Santiago has experience in Digital, Inbound and Growth Marketing. Prior to Polymath, he worked in several digital and media agencies leading an executing data-driven marketing strategies for companies in sectors like Technology, Health, Telecom and and Goverment. He's passionate about digital culture, blockchain edtech and future of work.

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Marketing Manager

Santiago Pérez

Latin America consistently ranks among the top developing country markets of motor vehicles, with 350 motor vehicles per 1,000 people in Brazil in 2019, compared to 200 in China in 2020. Bogota, with a population of just over 8 million, has a staggering 2.3 million motor vehicles. A large motor vehicle market also means a large market for <a href="https://autolab.com.co/">auto repair services</a>. <a href="https://polymathv.com/ventures/autolab/">Autolab</a>, a <a href="https://polymathv.com/">Polymath Ventures</a> company, is Latin America’s leading auto repair and parts platform is committed to achieving transparency, standardization, and convenience in the category.In this new blog post, we talked to <a href="https://co.linkedin.com/in/salvador-zepeda-67bab716">Salvador Zepeda</a>, also known as Chava, the co-founder, and CEO of <a href="https://polymathv.com/ventures/autolab/">Autolab</a>, – Mexican with a master’s degree from <a href="https://www.stanford.edu/">Stanford University</a> and passionate about entrepreneurship -, who has spent the past 6 years understanding how the category works, its needs and most importantly its potential.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:52.91%;"><img src="/uploads/Salvador_Zepeda_Autolab_CEO_f30aa76037.jpeg"><figcaption>Salvador Zepeda, CEO &amp; Founder of Autolab</figcaption></figure><h2>The opportunity in Latin America</h2>The current auto repair market landscape in Latin America is highly fragmented. It is a $74 billion annual market, with an estimated 839,000 auto repair stores. 81% of them are small independent stores or small chains, and only 6% are dealerships.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:29.26%;"><img src="/uploads/Auto_repair_market_07d0115b81.png"><figcaption>Auto repair market Latin America</figcaption></figure>Traditional dealership shops located at the top have little competition, and despite being able to offer original parts and high-quality service, they have rather high premiums. For the average independent repair store, the competition among them is highly homogeneous. In order to attract more customers, they must offer lower prices and a wider variety of services, resulting in lower quality of parts and repairs. In addition, these independent shops are known for their lack of transparency and low trust.Latin American countries are developing countries with rapidly growing car ownership, so the auto repair market has great potential. The industry’s acceleration is mainly driven by two factors; the healthy recovery of the auto market and the growing base of independent auto repair shops. The recovery of the auto market is directly connected to the reopening of cities and revamp of global economies; according to Statista, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/200002">the global automobile sales</a> average is 70 million units per year. At the same time, users reluctant to buy new cars are shifting their buying behavior towards <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/06/23/2251774/0/en/Global-Automotive-Repair-and-Maintenance-Services-Market-to-Reach-678-4-Billion-by-2026.html">boosting the life and trade-in value of their vehicles</a>. Latin America is well-positioned to evolve this industry, due to the high concentration of owned cars.On the other hand, many of the independent shop owners in Latin America are also repair workers, who lack the awareness of marketing and innovation to boost their businesses to achieve incremental growth. Through design thinking and quantitative research, Zepeda and the Polymath team found that the biggest problem of the traditional auto repair model in Latin America is the mistrust and loss of efficiency caused by the information asymmetry between service providers and consumers.As the company moves forward, its leaders identified the opportunity around the specific target audience they are trying to impact. Dealerships seem to have strong resources to support their entry into the competition, but in fact, their target customers are not the same as Autolab. Most middle-class Latin American car owners only go to a dealership for maintenance during the warranty period. After their cars are out of warranty, they generally choose independent repairers with more affordable prices. For this reason, dealerships want Autolab to undertake the repair business after the warranty period. This could prevent the low-level service of individual repair shops from destroying the reputation of their products. In addition to dealerships, Autolab is also trying to cooperate with some errand platforms, which will undertake the transportation of cars between homes and repair shops to strengthen Autolab’s door-to-door service capability.<h2>What is Autolab?</h2>Autolab’s story starts in 2013 with the ideation process led by <a href="https://polymathv.com/about/">Polymath Ventures</a> around<a href="https://polymathv.com/seeds/labor-employment/"> labor in Colombia</a>. With a 30+ million person strong Colombian labor force, only about 50% of workers have formal jobs. About 5.3 million are informally employed, meaning without a legal employment contract, while 14.3% of the population is unemployed.At the time, the team realized that if the market was too small for employees to grow, they would just have to open the market up and make it bigger. Through a process of elimination and deep user testing, the team found that the auto repair business in Colombia was ripe for disruption through scale. The team prototyped “Autolab”, a full-service auto repair center that excelled in professionalism, and technical ability. And yes, they fixed a few cars.The company was officially launched in mid-August 2014 with 15 members. Three years later, its turnover exceeded $806K US and it had more than 70 employees. Today, Autolab has 50+ <a href="https://autolab.com.co/nuestras-sedes/">shops</a> in Colombia, with a presence in 13 cities. They recently launched their operation in <a href="https://autolab.mx/">Mexico with 2 shops</a>, and a B2B<a href="https://autolab.com.co/flotas/"> business</a> model in Colombia with the aim of transforming this segment through a disruptive tech solution and superior client service.Autolab has built a platform that unlocks incremental growth for independent auto repair shops while providing trustworthy and affordable solutions for car owners. Currently, there are over 500,000 independent auto repair shops in Latin America, most of them with limited growth opportunities due to a lack of knowledge in customer acquisition, client management and operations, and limited access to capital. Autolab is currently the largest chain of auto repair shops in Colombia with a distinctive business model designed to provide a best-in-class experience and dramatically improve the profitability of the shops in their network, up to a 700%+ increase in profit.For the car owners, Autolab designed a unique experience that solves their unattended needs and surpasses their expectations in service and transparency. Their service model includes a website and web app for instant quotation and notification of repair progress based on the shop inputs. To ensure the highest quality standards, their operation team monitors the overall evolution of each service from their control room.<figure class="image image-style-align-center image_resized" style="width:35.42%;"><img src="/uploads/Service_Selection_and_Quotation_d33d909bf2.png"><figcaption>&nbsp;Service Selection and Quotation</figcaption></figure><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:36.04%;"><img src="/uploads/Visualized_Vehicle_Health_Management_6f4923159a.png"><figcaption>Visualized Vehicle Health Management</figcaption></figure>Overall, Autolab achieves a four-way linkage in its platform business model. The consumer first checks off the required items, then get a quote, and chooses whether they want a pickup and delivery service, service at home or to go to the shop. After receiving the car from the owner, the Autolab shop network performs the repair work supported by the existing technology. For the spare parts, Autolab has built an affordable auto-parts procurement network to ensure the price is competitive and the delivery is timely. In addition to providing technical support and strategic direction, the company has set up a remote service center to handle both store issues and customer feedback, effectively facilitating the integration of the four major players on the platform.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:50.79%;"><img src="/uploads/Autolab_business_mode_5c21ed9f3c.png"><figcaption>Autolab's Business Model</figcaption></figure><h2>What is next for Autolab?</h2>COVID-19 impacted all aspects of Latin American socioeconomics, but in Zepeda’s view, the pandemic brought more opportunities to Autolab’s business as well. The regular epidemic prevention measures require reducing the use of public transportation, which also means weakening economic activities and reducing new car sales. These all greatly increase the use of older vehicles, as well as the demand for auto repair. The pandemic also has a profound impact on consumer behavior. People are forced to bear the cost of adapting to the online business model and become more accustomed to using online services instead of in-store visits.As an Internet company, Autolab’s mature and efficient platform model not only ensures its “survival” in the post-pandemic era but also has a promising future for growth. The milestones achieved over the past 12 months reflect the massive opportunity for Autolab and the overall industry. From August 2020 to July 2021, Autolab grew its shop network by 7x and revenues and shop visits by 4x. To extend its operation and impact, Autolab continues its growth with a talented team of 80 people under the leadership of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/salvador-zepeda-67bab716/">Salvador Zepeda</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewhallman1/">Andrew Hallman</a>.In 2021 the team continued pushing for new goals, first, they launched the operation in Mexico with 2 shops. Also, under the leadership of Andrew, the team is now launching a B2B2 service for fleetsAutolab’s business DNA is essentially about creating value for users with data and technology, so the company is also considering refining and improving existing technologies and algorithms in the auto repair industry, to apply them to more scenarios, such as expectations for retail consumption.

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Autolab – a New Choice of Auto Repair for LatAm Middle Class

