Category: Magma Partners

Introducing Magma Fund II: $15M to Support Entrepreneurs in Latin America

Category : Magma Partners
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I’m excited to finally be able to announce our second fund, Magma II, which will continue to support the growth of U.S. incorporated startups with technology and sales teams based in Latin America, along with Fintech, InsuranceTech and Blockchain startups in Latin America. Just like Magma I, we’re still 100% privately funded.

Since we launched as Chile’s first fully private VC firm in 2014, and subsequently expanded across the region and into the United States, we’ve invested US$2.5m of our own money into 32 pre-seed and seed-stage companies with founders from ten countries. These startups now employ 300+ people from 15+ countries and have annual sales of US$15M+.

We’re excited to continue to build on Magma I by investing into 60 pre-seed and seed stage companies over the next three years into two niches: (more…)

PropertySimple Raises $3M to Expand in the US

Category : Chile, Magma Partners
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I’m excited to finally be able to announce that our portfolio company PropertySimple closed a $3M round in the United States to help them continue to grow. I’ve been working closely with Adrian Fisher, PropertySimple’s founder and CEO, and team over the past year, helping them navigate their US market launch.

PropertySimple gives real estate agents the tools they need to compete in a social media powered world by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence. Their software as a service product drives leads and follows up on them for real estate agents and starts at $2500/month.

PropertySimple started out as PropiedadFacil, a Chilean property search portal back in 2012. PropiedadFacil was Magma’s first investment back in early 2014. They’ve gone through many ups and downs and pivots since we first invested. After building great technology in Chile but finding it hard sledding to get clients to pay for it, Adrian and I flew to the US to test out the US market. (more…)

GroupRaise

Category : Latin America Startups and Investing, Magma Partners
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I love investing in companies that at first glance seem like they’d have a small market, but where further study shows that the market is orders of magnitude larger I originally thought. It’s even better when they can create a category.

That’s why I’m excited to finally be able to announce our investment in GroupRaise. We first invested in GroupRaise in early 2016 after I’d been trying to convince Devin Baptiste, GroupRaise’s cofounder and CEO, to let us invest since we started Magma back in 2013. After watching Devin, Sean, Kevin and Paul and the rest of the team set milestones and execute against them, while usually blowing them out of the water, it was a no brainer to invest again in 2017 when they asked for more capital to grow more quickly, especially when we’re able to invest alongside great investors like Techstars Ventures and Kapor Capital.

GroupRaise is a marketplace and booking engine that allows groups of 20-200 to books events in 5500+ restaurants in 150+ cities across the United States. Restaurants donate up to 25% of these groups’ bills to the organization or charity of their choice.

Why would restaurants want to do this? Most people think they’re just being good corporate citizens, and they are, as they’re giving back to their communities. But most people don’t realize that GroupRaise is one of the most cost effective ways of getting new clients into the restaurant and getting them to come back again. Of 100 people who go to a GroupRaise, 40 are new clients, 82 spend more than average and 96 come back in the future! (more…)

Portal Finance

Category : Latin America Startups and Investing, Magma Partners
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I’m excited to announce that Portal Finance is the winner of our FinTech competition and is now part of the Magma Partners portfolio. Portal Finance stood out from of the multitude of companies that applied from all over Latin America because of founders Diego Caicedo, Felipe Puntarelli and Nicholas Bohorquez’s deep experience in the market and the ability to translate it into a top notch product with clients in multiple countries that can expand worldwide. (more…)