• Senior level female investment professional committing capital to or deploying capital from a VC fund in the last five years (since 2011).
• Female angel investor committing over US$50k to LatAm startups or having invested in multiple significant deals in the last five year (since 2011).

> Dalus Capital has launched Fund II with US$50m in commitments through CKD and Limited Partnership vehicles.

> In Ecuador, top software companies have come together to create the country’s first seed fund for software based enterprises, 593 Capital Partners.

> Brazilian lender Banco Votorantim will invest an initial R$3m in the BR Startups fund created by Microsoft. They expect to fund six young firms with investments ranging between R$250k and R$1.5m. Existing investors in the fund include Microsoft Participações, Agência de Fomento do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (AgeRio), ES Ventures, Monsanto, and Qualcomm. 

> 500 Startups announces 18 new investments in Latin America as part of its LatAm Accelerator Batch, a program based in Mexico City which focuses on startups in LatAm and Spanish speaking regions.

> Barn Investments announced a US$1m investment in Skore, a knowledge management platform in Silicon Valley; a US$2m Series A in Worldpackers, a Brazilian social travel marketplace; and participation in Trocafone’s recent R$20m Series A led by Swiss firm Sallfort.

> Bossa Nova Investimentos announced recent investments in Brazilian startups Razoom, Contentools, AIO, Blogo, and 3Days, a talent platform for creative professionals.

> Mountain Nazca joins local and German investors in a US$600k round in Recorrido.cl, a Chilean bus ticketing platform. According to Recorrido.cl, four out of ten bus tickets in Chile is purchased online.

> VARIV Capital, 500 Startups, and Topaz Capital led a US$3m round in Yogome, a mobile learning platform for kids.

> Elevar Equity invested an undisclosed convertible note in Credijusto, a Mexican fintech startup focused on SMBs.

> Fundo de Inovação Paulista, managed by SP Ventures, made a R$2.5m investment in Moneto, a Brazilian payment processing app targeting individual business owners.

> Primatec made an undisclosed investment in Myleus Biotecnologia, a DNA testing service that emerged out of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Fundepar invested previously.

> Polymath Ventures launched Mesa, a chain of healthy quick service restaurants in Colombia.

M&A

> Movile’s Maplink, a Brazilian geolocation and logistics startup, acquired Optilogistic, a French logistics software company, to expand their footprint in Europe, North America and Africa.

> Activa, the private equity investment arm of Chile’s LarrainVial, acquired a majority stake in FenVentures, a local VC firm founded by Cristóbal Silva and Ricardo Levy.

> Tokyo-based IT services provider NEC acquired a 75% stake in Brazilian cybersecurity firm Arcon, which will become its subsidiary in Brazil.

> Dentsu Aegis acquired Brazilian consulting firm Cosin e Associados Consultoria in September. Cosin will become part of the Isobar Brazil Group.

> Brazilian management consulting and solutions firms Siteware and ControlCorp merged in April.

PEOPLE & PROGRAMS

> Bay Area: AMEXCAP is hosting their annual Mexico VC Day tomorrow. Google and Mexican co-working space Centraal are hosting Mexico Startup Day 2016 on October 27 at Google Launchpad, showcasing ten companies solving major challenges in Mexico. For an invitation, contact Marcela Gutiérrez at march@centraal.com.

> Mexico: The Monterrey Venture Capital Conference (MVCC.mx) is back this November 16-19, with strong participation from local and international fund managers, and a keynote by Richard Branson. Buy tickets here.

> Brazil: Resultados Digitais invites entrepreneurs and digital media executives to their RD Summit November 3-4 in Florianopolis.

> Village Capital, with support from Autodesk Foundation, is seeking innovative, early-stage startups for its first health program in Mexico. Entrepreneurs can apply by November 4.

> Capria is accepting applications for first or second time impact fund managers in emerging markets for its acceleration program until November 11.

> Dan Primack is departing Fortune’s ‘Term Sheet’ for a new content startup with the founders of Politico.

> Pedro Ivo Resende, Founder/CEO of Brazilian social media agency Riot, is launching Deepline, a mobile ad tech startup that serves Publicis Group’s agencies and clients in Brazil.

