🦄 👊🏽 Special Edition: I invested in soonicorn Latitud & so can you!
This is a special edition of Lolita's Newsletter, a bi-weekly newsletter of curated actionable insights and resources for underestimated founders, funders, and friends.
Brian Requarth, Yuri Danilchenko, Gina Gotthilf (Latitud) and me
Hi all! I’m so excited to share with you that Ganas Ventures and I invested in soonicorn Latitud and so can you!
🏃🏽♀️💨 Catch up.
On March 8th, Ganas Ventures launched with a thesis to invest in Web 2 and Web 3 community-driven startups in the US and Latin America! And I’m excited to announce Ganas’s first investment in LATAM’s Latitud!
💰 Founders, apply for investment here. 👊🏽 LPs, apply to invest in Ganas here.
🦄 👊🏽 Latitud investment TL;DR.
At Ganas we back founders that have ganas and a big vision to address big problems in growing markets via a go-to-community strategy. And the founders of Latitud, Gina Gotthilf, Brian Requarth and Yuri Danilchenko, more than fit the bill and so does Latitud’s market.
Founders. Gina is a Latina powerhouse who helped Duolingo reach millions of people and Brian Requarth is the founder of Brazilian prop tech pioneer Viva Real (acq $600M). They know Latin America and how to build and grow companies. Yuri is a former CTO at Escale, helping scale it through a rapid growth period after raising its Series B from top VCs like Kaszek Ventures and QED. Bonus: they are passionate and kind people unlocking untapped talent in the region in community.
Market. Latin America is fertile ground for the next wave of unicorns and decacorns. It’s a huge and growing market, with tons of intra and cross-border opportunities, and to top it off there are many problems to be solved for a region with some of the highest internet usage in the world. There are trillions to be made! See more market details below my signature.
Community-driven. Latitud understands the power of having a community and will enable the birth of many new unicorns in the Latin American region by creating a community-driven tech platform for founders, builders and investors in the region. Think Stripe Atlas + Mercury + Carta for LatAm.
Catalyzing. Latitud is catalyzing the region’s growth by removing roadblocks and building superhighways for founders in Latin America to create the world’s next top tech companies.
Today, on Latitud, Founders can explore & kick off their next big idea and build & grow their startup. Angels can expand their impact. Talented peeps can scale themselves as tech operators and this is just the beginning! How cool is that?!
Roadmap. Latitud's content is currently in English, as they prep founders for dealing with English-speaking investors, and yet their roadmap includes creating content in Spanish and Portuguese as well. This will not only make the content more accessible to the broader Latin American population but also allow them to capture a broader market opportunity.
😇 🚀 You can also invest in Latitud.
If you’re as excited about Latitud as I am, RSVP to Latitud’s Stonks event on April 5th. There you can learn more and join the Latitud investor family, alongside a16z, NFX, Ganas Ventures, and me!
PS I know that Gina, Brian, and Yuri want to make sure their cap table is representative of our population and community (which makes me like them even more)!
🌊 Latin America is fertile ground for the next wave of unicorns and decacorns
It’s an enormous market
LATAM represents 600M people and $6T of GDP; in other words, LATAM’s population is 2x that of the US
LATAM’s internet penetration is at 70% (China/India at 59/50%); mobile internet penetration is at 67% (China/India at 56%/50%) and expected to grow 15% by 2025, and engagement rates are averaging >9 hours per day of internet usage (for the rest of the world it is 6.5 hours)
A growing market
$20.2B invested in LATAM in 2021 but growing fast
In 2015, 259 investments at a value of $1.8B
In 2020, 551 investments at a value of $5.4B
Last year, there were 952 investments with total funding value of $20.5B
Number of exits went from 52 in 2015 to 105 in 2020
The number of unicorns has risen to 40+
There are tons of intra and cross-border opportunities
LATAM-US (e.g., Cornershop, NotCo)
LATAM (e.g., Bitso - crypto, Rappi - logistics and distribution)
And there are many problems to be solved with a market that’s online
Disclaimer: Ganas Ventures is a 506c fund that allows us to publicly solicit for our raise. All are welcome to apply to become an LP; however commitments into Ganas Ventures will only be accepted from accredited investors.