Tag: fintech latam

Andres Gutierrez, Tpaga: How Tappsi’s acquisition led to Trying to Help Latin America’s 400M Unbanked, Ep 94

Category : Colombia, Crossing Borders Podcast
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Andres Gutierrez was working for a can manufacturing company in Philadelphia when he realized that web and mobile apps were disrupting the US market. When he asked friends and family in Colombia if there were any equivalents to these companies back home, he discovered an underserved market. 

While most tech companies were launching in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, startups were overlooking 50M consumers, with a GDP of $360B. Andres decided to go back to Colombia to found Tappsi, a ride-hailing app that after operating for only 8 months got a $1M buyout offer which, to his parents’ dismay, he turned down. 

In this episode, I sit down with Andres to discuss his most recent venture Tpaga, a mobile wallet that aims to give financial services to the 400M unbanked people in Latin America. We also talk about his story growing Tappsi to an exit, advice he has for Latin American entrepreneurs, and lessons learned from Tappsi that he used to start Tpaga. We also cover what it’s like to raise money and advice for going through YCombinator.

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Ep 53 Diego Caicedo: Streamlining Small Business Finance in Latin America with Portal Finance

Category : Chile, Colombia, Crossing Borders Podcast
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Note: Portal Finance recently closed a $200M deal with one of Latin America’s largest investment banks, BTG Pactual, to provide financing to small and medium businesses across Latin America. They were also winners of Magma Partners’ Latin America wide Fintech competition in 2016.

After growing up in the Bay Area, Diego Caicedo left Popayán, a small town in Colombia, at age fifteen to go to university in Bogota, then dropped out two semesters before finishing his degree in engineering. Why? He had a plan to build a massive, vertically-integrated coffee company that bridged the US and his native Colombia. Three years later, a strong La Niña year wiped out the coffee industry and he was back at square one.

Diego has never been one to give up after his first failure, though. In this episode, we talk about how he rebounded after closing his first business, how Diego became an entrepreneur in Chile’s mining industry, then how he realized the opportunities in Latin American fintech and started Portal Finance to help small businesses get liquidity when they need it. Diego is a lifelong entrepreneur with a lot of lessons to share with people just getting started, so check out this episode of Crossing Borders to learn more about how Diego does business across Colombia, Chile, and the United States.

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Portal Finance

Category : Latin America Startups and Investing, Magma Partners
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I’m excited to announce that Portal Finance is the winner of our FinTech competition and is now part of the Magma Partners portfolio. Portal Finance stood out from of the multitude of companies that applied from all over Latin America because of founders Diego Caicedo, Felipe Puntarelli and Nicholas Bohorquez’s deep experience in the market and the ability to translate it into a top notch product with clients in multiple countries that can expand worldwide. (more…)