Social Commerce trend has grown dramatically in the past years, recent research has forecasted that e-sales will exceed <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/272391/us-retail-e-commerce-sales-forecast/">$735 billion by 2023</a>. According to emarketer, retail e-commerce sales in Latin America grew <a href="https://www.emarketer.com/content/latin-america-ecommerce-forecast-2021">63.3% in 2020 to $104.60 billion.</a> <a href="https://elenas.co/">Elenas</a>, Latin America’s first Social Commerce Marketplace, is a good example of the rapid acceleration of the social commerce trend, which is powered by the virality of the marketing model and the establishment of existing social platforms.Social commerce is a new way of doing business, it is no longer about digitizing traditional channels or leveraging social media channels to increase traffic conversion. This new way of commerce enables new buying behaviors, where traditional stores, websites, or even apps are no longer the first destination for new customers. As this new model evolves and takes over Latin America, we talked to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachoschin/">Zach Oschin</a>, Founder &amp; CEO of Elenas to learn about how they developed the concept and his vision of the rise of social commerce in the region.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:48.93%;"><img src="/uploads/Zach_Oschin_Founder_Elenas_136db29cac.jpeg"><figcaption>Zach Oschin, Founder &amp; CEO - Elenas</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;<h2>Elenas: The Story</h2>In 2017, young American Zach Oschin moved to Colombia from South Africa, where he worked for a start-up company of e-commerce and logistics, to join Polymath Ventures in the research and design of new business models for the Latin American middle-class. He joined one of the <a href="https://polymathv.com/seed-company-design-process-explained">ideation processes</a> of the company, which at the time was researching working women in Latin America.Before founding Elenas, the team went through different iterations to actually understand the need and expectations of the segment. In the process, the team explored different solutions to get closer to working women, our core segment. These solutions led them to explore the after-school space, online psychological services, and the direct sales model. Ultimately, the core need of the segment was to generate extra income for their household, while securing high levels of productivity and efficiency.Elenas was launched in 2018 and by October of 2020, they raised a <a href="https://news.crunchbase.com/news/exclusive-elenas-lands-2m-seed-to-expand-commerce-platform-in-latin-america/">$2 million seed round</a> from <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/alpha4-ventures">Alpha4 Ventures</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/amador-holdings/">Amador Holdings</a>, <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/polymath-ventures">Polymath Ventures</a>, and <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/meesho">Meesho</a>. Then, in March 2021, it raised a <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/04/elenas-series-a/">$6 million A round.</a> Since its foundation, the team led by Zach has achieved remarkable milestones, proving the relevance of this new business model in Latin America and the impact it can generate in thousands of women, or ambassadors as they call them, looking to achieve social and economic growth.With a competitively attractive environment, Latin American e-commerce has developed rapidly during the COVID-19 epidemic. In 2020, the business of Elenas has increased by 25 times. In May 2021, Elenas expanded to Mexico.According to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/shuang-bin-05a33125/">Shuang Bin</a>, Elenas’s consultant and expert in the China-Latam supply chain, Latin American e-commerce is still in its early stage, with a shortage of supply and monotonous business models. Amidst this opportunity, Elenas is choosing the social commerce alternative, which connects the suppliers with local communities, also enabling increased access in areas where some of these services have never landed.<h2>How to gain customers’ trust with social networks?</h2>In 2017, the team realized Colombia’s local e-commerce business was at a relatively early stage. Though there existed many e-commerce companies in Latin America, they only owned 0.5% of the market in many categories.Latin American is wealthier than other emerging markets, and the penetration of the Internet and smartphones is higher. According to Statista, in 2019,<a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/218531/latin-american-smartphone-penetration-since-2008/"> smartphones accounted for 69 percent of all mobile connections in Latin America</a>, and the share is expected to increase to 80 percent by 2025. In the same time period, the share of the population in the region who has <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/218141/mobile-penetration-rate-in-latin-america-since-2007/">access to a mobile phone</a> will increase from 68 to 73 percent. So, if the overall behavior is healthy and the ecosystem is ready to foster new digital behaviors, why didn’t e-commerce rise?.In order to tackle this question, Zach and the team interviewed hundreds of Colombian citizens. Through the process, they found that lack of confidence was the first barrier, users preferred corner grocery stores over e-commerce platforms. Besides, selling happened via traditional direct channels, where people probably ordered products from magazines shared by friends. According to Zach, in China, daily necessities e-commerce has a 70% penetration rate, while in Latin America this number declined to about 50%. In Peru and Brazil, the rate is 25% and 17%, and the main reason is the direct selling tradition. The global No.1 direct sale company, <a href="https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&amp;ai=DChcSEwjHpqC27vLyAhUZisgKHWkQC60YABAAGgJxdQ&amp;sig=AOD64%5F0d32W1RrsvTYVVX%5F16akYxF9XHfg&amp;q&amp;nis=1&amp;adurl&amp;ved=2ahUKEwji%5FZS27vLyAhUrK7kGHXTnCvQQ0Qx6BAgDEAE">Natura</a>, is Brazilian. The key learning was that in Latin America, community culture has a strong foundation, social contact is crucial to unlocking trust, people want to share recommendations and exchange information about the product.At the time the direct sales model filled this gap, however, the model was not efficient and created unnecessary barriers to both the final customer and the seller. For example, direct sellers had to order products to their own places before pushing them to the customers, they spent time and took associated risks, in some cases they even had to pay upfront for the product before receiving the client’s payment.Precisely to disrupt these inefficiencies and to create an impactful channel for thousands of women in Latin America looking to increase their income, Elenas was born. This Social Commerce Marketplace has built a selling network of tens of thousands of ambassadors, over 90% of them are women, that are enabling their own digital businesses thanks to the extensive cooperation with both local factories and importers, which gives them access to more than 45k types of products.Elenas is leveraging the power of social connections to maintain the familiarity of the direct sales model, empowering ambassadors to sell to friends and family members. At the same time they are leveraging the most critical learnings of the traditional models to enhance the experience for both the ambassador (seller) and final customer through digital solutions and a growing network of local and international brands.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:49.12%;"><img src="/uploads/Mujeres_Poderosas_2123093965.jpeg"><figcaption>Elenas Ambassadors</figcaption></figure><h2>Elenas mission to empower women in Latin America</h2>At the beginning, the core topic of the research was working women and the expectations put on “guerreras” (female warriors!), as they referred to themselves, as they worked to balance family, relationships, and career. And as the team learned since the launch of the venture, the impact of Elenas is directly related to the social and economic conditions of the countries in which it operates, especially regarding issues of gender equality.Today, most of its sellers or embajadoras are housewives and university students, and a large proportion of the sales comes from small cities and rural areas. Lizbeth, a young 24 years old woman, living in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duitama">Duitama</a>, sustains her household expenses thanks to Elenas. In December of 2020, she earned over $3,000 US, which allowed her to pay the maintenance of her car, grocery shopping and rent.Elenas enables the opportunity to earn extra income while working from home and reducing barriers and risks. According to Zach, some of the most successful ambassadors who work full-time in the platform can earn thousands of dollars per month, up to 10x more than in the traditional direct model. Also, the sales commissions can go from 10% up to 40% for the ambassadors, which gives them incremental opportunities to earn more.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:54.16%;"><img src="/uploads/Elenas_7f20c3d65a.jpeg"><figcaption>Elenas enables women opportunities</figcaption></figure><h3>25x growth during the pandemic</h3>In 2020, the outbreak of COVID-19 changed the pace of Latin American e-commerce. At the beginning of the epidemic, Elenas faced several difficulties. With Chinese borders closed, many imported products could not arrive in Colombia. Then, the virus in Colombia cut the logistical network, so Elenas could not transport products from Bogotá to Medellín.However, when the Colombian logistics industry adapted to the epidemic, local e-commerce exploded just like in other regions around the world. In 2020, with the fastest sales growth, Latin America beat the Asian-Pacific region and became the champion of the e-commerce retail market. It has been estimated that <a href="https://oxfordbusinessgroup.com/news/how-covid-19-triggered-latin-american-e-commerce-boom">13M people across</a> Latin America made an online transaction for the first time last year.Elenas won from two different aspects. First, customers were looking for new shopping possibilities. They spent more time on the Internet and social media and hoped that products could be directly delivered home. Second, many were looking for a platform to earn money at home, which means more potential Embajadoras went to Elenas. Eventually, sales of Elenas increased 25x in 2020.In May 2021, Elenas landed in Mexico. As Polymath Ventures have learned in his extensive research, <a href="https://polymathv.com/push-pull-design-forces-in-colombia/">Latin American people share similar behaviors.</a> Generally speaking, due to lack of opportunities for female workers, women from small cities are looking for extra income, and they are used to traditional catalog sales. At the same time, the region is showing similar patterns of digital growth, presented in smartphone adoption and internet penetration.As Zach stated, “some of our top embajadoras receive more than 100 orders every month”. Today, 11M housewives are selling products via direct sales channels, said Zach, demands exist there, so we need to extend our scope and bring more people to Elenas.

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The rise of Social Commerce in Latin America

JP is a close advisor to Polymath he was previously our Chief Business Officer. &nbsp;Before that, he co-founded and led Ataria, a venture capital (VC) and corporate advisory firm. Academically, JP’s experience includes both teaching and research positions at Stanford University and Harvard University. JP holds a bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from Universidad de Lima, a Ph.D.(c) and an M.A. in Economics from Stanford University, an M.P.A. in International Development from Harvard University, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Advisor 

Juan Pablo Ortíz

Polymath Ventures is the Venture Studio for Latin America, we are a group of entrepreneurs building digital platforms to empower the middle-class. Our story as pioneers of the venture studio model and innovation leaders in Latin America started in 2012 under the leadership of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/wenyi-cai-5a99876/">Wenyi Cai</a>, our co-founder and CEO, who had an epiphany during her academic journey at Harvard; leveraging entrepreneurship in Latin America as a tool to encourage social and economic development and generate growth opportunities for the middle-classLatin America is the ideal emerging market for scalable business disruption: size and growth of the emerging middle class, regional integration, and tertiary education. Middle-class consumption is exploding across the region; consumption patterns show that Latin America will surpass the US by 2030. At the same time, the digital adoption rate of this segment also reflects its readiness for more sophisticated solutions. By 2020 the smartphone penetration in Latin America, China, and the US was around 70%.Now, methodologically facing some of the challenges and opportunities requires an intentional approach. Building for the emerging middle-class looks very different than hubs like Silicon Valley, so how you design, launch, and fund companies need to look different. At our core, we combine powerful solutions for the emerging middle class with exceptional teams that have the ability and hunger to build big.As the idea of Polymath Ventures evolved, Wenyi dropped her MPA and MBA studies at Harvard and Stanford University in 2012 and relocated to Bogota, Colombia to launch Polymath Ventures, the first Venture Studio in Latin America. Since then the company has built over 200 business concepts, 11 ventures, <a href="https://polymathv.com/ventures/">6 of them still operating</a>, raised over $45M US in capital, and built a team of 315+ talented individuals.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:50.12%;"><img src="/uploads/Polymath_s_Venture_Portafolio_d98766441a.png"><figcaption>Ventures built by Polymath Ventures</figcaption></figure>So, what do we do at Polymath Ventures? We create companies from scratch and go along with them through the whole journey, giving them advice, capital, talent, and safeguarding the maintenance of the culture of Polymath, so all our ventures turn around the same consonance. Below we are covering the most relevant components of our model and answering some of the most frequent questions about what do we do and how do we do it.<h2>THE VENTURE STUDIO MODEL</h2>Venture Studios are company builders, matching business ideas with proven entrepreneurs. They/We test ideas and back them with funding and resources to launch and grow powerful and scalable startups. Unlike accelerators and incubators that receive applications from startups, Venture Studios start with their own ideas to create companies from scratch; ideas are born, validated, and developed from within the studio.<ol><li>Design the company: Our talented team of Business Designers uncovers large opportunities through months of intensive research, business thinking, and iteration, by going to the streets to find out what the needs are, connecting with people, running interviews through the different places where they feel that something’s missing.</li><li>Recruit the founders: During the process of design, we start to assemble founding teams of the best international talent to lead the launch and growth of the business. We always look for passionate people, committed to Polymath´s values, with a huge growth mindset and an entrepreneurial soul ready to put their hands on to lift their venture.</li><li>Accelerate the business: We work full time alongside the founders, the core team of builders, and the early-stage team during the first year of operation leveraging agile and lean methodologies to build and accelerate the venture. As the venture matures, we support the recruitment and building of the early-stage team and support other strategic functions through core experts teams within Polymath, such as fundraising, growth, branding, finance and accounting, legal, talent acquisition, and development. Everything we do aims to drastically de-risk the company (making it more likely to succeed big).</li><li>Assemble the capital: We provide funding to design and launch the business and we support the venture in subsequent financing rounds. One of the most difficult parts of building a company from scratch is finding the capital to make it happen. For this reason, we have structured and launched PVG, a “corporate entity” structure that provides capital to our ventures during their lifecycles, from Series Pre-Seed to Series C.</li><li>Support the venture: We supply the venture with continued hands-on support in tech, finance, marketing, talent, fundraising, strategy &amp; biz development. Our core is to develop technological solutions, not only to cover the people’s needs but to make it in an easier way that eases development and growth. Our proficient team will always be available to start new projects that add value to our ventures.</li></ol>&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:68.1%;"><img src="/uploads/Polymath_Ventures_methodology_099681e4ed.jpeg"><figcaption>Venture Studio Methodology</figcaption></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/comp-icons-1.jpg" alt=""></figure><h2>How do venture studios get financed?</h2>Our investment model provides value to both entrepreneurs and investors. We support our entrepreneurs with capital during the ideation (Series Pre-Seed), launch (Series Seed), and growth (Series A-C) phases. To solve the capital constraints in the region, we are able to lead follow-on funding rounds and leverage our extensive network of investors. From an entrepreneur’s perspective, this significantly de-risks their business and helps them to grow at a faster pace. For investors, we have built a “corporate entity” that provides upside potential but with risk reduction coming from both a diversified portfolio and the advantages of having a group structure in terms of knowledge and capabilities sharing, talent, data, and resilience during hard times. If you want to learn more about our fundraising history, we highly recommend <a href="https://polymathv.com/fundraising-in-latin-america-our-journey/?utm%5Fsource=Digital&amp;utm%5Fmedium=Blog&amp;utm%5Fcampaign=IntroToPv-Fundraising">this blog post</a> sharing our journey.<h2>Our methodology</h2>In order to implement the Venture Studio model, we need the right methodology to build from scratch. We designed our own <a href="https://bit.ly/3kmBuZg">Company Building</a> methodology that combines Human-Centered design, high experimentation, and iteration, along with an entrepreneurial toolkit. This methodology consists of 4 phases, going from ideation to acceleration, each phase has clear timelines, deliverables, and objectives. We designed this methodology to build market-transforming business models. It’s about finding a big untapped opportunity and building a 10x better product. Especially to serve the mass demographic in Latin America, it also means business model innovation.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:58.75%;"><img src="/uploads/Company_building_methodology_0e22300cf5.png"><figcaption>Company Building Methodology&nbsp;</figcaption></figure>If you want to have an in-depth view of our**<a href="https://bit.ly/3kmBuZg"> Company Building </a>**methodology, we recommend our <a href="https://bit.ly/3kmBuZg">latest playbook</a>, which summarizes how we do what we do and some of our best-kept secrets to successfully build ventures for the emerging middle-class in Latin America.<h2>The secret sauce of venture studios</h2>Today there are more than 200 venture studios around the world, according to the <a href="https://www.enhance.online/startup-studio-map/">Studio mapping</a> done by Enhance. Each of them has a unique approach to the process, for example, we leverage four major components that we consider critical to the success of our operation.Deep understanding of the segment. Successful company building relies on the right identification of opportunities. It’s not about what startups get the most funding or the trendiest business model, it’s about solving deeply unmet needs and achieving product-market fit before scaling.Reaching Product-Market-Fit. Reaching Product-Market Fit is necessary before investing in growth, and it is usually a ~12 month iterative journey because of the need to find a 10x value proposition. To do so we have built a digital growth engine focused on customer understanding and engagement, experimentation and metrics, and an appropriate technology stack.We move fast. We aim to reduce uncertainty, and to do so we embrace experimentation and failure as a part of our journey. Our systematic approach and clear alignment on this mindset allow us to be agile and make as many mistakes at the least possible cost to make sure we continue learning.Access to global talent. To build disruptive business models you need exceptional talent, so we have designed a scientific approach to talent acquisition that allows us to recruit, develop and grow entrepreneurial talent that shares our building vision.As pioneers of Venture Studios in Latin America, we are committed to strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the region, influencing how corporations innovate, and overall generating awareness about the importance of building intentional solutions to face some of the most complex challenges of our times.

