Tag: latamlist

Magma Partners First Half 2018 Update

Category : Magma Partners
Posted on by

Since we closed our second fund in January to invest in fintech/insurancetech companies in Latin America and US companies with Latin American tech and sales teams, the entrepreneurs we support have been busy. And so have we. Here’s a roundup of some of the most interesting things that have happened in the first half of 2018.

New Investments

We’ve invested in 8 companies out of Magma II since January. Here are three that are public. We’ll be announcing more of our investments in the next month.

CryptoMarket – CryptoMarket is a Chilean fintech company that operates cryptocurrency exchanges in Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Europe, with plans to open Mexico and Colombia this year. Magma coinvested with Consensys, the fund created by the cofounder of Ethereum in a $600k round.

BrainHi – Puerto Rico based Brainhi helps doctors and dentists book more appointments using chat bots. They’re the first Puerto Rican company to be accepted into YCombinator. I met them during a visit to Parallel18 in Q1.

Workep – Medellin and San Francisco based Workep is a project management tool built onto of G-Suite. I’ve know Carlos Eduardo Alvarez since meeting him at a BBQ in 2015 in Medellin and have been following since then. We reconnected at Parallel18 this year and invested recently.

(more…)

LatAm List: Latin American Startup News in English

Category : Latin America Startups and Investing
Posted on by

Latin America’s entrepreneurs are solving some of the world’s most pressing challenges, yet there is only minimal English language coverage of their work. As a result, these stories remain confined to the region, hidden away in their native Spanish or Portuguese.

With major English-language tech publications covering only the biggest stories, generally $20M+ fundraising and big ticket acquisitions from the region’s most prominent startups who have been funded by US venture capitalists, English speakers only have limited access to insights on Latin America’s booming startup ecosystem.

After we started the Crossing Borders Podcast ~1 year ago to highlight entrepreneurs with amazing stories with some connection to Latin America, the feedback was overwhelming. Building on what we’d started, we realized that there was a pressing need to bring the US and Latin American startup ecosystems closer together and to keep the English-speaking public informed of current events in Latin American entrepreneurship.

To solve this issue, we launched a new Latin American tech news site, called LatAm List to cover the stories that the English tech media isn’t covering. These stories are already being shared by mostly Spanish-language sources like PulsoSocial, El Mercurio, La República, and many more and many are aggregated into the great LAVCA bi-weekly English newsletter. Unfortunately, the language barrier prevents these narratives from reaching a wider, more global audience. (more…)