🇪🇨 Issue #44: Investing In LATAM Startups
Fernando Rivera - Pomona alumnus, former founder of ETF.com, and now MP at BuenTrip Ventures
💬 Welcome to issue #44 of Between the Lines
Despite record growth in the past few years, venture capital has still remained relatively scarce and highly concentrated. Only five countries account for roughly 95% of all VC investments, and early-stage investments like pre-seed and seed only make up a small fraction of all the capital deployed compared to later-stage. Pomona alumnus, Fernando Rivera, is helping change this narrative by investing in early-stage Latin American founders through BuenTrip Ventures.
~ Josh & Miles
👤 Community Spotlight: Fernando Rivera
Fernando is the Managing Partner at BuenTrip Ventures, a seed-stage fund based in Quito, Ecuador, where he brings technology and operational background, having co-founded ETF.com as the CTO. BuenTrip Ventures grew out of the work of BuenTrip Hub, a leading community and ecosystem builder in South America. He graduated from Pomona College with a major in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Fernando is motivated by a deeply rooted belief in the potential of Latin American entrepreneurs to positively affect the future of Latin America through technology, a vision that has driven his 20+ year career as an entrepreneur.
Prior to entering the VC space as an investor, you spent over a decade founding and building ETF.com. Can you tell us more about the founding story of ETF.com and how you met your co-founder through a Claremont connection?
In 1999 I founded a web design firm based in Quito, convinced of the potential of local talent to compete in the most competitive markets globally. Perhaps this was as much driven by what I knew about the Ecuadorian tech sector as by youthful hubris, but in 2001, I met Jim Wiandt. I met Jim through his wife Noemi Ezkurdia (Pitzer ’95) who was one of my closest friends in college. Noemi was visiting me in Quito from SF and when she saw what I did, she introduced me to Jim, who at the time was running IndexFunds.com, a bulletin board for index investors that was later acquired by Dow Jones. He eventually hired my firm to build his very first website. The journal ultimately became ETF.com, at the time the leading publication on ETFs and index investing.
In 2004, my wife and I moved to New York so I could pursue a joint venture with Jim while my wife pursued her master’s degree at NYU. Together we worked for Dow Jones Indexes, Van Eck, IndexIQ, and other firms in the ETF industry. Then, in 2008 we decided to merge both companies to simplify the relationship and align interests. That’s when I became co-founder and CTO of the company. Two years later, ETF.com raised venture capital to build the first institutional-quality ETF ratings and analytics tool in the market. ETF Analytics offered the best quality reports on every U.S.-listed ETF and was eventually acquired by Factset in 2015.
What are you working on now, and what prompted you to leave ETF.com and start BuenTrip?
Today I am a managing partner at BuenTrip Ventures, a pre-seed venture fund and accelerator. We invest first checks in outstanding founders who are transforming the region through technology. The companies in our portfolio are innovating in important areas of the region’s economy like finance, health, logistics and distribution, and SMB and Enterprise SaaS. Our investment thesis comes from the work we’ve done since 2014 to accelerate the Ecuadorian startup ecosystem. Our hypothesis was that there was enough entrepreneurial and technical talent in Ecuador and that we could provide what was missing: access to know-how, networks, and capital.
Our hypothesis has proven correct and now Ecuador is one of the fastest-growing ecosystems outside the leading five. Today we’ve taken all the lessons we’ve learned over the years and translated them into an online platform that provides the same three basic needs to founders. We run the leading online conference dedicated to Latin tech founders with speakers such as Brian Requarth from Latitude, Alex Torrenegra from Torre, and Ian Hathaway from Techstars.
Access to capital in Ecuador was always difficult which was why we decided to raise our own funds to invest in the best startups we were working with. We took the know-how and mentor networks we had built over the years of mentoring founders and turned that into our acceleration program which allows us to invest in top founders from throughout the region.👇
📣 Pardon the Announcement: June Crew Cohorts
Crew is a collective of motivated professionals working together to build careers that bring them meaning, fulfillment, and happiness. They offer group-based courses that combine the power of coaching and design thinking to help people design careers they love. Founder and CEO, Mollie Amkraut (CMC) would love to see more Claremonsters getting involved and they’re offering 10% off on upcoming cohorts for BTL readers. Use code "Claremont2022" at checkout, and email Crew here with any questions.
Read more about Mollie and Crew’s mission and how they believe that Talent Development is going the way of Healthcare - Consumer First.
Navigate your biggest career challenges with a crew of professional peers & tools that help you design a career that brings you meaning, fulfillment & happiness. 👇
Apply by May 15th to join the next Visionary cohorts kicking off in June.
🚨Claremonster Call-Out: Ajay Sridhar
Ajay Sridhar is a Claremont graduate and the current CEO and Co-Founder of NiftyCat. Prior to co-founding NiftyCat along with Prashant Fonseka (CMC) and Carl Peaslee (CMC), Ajay was a Duke Ph.D. student and MA graduate and the CEO of SelfMade - a venture-backed marketing company that works at the intersection of technology and digital art, empowering individuals and brands to grow their business through social media. At the end of 2021, Ajay teamed up with Prashant and Carl to found NiftyCat.
