Since we closed our second fund in January to invest in fintech/insurancetech companies in Latin America and US companies with Latin American tech and sales teams, the entrepreneurs we support have been busy. And so have we. Here’s a roundup of some of the most interesting things that have happened in the first half of 2018.
New Investments
We’ve invested in 8 companies out of Magma II since January. Here are three that are public. We’ll be announcing more of our investments in the next month.
CryptoMarket – CryptoMarket is a Chilean fintech company that operates cryptocurrency exchanges in Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Europe, with plans to open Mexico and Colombia this year. Magma coinvested with Consensys, the fund created by the cofounder of Ethereum in a $600k round.
BrainHi – Puerto Rico based Brainhi helps doctors and dentists book more appointments using chat bots. They’re the first Puerto Rican company to be accepted into YCombinator. I met them during a visit to Parallel18 in Q1.
Workep – Medellin and San Francisco based Workep is a project management tool built onto of G-Suite. I’ve know Carlos Eduardo Alvarez since meeting him at a BBQ in 2015 in Medellin and have been following since then. We reconnected at Parallel18 this year and invested recently.
Portfolio News
The companies we support have now raised $25M+ in follow on funding, mostly from US investors, employ 500+ people and generate $20M+ in annual revenue around the world. Here are a few highlights, although there are many more!
Keteka, a marketplace that connects tourists directly with guides for off the beaten path experiences, took home €275k in equity free funding from Booking.com’s Booster program. See Kyle’s take aways from the program. Keteka has offices in Santiago and Chicago and offers thousands of trips in Latin America.
GroupRaise, a marketplace that allows groups to book large events in restaurants, has facilitated more than $1M in donations from its more than 15k restaurant partners around the US. GroupRaise has offices in Houston and Santiago. Listen to cofounder Kevin Valdez’s story, from Guatemala to GroupRaise on Crossing Borders.
PropertySimple, a real estate tech company with offices in Phoenix and Santiago, launched their fully national real estate portal with more than 2M properties in the US. PropertySimple allows real estate agents to automatically create unique content and post it to social media.
Jooycar, a Chilean startup that creates whitelabel solutions for Usage Based Insurance, launched a new partnership with Chilean giant Consorcio. The product can reduce car insurance premiums by up to 40%.
Amberads launched a new video platform that allows you to create programmatic, api driven videos for all digital media, including social networks and advertising. You can think of it as Canva for video, powered by APIs and collaboration tools for agencies and brands.
Magma News
Medellin and Bogota Events – Francisco and I attended the Lab4 conference in Medellin, leading to one new investment. We also held an event at WeWork in Bogota with Diego Caicedo of Portal Finance where more than 150 entrepreneurs attended.
Sino-Latin America Accelerator – In January Francisco Saenz and I traveled to Shanghai to meet up with our China based Partner Jie Hao to launch the Sino-Latin America Accelerator with Kr Space, the WeWork of China. Since then, we’ve hosted monthly events with Latin American countries at Kr Space and Latin American embassies to promote partnerships between Latin America and China.
New Team Members – In the past six months, we’ve expanded our team in Latin America and the US. We’ve added Pedro Pablo del Campo as a partner, Codie Sanchez and Neil Coleman as a Venture Partner, Angel Andraca and JT Li in operations. Pedro, based in Austin, is a Chilean entrepreneur who recently worked for Techstars. Neil, based in New York, is an entrepreneur and tech executive who’s worked at Google, Snapchat and more. Codie is an investment professional and entrepreneur based in the US with extensive Latin American experience. Angel is a Chilean entrepreneur and JT, originally from China, joined the Magma team in Chile. We’re excited to continue expanding our team as we continue to grow!
Latin America Investment Press & Podcasts
Chinese Investors Target Latin America – Venture Beat
China Moves Into Latin America While the US Sleeps – The Economist
Value Investing in Latin America – Seeking Alpha
Chinese Startups Export Playbook to Latin America – Bloomberg
Latin America’s Movile is Quietly Building a Mobile Empire – TechCrunch
How Mayer Mizrachi Launched Criptext from a Colombian Prison – Podcast
How Lauren Cascio is Upgrading Healthcare with Abartys Health – Podcast
Jie Hao – How China Sees Latin America Startups – Podcast
GroupRaise’s Devin Baptiste Interviews Nathan Lustig – Podcast