Colombia Venture Capital Overview

Category: Colombia, Latin America Startups and Investing
Posted on by

This post is the third in a series about Latin American venture capital ecosystems. Read the post on the Chilean Venture Capital, Peru Venture Capital, Highlighting Latin American Startups. Hopefully it’s helpful. Thanks to Monica Avila from Magma and Andres Barreto from Social Atom for reviewing drafts of this post and improving it.

Private Investors

Social Atom Ventures – A $30m investment fund with offices in Medellin and Bogota. They invest into early stage companies that have their technology team in Latin America, but whose target market is the US. We’ve done two co-investments with them.

Torrenegra Labs – Accelerator and early stage investor based in Bogota. 20 investments. 5 exits.

Magma Partners – Monica Avila is our lead in Colombia. We plan to invest in 1-2 companies per year. Additional presence in Chile, Mexico, USA.

Axon – Late stage capital. Six investments.

Velum Ventures – Medellin based seed and early stage investor. At least 16 investments in their first fund. No longer doing investments. Check out their excellent post explaining why they decided not to raise a second fund (spanish).

Public-Private VCs

Nazca/Mountain – In 2015, Nazca was acquired by Mountain Partners, a successful German/Swiss VC and company builder. They generally invest $200k-$500k in companies that can scale regionally and potentially expand to other mountain offices in Europe, Asia and Africa. Nazca has offices in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. Mountain has offices in multiple countries across Asia, Africa and Europe.

NXTP Labs – Early stage seed accelerator with offices across Latin America. Their standard deal is that NXTP has a $25,000 option to invest via a SAFE with a $250,000 cap that’s exercisable for one year. This means that if you accept the NXTP acceleration program, you go through the program without receiving money, then, over the next year, NXTP decides if they want to invest $25k in your company. NXTP also has significant funds to do follow on in their portfolio. NXTP regional portfolio.

Promotora –  VC fund operated like a PE Fund, not actively investing right now. Backed by FOMIN, Bancoldex and others.

Company Investors

Wayra – Wayra Colombia is part of the investment arm of Telefonica/Movistar.  They invest in startups generally with $50k + $25k of services for 5-10% equity on convertible notes. Wayra can be flexible for startups with significant traction. They seem to prefer B2B companies that can be Telefonica clients or have products that they can sell to their clients. We’ve done two coinvestments with Wayra. and they have offices regionally in Latin America and Spain.

FCP Innovacion  – Fund 100% backed by Empresas Publicas de Medellín, Medellin’s utilities company.

 Vero Norte – Fund 100% backed by Sura, a very large insurance company.

Government Help

Ruta N – Medellin based help for entrepreneurs.

Innpulsa – Colombia’s national institution for helping support entrepreneurs.

 Apps.co – Ministry of Technology’s program to help entrepreneurs

Company Builders

Polymath Ventures  – “Polymath exists to build scalable companies that transform industries and societies, and become the backbone of the middle class of emerging economies.” 7 investments.

Investment Syndicates

Founderlist.la – Founderlist is modeled after AngelList but for Latin America. They also run Emprendedores Anónimas, the largest meetup group in Latin America. (Disclosure, I’m an investor via Magma).

Angel Networks

Capitalia – Medellin based company that connects investors with with companies.

Red Nacional de Angeles Inversionistas

Hubbog  – Bogota based accelerator and angel network.

Family Offices

Valure Capital –  family office investing in new companies.

Grandes Patrimonios – Family office that invest and helps family offices invest in startups.

Some Colombian family offices have invested in startups and are working with funds to invest in startups. It seems to be more developed than in Chile or Peru.

If you have anyone I should add, please let me know and I’ll edit the post!

Photo credit: Enrique Lara

13 Comments

  • Hello Nathan, Thanks for your valuable contribution in understanding this topic. I just wanted to inquiry about the criteria you used to classify private investors and Public-private VCs, why these two groups are different from each other?. Secondly, what do you mean by mentioning “company investors” ? I trully did not understand it and It’d very helpful for me to understand the concept in a better way.

    Thanks you so much in advance for you help

    Gerardo Cárdenas Blanco

    • Hi Gerardo,

      A company investor is a venture capital fund that’s funded by a large corporation. For example Veronorte is funded by Sura, Wayra is funded by Telefonica. Public/Private investors have money from government entities. Mountain/Nazca has money from CORFO from the chilean government, so does NXTP. Make sense?

      • Hi Nathan,

        Do you mean Nazca/mMountain, NXTP Labs and Promotora receive money from the Colombian goverment ?. If they do so, can they be seen as venture capitalists despite the fact the government is the one providing money to fund companies?. My original question was directed toward the difference between private investors and public-private VCs, I would like to know which criteria you used while classifiying these companies?. Can’t the private investors be seen as private venture capitalists ?

        Thank you so much for replying in a short time,
        Gerardo Cárdenas Blanco

          • Ok Nathan

            In regards with my original question about the difference between private
            investors and public-private VCs, I would like to know which criteria
            you used while classifiying these companies?. Can’t the private
            investors be seen as private venture capitalists ?

            Thanks again

          • Magma Partners is a 100% fully private venture capital fund. 100% of our first fund came from the partners and 100% of our second fund is from the partners plus private capital sources like family offices and successful entrepreneurs. That’s a 100% private venture capital fund.

            Mountain/Nazca and other funds like them use a Chilean government program called CORFO which gives funds $2 or $3 for every $1 they invest. So a $12M fund would have $3M from private sources and $9M from the government. That’s why I would consider them public-private. Funds that take money from CORFO or the Mexican equivalent have restrictions on investment types, structures etc. That’s why they’re public/private.

            Make sense?

          • It does make sense, I finally understood why they were placed in different groups. Thank you so much for answering all my inquiries and for doint it in such a short time. All the best

Comments are closed.