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The Venture Studio model in Latin America

Before joining Polymath, Shawn co-founded and was Managing Partner at August Hill, a global leader in advisory services for startups and industry operators. At August Hill, he worked with clients across various funding stages worldwide. Before that, he was a Partner at Moderne Ventures, where he helped raise and deploy capital, conducted due diligence, and managed LP partnerships, overseeing a portfolio of over 125 startups. Shawn has also held executive positions at major technology companies like DocuSign and Constellation Software. With 25 years of experience in venture capital, strategy, business development, and operations, Shawn is also active in supporting underserved founders and mentoring in several VC accelerators. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Rowan University and is based in Mexico City.

Venture Partner

Shawn Hill

Building a <a href="https://polymathv.com/about/">Venture Studio</a> with the right capabilities to systematically build new startups requires, among other things, access to capital. Fundraising in Latin America has its own challenges and characteristics and after nine years doing it, we have acquired a massive amount of learnings that we believe are worth sharing.We met with our co-founder and CFO, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlos-fern%C3%A1ndez-de-la-pradilla-a786711/">Carlos Fernandez de la Pradilla</a> to talk about our journey, the key learnings and the most valuable lessons other founders can elevate when fundraising in Latin America.<h2>How did we start?</h2>In the early days, around June of 2012, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/wenyi-cai-5a99876/">Wenyi</a> was leading the conception and structure of Polymath as a Venture Studio. As a foreign entering a new market her first move was to provide the seed capital to kick off the journey. Instead of fundraising from external sources in an unknown market, she wanted to focus on the creation of what we called Labs1.Labs 1 was our <a href="https://polymathv.com/seeds/transportation/">first seed</a> vehicle, which was focused on researching the transportation ecosystem in Colombia. At the time, a team of five, 2 designers, 2 business people, and an engineer observed urban mobility behaviors of real users in their daily lives. This research allowed us to surfaced complex market insights and exciting areas of opportunity.From smart bus stops to personal security networks, the team iterated and tested their ideas in the field until one concept, a safer taxi, began to take real action. By early Q3 of 2012, we had our first concept on the ground, Taximo, a data-driven vehicle leasing platform for Latin America’s ride-sharing market. We started fundraising with friends and family and then started our first approach with angel investors in LatAm.<h2>What is our fundraising strategy?</h2>Our fundraising strategy has two levels of complexity, on one hand, early-stage fundraising in Latin America has its own dynamics, then we need to consider that fundraising for Ventures is very different than doing it for a Venture Studio, no matter the region.The value proposition of these structures is dramatically different. Venture Investors are usually big corporations, family offices, and VCs, which are mainly looking for economic returns, knowledge, and business synergies due to their structures. The venture’s structure is clear when considering disinvestment objectives and timelines. In this sense, the fundraising strategy for the ventures of our portfolio aligns with the expectations of the market. We build high-growth startups that can provide the desired results.On the other hand, our value proposition as a Venture Studio mainly focuses on knowledge, learnings, and synergies, and lastly on returns. We know it is a long-term investment, primarily because we are not looking to sell in short periods of time, and that does not necessarily match with the expectations of the more traditional institutional investors.As a Venture Studio, we operate as a holding company that designs ventures from scratch. We leverage our entrepreneurial methodology, the right talent, our deep knowledge in the emerging middle-class, and the acquired expertise after nine years of building. This scheme allows investors to unlock richer partnerships, reduce their risk through a diversified portfolio, and access a broader network of talent, advisors, and experts.The evolution of our fundraising strategy for the Venture Studio considers a stronger relationship with Corporations looking to enter the digital native ecosystem along with proven entrepreneurs. This relationship does not necessarily reflect on direct investment, but it clearly unlocks valuable partnerships focused on co-building along with them.Our long-term strategy as a Venture Studio led us to build an ever-green funding structure, different than closed-end funds, which allow us to eliminate any predefined exit deadlines and better tackle the volatility of Latin America.<h2>Biggest wins fundraising in Latin America</h2>After nine years and $41M of capital raised, we feel very proud of our results. First of all, as a portfolio, we have been able to raise relevant amounts both for capital and debt, which is truly significant considering the investment behavior in Latin America (without Brasil) and the nature of our structure which at the time was relatively unknown. This amount is a reflection of our work and the trust of our investors, who believe in the power of building for Latin America.Beyond our track record, we feel particularly proud of being part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem acceleration in the region; enabling the arrival of renowned international investors, 60% of our capital comes from outside Latin America, and building a stronger bridge of collaboration between local entrepreneurs, corporations, and family offices looking to extend their presence in the region.Lastly, I would like to highlight the work we have been doing to bring methodologies and formality to the fundraising exercise. It is no doubt that within the startup ecosystem there is a gap between ideas and methodologies. In fact, one of the key reasons for startup failure is the lack of proper research before launch and the lack of formal tools to support pivots and achieve product-market fit.Amongst this, we made sure that our methodology covered these gaps. We have built an entrepreneurial toolkit that ensures proper research in the initial stages, we have also designed a validation stage that ensures we prove desirability and viability. Lastly, our studio structure allows supporting the designed ventures in the most advanced stages of the process.This ensures they have the right tools to cover potential pivots, continue applying internal methodologies to better understand the business, and access a platform of experts, resources, and stakeholders.<h2>Fundraising in Latin America: Our advice</h2><ul><li>Fundraising is an ultramarathon, not a sprint. We have experienced 38 rounds of financing, over 2K pitchings, 6K investor leads, so you must know this is an ongoing process that requires continuous preparation and follow-up.</li><li>Fundraising is a fundamental skill of a startup CEO. As a Venture Studio that recruits founders, we always have this component in mind.</li><li>Fundraising requires planning. Consider leaving some margin in your cash flow, and always have at least one additional plan.</li><li>Manage a disciplined process. Start by building your investment thesis, which will help you identify your target leads and qualify them. Once you have that structure, build your timelines to follow up and always consider that it’s not closed until the money is in the bank.</li><li>Each round is different. When you are raising Series Seed, you must prove that you have identified and articulated the problem and a good team. When you move forward to Series A, Investors are looking for Product plus Market Fit. Then Series B is all about scalability.</li><li>Always be honest. Good businesses do not need to be over-embellished. If you have built something differential, with a great team and a clear growth plan, feel confident you are starting with the right foot.</li><li>Nothing beats building a good business. So make sure you focus on your building methodology. This will support the first fundraising stages when you need to prove the value of your concept.</li></ul>

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Fundraising in Latin America: Our Journey

