> We’re excited to share our new home for all things VC in LatAm, lavca.org/vc. With support from Telefonica Open Future_ and Omidyar Network, we’ve created a dedicated platform for breaking deals, new funds, exits, digital M&A, VC research, news from the LatAm digital ecosystem, and interviews with local and international investors.

> Access the LAVCA VC Member Directory for details about the core group of venture investors dedicated to early stage rounds in LatAm.

> Check out Michael Nicklas’ short video on what Valor looks for in a founding team, filmed at our May 2016 Brazil Venture Investors Peer Exchange at Google São Paulo. More videos can be found on LAVCA's Investor POV page.

> Founders Fund invested an undisclosed amount in Jusbrasil, a legal information platform based in Salvador that has 20m active users a month and 75% of Brazil’s attorneys registered. This is Founders Fund’s second investment in Brazil this year after Nubank, and their first legal tech investment globally.

> Andreessen Horowitz invested an undisclosed amount in Rappi, a Colombian grocery delivery service. This is Andreessen Horowitz’ first investment in Latin America. Redpoint e.Ventures invested previously.

> Bamboo Finance led a US$7.5m Series A in kubo.financiero, a Mexican peer to peer lending platform.  Endeavor Catalyst, Monex, KuE Capital and previous investors Alta Ventures, Capital Invent, Vander Capital Partners and Wayra participated.             

> Finep invested R$15m in BrPhotonics, a Brazilian provider of high-speed optical communication systems.

> Redpoint e.ventures invested an undisclosed amount in Olist to purchase 20% of the startups’ equity. Olist previously raised US$835k and participated in 500 Startups’ acceleration program.

> Ribbit Capital made an undisclosed investment in Ideal Invest, which provides financing solutions to Brazilian college students. Previous investors include IFC, Victoria Capital, and Itau.

> A group of Brazilian investors invested R$1m in XBW, an industrial product and service platform incubated at Tecnosinos, an acceleration park in the south of Brazil.

> Verus Group, an angel network in São Paulo, made an undisclosed investment in Omie, an ERP platform targeting small businesses.

> SP Ventures invested R$2.5m in Agronow, an agtech productivity monitoring platform based in the northeast of Brazil.

> Syngenta Ventures and St. Louis-based Cultivation Capital led a US$1.2m round in S4, an agtech startup that was founded in Argentina before relocating to St. Louis.

> 500 Startups is raising a US$10m LatAm fund that will be managed by Santiago Zavala out of Mexico City.

> Cedro Capital, a new Brazilian fund, reported a R$50m first close for its debut fund. They are targeting R$100m.  

> Grupo Algar is launching Algar Ventures, a corporate venture capital fund focusing on agrIbusiness, energy and tourism sectors.

AGTECH

“The Agtech opportunity is huge; there is a lot of money to be made. But there ar ealso constraints. This is not a standard ewb company that can acquire cstomers with Google Ads and Facebook.”  

—Luiz Tangari, CEO, Strider 

> Brazil’s agtech startup Strider’s recent US$3m Series A was Monashees’ first investment in agtech, and Qualcomm’s first agtech investment in Brazil. LAVCA spoke with CEO Luiz Tangari about the opportunity for Brazil to become global market leader in agribusiness (currently No. 2 behind the US). Agtech accounts for less than 1% of VC investment in LatAm since 2011.

> Qualcomm launched a program to get a drone on every farm in Brazil through its Qualcomm Wireless Reach initiative. Last month Monsanto invested in BR Startups, a R$300m fund for Brazilian agtech startups launched by Microsoft Participações in 2012 in collaboration with Qualcomm Ventures.

> WSJ says agriculture was the only sector of Brazil’s economy to grow in 2015 (they clearly missed the web sector). 

PEOPLE & PROGRAMS

> Qualcomm and KaszeK invite you to the QPrize Latin America 2016 Awards, on August 11 in Buenos Aires, to select the winner of their competition for US$350k in convertible note funding. RSVP here.

> The WeXchange Pitch Competition is open for applications until September 16. Apply here. This year’s WeXchange will take place November 14-17 in Buenos Aires.

> Fuck Up Nights, a monthly opportunity to share failure stories started by Leticia Gasca, is celebrating its four year anniversary with meetups in Mexico City, Aguascalientes, Monterrey, Tijuana, Mexicali, Bolivia, Baranquilla, Medellin, Aracaju, Florianopolis and more cities this month. Dates here.

> Registration is open for the LAVCA Venture Investors NY Summit, taking place at the Tribeca Rooftop in NY on September 29, 2016. Among those sharing insight will be ALLVP, Cygnus, Dalus Capital, eBricks Ventures, Facebook, FLAG Capital Management, FOMIN, Future\Perfect Ventures, Geekie, Google, Jaguar Ventures, KaszeK Ventures, monashees+, Movile, Naspers, Newscorp, NXTP Labs, Omidyar Network, PayPal, Promotora, PSafe, Qualcomm Ventures, QED, Redpoint eventures, Silicon Valley Bank, Telefonica Ventures, Valor Capital, WPP.

GLOBAL M&A

> Verizon is buying Yahoo’s core business for US$4.8b, or slightly more than the value of Magic Leap, an AR/VR unicorn that has yet to launch its first product.

> Unilever bought Dollar Shave Club for US$1b. This is the fourth largest CPG acquisition since 2009, according to CB Insights.

> Make that the fifth largest… Walmart is buying Jet.com for over US$3b.

SILICON VALLEY

> Republic, a fundraising platform that allows non-accredited investors to invest in startups, launched this month in San Francisco. This is a big deal: The founding team spun the platform out of AngelList, a disruptive platform for venture investing that has syndicated over $350M into more than 1,000 startups since 2013. Co-founder Kevin Nguyen says only 3% of Americans are accredited investors. Republic is going for the other 97%.

> Facebook crushed their Q2 earnings and saw 59% revenue growth year over year. Seems like just yesterday they were competing with MySpace...

> Redpoint’s Anderson Thees digs into the recent uptick in corporate venture activity in Brazil in a post for TechCrunch.

> Pedro Sorrentino at FundersClub gives some very practical guidance for entrepreneurs to send investors updates on their progress.

> Federico Antoni at ALLVP talks about the rise of Mexican fintech in a post for TechCrunch.

> Anjos do Brasil has a new survey profiling Brazilian angel investors. 9% are women, up 2x in the last two years.

> Scott Kupor at Andreessen Horowitz has useful recommendations on how to structure employee stock option incentive plans. 

> Four partners at Sequoia Capital participated in a fund teardown with CBInsights, providing commentary to their recent investments, exits, investor analytics and investor syndicates. Any LatAm funds interested in doing this kind of analysis with us? Hit “reply” and let me know.

> Credit Suisse reflects on 30 years of investing and identifies 10 attributes of great investors.

...AND MORE FACEBOOK MELODRAMA

Facebook and Twitter cooperated with Brazilian authorities to provide data about a group with aspirational ties to ISIS that was trying to plan an attack over Rio2016. (This is largely because Facebook and Twitter can actually access the data, whereas Facebook’s WhatsApp is a fully encrypted platform.)

Not good enough, apparently — in related news, Brazil froze over US$10m of Facebook’s Brazilian funds in its latest attempt to get WhatsApp to turn over data in a criminal investigation, after the third court-ordered shutdown this year failed to unencrypt the data.

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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