueled innovation over pure replication models.

So, where do things stand now? What opportunities lie ahead? And what challenges still need to be solved?

🌎 Latin America’s Tech Journey: A Quick Recap

Two decades ago, Latin America’s startup world barely existed. Companies like MercadoLibre (founded 1999) and Despegar (founded 1999) were rare early survivors. VC funding was minimal, local ecosystems were fragmented, and global investors mostly ignored the region.

But by the early 2010s, things started to shift:

• Mobile internet adoption exploded 📱

• Middle-class growth created new consumer demand 📈

• Early funds like Kaszek and 500 Global (check out our convo with René from 500) and accelerators like Start-Up Chile started nurturing talent 🌱

The inflection point?
In 2019, SoftBank’s $5 billion Latin America Fund turbocharged capital inflows. Global VCs like Sequoia, a16z, and QED swooped in.

By 2021, Latin America had its "gold rush moment": VC investment hit a record $16B, startups like Nubank IPO’ed, and unicorns seemed to pop up weekly.

And then?
Global interest rates soared. Tech valuations crashed. Capital retreated. Latin America’s startup dream didn’t die — but it had to adapt.

🔥 Why Latin America Still Excites in 2025

Today, Latin America offers one of the most exciting emerging tech opportunities globally. Why?

• Massive Market: 660M people, 70% internet penetration, 400M+ smartphone users. For context, the United States has 347M people, 92% internet penetration, and 310M+ smartphone users.

• Underpenetrated Services: 45% remain underbanked. Huge gaps in healthcare, education, logistics, and retail.

• Digital Acceleration: COVID forced mass digitization. Behavioral shifts stuck.

• Talent Explosion: A generation of founders and operators now have real "at scale" experience (think Rappi, Kavak, dLocal).

• AI Leapfrogging: AI adoption rates in LatAm now outpace Europe and North America for developers.

In short: Latin America has evolved from "copy Silicon Valley" to solve real-world problems, locally and profitably. This is HUGE.

💰 Venture Capital in LatAm: The 2025 Reality Check

After the party of 2021, Latin America’s VC landscape had to sober up fast. In 2022–2023, investment volumes fell by 70% from the peak.
Today, in 2025, things have stabilized — and in many ways, matured.

• 2024 VC funding: ~$4.2B deployed across ~800 deals — steady compared to 2023.

• Seed and Early-Stage Dominance: 43% of deals in 2024 were at seed or Series A.

• Venture Debt Rising: Debt financing made up 22% of startup capital — lifeline for growth-stage players like Pomelo and Jeeves.

Big takeaway: Latin American founders have gotten leaner, scrappier, and savvier. Investors are back, but only for startups with capital-efficient growth and a clear path to profitability. 🚀

🧩 Sector Breakdown: Where the Money is Flowing

Fintech: Still the heavyweight, grabbing 46% of 2024 VC dollars. Think next-gen payments, B2B finance infra, lending automation. (Check out our interview with Valentina from Vaas, who is building private debt infra for LatAm)

Proptech: Surprising second — about 7% of funding. Urbanization, logistics, and real estate innovation booming.

AI + Automation: Fastest-growing sector 🌟. 55+ AI-focused deals in 2024 alone, across customer service, agtech, healthtech.

Cleantech: A dark horse. With energy volatility and climate shifts, solar, wind, and energy storage startups are drawing serious interest (Pachama, Lemon Energy).

Logistics: Powered by nearshoring trends, especially in Mexico.
(Example: startups helping companies relocate manufacturing closer to the U.S.)

🌎 Future Hotspots: AI tools for LatAm languages, B2B fintech infra, climate resilience tech (energy storage, water conservation), regional logistics.

🗺️ Country-by-Country: Where Ecosystems Stand in 2025

Country

2024 VC Funding ($)

Highlights

🇧🇷 Brazil

$2.3B

Still ~50% of all LatAm funding. Strong fintech, SaaS, cleantech.

🇲🇽 Mexico

$1.1B

Rising star. Benefiting from nearshoring boom. Hot in logistics, B2B fintech.

🇨🇴 Colombia

$400M

Strong entrepreneurial wave. Fintech + delivery innovation continues.

🇨🇱 Chile

$240M

Consistent seed-stage hub. Edtech, healthtech growing.

🇦🇷 Argentina

$70M

Talent rich but macro still tough. Most startups incorporate abroad.

🔎 Key regional insight:

• Brazil = standalone scale (you can build a unicorn inside Brazil alone: iFood, QuintoAndar).

• Spanish-speaking LatAm = cross-border scaling needed (startups must win 3–5 markets to reach unicorn status: Rappi, Kavak).

• Check out our interview with Alejandro Troll of BVC, who has special insights into the differences between building/investing in Brazil vs. Spanish-speaking LatAm.

In Latin America, the biggest winners don’t just win — they endure.
Let’s look at two case studies that show why:

🏆 Case Study: Why Giants Like MercadoLibre and Nubank Dominate for Decades

🛒 MercadoLibre: From E-Commerce to Everything

Founded in 1999, MercadoLibre is often dubbed the "Amazon + PayPal + UPS" of Latin America.
But its real magic lies in building deep, hard-to-replicate infrastructure:

• Payments: Created MercadoPago to solve the lack of credit cards and safe online payment options.