Colombia has one of the most dynamic and competitive economies in Latin America; Colombia’s VC landscape continues to flourish and the rapid acceleration of the ecosystem shows the potential of the country. In this new blog post, our team analyzes the current VC Landscape and Investment Opportunities through a deep dive into the state of the top industries, the most relevant players in VC and CVC, and an overview of the international investment coming to the region.In 2019, startups in Colombia received more than 1.1 billion U.S dollars, up from only 20 million dollars reported in 2017, according to Statista. In early 2021, Colombia’s unicorn company Rappi announced the official launch of <a href="https://calendly.com/maria-polchlopek/30min-1">Rappi Bank</a> and <a href="https://calendly.com/maria-polchlopek/30min-1">Rappi Travel</a>, just a few months after closing a $300M round. Around the same time, other startups closed important rounds, <a href="https://news.crunchbase.com/news/colombias-la-haus-raises-35m-to-digitize-latams-residential-real-estate/">La Haus raised $35M</a>, and social-commerce pioneer <a href="https://news.crunchbase.com/news/colombias-la-haus-raises-35m-to-digitize-latams-residential-real-estate/">Elenas raised $6M</a>.The rapid development of Rappi, along with the exponential growth of the entrepreneurial ecosystem reflects the take-off of LatAm’s venture capital market in recent years. In 2019, LatAm’s venture capital financing amount exceeded 4.6 billion US dollars, of which Colombia’s financing amount alone was as high as 1.09 billion US dollars, which ranked second in LatAm, far exceeding Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and other countries.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:74.22%;"><img src="/uploads/Lat_Am_s_venture_capital_3154223556.png"><figcaption>LatAm’s venture capital financing amount has doubled since 2016 (Source: LAVCA)</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;<h2>Macroeconomic Pattern Of Colombia</h2>Colombia is the fourth-largest economy in LatAm, with a land area of about five times that of the United Kingdom and a population of nearly 50 million. According to the World Bank, the annual GDP growth rate in 2019 was 3.3% and despite the impact of COVID-19, the country has shown a sustained recovery that will be consolidated in the second half of 2021 with an expected GDP growth of 4.8%.Colombia’s positioning is also related to the fast growth rate of internet penetration and mobile adoption; Internet penetration in Colombia stood at 68.0% in January 2021, reporting 1.3M more users than 2020. While, according to Statista, the penetration rate of mobile voice services in Colombia amounted to 134.2 percent in 2019, which means that there were more than 1.34 mobile lines per inhabitant in the South American country.Some of these key metrics were reaffirmed during the pandemic; e-commerce giant MercadoLibre, which is active in the country, revealed that <a href="https://www.larepublica.co/empresas/cuatro-de-cada-10-colombianos-modificaron-sus-preferencias-de-consumo-ecommerce-2994870">four out of 10 Colombians</a> had changed their purchasing habits through e-commerce as a result of COVID-19. Overall, online sales in Colombia <a href="https://thebogotapost.com/a-look-into-colombias-e-commerce-industry-in-the-time-of-covid-19/46214/">increased by 47%</a> from February to March with a 29% increase in sales in the first week of April.Today, Colombia is one of the countries with the most stable economic development, one of the best business environments, the most innovative vitality, and one of the most promising VC ecosystems in LatAm.<h2>Investment Opportunities</h2><h3>Fintech</h3>Among all those star tracks, Fintech takes the lead, accounting for about one-third of the venture financing. Colombia, as a pioneer of Internet innovation in LatAm, is the bellwether of Fintech’s development.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:50.35%;"><img src="/uploads/Fintech_gets_the_most_financing_f084c748c1.png"><figcaption>Fintech gets the most financing</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;Fintech gets the most financingAccording to the latest data released by Finnovista, the Fintech sector in Colombia grew by 26% in the past year or <a href="https://www.valoraanalitik.com/2021/04/24/industria-fintech-crecio-211-cuatro-anos-segun-rapicredit/">212%</a> between 2016 and 2020.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Screen_Shot_2021_05_11_at_5_09_46_PM_1_a555b23d6e.png"><figcaption>Fintech Radar Chart of Colombia (Source: Finnovista)</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;Among the 220 active start-ups, <a href="http://aflore.com/">Aflore</a>, a company built <a href="https://polymathv.com/ventures/aflore/">by Polymath Ventures</a>, has attracted wide attention thanks to its innovative model that aims to solve the financial exclusion in Latin America. The company recently raised both debt and equity rounds, the first one for US $10 million in debt from Accial Capital and then a $6.6M pre-Series B funding round led by <a href="https://www.womensworldbanking.org/gender-lens-investing/">Women’s World Banking Capital Partners II</a>. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/amador-holdings">Amador Holding</a>, <a href="https://unreasonablecapital.com/">Unreasonable Capital</a>, and <a href="https://polymathv.com/">Polymath Ventures</a>. Since 2014, Aflore has issued more than 25 thousand loans to individuals and businesses, with a total value of nearly $20 million.Aflore is changing how Colombians experience the financial system, mainly because thanks to its innovative approach they are enabling access to a demographic that historically has been neglected by the traditional structures. This is possible thanks to an empowered network of over 23,000 informal advisors who use Aflore’s digital platform to offer financial products to their friends and family networks.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:60.44%;"><img src="/uploads/How_Aflore_works_1024x401_1_54130b3366.png"><figcaption>How Aflore works</figcaption></figure> &nbsp;<h3>Distribution Apps</h3>Speaking of the sectors with rapid expansion during the epidemic, we can not miss the distribution industry. According to Statista, the <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/857243/food-delivery-apps-colombia-download-share/">most popular distribution apps</a> in Colombia during the pandemic were Rappi and Domicilios.com. As one of the fastest-growing companies in LatAm, Rappi has more than 25 thousand delivery workers in Bogota alone, occupying 61% of the distribution market in Colombia. According to Matías Lask, general manager of Rappi, before the pandemic, the company’s app downloads were about 10 thousand per month. However, when the epidemic became serious in July 2020, the demand for apps increased sharply, and the total number of APP downloads reached 600K.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:42.66%;"><img src="/uploads/Rappi_colombia_8c95e9ff75.jpeg"><figcaption>Rappi Workers</figcaption></figure><h3>E-commerce</h3>As the only country with a Ministry of E-commerce in LatAm, the Colombian government has given full attention to the development of e-commerce. In the first half of 2020, the growth rate of E-commerce sales has reached an amazing 230% in LatAm. Of the 50 million Colombians, nearly 34 million started using the Internet during this period, of which about 22 million became online shopping users. Now, Colombia is considered the fourth largest E-commerce market in LatAm and is expected to generate 6 billion US dollars of E-commerce sales by 2022.In 2020, the per capita E-commerce consumption expenditure in Colombia was 557 thousand pesos (about US $150). Vertically, the figure is 125% higher compared to the 246 thousand pesos (about US $69) in 2016; horizontally, the per capita amount in Colombia has exceeded the average level in LatAm (about US $132).<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:63.45%;"><img src="/uploads/Colombia_s_per_capita_E_commerce_5547359a96.png"><figcaption>Colombia’s per capita E-commerce consumption expenditure increases year by year (Source: BlackSip)</figcaption></figure>At present, the top E-commerce platforms in Colombia are all non-local companies, including Mercadolibre and Mercadoshops in Argentina, Dafiti in Brazil, and Linio in Mexico. This also reflects the openness of the Colombian market and the activeness of E-commerce in LatAm. Local representative E-commerce startups in Colombia include BlackSip, which provides digital transformation services, and <a href="https://elenas.co/">Elenas</a>, a social E-commerce platform built by Polymath Ventures,<h3>E-health</h3>The epidemic has accelerated the spread of online applications and digital technologies in all areas. Among them, E-health and online education have achieved significant growth, and have brought rare opportunities for investors and foreign technology companies. Due to the epidemic blockade, people are turning to online services in education and medical care.According to Statista, as of May 2020, the total number of online medical appointments in LatAm has reached nearly 1.5 million, and various online medical platforms in Colombia have developed rapidly during the period. In September 2020, 1Doc3 received a total of 690 thousand visits; during the epidemic, the number of online appointments on doc-doc increased by 300%; Lentesplus, a platform focused on contact lenses, has received about US $31.7 million in financing.<figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Lentesplus_471ddf5d94.png"><figcaption>Promotional activities on Lentesplus’s website</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;<h2>Colombia’s VC LANDSCAPE</h2>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/VC_1_720x480_cb5b57bd11.jpeg"><figcaption>Main VCs and CVCs in Colombia</figcaption></figure><h3>Top VCs in Colombia</h3><ul><li><a href="https://alive-ventures.com/home-en/">Acumen LatAm Capital Partners（ALCP</a>：ALCP focuses on agriculture, education, and energy in Colombia, Peru, and Central America. The portfolio includes SunColombia, Crehana, and Levee.</li><li><a href="http://ewa.capital/">Ewa Capital</a>：Ewa Capital focuses on education, health care, financial services, and retail. The portfolio includes companies such as Platzi, Mercqueo, and 1DOC3.</li><li><a href="http://inqlab.co/">InQlab：</a>InQlab mainly invests in seed-stage and round A, with an average investment amount of US $0.3 billion. The portfolio includes Lentesplus, Laika, and Mesfix.</li><li><a href="https://co.linkedin.com/company/impulsum-ventures">Impulsum Ventures</a>：Impulsum Ventures focus on seed rounds. The portfolio includes Sempli and Vozy.</li><li><a href="https://magmapartners.com/">Magma Partners</a>: Magma Partners originated in Chile, with offices in Colombia, Mexico, the United States, and China. The portfolio includes companies such as Truora and Omnibank.</li><li><a href="https://capria.vc/network/odiseo/">Odiseo</a>：A venture capital fund widely supported by domestic and foreign investors. The portfolio includes companies such as Mesfix.</li><li><a href="https://www.velumventures.com/">Velum Inverlink</a>：Velum Inverlink focuses on seed round investment of start-ups in Latin America. The portfolio includes OFI, Hogaru, and Merqueo.</li></ul><h3>Top CVC in Colombia</h3>According to Wayra’s research, CVC in Colombia invested $50 million in startups (50% of which went to venture capital) in 2019. Unlike in other countries, companies in Colombia are very willing to invest in start-ups rather than just cooperate through business alliances.<ul><li><a href="https://startupeable.com/directorio/venture-capital/bancolombia-ventures/">Bancolombia Ventures:</a> The venture capital division of Bancolombia, one of the largest banks in Colombia. The portfolio includes Plug＆Play Fintech.</li><li><a href="http://www.fcp-innovacion.com/">FCP Innovation</a>：FCP Innovation focuses on high-tech innovative enterprises applied in public services. The portfolio includes Leal, Choice, and Playvox.</li><li><a href="http://www.veronorte.com/en/">Veronorte</a>：Veronorte primarily invests in insurance, health, and financial services, as well as in energy, infrastructure, and construction. The portfolio includes companies such as Alkanza and Acendo.</li></ul><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:64.21%;"><img src="/uploads/VC_Landscape_0c85f5cd5e.jpeg"><figcaption>Other Main VCs in Colombia</figcaption></figure><h3>Accelerator / Incubator / Company Builders</h3><ul><li>Antwerp Ventures：A start-up focusing on the food and beverage industry, with a cumulative investment of about $15 thousand in the seed round.</li><li><a href="https://bictia.com/">BICTIA</a>：Funded by the Norwegian government, they mainly invests in technology-based enterprises (AI, big data, IOT, E-commerce, etc.). Its start-ups include Ruedata.</li><li><a href="https://ventures.com.co/site/">CorporaciónVentures：</a>Columbia start-up accelerator. Its start-ups include Going, Coschool, and Holi</li><li><a href="https://polymathv.com/">Polymath Ventures</a>：Polymath Ventures is the Venture Studio for Latin America with 9+ years of experience building digital platforms to empower the middle-class. Operating since 2012 and with offices in Bogota, Mexico City, and Lima, Polymath has generated 200 business concepts, launched 10 ventures, seven of them still operating, and raised US$41M+ of equity across the group. Its start-ups include Aflore, Autolab, Elenas, and Ropstar.</li><li><a href="https://www.rockstart.com/">Rockstart</a>：A Dutch-based venture accelerator and venture capital fund with an office in Colombia. Focus on cutting-edge technologies such as AI, blockchain, and sensors. Its start-ups include La Manicurista and Foody.</li></ul><h3>Government Innovation Agency</h3><ul><li><a href="https://apps.co/765/w3-channel.html">Apps.co：</a>Established by the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications of Colombia to promote the creation and development of technology start-ups, it focuses on mobile applications, software, and content development. Apps.co have worked with 2175 teams and companies. Its start-ups include Peiky, Vozy, and Datagran.</li><li><a href="https://www.innpulsacolombia.com/">iNNpulsa Colombia</a>：It’s an entrepreneurial innovation organization jointly established by the government of Colombia, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, and the Ministry of Tourism, and is responsible for promoting the development of start-ups in Colombia. Its start-ups include Ecobot, Paqua, and Smart Coin.</li><li><a href="http://www.rutanmedellin.org/">Ruta N</a>：As the business innovation center of Medellin, Colombia’s second-largest city, it was founded to promote technology and innovation as well as advanced business ideas.</li></ul><h3>Angel Investors</h3>In Colombia’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, angel investors and family offices are very active.<ul><li><a href="https://co.linkedin.com/company/bilbao-2">B2 Capital</a>：B2 capital was founded by Andrés Bilbao, co-founder of Rappi, and Daniel Bilbao, co-founder of Truora.</li><li><a href="https://www.invx.co/">INVX</a>：A venture capital fund in Medellin and Bogota. The portfolio includes OFI, TPaga, and Foody.</li><li><a href="https://angelesinversionistas.com.co/web/">Red de Ángeles Inversionistas</a>：Located in Medellin, it has made nearly 50 investments in many cities across the country. The portfolio includes companies such as Ayenda, Liftit, and Rebus.</li><li><a href="https://www.ventura.net.co/en/">Ventura</a>：Home office based in Colombia, investing in start-ups in Latin America, Central America, and Mexico. The portfolio includes Rappi, Truora, and Logysto.</li></ul>&nbsp;<h2>International Investors role in Colombia’s VC landscape</h2>In March 2019, Softbank announced the establishment of a $5 billion Softbank Innovation Fund (SIF) for targeted investment in LatAm technology enterprises. As soon as the news came out, global capital set off a wave of upsurge to enter LatAm, making the total amount of VC financing 2.3 times more than that in 2018. In April of the same year, Softbank invested US $1 billion in Rappi, Colombia’s unicorn company, which is the largest financing deal of LatAm technology companies so far. In February 2020, Softbank announced US $1 billion for the SIF in addition to the previous investment, and another US $200 million was injected a year later to establish a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) for LatAm technology enterprises.Alibaba, Didi, Tencent, and other Chinese Internet giants are <a href="https://polymathv.com/china-and-latin-america-time-to-collaborate">also entering the market in succession.</a> Recently, Alibaba and Ruta N, Colombia’s government innovation and entrepreneurship service platform, have reached a cooperation, including the establishment of an IT center, the provision of training for about 200 business owners, and the incubation of local enterprises. It plans to transform Medellin, the “Silicon Valley in Latin America”, into the LatAm E-commerce center.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:44.63%;"><img src="/uploads/Alibaba_b1e9e5c710.jpeg"><figcaption>Alibaba</figcaption></figure>According to the World Bank, Colombia’s economy is expected to rebound in 2021-2022, especially with the help of the technology industry. Under the favorable economic environment of recovery, the establishment of the enterprise ecosystem, the support of the government, and the influx of international capital are bound to bring Colombia opportunities to surpass.

