⏳ 5min read /✍ by Arturo Torres

 
 

It is always a great feeling when you see that talented, hard-working founders achieve their dreams.

Nuvemshop, Latin America’s leading e-commerce platform, announced that it has raised a $500 million Series E round of funding. Read the full note

When reading this note this morning in Business Insider, I couldn’t help going back to 2011 when I first met Santiago and his partners. A bunch of kids with the bold vision of helping SMEs to ride the emerging e-commerce wave in the region.

I was working at an international bank, that pioneered in Argentina what it was later known as corporate venture capital. We had this special business unit through which we had invested in several technological startups, including Three Melons -also mentioned in the note-. But, as expected, being a high-risk non-core business, it was prematurely shut down by the bank’s top management. In fact, and the reason why I am telling this story, is that Tienda Nube was the last proposal that we presented to the Investment Committee. It was rejected and we were informed that the venture capital adventure was terminated. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me and steer my career away from investment banking and embrace the amazing business of investing in tech startups.

Fortunately, we completed the investment in that initial round with a new vehicle co-founded with a group of 6 other angel investors.

Those were times of booming tech startups in the region after the 2008 crisis. We had the opportunity to meet and to invest in several great founders, besides Tienda Nube, that started to build their companies by that time: Auth0, Satellogic, The Other Guys, Jampp, Mural. All great names today, emerging dreams then. Of course, we had our fair share of failed investments and bad bets too. A great journey that brought us where we are today. Hopefully wiser.

Nowadays the venture capital industry is growing exponentially in Latin America. The jump in activity we witnessed in that glorious 2011/13 period is dwarfed when comparing to what happened since 2019. A new wave of interesting investment opportunities are coming and will be coming over the next couple of years. The key, once again, will be to select those awesome teams working on global solutions. And to be very careful at valuations. But the chance to build the portfolio that will yield handsome ROIs is now again at hand.