Musings from Mexico City #3
Welcome to the third edition of Musings from Mexico City. A personal newsletter on tech, community, and happenings in Mexico City!
In the last month, we have had a ton of startups announce large funding rounds in Latam to expand to Mexico like Inventa! At Khora, we launched Office Hours for founders including mentors like the Director of Engineering at Classpass, Head of Product at Plaid, and 50+ Partner level investors.
Mexico City is growing rapidly and talent is top of mind for VC funds & startups. Six VC funds are hiring for roles based out of Mexico City (see more below)! Startups like Nowports, Riogrande, and others are looking to hire summer interns. Ping me if you or a friend is interested in any of the roles!
Thank you to everyone that came out to the Founder & Builder Mixer last month. We had over 350+ RSVPs committed to growing together. We had investors from funds like Kaszek, Cometa, Softbank, Monashees, Magma, Monashees, QED, Nazca, Two Sigma, Elevar, Leap Global Partners, RallyCap and Angel Ventures. We had Founders & Builders from firms like Justo, Rappi, Alima, Twitch, Scape, Treggo, and more (check out photos from the event here).
LatAm Stats
Brazil is leading the way in crypto adoption with 41% and Mexico with 22% adoption (more here in Gemini’s 2022 Global Crypto Report)
Latin America is the fastest-growing region for startups in the world, x3 the amount of capital went into the region from 2020 to 2021, according to Miami Harold (more here)
Latam fintechs raised $318 million in April. During the first four months of the year, fundraising totals $1.9 million, a 46% increase over the same period in 2021 (more here)
Big News
Chilean-based Xepelin broke a record by receiving the largest Series B funding round by a Spanish-speaking startup in LatAm ($111M) (more here)
Mexico-based Jüsto raised a $152M Series B led by General Atlantic (more here)
Colombia-based Inventa raises $20M Series A from a16z and Monashees with plans to expand to Mexico. More in Techcrunch here
Softbank’s early-stage fund spins out into Upload Ventures (more here). Latin America fund managing directors Shu Nyatta and Paulo Passoni have decided to leave SoftBank to start their own Latin America-focused late-stage investment firm (more here)
Community Wins to Celebrate
The Rappi Effect in Latam by Christopher Schroeder (more here)
rali_cap gets backing from global VCs and launches $30M fintech fund for emerging markets like Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa (more here)
Addem Capital became the first firm in Latam to leverage one of its funds through a crypto DeFi protocol (more here)
May & June Events in CDMX
5/10: Women in tech hosted by Gina Gotthilf, cofounder of Latitud. RSVP here
5/20-5/22: Techstars Startup Weekend Blockchain México with Stellar. RSVP here
5/25: Mexico City Web3 Event. RSVP here
6/1 & 6/2: FINNOSUMIT 2022, use discount code: PARTNERFS20 for 20% off. RSVP here
6/2 & 6/3: Proptech Latam Summit. RSVP here
6/4: Healthtech in Latam Meetup in CDMX. RSVP here
6/6: MassChallenge Mexico Welcome Event. RSVP here
6/16: 2022 Climate Innovation Summit. Startups apply here
Startup Opportunities
Applications for the next Latitud cohort of Explore are closing on May 13th. Apply here
Apply here to become a mentor in the Khora community and apply here if you’re a startup founder looking for mentorship. Mentors include growth-stage founders, executives at corporates, investors, and more. For questions reach out to hello@withkhora.com
If you’re an early-stage startup founder raising equity or debt – email Christine Chang at christine@thisweekinfintech.com or sign up for office hours here to go through your pitch, chat about the ecosystem, talent, or whatever is on your mind!
VCs Hiring for Latam Roles
Investor @ rali_cap in MX, BR, CO, NG, EG, ZA, KE, PK – Apply here & more details here
Venture Fellow @ Amplifica Capital in Mexico City – Apply here & more details here
Investor - Hispanics Lead @ Latitud in Mexico. Apply & more details here
Venture Ops Specialist @ Latitud in Mexico. Apply & more details here
Investment Analyst @ Elevar Equity in Mexico City. Apply & more details here
Investment Associate @ NXTP Ventures in Mexico City. More here & apply here
What I’m Reading
How Repricing May Affect Latin American Startups by Nathan Lustig (read here)
Soonicorn Club Handbook by ALLVP (read here)
Cofounder of Rappi, Andres Bilbao - Unsolicitated Fundraising (read here)
What I’m Listening to…
Greatest Hits Episode: Caterine Castillo, Neivor: Streamlining real estate administration in Latin America, Ep 170 (listen here)
Latitud Podcast Episode #92 - Polishing an opportunity like a diamond: Stelleo Tolda, Mercado Libre (listen here)
Crossing Borders with Nathan Lustig, Izabel Gallera, Canary: Leveraging the power of connections to help early-stage Latin American startups, Ep 171 (more here)
Dog of the Month
(Milou the Goldendoodle in Roma, follow him @milouthegoldendoodleee)
Gratitude
Thank you to the community and many of my peers for your continued support. Special shot out to the following folks that have been incredibly supportive & amazing to work with this past month: Gabriel Vasquez, Tomi Roggio, Dany Gonzalez, Rich Kane, Shu Nyatta, Simon Heuer, Nilou Ghazizadeh, Johnny Hwin, Waseem Shabout, Muj Seyd, Luisa Sucre, Gabby Cazeau, Ignacio Vial, Olivia Deng, Kelly Kiewel, and Amelia DeSorrento.
Abrazos,
Kate Kiewel
Find me on Twitter for daily sound bites @katekiewel