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Intro to Colombia’s VC Landscape

Maria Paula is the Marketing Director at Polymath Ventures, the Venture Studio for Latin America. Before joining Polymath, she worked at Uber leading brand partnerships to unlock business goals, including deals to improve the quality of life of active drivers and enhance brand positioning. She also worked at Twitter as Events and Campaigns Manager for Spanish-speaking markets in Latin America. Earlier in her career, she worked with Sony Pictures Television and Telcom giant Millicom. Maria Paula holds a bachelor's degree in Communications and has studies on Leadership and Strategy from HBX.

Alumni

Maria Paula Polchlopek 

We are a <a href="https://polymathv.com/">multicultural organization</a>. Born in Colombia with <a href="https://polymathv.com/about/">Chinese-American and Spanish founders</a> and a clear purpose towards the Latin American middle-class, we are always looking to expand our collaboration bonds with markets that can elevate our work. Our relationship with China began a few years ago, through the obvious connection with our Founder and CEO, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/wenyi-cai-5a99876/">Wenyi Cai</a>, and it has become an important source of trends, know-how, talent, and allies looking to expand their presence in Latin America. In this new blog post, we talk a bit more about why are building a strong bridge between China and Latin America.<h2>China and Latin America: The similarities</h2>With an advanced digital economy and a well-developed tech ecosystem, China has invested billions of dollars in emerging markets, historically focusing on India and South East Asia.In 2019, <a href="https://time.com/5936037/us-china-latin-america-influence/#:~:text=Today%2C%20China%20is%20South%20America's,%2C%20roads%2C%20dams%20and%20railways.&amp;text=For%20China%2C%20the%20investment%20brings%20political%20returns.">Chinese companies invested $12.8 billion in Latin America</a>, up 16.5% from 2018, concentrating on regional infrastructures such as ports, roads, dams, and railways. Also, China represents 4% of all venture capital in Latin America and more and more Chinese investors began to realize that China and Latin America share similar market conditions, making a mutual understanding and their experience very relevant to the region.In fact, China’s Internet giants have already taken action. In 2018 alone, big events in their expansion in Latin America include <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/03/didi-confirms-it-has-acquired-99-in-brazil-to-expand-in-latin-america/">DiDi’s acquisition of Brazilian shared mobility leader 99</a>, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tencent-holdings-nubank-m-a-idUKKCN1MI20L">Tencent’s stake in FinTech company Nubank</a>, and <a href="https://lavca.org/2018/09/13/ggv-capital-leads-us63m-series-a-in-brazilian-mobility-startup-yellow/">GGVCapital’s lead in bike-sharing company Yellow.</a>&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:73.87%;"><img src="/uploads/Image_Blog_China_2_099d6069e1.png"><figcaption>Chinese Internet Giants in LatAm since 2014</figcaption></figure>Amongst all emerging markets, China and Latin America have the most similar market conditions. The GDP per capita (PPP) of China and Latin America is relatively close, both around $17,000; and the ratios of the middle class to the total population are both 30%. In terms of Internet penetration rate, average daily use time, mobile Internet penetration rate, and other indicators, Latin America is also much higher than developing countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa, even exceeding China. These have laid the foundation for the Latin American Internet industry to learn from China’s experience.<h2>China and Latin America Tech Alliance: How it started?</h2>Witnessing such an exciting process and forecasting the massive opportunities this bridge may develop, we foresee that Latin America will be the next China, leapfrogging to a digital economy, in which Digital revenues will dominate or compete for leadership in the B2C landscape and the middle class will drive the adoption of digital solutions. We also believe that the development of the digital industry in China can provide Latin America with inspiration on all aspects of talent, business models, strategies, financing, and so on.Therefore in 2019, we decided to formalize our cross-border tech collaboration between China and Latin America, and further launched the China-LatAm Tech Alliance Initiative, aiming to bridge the information gap between the two regions and unlock true opportunities for collaboration.The Latin American Internet venture capital market is currently facing three main challenges: limited access to capital, scarcity of tech know-how, and high costs to reinvent the business model. Our understanding is that most of these challenges can be addressed through this cross-regional collaboration, Chinese corporations and investors have the capital and expertise to support the evolution of raising startups in our region. Chinese venture capitalists systematically evaluate tech businesses and have enabled the rise of the largest unicorn ecosystem in the world. Their tech companies have developed and applied mature technologies and have been continuously innovating new business models that have proven to fit the needs of China’s massive middle class, which can definitely be a great source of learning for Latin American entrepreneurs looking to solve similar challenges.<h2>Leveraging CHINA expertise to elevate LatAm startups</h2><a href="https://elenas.co/">Elenas</a>, Polymath’s digital direct sales platform, also the first digital direct sales company in LatAm, accelerated its product-market-fit due to its close relationship with <a href="https://meesho.com/">Meesho</a> and one of its leading angel investors from China. As India’s No.1 digital direct sales platform, Meesho not only became the <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/04/elenas-series-a/">anchor investor for Elena’s Series A round</a>, it also provided relevant learnings and best practices about their journey and their growth strategy.Another example is <a href="https://www.uala.com.ar/">Ualá</a>, Argentina’s leading digital bank, which took inspiration from <a href="https://pay.weixin.qq.com/index.php/public/wechatpay">WeChat Pay</a> to develop its own product roadmap thanks to the strategic investment from China. In 2019, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/25/argentine-fintech-uala-raises-150m-led-by-tencent-and-softbank/">Tencent’s corporate venture capital led Ualá’s $150 million Series C</a> round. Tencent also provided critical strategic advisory from its experience with WeChat Pay, including which product features are prioritized in WeChat Pay, how WeChat Pay defined prices for its financial services, and so on, which greatly sped up Uala’s product development and reduced its risk.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:77.55%;"><img src="/uploads/Image_Blog_China_3_927cdcb541.png"><figcaption>LatAm startups leveraging Asian expertise and resources</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;<h2>Influence &amp; Previous Successful Cases</h2>In the past 2 years, Polymath Ventures has built a strong and large network of investors, allies, and tech companies across China, and it already positioned as the region’s leading partner between China and Latin America thanks to the execution of several initiatives designed to enable collaboration and reduce the gap.<figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Image_Blog_China_4_7100ad44d1.png"><figcaption>Tech expedition to China</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;<ul><li>Latin American Tech Expedition to China 2019: Polymath Ventures led a group of renowned Latin American investors and entrepreneurs on a 7-day expedition to China, to meet with the most important tech companies like <a href="https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&amp;ai=DChcSEwip7quut9nvAhUK97MKHb9pAWoYABAAGgJxbg&amp;sig=AOD64%5F0EO0YTWA0s-eXQJK%5FXDx3tVq%5FSHA&amp;q&amp;adurl&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjFoaCut9nvAhXkF1kFHU%5FuDTYQ0Qx6BAgDEAE">Alibaba</a>, <a href="https://www.bytedance.com/">ByteDance</a>, <a href="https://www.mi.com/global/">Xiaomi</a>, and <a href="http://english.creditease.cn/">CreditEase</a>. Check our <a href="https://polymathv.com/inside-look-polymath-ventures-first-latin-american-tech-expedition-china/">trip recap blog </a>to discover learnings and insights.</li><li>First China and Latin America Tech &amp; Innovation Summit in Beijing: The first summit specifically focused on discussing Latin America’s technological landscape with the Chinese tech community. The Summit was structured in a way to facilitate the conversation around opportunities in Latin America’s tech boom. Learn more about the summit and the content <a href="https://polymathv.com/polymath-ventures-hosted-first-china-latin-america-tech-innovation-summit-beijing/">here.</a></li><li>Content about Latin American opportunities for China’s audience: Polymath Ventures analyzes the local technological and entrepreneurial ecosystem in Latin America and develops content specifically targeted to Asian venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and tech companies.</li><li>Content about China’s tech ecosystem for LatAm audience: Polymath Ventures develops in-depth content pieces about China, Southeast Asia, and India, its venture capital ecosystem, business model innovation, digital expertise, and going overseas strategy.</li></ul>&nbsp;<h2>Expanding from China to Asia</h2>In an effort to provide more resources to Latin American startups, we are also expanding our presence outside of China. Last year, Polymath Ventures became the official partner of <a href="https://www.born2global.com/">Born2Global Center</a>, a Korean government agency under the Ministry of Science and ICT contributing to the national startup ecosystem and beyond. Our role as an official partner is to accompany Korean startups in their expansion journey into Latin America. From leveraging our established methodologies to securing new business opportunities, we are here to enable a path of success for them.Today, our Asia Team is committed to accelerating Latin America’s digital transformation by leveraging Asian expertise and enabling partnerships with India, China, SEA, and Korea to secure a continuous exchange of resources. So, if you need some international experience for your startup in LatAm, please consider our Asia Team, and hope you could find your inspiration in Asia!Follow us on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/polymath-ventures/">LinkedIn</a> to stay updated on the latest news about technology in Asia/China and Latin America.

