LatAm Venture Bulletin February 14, 2018

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LatAm Venture Bulletin
 
DEALS

> TheVentureCity led a US$2m seed investment in 1DOC3, a Colombian healthcare platform, with participation from Mountain Nazca Colombia.

  • READ LAVCA’s interview with founder Javier Cardona: “La revolución digital en la industria de la salud ni siquiera ha empezado.”

> TheVentureCity, Y Combinator, Sam Altman, and others made a US$810k investment in Hogaru, a Colombian subscription cleaning service for small businesses that was accelerated at Wayra Colombia & Y Combinator.

> Axon Partners made its first Peru investment in Mi Media Manzana, a dating platform operating in Peru, Colombia, Mexico, and Chile. Previous investors include Sparklabs Global Ventures and Willowtree Ventures.

> Fir Capital BZPlan invested R$2m in Gofind.Online, a Brazilian local price comparison platform. The startup recently joined Facebook’s FBStart and FBStart para Bem Social.

> Manutara Ventures made an undisclosed investment in Rhinobird, a Chilean interactive video platform.

> Wayra Mexico invested MX$2.2m in HexagonData, a data monetization platform for app publishers, and US$125k in BoxiesToys, an edtech device for young children.

> Undisclosed investors made a US$1.5m investment in Winclap, a mobile adtech startup that was accelerated at Wayra Argentina.

> Movile and private investors made an undisclosed investment in Mensajeros Urbanos, a Colombian B2B messenger service.

> Colombian corporation Activos made an undisclosed investment in Dreamjobs, a Colombian geo-local job platform.

> READ a round of Telefonica Open Future_s  investments 💸 in LatAm in 2017, including Mercadoni, Hogaru, Trocafone, Agruppa and others.

> Mexican growth equity firm IGNIA has increased its investment in the Mexican fintech startup AirTM.

 
EXITS

> Monashees Capital, Valar Ventures, Thrive Capital, and KaszeK Ventures have completed an exit from Brazilian e-commerce platform Oppa with a sale to Meu Móvel de Madeira.

 
FUNDS

> Endeavor closed its Endeavor Catalyst II fund with US$85m in commitments.

> Magma Partners had the first close of its second US$15m fund to invest in US-incorporated startups with technology and sales teams based in LatAm.

> VCS Capital is a new entertainment fund that will invest MXN$150m in Mexican film projects.

 

IMPACT

> FIS Ameris, a new social impact fund, made its inaugural investment in Allride, a Chilean carpooling app.

> NYTimes profiles Ashoka founder Bill Drayton in Everyone is a Changemaker.

> New Ventures is hosting the annual Foro Latinoamericano de Inversión de Impacto (FLII) 2018 in Merida, Mexico February 27 - March 1. Join LAVCA's Natalia Valencia for a breakout session on global networks. Details here.

> Impact investing firm Capria aims to raise US$200m this year to deploy in emerging markets. Capria’s network of impact investment funds in LatAm includes Odiseo in Colombia, Performa Investimentos in Brazil, and Pomona Impact in Central America.

> ImpactAlpha interviews Nathan Lustig of Magma Partners on the definition of impact in LatAm: “Most investments in Latin America should be considered impact investments if they’re creating jobs, training employees, and seeding the next generation of entrepreneurs, while not creating an extractive business model.”

 

NEWS

> Reuters says Brazilian fintech credit card processor Stone is planning an IPO in New York later this year. Investors include Gavea Investimentos, Actis, Madrone Capital Partners, and several 3G Capital founders.

> Softline, an Argentine IT solutions company, partnered with VU Security, a startup backed by NXTP Labs and INICIA, to export their cybersecurity software.

> Weex, a mobile virtual network operator that raised an undisclosed investment from ALLVP and Coca-Cola, launched a digital wallet for Mexican millennials who don’t have access to a bank account. READ our interview with co-founder Ricardo Suárez.

> YouTube Go, a mobile version of YouTube that lets you watch videos offline or with an unstable connection, launched in 100+ emerging markets, including Central & South America.

> #AGTECH 🌿Reuters talks about making Latin America's farmers more tech-savvy to stop urban drift.

