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Despite the economic crises of recent decades, Argentina remains an attractive country for investment funds that They seek to discover the next unicorn companies in local talent, such as Mercado Libre or Globant. The entrepreneurial spirit in Argentina, in turn, is fed back thanks to the financing provided by the companies that They risk capital in the initial stage of business (startups). In this context, a new investment fund raises its profile to announce active interest in new Argentine projects.
Is about Latitude Venturesa venture capital fund born in the United States, but that focuses on projects in Latin America. It has liquidity of US$25 million to investbut its main objective is to act as a bridge between local startups and large investment funds in the United States.
Latitud Ventures was created by the American Brian Requarth (married to a Colombian), the Brazilian Gina Gotthilf and the Argentine Thomas Roggio. At the same time, it has the financial support of the main entrepreneurs in the region, such as the bank Nubank, Mercado Libre and the delivery company Rappi.
In Argentina, Latitud Ventures has already invested more than US$3 million in a dozen startupsas Grapefruit, FUDO, Tapi, Elevva and Extendealwhich are mostly technology companies that design software to improve other companies’ systems.
“Among investors in Latitud funds are important individual investors such as David Velez (Nubank), Stelleo Awning (Free market), Francisco Alvarez Demalde (Riverwood), Carlos Garcia (Kavak), Sebastian Mejia (Rappi), Nigel Morris (QED/CapitalOne) and Saurabh Gupta (DST), as well as regional and global institutional investors such as Industry Ventures, NFX, FJ Labs, Globo Ventures and Galicia Ventures,” says the company.
Latitud Ventures was born three years ago, post-pandemic, when it raised $13 million for its stealth Fund I in February 2021. Three years later, the firm raised an additional $12 million for the first close of its Fund II. Now, it has the objective of closing Fund II at US$25 million in the coming months. This would bring the total amount raised by the company to US$38 million.
“In the last five years, the Latin American ecosystem has developed thanks to success stories such as Nubank, dLocal, Auth0 (in addition to the sustained growth of MercadoLibre or Globant), and there are a number of candidates to go public soon. (like QuintoAndar, Rappi or Kavak). As a result, major global funds poured into the region and local funds raised increasingly larger financing vehicles. However, there is still the need for a truly pan-regional ‘pre-seed’ investor, to provide the first capital for founders to focus on starting their businesses startups” says Roggio, general partner at Latitud Ventures, based in Uruguay.
The fund invested in more than 70 startups throughout Latin America, such as Alinea, BHub, Clubbi, Finkargo, Kanastra, Pomelo, StarkBank, Treble and Yuno. With respect to Argentina, it has already made 14 investments in startups with teams or headquarters Argentines: Pomelo (US$100 million of capital raised from global investors), Elevva (US$30 million), Tapi (US$25 million), FUDO (US$12 million), Extendeal (US$7 million), others very advanced such as Belo or Remitee , and several others in a somewhat earlier stage: AnyoneAI, Aument, Darwin AI, Exactly, Nulinga, PulpOS, Qurable or Wibond (all of them raised between US$2 million and US$5 million).
“Although Argentina has a much smaller domestic market than Brazil and Mexico, Argentine talent is among the best in the region. It has a lot of execution capacity, generally with more limited resources, and with a regional and global ambition from day zero.. We can see that in our portfolio. Companies that do not yet have as much visibility, such as Remitee, Belo or FUDO, are already building very relevant businesses,” says Roggio.
Requarth, the American partner based in San Francisco, California, He was the founder of VivaReal in Brazil (similar to ZonaProp), and orchestrator of the merger of ZAP Imóveis, which led to a $650 million sale to OLX. He is an angel investor in over 100 companies, including QuintoAndar, Brex, Jeeves and Clara; entrepreneur Endeavor; Shark Tank Mexico investor, and author of the Amazon bestseller Viva the Entrepreneur: Founding, Scaling and Raising Venture Capital in Latin America.
Gotthilf is Brazilian-American, based in New York, and She was vice president of marketing at Duolingo, taking the app from 3 to 200 million users. He also held leadership positions at Tumblr and Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign. Recently, she was highlighted as one of Lavca’s Top Women Investors in Latin America Tech 2023 and as one of Bloomberg Línea’s 500 most influential people in Latin America 2023.
Roggio, for his part, is the only Argentine, and headed Latitud Ventures since its inception, leading investments in Pomelo, Finkargo, BHub, Elevva, Yuno and more than 40 other startups. Previously he led B2B sales for Disney/DGE and ABInbev UK. He has an MBA from London Business School.