INVESTOR POV

> Sonya Mann at Mattermark reviews a study by WomenVC, PE Hub, and Venture Capital Journal in How Women VCs Affect The Performance Of Firms And Startups.

> Michelle Tandler at Trinity Ventures gives 10 reasons founders should meet with a VC associate.

> VIDEO: Scott Voss, Managing Director of HarbourVest discusses venture cycles during the LAVCA Venture Investors NY Summit in September 2015 in New York, NY.

> VIDEO: Terry McGuire, Founding Partner of Polaris Partners on the importance of alignment of interests during the LAVCA Venture Investors NY Summit in September 2015 in New York, NY.

STATS

> The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released Unblinking Eyes: The State of Communications Surveillance in Latin America, a project that analyzes surveillance laws and practices in Latin America and “the consequences of unchecked surveillance,” in partnership with Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales, Fundación Karisma, TEDIC, Hiperderecho, Centro de Estudios en Libertad de Expresión y Acceso a la Información, Derechos Digitales, InternetLab, Fundación Acceso. MUST READ

> A study comparing angel investing to venture capital, by Josh Lerner at HBS and Antoinette Schoar at MIT Sloan, found startups funded by angels are 14% to 23% more likely to survive for the next 1.5 to 3 years and grow their employment by 40% relative to non-angel funded startups, and have a slightly higher likelihood of a successful exit. INTERESTING

> Seedcamp, a London-based seed fund run by co-founder Reshma Sohoni and Carlos Eduardo Espinal, delivered a 1.5X return for its inaugural 2007 cohort of investments, putting them in the top quartile of funds started in 2007.

> Crunchbase published its third Women in Venture report. Only 7% of investment partners at the top 100 VC firms are women.

> Brazil and Mexico are among the top four audiences in terms of monthly visitors on both Facebook and YouTube, according to Facebook VP of LatAm Diego Dzodan and Google’s LatAm head of product partnerships Newton Neto at LAVCA’s Venture Investors NY Summit in September.

> The e-commerce market opportunity in Brazil is US$23b—three times that of Mexico, the second-largest e-commerce market in Latin America, according to a new e-commerce report by Americas Market Intelligence.

> Mexico City is Uber’s busiest city on the planet. Brazil is Uber’s third biggest business after the US and India.

NEWS

> Anna Heim has updates on Google and Facebook in her monthly LatAm roundup for The Next Web:

Google rolled out its YouTube Kids platform into Chile and Peru, following its earlier launch in Argentina, Colombia and Mexico. Mexico also welcomed YouTube Music and subscription-based YouTube Red, which users will be able to test through a free 30-day trial. As for YouTube Gaming, it launched in Brazil…. Facebook launched new page sections aimed at helping small businesses make money, including a shop section available in emerging markets. In the same spirit, Instagram for Business launched in Brazil, making dedicated tools available to SMBs.

> El Pais’ Oscar Granados interviews Eduardo Roman, LAVCA’s Director of Research in Las ‘startups’ latinas dan la talla: “El ecosistema de startups es joven en la región y no tardarán en llegar recursos de manera robusta.”

> Pablo Tirado for El Mercurio interviews LAVCA’s Cate Ambrose in Inversiones en venture capital en los últimos cinco años suman US$85m en Chile: “Después de un período de incertidumbre, tanto en el país como en América Latina, los distintos fondos están comenzando a reactivarse.”

> In a post for TechCrunch, Victoria O’Shee and Congrad Egusa have a great summary of the rise of entrepreneur culture in Chile, and the role the government played through the Corporación de Fomento de la Producción de Chile (CORFO).

> eBay divested the majority of their stake in MercadoLibre.

> FreedomPop, a US wireless startup backed by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, partnered with Dish Mexico to offer a free mobile package for half of its customers.

> PSafe opened an office in Silicon Valley to facilitate its Android security app’s expansion into the US market. They opened a Mexico City office last year.

> IMS is representing Snapchat for all commercial deals in LatAm. IMS also works with Twitter, Vevo, Spotify, and LinkedIn in the region.

The LatAm Venture Bulletin is a news platform of the Latin American Private Equity and Venture Capital Association.

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