Technology entrepreneurship platform Latitud today announced an $11.5 million Seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), one of Silicon Valley’s most recognized venture capital funds.
The round also has participation from NFX, Endeavor, Canary, FJ Labs, and some startup leaders across Latin America, including David Velez (founder of Nubank); Carlos, and Loreanne Garcia (Kavak); Sebastian Mejia (Rappi), among others.
This is one of the largest Seed rounds in the region and responds to a recent trend of investors betting on startups that help manage other startups. Such is the recent case of Kamino, which raised $6.1 million in Seed capital to explore startup infrastructure, and Jeeves, a fintech offering financial services to startups that just became a $2.1 billion unicorn.
The startup founded in 2020 in California will use the funds from this round to scale its technology platform and educational programs, where 800 founders in Latin America have already participated.
Founded by Brian Requarth, Gina Gotthilf, and Yuri Danichenko, Latitud created a suite of solutions, which to date include Latitud Go and Latitud Fellowships, to address and provide solutions to the biggest friction points for early-stage entrepreneurs starting companies in Latin America: company formation, international capital, cap table management and access to world-class mentorship from accomplished tech leaders and operators.
Latitud Ventures, the company’s investment arm led by Tomas Roggio, manages the region’s first fund, which has already invested pre-seed and seed checks in more than 70 companies, of which 15 are Mexican, including Yuno, Flexio, Jefa, Reworth, and Castor. Other companies such as Argentina-based Pomelo, Brazilian BHub, and Alinea have also joined the list.
In Mexico, there are 119 Latituders, founders of startups in Latitud’s programs. The company is supported by prominent entrepreneurs from the startup ecosystem including David Arana from Konfio; Oscar Hjertonsson from Cornershop and Carlos and Loreanne García, co-founders of Kavak. Also, unicorn founders Gerry Colier of Clara and Daniel Vogel of Bitso are part of the first Latitud Angel Fellowship group.
A commitment to startups in Latin America
Brian Requarth, Gina Gotthilf, and Yuri Danichenko are tackling a serious problem: the high mortality rate of startups in the region. According to the Instituto del Fracaso, a Mexico-based independent organization dedicated to analyzing the entrepreneurial ecosystem, 75% of startups close their doors within two years of being born.
Requarth, Latitud’s CEO, told Bloomberg Línea that the idea for Latitud came in the middle of the pandemic when people were all at home. He was waiting for approval for the sale of a proptech he founded. Although he is an experienced startup executive, he did the transaction in Brazil for $550 million but lost the equivalent of $100 million due to a mistake. “When I sold my last company, there was a mistake in the transaction and the money was transferred to the wrong person. How did that happen?’ It was a punishing mistake,” he confesses.
This mistake was because many of the processes are done manually. His own experience of entrepreneurship in Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil led him to identify that infrastructure was needed to support startups in Latin America. “I saw first-hand how this barrier can kill very promising solutions,” Requarth said. The idea he had was to build a superhighway to make everything more efficient for tech entrepreneurship.
“I connected with Yuri, who is a CTO with a lot of experience building tech and product teams, and Gina, who is an executive who scaled the team and Duolingo’s growth from 3 million users to 200 million users globally. The three of us saw the great need to elevate the ecosystem. So, with the same vision and the same mission, we came together to try to close that information gap and support the ecosystem with good solutions so that the startup ecosystem in Latin America can grow,” said Requarth.
Thus was born Latitud Go, a technology platform that allows any founder to intelligently incorporate a venture capital-backed company ready to scale globally simply and affordably.
“We are open to different solutions, the idea is to imagine a world where you basically click a button and you can start your business with all your accounts set up and cap tables,” adds Yuri Danilchenko, CTO of Latitud.
Today Latitud is boosting entrepreneurs in Latin America, its main focus at the moment is on Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina.
The same opportunities as in Silicon Valley
Gina Gotthilf, COO of Latitud, says that many founders do not succeed in the region because they face bureaucratic problems. “Nothing is as easy as in Silicon Valley,” reflects the Brazilian entrepreneur.
“That’s why we started a community and invited all the most ambitious entrepreneurs we knew to learn how to be the most successful entrepreneurs and the most successful operators in Silicon Valley and Latin America, so they could learn from each other and also from their mentors,” Gotthilf stresses. That is Latitud’s educational arm, Fellowships.
Requarth says he knows from his own experience how lonely the entrepreneurial journey is. But “if you meet other people who are one step ahead of you, you can often share that feedback and so give more direction to the big challenges that are around every corner. So I saw that when I met other founders in Brazil and that made the whole entrepreneurial journey easier for me.
Latitud’s next step
Danilchenko says he intends to double the products they offer. “We have the ambition to create foundations and infrastructure to start growing and scaling startups in Latin America, any pain we see in the founder’s path (such as hiring, cap table, financial institutions) we will go deep to understand and solve it,” says Danilchenko, who has experience scaling tech teams in high-growth B2B startups in Brazil.
The plan is to strengthen internally as well. The intention is to end the year with 45 people, doubling the company by the end of the year, Requarth shared.
In addition, the seed investment led by a16z will serve to improve Latitud’s solutions for early-stage entrepreneurs. “It will allow us to dream much bigger and build great solutions from a technological perspective,” says Gina Gotthilf.
