INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Kaszek Ventures, the investment firm that has been one of the primary architects of the recent boom in startup financing and growth in Latin
under management at roughly $1 billion, making the firm the first local early-stage investor to hit that milestone.In the eight years since
Hernan Kazah and Nicolas Szekasy launched Kaszek Ventures in 2011, the startup ecosystem in Latin America has experienced a renaissance,
with investments in the region surging to nearly $2 billion in 2018.Much of that growth has come on the back of Kaszek portfolio companies
like Gympass, the provider of corporate-sponsored gym memberships and perks; Konfio, the Mexican small business lending platform; Nubank,
the Brazilian consumer credit company now worth roughly $10 billion; and Loggi, the Latin American logistics company with the billion-dollar
valuation.For Kazah and Szekasy, the growth of their nearly eponymous venture fund marks a successful reinvention of two of the most
investment vehicle, but one of its first investments would go on to show the potential for outsized returns that existed in the Latin
That company would be Nubank, and Kaszek was among the first money into the company (alongside Sequoia Capital) when it was little more than
managers in different regions to localizing the pitch for different countries
Kaszek-sponsored retreat at Stanford University, Muchnick was introduced to a professor who became an advisor to the company
The professor then put Muchnick in touch with Bezos Expeditions through a connection, and the firm wound up investing.Nubank may have been
and mayonnaise to replacement meat patties
That company managed to attract the attention of Jeff Bezos and his Bezos Expeditions investment fund
Two other standouts in Mexico are Kavak, a car marketplace, and Credijusto, an online lending company that raised $42 million from Goldman
raise increasingly large rounds.Kazah expects that the firm will invest a bit larger amounts in roughly the same number of companies, with
the fund making between 25 and 30 new investments, he said.And increasingly large rounds are becoming the norm in Latin America, just as in
other rapidly maturing technology ecosystems.That rapid growth has been parlayed into returns that represent an 8x multiple on invested
Du Chai, managing director at Horsley Bridge Partners, in a statement
what was happening in China and saw that Latin America was a very large region with a large population and GDP and the right demographics
technology services across Latin America was the rollout of 4G, says Kazah.The mobile internet was always going to be the way that Latin
Americans went online, thanks to the penetration of mobile phones across the continent
But high-speed internet transformed the types of companies and services that could be on offer, Kazah says
opportunities for new businesses in countries across the continent.Brazil has always been an economic powerhouse, but now Mexico, Colombia
and even countries like Argentina and Chile are showing signs of increasingly vibrant startup ecosystems.Attention from international
investors is also helping to drive the region to new heights
Earlier this year SoftBank announced that it would create a new Latin America fund, with $5 billion to invest in startup companies