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China and Latin America: Time to Collaborate

Moving from corporate to <a href="https://polymathv.com/">startup</a> may seem daunting. For years you have been used to the traditional corporate ways and immersing in a new, shiny, and uncertain world has its own challenges and rewards. If you come from corporate and just got hired in a startup or if you are considering doing the jump, then this blog piece is for you.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:63.88%;"><img src="/uploads/Startup_Pearks_97687437c8.jpeg"><figcaption>Young startup employees pretending to be talking about very important things</figcaption></figure>The overall perception about startups is that we work fast and maybe a bit disorganized, that we have very young <a href="https://polymathv.com/team/">teams</a> with very fancy titles, the office is unusual (to say the least), and priorities change constantly. Even though some of these perceptions may be true, there are crazy myths that should be destroyed and some other truths that deserve to be shared.<h2>What is it like moving from corporate to startup:</h2>– Collaborative work is a priority. Let go of your expert approach, no matter how senior you are, and embrace a culture where everyone gets an opinion and a vote.– Embrace risk. Startups, especially in the early stages, live amongst many unknowns so your ability to not only deal with ambiguity and messiness but to thrive in it will be key.<blockquote>“Changing priorities and strategy constantly (sometimes daily). This has been a big challenge for me. I used to very focus on planning (control) the strategy for the next 6 months and making sure we complied with it, nevertheless, to be successful in this type of high uncertainty environment it is imperative to develop the openness to rethinking the initial hypothesis and the flexibility to constantly adjust the plan based on new developments or learnings”. – Nicole Perez, Talent Director</blockquote>– Be creative. At corporations, final decisions come from the top, but at startups, the next great idea can come from you, so get comfortable with sharing your opinion and pushing your mental boundaries to detonate greatness.– Go with the flow. Titles are very blurry at startups because we are in “make it work mode”. That means sometimes we need to remove our fancy CEO/Director or VP hat to actually get our hands dirty and do whats is needed to win; from making big decisions to experimenting with digital ads and moving boxes.– Move fast. You come from an environment with way more resources and startups usually can not compete against that. So, to survive and win startups move fast.– Get ready to learn. No course or official program. Get ready to learn by doing the work, you will face challenges from new perspectives, will work around with cross-functional teams, and will have a first-hand view on the overall management of a new business.<blockquote>“I think the learning curve on the entrepreneurial ecosystem is extremely fast-paced and at the same time, very rewarding”. – Lucía Jaramillo, Service Designer.</blockquote>– Own a growth mindset. You were hired or could be hired because you are great at your field. But, that does not mean there is no room for you to learn and grow, especially in an environment where you will have to face multiple challenges from different areas.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:60.03%;"><img src="/uploads/Corporate_Struggle_f2930fe7cd.jpeg"><figcaption>Former corporate employees struggling with the startup environment &nbsp;😉</figcaption></figure>If you are having second thoughts about moving from corporate to startups, here are a few tips from our own experience and real testimonials (we promise they are real) to help you in your decision-making process.<ul><li>Take a look at the social media account of the startup. At Polymath we use LinkedIn and Instagram as channels to get candidates excited about their potential role with us. For example, we use Instagram to showcase our culture, the off-work activities we do, and our team.</li><li>Talk to a friend that has gone through a similar experience. Since I experienced this transition, I have been able to provide some insights to friends that are looking to join Polymath and other startups.</li><li>Reflect on your motivations, work styles, and expectations to identify potential areas of discomfort. Startups are not for everyone, so you should do the work before jumping in.</li></ul>&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:53.22%;"><img src="/uploads/Team_members_f96bb3e806.jpeg"><figcaption>Group of finance and accounting experts clapping for the picture</figcaption></figure><h2>Our experience</h2>Coming from the corporate world, where resources are in excess and things move slower, it was a big shift to adjust to the lean, agile way that startups operate. Working here, I’ve learned to challenge myself to prioritize my focus on the most pressing problems and creatively tackle them with the limited resources available to me.The most exciting thing about working here is how much autonomy and agency I have. When I notice something at the company that can be done differently, I am given the freedom to execute my idea. Already I can very clearly see the direct impacts of my work on the organization and that keeps me motivated each day to do my part in bringing Polymath to the next level.<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieloabraham/">Daniel Abraham</a> – Chief of Staff at Polymath Ventures. Former associate at <a href="https://www.oliverwyman.com/index.html">Olyver Wyman</a>.————I was expecting to work for a different type of recognition, one that is less focused on my ego and more towards a transcendental purpose. In the corporate world, the ultimate recognition comes from climbing the ladder faster than anyone else, and you do so by meeting targets and fostering the right relationships. My experience in entrepreneurship has been the exact opposite, the challenge we face is so complex and difficult to solve that the only way to do it is by full immersion &amp; commitment into a team, where egos blend and all the members together strive for a bigger purpose, here the ultimate recognition is the sensation of fulfillment that you can get from solving a problem that creates real impact to others.The most exciting part is being part of an organization where the rule is to break the mold, looking at every challenge from different angles, and as a team build something that no one has managed to do before. There is no boring day, if anything there are too intense days.<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoleperez991/">Nicole Perez</a> – Talent Director at Polymath Ventures. Former Human Resources Manager at <a href="https://latam.pg.com/">P&amp;G</a>.————My transition from corporate to a startup has been a roller coaster ride, I guess the most challenging part for me was this new dimension of collective responsibility small startup teams have in them because your startup is the reflection of every decision you make. It’s both exciting and terrifying to think that together you have the power of setting a new course and building something you feel proud of.I always tell people this is some sort of “business parenthood”, your startup becomes your baby, and every decision you make has a tangible impact on its future. The most exciting part for me is not knowing what comes next, and knowing my job is to do the best I can to provide it with all the tools and insights to thrive.<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ljaramillora/">Lucía Jaramillo</a> – Service Designer at Polymath Ventures. Former Corporate Social Responsability Manager at <a href="https://www.davivienda.com/">Banco Davivienda.</a>————Currently, we have over 20 positions in Digital, Product, Investment, Marketing, Talent, and Tech. We would love to meet new talents looking to make a change in their careers. Join the Polymath family, <a href="https://polymathv.com/join-us/?utm%5Fsource=Digital&amp;utm%5Fmedium=Blog&amp;utm%5Fcampaign=JoinUs-FromCorporateToStartup-Aug20">check our open positions and apply now.</a>

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From Corporate to Startup: Myths and Truths

