Tag: magma china

Magma Partners First Half 2018 Update

Category : Magma Partners
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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.

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Ep 40 Jie Hao: How China Sees Latin America Startups

Category : Crossing Borders Podcast, Latin America Startups and Investing
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Jie Hao is a partner at Magma Partners who previously built and sold two companies before heading to Chile to look at investment opportunities in 2012. To make this podcast, I repurposed a segment of a conversation we had while I was in Shanghai for the launch of the partnership between Kr Space and Magma Partners to create the Sino-Latin American Accelerator. This conversation was a part of our doing business in Latin America course through 36Kr, China’s version of TechCrunch, where we taught Chinese entrepreneurs and investors about the growing opportunities for investing in Latin America.

In this short form episode of Crossing Borders, we talk about how Magma Partners got involved in China, why Chinese investment is important for Latin America, and how China and the US are looking at Latin America differently.

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Jie Hao at Remix (Chinese TED): Estonia’s e-Residency Will Change the World

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Adam Rang wrote an article on the e-Residency Blog about Magma Partners’ Jie Hao’s talk at the Remix Conference, China’s version of TED, about Estonia’s e-residency program. More than 5M people have watched it so far. From the article:

Estonia’s e-resident community has been growing at record speed so far in 2018, thanks in large part to new interest from entrepreneurs in south-east Asia — especially Korea, Japan, and China.

One person who has played a particularly significant role in this growth is Jie Hao, one of the first e-residents from China, who took to the stage at the Remix conference in December to discuss his thoughts about the e-Residency programme.

Hao is a serial entrepreneur, author, angel investor and a Partner at Latin American tech fund Magma Partners. He’s a passionate advocate of blockchain technology and teaches Chinese entrepreneurs to find global opportunities.

During his talk, Hao cited the analysis conducted by Deloitte into the economic impact of e-Residency, which revealed that e-residents make a positive contribution to Estonia and the country is projected to gain €100 for every €1 invested into the programme.

You can read the rest of Adam’s article which goes into more detail on the e-Residency Blog and can watch Jie’s whole talk, complete with English subtitles below:

Chinese Venture Capitalists and Startups are Making a Splash in Latin America

Category : Latin America Startups and Investing
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Note: a version of this article was originally published in Venture Beat with the title Chinese Investors Target Latin American Startups as US Investors Shy Away. This version has more background and information about Magma Partners.

China, a country with deep roots as an industrial powerhouse, is now determined to center its economy around technological development and innovation. With government support and outward investments on the rise, China is positioning itself to have a much greater role in the global technology market.

According to Yilong Du, Managing Partner at Latham & Watkins, there are many factors stimulating the growth of the technology sector in China. Firstly, economic growth is driving the Internet market and an explosion of Internet-based companies. In China, 731 million people have access to the Internet and 95.1% of these people access the Internet via mobile devices, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. A budding, Internet-savvy middle class, coupled with a strong supply of talent, is driving China’s technology sector and increasing the demand for innovative products and services.

Shenzhen Capital Group Co Ltd, a State-owned venture capital firm, is just one example of a firm increasing its investments abroad to bring new technology to China. Through investments in innovative companies overseas, the firm hopes to strengthen China’s technology and industrial structure, said Ni Zewang, chairman of the SCGC. Zewang also stated that by connecting more Chinese startups with overseas resources, they can help local companies mature faster. While SCGC’s investments overseas account for only 6% of its current total, it plans to increase the figure to 15% by 2020. (more…)