> BBC's Sprawling Maya network discovered under Guatemala jungle:

Results from the research using Lidar technology, which is short for "light detection and ranging", suggest that Central America supported an advanced civilisation more akin to sophisticated cultures like ancient Greece or China.

 
NUMBERS

> Reuters: Brazil’s PagSeguro raises US$2.7b in IPO.

> WhatsApp has 1.5 billion monthly active users. That’s more than Messenger and Instagram - but still less than Facebook’s 2.1 billion. +1 for encryption & user privacy.

 

PEOPLE & PROGRAMS

> LAVCA's on the search for a new Digital Marketing Manager.🚀 Apply here.

> Finnovista and the IDB launched a collaborative research project on the fintech ecosystem in LatAm. Fintech startups: please contribute by completing a 5-minute survey.

> TheVentureCity launched The Garden, an acceleration/international expansion program for startups that does not take equity upfront. Apply here.

> Nexa (formerly Votorantim Metais) will give US$2.4m in equity-free capital to twelve startups for its second Mining Lab open innovation program. Sectors: Logística, Automação Industrial, IoT/TI, Economia Circular e Concentração Mineral. Apply by March 18.

> Embrapa (The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation) and Cedro Capital selected seven agtech startups, including Agronow, Agrosmart & Horus, to receive up to R$5m each.

> Y Combinator is offering a free, four-day course on startup investing on March 5-8. Accredited investors can apply for Startup Investors School here, and attend in Mountain View or via livestream.

> Applications for Y Combinator Summer 2018 are open.

  • Need a reason to apply? READ how Y Combinator helped the teams at Rappi and Hogaru raise capital from Silicon Valley investors.

> TheVentureCity hired Katia Sielecki in the role of fund strategist.

> Axon Partners promoted Rafael Gonzalez and Dikmen Edgu to Partners.

> Parity Partners is launching its second Parity Professional Program (P3) in NYC, designed to cultivate the next generation of female leaders across the investment and tech industries. Apply here. #CHANGETHERATIO

> NYU Stern is hosting their annual VC & PE Conference in New York on March 2.

> Check out the Stanford/NVCA Venture Capital Symposium on March 13-14 in Stanford, CA.

> Wayra Chile, the accelerator of Telefonica Open Future_, is looking for soluciones o productos que contribuyan a mejorar la calidad de vida de las personas a través de un hogar sostenible, accesible, inclusivo, con mayor conectividad y seguridad. Apply to Hogar del Futuro by March 19. Details here.

 

INVESTOR POV

> Term Sheet looks at VCs automating parts of investment decision-making:

As we've seen with Social Capital's "capital-as-a-service" platform, diversity improves when human bias is taken out of investment decision-making. For context, Social Capital evaluated nearly 3,000 companies during its private beta and committed to funding several dozen across 12 countries. CEO demographics skewed 42% female and majority non-white. 

> First Round Capital interviews Uber’s Mike Brown about growing Uber’s Asia business from zero to billions.

 

CRYPTO

> Etherium is better distributed than bitcoin:

Part of the reason for this is that a much higher percentage of Bitcoin nodes reside in datacenters. Specifically, only 28% of Ethereum nodes can be positively identified to be in datacenters, while the same number for Bitcoin is 56%.

> NYTimes: Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble.

 

THE FUTURE

> #MUSTREAD Elon Musk just shot an Arch disc into space. This is a kind of mega-time capsule built to “permanently archive human knowledge for thousands to billions of years.”

> Police in a city in China are using special facial-recognition glasses to identify wanted criminals in a railway station.

> MIT Technology Review says A fast-evolving new botnet could take gadgets in your home to the dark side: “It began by targeting routers in Latin America and Egypt.”

> The Exponential View looks at the ethical questions raised by #deepfake, an open-source community making hyper-realistic fake porn videos using neural nets:

The combination of powerful, open-source neural network research, our rapidly eroding ability to discern truth from fake news, and the way we spread news through social media has set us up for serious consequences.

 

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

Have news we should include? Please email news@lavca.org.

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