• Logistics: Built MercadoEnvios, its own shipping network, in regions with unreliable postal services.

• Fintech: Expanded into loans, savings, and even launched Meli Dólar — a digital dollar stablecoin to shield users from currency devaluation.

By controlling payments, logistics, and credit, MercadoLibre created a self-reinforcing flywheel few competitors can break.

Today, it’s one of the most valuable companies in LatAm with a market cap of $112 billion, and still growing fast across 18 countries. 🛒✨

🏦 Nubank: The Neobank That Ate Traditional Banking

Founded in 2013 in São Paulo, Nubank did something radical: made banking lovable.

• Offered a sleek, no-fee digital credit card in a market infamous for bad service and high fees.

• Grew to 70M+ customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.

• Expanded into savings, loans, insurance, investments — all through a single app.

Nubank IPO’d in late 2021 at a $41B valuation. Today, it’s expanding into the U.S. market — aiming to export its winning formula globally.

Key to Nubank’s success: relentless focus on customer experience, brand trust, and launching new products early (now 4+ products per customer on average).

🧠 Why Winners Last Longer in Latin America

• Structural Challenges Create Moats: Solving payments, logistics, and trust in LatAm isn't easy. Those who succeed build deep defensibility.

• Slow-Moving Competitors: Traditional incumbents are often inefficient, bureaucratic, and slow to adopt tech.

• High Friction Means High Loyalty: Once a startup solves a problem well, customers rarely churn. Trust is everything.

• Regional Complexity: Expanding across Latin America is tough (regulations, culture, currencies). Companies that master it early (like MercadoLibre and dLocal) win massive advantages.

🌎 In short: LatAm startups that break through aren’t just lucky — they’re battle-tested, adaptable, and insanely resilient.

🌟 The Rise of Entrepreneurship Across Latin America

The most powerful shift over the last decade?
Entrepreneurship is now part of the culture.

In the 2000s, startups were rare and risky. Today, founders are everywhere — building companies from Bogotá to Buenos Aires, Guadalajara to Santiago.

Key drivers:

• Role Models: Founders like David Vélez (Nubank), Simón Borrero (Rappi), and Pierpaolo Barbieri (Ualá) showed it’s possible.

• Talent Recycling: Ex-MercadoLibre and Rappi employees are starting their own ventures — a real “LatAm Mafia” effect.

• Global Mindset: Founders today are building for regional or global scale from Day 1.

• Support Ecosystem: Accelerators, venture studios, angel networks, and new VCs like Atlantico, Maya Capital, and Latitud are helping founders at every stage.

🌱 In short: the startup muscle is getting stronger. And it’s fueling the next wave of breakout companies.

🤖 AI: Latin America’s Wild Card for 2025 and Beyond

AI isn’t just hype — it’s reshaping Latin America’s startup landscape already.

Stats you should know:

• 74% of LatAm developers use AI tools weekly — outpacing the U.S. and Europe! 🚀

• Over 55 AI-focused deals closed in 2024 — from agtech computer vision to Spanish-language AI chatbots.

• Companies like Kavak are already using AI to streamline customer service, credit scoring, and operations.

Emerging players to watch:

• Saptiva AI — building Latin America’s GenAI infrastructure (check out our interview with their founder, Angel)

• Fintoc — fintech infrastructure + AI risk modeling

• Talisman AI — enterprise AI automation

• Pomelo, Belvo, QiTech — B2B fintechs layering AI into payments, lending, and fraud prevention.

🌎 AI gives LatAm startups a rare chance to leapfrog slower incumbents — if they can integrate it smartly.

🛤️ What Needs to Happen to Keep the Momentum

To truly unlock the next decade of growth, Latin America must:

✅ Deepen Local Capital Pools: More venture funds, corporate VC, and pension fund involvement to back startups beyond seed.
✅ Build Better Scaling Playbooks: Especially for cross-country expansion in Spanish-speaking LatAm.
✅ Strengthen Exit Markets: IPOs and M&A need to be more viable pathways (not just in Brazil!).
✅ Invest in Talent: Training more engineers, product managers, and scaling leaders.
✅ Embrace Capital Efficiency: Profitable growth is now the norm, not the exception.
✅ Tackle Infrastructure Gaps: Better logistics, financial services, internet access in underserved areas.

💬 As one founder put it:

❝  

"The first generation showed it was possible. Now the challenge is to build faster, smarter, and more sustainably."

🚀 Final Take: Latin America’s Tech Future Is Its Own Story

Latin America didn’t simply copy Silicon Valley or Southeast Asia.
It’s building its own model: capital-efficient, resilient, regionally savvy, and increasingly AI-powered.

For founders, investors, and ecosystem builders:
🔵 The opportunities are still massive.
🟠 The path is harder but clearer.
🟢 The next decade is up for grabs.

If you’re betting on Latin America — now is a better time than ever to double down. 🌎🚀

📚 Sources:

• LAVCA Trends in Tech 2024

• Atlantico Digital Transformation Report 2024

• BBVA Latin America VC Report 2024

• The Future of Latin America’s Tech Ecosystem (2025)

• The Fintech Opportunity in Latin America (2024)

• SVB Global Banking Reports (2025)

• Contxto, PitchBook, Finsmes reports on 2024 deal flow

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Be sure to share La Frontera with your network if you enjoy our newsletters!

Share La Frontera 🌵