The startup culture is one of the most overrated concepts of our times. It has its own halo of divinity filled with high expectations, several myths, and a ton of Hollywood images of yoga studios, unlimited beer, no hierarchies, and a lot of happy faces. All of these may sound fantastic and exciting, but in our experience, we have learned that startup culture goes beyond idyllic expectations and requires intentional work from the leadership to actually create a differentiated culture that impacts attraction, retention, but most importantly, deeper connections with your team.In this new blog post, we talked to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoleperez991/">Nicole Perez</a>, Talent Director at Polymath, and other members of the company to understand why we believe our startup culture is <a href="https://polymathv.com/polymath-ventures-lessons/">crucial to our success</a> and the learnings that the pandemic left us and drove important transformations within our group. Welcome!<h2>What is a Startup Culture?</h2>We usually do not see a Startup Culture as any of the mentioned above. Sure all of those perks are exciting and in some cases, those reflect the interests of certain audiences. But, for us, startup culture is an intangible sum of traits and mindsets that define who we are and how do we behave. Also, if you are looking for just perks, maybe we are not the right fit. Instead, we would expect that our culture is a <a href="https://polymathv.com/from-corporate-to-startup-myths-and-truths">key differentiating factor</a> for you to join Polymath Ventures.<h2>Why is it important to develop and own your culture?</h2>In the startup ecosystem, achieving greater results does not rely just on know-how, amazing products, smart people, and a few cool perks. Startup Culture is at the core of your success along with some of these components because it reflects the soul of your company and it dictates the guidelines for everything you do; <a href="https://polymathv.com/inside-polymath-ventures-turn-talent-acquisition-science">how you hire</a>, promote and, make tough calls, prioritize the focus and energy of the team, among other things.We believe the Startup Culture is a reflection of our founders, <a href="https://polymathv.com/about/">Wenyi Cai and Carlos Fernández de la Pradilla</a>, and it’s continuously built by the <a href="https://polymathv.com/team/">team members</a> of the group. From the get-go, Wenyi and Carlos knew they wanted to build a very different culture, a culture where the main players are warriors determined to win, no matter the circumstances. This common mindset determined how we started building our own cultural framework which includes components like Growth Mindset, Founders Mentality, and Pursuit of Excellence.<a href="https://polymathv.com/polymath-ventures-lessons/">After 9 years</a> of building ventures in Latin America, we have learned that owning a differentiated culture impacts your ability to attract, develop, and retain talent. According to the 2019 report released by <a href="https://about-content.glassdoor.com/en-us/workplace-culture-over-salary/">Glassdoor</a> around the relevance of culture in the workplace, “ more than three-quarters (77 percent) of adults would consider a company’s culture before applying for a job there, and well over half (56 percent) say company culture is more important than salary when it comes to job satisfaction.”<blockquote>“ More than three-quarters (77 percent) of adults would consider a company’s culture before applying for a job ” – Glassdoor</blockquote>As the culture is being built within the startup, the core leaders also secure that it’s being adopted and implemented in each interaction, experience, or even decision-making process. At Polymath, we have done this for both internal and external interactions. Internally, from the moment someone starts to be part of the selection process until the person leaves the company, every touchpoint is based on the culture. Therefore, if the culture is not clear, each part of the talent journey can feel like a series of inconsistencies that will prevent talent from understanding how to add a disproportionate value to the organization and succeed individually and collectively.Externally, culture is also the strategy to connect with the right people. When the culture is not clear you can attract all types of talent, investors, stakeholders and a relevant portion of them might not be aligned with the values of the organization, causing rework and misalignment of expectations on both sides.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:53.26%;"><img src="/uploads/Startup_Culture_2dccee6450.png"><figcaption>This is how our Startup Culture feels like</figcaption></figure><h2>How to develop your own startup culture?</h2>The theory explains that in order to build high-performing teams, one of the most important factors is to make sure everyone is looking in the same direction. But, when it comes to entrepreneurship, the high level of uncertainty adds an additional layer of complexity, in which a clear direction is often not a possibility or can even represent an obstacle for teams to reach the highest potential of an idea. Therefore, successful startup teams instead of always having a fixed direction, have a set of guiding principles to navigate through the uncertainty and adjust the path in order to build something truly extraordinary.At Polymath, getting to today’s culture has been an ongoing process. Recently, after important organizational changes, a pandemic, and new leaders jumping into the table, we decided it was time to review our culture vision and align as a leadership team on what is really important. Our objective with the culture revamp was to intentionally design those principles as a team and involve everyone in the process to guarantee ownership and familiarity. This is how we do it:<ol><li>We started by deep diving at all levels of the organization on their perception of the culture (the good and the gritty)<ul><li>Leaders shared their input in a Miro board around; heroes and legends, sayings and language, customs and rituals, values and beliefs, and artifacts</li><li>A group of employees played “mad-libs” to share the adjectives that represent our culture in different scenarios</li></ul></li><li>We synthesized findings to arrive at what was common, what was contradictory, and what were the most important questions to answer<ul><li>Reviewed and filtered all the responses to find common patterns and categorize them to enable more effective discussions</li><li>Compare the findings with the strategic vision we had from previous conversations with the leadership</li></ul></li><li>We hold an intense in-person 2 days-workshop session with all leaders in the organization (everyone leading a department was part of it, and managers located in other places traveled to HQ to meet the team in person) with the objective to share the results from the culture research, and build together a stronger and more refreshed version of Polymath Culture.</li></ol>&nbsp;<h3>This how our culture looks like</h3><h4>Who are we? – We are Polymaths</h4>Wikipedia said it better. We are individuals with the ability to span our knowledge to a substantial number of subjects. We are a rare combination of skills, empathy, and knowledge that allows us to break through complex problems with creativity, agility, and grit. If you work at Polymath Ventures, you are a Polymath. You and every one of us have the power to make us win. Our team is small, but we move fast and with clear goals, so you will make a BIG difference.<h4>Our core values</h4><ul><li>Founders Mentality – _We all are founders of Polymath. Period_We are all owners of the success of our company, so we take actions to solve what’s not working or improve what can be done to better, even if it is not related to our role. We take care of company resources as our own, we care about our people, and we obsess about every aspect needed for our success. We enjoy getting our hands dirty, fully immersing ourselves in the project, understanding the details, and playing a part in the execution.</li><li>Results obsessed – We are here to win, with no excuses We are real entrepreneurs, we are here to win, with no excuses, and to do so we do everything it takes to follow through and accomplish the goal. We are always drawn to bigger challenges and at times of failure or uncertainty, we keep pushing even harder than before with the result in mind.</li><li>Growth Mindset – _We are not afraid of failure, it’s an opportunity to grow_We see opportunities in failure, criticism, and feedback. We constantly expose ourselves to uncomfortable situations because we know it’s an incredible opportunity for learning and overcoming limitations. We transform setbacks into levers that propel us forward.</li><li>Pursuit of excellence – We are passionate and proud of our work We always do our best, and our best means better and different than the norm. It is about both the quality of thought and the quality of execution. Our standards of quality and performance are extremely high – we never settle and always strive to do extraordinary work.</li><li>Team over individuals – _We always prioritize the success of the team_We believe in the power of the collective to unleash tremendous potential and tackle the world’s toughest issues. As a team, we push each other to think differently, care about each other, and foster a psychological safety space. We have the emotional maturity to understand and accept that sometimes individual sacrifices are necessary for the success of the team.</li><li>Diversity at the core – We believe individual uniqueness builds collective success We believe that innovation and organizational resilience are derived from the diversity of our team. We bring different backgrounds, skills, and opinions to enrich the collective knowledge and the experience of the team, and we are all responsible for building a safe environment that celebrates diversity.</li></ul><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:47.61%;"><img src="/uploads/Culture_Building_a1fdc8c1b2.png"><figcaption>The people that makes our Startup Culture</figcaption></figure><h2>Advice to build your startup culture</h2>Building a startup culture is an ongoing process that requires intentional work from the founders, leadership, and team members. Here are four recommendations from our talent director, Nicole Perez to kick off your development journey and how to continue fostering a culture at every step.<ul><li>A culture that is everything at the same time, is a culture that has no clear personality. Avoid the trap of trying to appeal to everyone and accept that a strong culture would have some trade-offs</li><li>Do not underestimate the process. The journey to define the culture is as important as the final outcome. Have in mind the different levels and profiles in your organization and think of creative ways to engage them in the process. The objective should be to get input from different angles and at the same time make sure to develop ownership from their side as well</li><li>This is not an HR department job. It should be a priority in the top leadership agenda. In our case, the Marketing Director and the Talent Director led the process but leaders across the organization were accountable to comply with deliverables and to participate equally in the discussion, especially the CEO</li><li>Avoid the trap to keep the “culture” at a high level of thought. When doing a revamp, how to land messages into the day-to-day is key. Land it with specific examples, role models, and behaviors.</li></ul>In our vision, having a compelling and cohesive culture increases our chances of success. A team that is so strong and so aligned at a principles level can go through anything in order to win.We are happy to hear about your journey and learn what other startups have done to develop a differential and successful culture, reach out at <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection">[email protected]</a>Happy Culture Building!

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The road to building a winning Startup Culture

Wenyi Cai is the Founder &amp; CEO of Polymath Ventures, a venture studio that builds digital platforms to empower the middle-class of Latin America. Prior to founding Polymath, Wenyi was an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. As the COO of Milo.com, a consumer internet startup that sold to eBay in 2010, Wenyi led business development efforts with major technology companies like Microsoft and eBay and oversaw the product and engineering teams. Earlier in her career, Wenyi was a consultant with McKinsey &amp; Company in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. Preceding her business career, Wenyi helped build a quantitative trading hedge fund, and was a published researcher in applied physics. Wenyi graduated cum laude from Harvard College, and studied philosophy and physics. Wenyi was born in China and grew up between China and the United States.

Co-Founder & CEO 

Wenyi Cai 

Polymath Ventures was founded on an audacious hypothesis: that building tech companies intentionally designed for the emerging middle-class could be a catalyst to solve the structural inequality and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle%5Fincome%5Ftrap">middle-income trap</a> that has plagued Latin America. Nine years into the journey, we have built important proof points validating this hypothesis, with portfolio companies like <a href="https://www.venturecapitaljournal.com/aflore-grabs-6-6m/">Aflore</a>, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/04/elenas-series-a/">Elenas</a>, and <a href="https://polymathv.com/ventures/autolab/">Autolab</a> jointly impacting millions of people in the region already. It took time and grit to acquire the capabilities to consistently build great companies, with many lessons learned along the way.With the LatAm middle-class <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/06/24/pandemic-crisis-fuels-decline-of-middle-class-LAC">pummeled by the pandemic</a> — 5M people have already slipped from the middle class, showing the vulnerabilities of the gains made in the last decades — the mission of Polymath Ventures is more relevant than ever.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:64.47%;"><img src="/uploads/Copy_of_Wenyi_01_2_96430463c9.jpg"><figcaption>Wenyi Cai - CEO &amp; Co-Founder Polymath Ventures</figcaption></figure><blockquote>Our commitment is to leverage the platform and talent base we have built, to even more courageously attack the core issues, like education, productivity, and financial access, that hold back the potential of the emerging middle class, and of the region.&nbsp;</blockquote><h2>Lessons learned</h2><h4>#1 Building a movement requires peers</h4>We approached building Polymath Ventures from first-principles thinking. If the issue of the middle-income trap came from the productivity of informal and small firms, then let’s design solutions that systematically increased their productivity; over time, we realized that business models like managed marketplaces were especially well-suited for this challenge. If the issue is the lack of experienced entrepreneurial talent, then let’s create a venture-building backbone that partners with and trains entrepreneurs. If there is very limited early-stage capital, then let’s fund the early rounds ourselves.The benefit of first-principles thinking is that it allows you not to shy away from very complex and difficult problems, and helps you break them down into testable and actionable steps. The downside is that you are the pioneer, often along multiple fronts, which is a challenging and potentially even fatal setup. Looking back, we set out to build scalable ventures in LatAm before all the conditions were ready: middle-class smartphone adoption did not massively take off until after 2016, VC capital only started flooding the region in the last three years, and experienced startup talent remains limited today.Our willingness to jump into the game gave us many years to iterate and learn what works and what doesn’t work. But the bumpiness of the journey also shows the limitations of tinkering away like a mad scientist in your own lab. Not taking away from the deep and even unique insights Polymath has developed about our target demographic and the business models that match their needs, we really gained momentum as more allies and peers appeared. For example:<ul><li>Other companies solving problems along the value chain our ventures operated in (e.g. logistics, fintech infrastructure), so we didn’t have to build everything ourselves</li><li>The 600+ strong global movement of venture studios, showing that we were not crazy in building from scratch</li><li>The growing universe of venture capital (especially international ones entering LatAm), so that there is enough firepower to propel great products and teams to scale.</li></ul>Although venture studio models have certain biases towards being inward-looking, it is critical that we understand we need all the allies and peers we can get to tackle the audacious problem that launched us on our journey.<h4>#2 Human-centered companies build resilience</h4>Polymath’s Ventures design methodology is led by Human-Centered Design. This imbeds user-centered orientation into the DNA of our ventures, which we believe gives them an important competitive advantage. A different manifestation of this is what I would call “Human-Centered Companies”.What has given Polymath Ventures a powerful resilience over our long and windy journey is our philosophy and approach to talent. We understand that people are complex and good. That means few are driven by singular pursuits of money and ego for long. Most talented people seek challenge, mentorship, meaning, friendship, and a richness of life. Therefore, an organization that can weave a delightfully entangled ecosystem for talented people to interact and flourish creates enormous value for each person and the company.We are lucky to have been around enough now to see people leave and then rejoin, evolve from analysts at Polymath to co-founders of our ventures, form lasting friendships even as they disburse around the world in their next pursuits. These life-long relationships are the result of shared values and the formative experience of trying to do something very hard together.Throughout the pandemic crisis, we have lived the results of our approach: every single person in the company decided to sacrifice salary temporarily so that we could keep everyone while cutting burn; alumni reached out to contribute money and work; and despite very difficult times and aggressive external poaching, we kept almost everyone together. As our outlook recovered in the last trimester of 2020, we were able to hire amazing talent and train them up quickly because of the excellence and coherence of the existing team. This type of resilience is no longer dependent just on the grit of founders, it is now deeply rooted in the organization, and in an even broader ecosystem of support, including alumni, advisors, investors, and friends.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:51.05%;"><img src="/uploads/IMG_0824_2480f0512c.jpg"><figcaption>Polymath Ventures Team</figcaption></figure><h2>Next horizons</h2>Looking forward, the internal and external conditions are ripe for us to build and scale innovative and impactful companies in Latin America. The region has developed more mature conditions to build new technological solutions, the middle-class is rapidly driving the adoption of digital solutions, and the entrepreneurial ecosystem is flourishing thanks to the abundant investments led by global VC investors.Our commitment to the mission of serving the emerging middle class has only been reinforced by all the pain wrought by the pandemic. However, we see not only resilience at the Polymath level, but we continuously derive inspiration from the motivations and grit of the tens of thousands of people who work as financial advisors, sellers, mechanics, and doctors in our businesses.At Polymath Ventures, we believe our path to achieving our mission is not by conquering, but rather impacting the hearts and minds of all that engage with us. We believe we can transform how Latin America approaches innovation with every interaction, so our promise going forward is to more readily share our learnings and values with the wider ecosystem.Our plan is to continue building transformational and scalable businesses. For us, it is not about how many ventures we build, but the impact of each new venture we design, validate and scale. Our mandate is to create impact through disruption, building for a more equal and prosperous Latin America.