NiftyCat is an early-stage startup that's creating the web3 people dream about—a network where everyone controls their own data and gets paid when it’s used. The result is lower acquisition costs for eCommerce brands and never-before-seen privacy for consumers. Their first product and go-to-market is a platform that enables Shopify merchants to build and customize branded NFT experiences and enables consumers to access them with a NiftyCat crypto wallet - no web3 knowledge needed. Check out their private beta below. ⬇️
💼 Who’s Hiring?:
Argonautic Ventures is an investment firm run by former and current operators that are passionate about building resilient and scalable businesses. They understand founders and work closely with them to serve as an extension of their team as they maneuver the venture landscape. The culture of Argonautic is rooted in entrepreneurialism and they operate with the same level of focus as the founders they build with. Claremont alumnus Viken Douzdjian is the Managing Partner, and he is hiring an Investment Associate to work closely alongside him in their new Seattle office. Want to get in touch with Viken? Shoot us a note.
BuenTrip Ventures is a pre-seed VC firm in Quito, Ecuador, that leverages its position as one of the leading ecosystem builders in Latin America to identify, mentor, and invest in software-based startups that are transforming the region’s economy. They write first checks in software-based startups that are helping transform the largest sectors of the Latin American economy and also invest in Latin founders based in the U.S. and Canada. Fernando Rivera (PO) is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of BuenTrip and they’re looking for a Claremont Investment Analysis.
Make sure to check out the other 5,000+ open jobs at 400+ Claremont-affiliated companies here on our Storyboard. Plus, make sure to create a profile and enter your preferences to get alerted to new job postings relevant to you, be they the 750+ remote jobs, 180+ internships, or 30+ part-time positions available. We’ve published research that shows that Claremont-founded companies that disproportionately hire Claremont talent outperform — so pay attention Claremonsters!
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🗣️ Conversations on the Interwebz:
This week’s top read 🔥
San Diego-based Cardea Bio, which integrates biology with modern electronics and is the only mass producer of biocompatible semiconductors, announced that they have received a $1.1M grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop an electronic nose with the potential to diagnose diseases like COVID, malaria, or even cancer, among others. Kiana Aran is an Associate Professor of Bioengineering at Keck and is also a co-founder and the Chief Science Officer at Cardea. Read more about their BPU invention and electric nose here.
Everything else you need to know….📖
Edith Harabough (HMC), HMC graduate and Co-Founder of LaunchDarkly, was spotted ringing the Nasdaq opening bell last week during the CloudNY summit. The $3B unicorn company likely has more bells in its future. 🦄
Daniel Kan (CMC) and Cruise have opened up the claw in San Francisco. Cruise’s service map for their autonomous taxi service has continued to expand since February when their driverless cars were officially opened to the public in San Francisco.
Scribe Therapeutics, a CRISPR molecular engineering company co-founded by Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna (PO), continues to accelerate the development of best-in-class in vivo CRISPR-based medicines through the expansion of its ongoing collaboration with Biogen. The expanded collaboration further validates Scribe’s position as a leading organization driving the development of novel CRISPR-based therapeutics that treat the underlying cause of disease.
Tune in this morning to hear Matthieu Hafemeister (CMC), Head of Growth at Jeeves and former Partner at a16z, chat with other venture capitalists on what’s going on in this crazy market and how to best navigate fundraising in 2022.
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🍽️ BTL Snacks:
🚗 A Match Made In Carbon….. Bridgestone Tires and LanzaTech will co-develop the first dedicated end-of-life tire recycling process. More than one billion tires globally reach the end of their useful service life each year. Bridgestone and LanzaTech (run by HMCer Jennifer Holmgren) will work to address this issue by converting end-of-life tires into new materials, including exploring processes to create sustainable synthetic rubber that does not rely on petrochemicals.
🔋 Cobalt & Our Battery-Powered Future….. Cobalt and the search for it have become a critical component in the global transition to a greener future, a reality reflected in its soaring price. Leading the charge in the search is a growing army of geologists, software engineers, and data scientists at KoBold Metals, a U.S. technology firm founded by Kurt House (CMC) focused on accelerating and expanding the exploration process for cobalt and other so-called battery metals, including nickel.
🍾 Supercharging Alcohol E-Commerce….. DRINKS just recently acquired Electriq Marketing in order to supercharge their alcohol e-Commerce business. Zac Brandenberg (CMC) co-founded DRINKS almost nine years ago and is currently the CEO. The acquisition will help solve the manufactured complexity of online alcohol sales, building an alcohol e-commerce powerhouse with unparalleled Shopify expertise.
🧱 Lego Bricks In The Metaverse….. As Epic Games pushes further into the metaverse, it’s strengthening ties with giants in digital entertainment and toys. PM at Electronic Arts and CMC graduate, David Taylor, shares an overview of what Epic's $2 billion fundraise from LEGO and Sony means for each company involved and how this could impact the future of the Metaverse.
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