Ep 41 Marcus Dantus: From Mexico.com to Startup Mexico

Category : Crossing Borders Podcast, Mexico
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Marcus Dantus launched his first tech startup in 1993, selling email addresses through a portal that he hosted on the domain Mexico.com. Born in Mexico City, Marcus studied Media Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, but his career quickly switched to technology when a friend introduced him to the Internet. Since then, Marcus never looked back. He founded a telecommunications company, acted as CEO of a medical device business, was on the founding team of Wayra Mexico, and finally developed and launched Startup Mexico, where he acts as CEO.

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Why Latin American Startup Valuations Have Been Lower than Silicon Valley Valuations

Category : Latin America Startups and Investing
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I wrote an article on The Next Web about a topic that comes up weekly at Magma Partners: valuations in Latin America. I hope Latin American founders take a look at this article before they start talking with venture capitalists, so that we can start a conversation. I also hope that more US, Chinese and Latin American investors get in the market, and that more US, Chinese and Latin American companies start making acquisitions so that this valuation gap can change. From the article:

Latin American startups haven’t had the same valuations as Silicon Valley startups. This frustrates many Latin American entrepreneurs seeking investment, as they don’t understand why Latin American VCs aren’t doing deals at Silicon Valley valuations.

There are important reasons why Latin American early-stage investment valuations are lower. For one, there are few acquisitions in Latin America, and when acquisitions do happen, they tend to be at lower valuations than their counterparts in other parts of the world. VCs need to make returns, or they’ll be out of business. Therefore, if exits are lower, the initial price that venture capitalists pay must be lower.

But what other reasons are there for this? Why are there still so few Latin American exits and why are they at lower valuations compared to their international peers? Here are just a few of the reasons.

Read the rest of the article 6 reasons why Latin American valuations are lagging behind Silicon Valley on The Next Web and if you have any feedback, would love to hear about it in the comments here.

Ep 40 Jie Hao: How China Sees Latin America Startups

Category : Crossing Borders Podcast, Latin America Startups and Investing
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Jie Hao is a partner at Magma Partners who previously built and sold two companies before heading to Chile to look at investment opportunities in 2012. To make this podcast, I repurposed a segment of a conversation we had while I was in Shanghai for the launch of the partnership between Kr Space and Magma Partners to create the Sino-Latin American Accelerator. This conversation was a part of our doing business in Latin America course through 36Kr, China’s version of TechCrunch, where we taught Chinese entrepreneurs and investors about the growing opportunities for investing in Latin America.

In this short form episode of Crossing Borders, we talk about how Magma Partners got involved in China, why Chinese investment is important for Latin America, and how China and the US are looking at Latin America differently.

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Doing Business in Chile: What You Need to Know

Category : Chile
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Note: It might seem funny, but I’ve never written a standalone post about doing business in Chile. If you’re interested in going deeper, please check out the Chile category on the blog, as there’s 8 years of content about what it’s like, delving deep on banking, real estate, startups, investing and more.

Chile is a long, thin country at the tip of Latin America that is widely considered one of the best countries in the region to do business. Across several indicators in the World Bank’s Doing Business Report, Chile beats out the regional competition. In 2018, Chile ranked 55th in the world on the World Bank’s Doing Business report, coming in just after Mexico, which ranked 49th. However, in recent years, Chile’s business-friendly reputation has slid from 34th to 55th which has been subject to some controversy.

Still, Chile is undoubtedly one of the most influential economies in the region, despite its small size. Chile’s population reaches just 17 million people, but the country is extremely centralized. The capital, Santiago, is home to 7 million people, or one-third of the total population. By comparison, São Paulo, the biggest city in Brazil, has over 21 million inhabitants – more than the entire country of Chile.

Chile’s overall GDP was US$247B in 2016, 28% of which is made up of exports. Chile is the world’s largest exporter of copper, and it also exports lithium, fish, and wine. While Chile’s overall GDP appears small beside giants like Brazil (US$1.8T) and Mexico (US$1.1T), its population is more than ten times smaller. When measured per capita, Chile’s GDP is the second-highest in the region after Uruguay.

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