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Lessons learned from our CEO, Wenyi Cai

Dan’s background is in management consulting, advising leading executives in the US on corporate strategy engagements and private equity due diligence. He gained exposure to LATAM’s venture ecosystem while on secondment last year, working as an impact investor in Bogota. As an Investment Analyst, he fundraises into Polymath’s holding company and executes investments across our venture portfolio.

Chief of Staff

Daniel Abraham

Last month, we at <a href="https://polymathv.com/">Polymath Ventures</a> had the opportunity to virtually attend the 3-day Global SME Finance Forum. Sponsored by the <a href="https://www.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/corp%5Fext%5Fcontent/ifc%5Fexternal%5Fcorporate%5Fsite/home">IFC</a>, this year’s event was attended by 2400+ individuals from 950+ institutions in 140+ countries. Unsurprisingly the focus this year was on how COVID-19 had impacted SMEs. The pandemic has thrown the world into great uncertainty, turning the way we live and work completely topsy-turvy, perhaps forever in some ways.Earlier this year, Polymath Ventures and Aflore joined IFC’s SME Finance Forum membership network. The 200+ global members form a close-knit community of industry experts who share a common purpose of helping SMEs. “We believe in the power of the collective and understand the impact of a large network on driving business growth. The association with the Forum will enable us to further provide value to our users, create new opportunities, and design solutions for sustainable economic development,” said Carlos Fernandez de la Pradilla, Founder and CFO of Polymath Ventures.Certainly, the disruptions and negative effects are too numerous to count—not the least of which include the unfortunate loss of life and the millions of individuals around the world who have been plunged into poverty. But the pandemic has also brought about a massive opportunity, and with it come certain implications for how the ways we do business can and should evolve.<blockquote>“Given that SMEs account for 60%-70% of GDP, 90% of businesses, and 50% of jobs across countries worldwide”, the focus of this year’s forum was to explore both the challenges and opportunities in SME finance moving forward. IFC / SME Finance Forum</blockquote>&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:46.07%;"><img src="/uploads/IFC_SME_Finance_Forum_13ad9a587e.png"><figcaption>IFC / SME Finance Forum</figcaption></figure><h3>Highlights</h3>The first day was focused on examining how COVID-19 impacted SME finance across the landscape of players including SMEs, financial institutions, regulators, and fin-techs.On the second day, we heard from different institutions—including DFIs, banks, credit card companies, fin-techs, and policymakers—on the measures they have taken to respond to the pandemic.On the final day, a variety of thought leaders shared their predictions for the future of SME Finance, including how both SMEs and the institutions that support them would likely evolve over the next 10 years.Aside from listening to the keynote speakers, the platform provided opportunities to simulate in-person conferences by offering opportunities for one-on-one networking, virtual marketplaces, exhibition booths, fireside chats, and much more.<h3>How COVID-19 impacted SMEs?</h3>The final impact of COVID remains to be seen as both the health crisis and the financial situation continues to evolve with no immediate end in sight. But the pandemic has already had a profound impact on SMEs both financially and operationally.The full extent of the pandemic’s effect is still unknown. It is difficult to measure, given the high level of informality in the global SME segment as well as the uneven impacts across geographies and sectors.Still, some clear trends have emerged giving us broad indicators of how the SME landscape is changing:<ul><li>Many SMEs were unable to weather the crisis and were forced to shut down, especially informal firms and those in the hospitality &amp; services sectors; some estimates ranged as high as 20% of all SMEs globally went out of business.</li><li>The lockdowns accelerated the shift to digital: consumers habits have moved toward e-commerce and companies are adjusting to extend periods of remote working.</li><li>Women-led SMEs were generally the worst hit due to women having a heavier burden of domestic duties, unequal access to financing, and overrepresentation in hardest-hit sectors.</li></ul>&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:56.54%;"><img src="/uploads/pandemic_finance_431b3dddb7.jpeg"><figcaption>COVID-19 impact on SMEs led by women</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;<h3>How institutions are supporting SMEs (Finance)</h3>Outlook for SMEs in the mid-to-near term is bleak, as recovery is expected to be slow and uneven. This is exacerbated by an ongoing health crisis that is ever-changing, especially now that certain European and US cities are heading into the second round of lockdowns.Still, there is reason to be hopeful that SMEs will be able to weather the crisis. Multilateral institutions are countercyclical, fin-techs are experiencing unprecedented growth, and governments were quick to recognize solvency issues. All of which have positioned these institutions to better support SMEs through the liquidity crunch.Policymakers worldwide have generally been leveraging the same tools including moratoriums, loan guarantees, and tax deferrals.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:54%;"><img src="/uploads/COVID_19_Measures_3b2e200a72.jpeg"><figcaption>Measurement to revert COVID-19 Impact on SMEs</figcaption></figure>Banks and credit card companies have been working to offer more financial products to SMEs, along with expanding access and offering more favorable terms.DFIs have been injecting more capital to defend their current portfolios and participate in new investments. Fin-techs have been leading the charge in alternative financing and expediting credit decision-making.Lastly, many institutions have been working to educate SMEs on factoring and reverse factoring financing solutions to help companies stay solvent, during a time when their customers have been slower to pay their invoices on time.<h3>How institutions are supporting SMEs (Non-Finance)</h3>Along with financing, institutions have also been providing Non-Financial Services to SMEs. These holistic suite of services, they feel will give them an edge against competitor institutions and enable greater value creation for their SME customers in the long-term.Such non-financial services include information exchange, training, consultancy, networking, and partnerships.In particular, these institutions have been working to train and support SMEs in accelerating their shift to digital, including areas such as: instituting cashless payments, developing a digital brand identity, and optimizing remote working.<h3>Future outlook of SME financing</h3>With the pandemic, several headwinds have emerged that give us some insight into how the SME finance landscape will evolve over the next ten years:<ul><li>Rise of fin-techs and alternative financing (e.g. revenue-based financing, crowdsourcing)</li><li>Symbiotic relationship between banks and fin-techs as complementary strategic partners</li><li>Major legal and tax policy changes to reduce the compliance burden on SMEs</li><li>Shifting focus of DFIs toward high-growth SME startups with more flexible financing instruments (equity, Tier 2 capital, lending to NBFIs)</li><li>Use of blockchain, machine learning, and artificial intelligence for instantaneous decisioning with predictive financing (e.g. pre-approvals, credit facilities).</li></ul>&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:51.42%;"><img src="/uploads/Finances_to_revert_COVID_19_8abf111182.jpeg"><figcaption>Predictive financing to revert COVID-19 impact on SMEs</figcaption></figure><h3>The role of SMEs after COVID-19</h3>Over these three days, getting to learn from thought leaders at the top of their fields was a humbling experience. But more than anything it reaffirmed the importance of the work we do here at Polymath Ventures.As we continue to watch the pandemic unfold, two things have been made painfully clear over the last few months.The first is that SMEs are the lifeblood and growth engine of a healthy economy. When we create the optimal conditions for SMEs to flourish and grow, we all stand to benefit. Conversely, when SMEs hurt, we will all feel the consequences.The second is that the pandemic has in some ways forever altered our behaviors. It has uprooted the way we think, work, and go about life. It has also accelerated some pre-existing trends, especially with e-commerce and digitalization.Like it or not, the digital revolution is here to stay. To stay competitive, companies must adapt quickly, innovate, and evolve.We at Polymath are obsessed with <a href="https://polymathv.com/process/">creating high-growth digital companies</a> from scratch that solve the needs of underserved populations. In doing so, we hope <a href="https://polymathv.com/ventures/">our ventures</a> will help fill the “missing middle” of SMEs and serve as an engine of growth in the region.After all these years, it is reaffirming to know that COVID or not we were on the right path all along. At Polymath we aspire to be an agent of change, doing our part to lead the charge and partnering with formidable organizations such as the SME Finance Forum along the way.

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How COVID-19 impacted SME finance?

Luisa joined the team in 2017 as a Junior Recruiter and currently works as a Talent Business Partner. Before joining Polymath, she worked with Los Andes University as a project assistant, especially with a program dedicated to entrepreneurship.

Talent Business Partner

Luisa Bolivar

In our current process to recruit the best talents for our Service Design Fellowship, we often get questions about the overall experience, the most relevant characteristics of our culture and why is it different from other entrepreneurial experiences. To give our future fellows a realistic idea of what is like to join our team, we talked to one of our original fellows, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ksommerkamp/?originalSubdomain=es">Katharina Sommerkamp,</a> who joined the Venture Design &amp; Acceleration Fellowship in Mexico City.Kat, as we like to call her, quickly developed a successful career within Polymath. Shortly after joining the team, she had the opportunity to lead diverse challenges, from working on a corporate project with one of the biggest financial groups in Latin America to supporting the talent acquisition team to develop a new experimentation tool designed to recruit C-level profiles.Her experience at Polymath is a reflection of the multiple opportunities professionals have at our company. Our entrepreneurial core and robust venture portfolio provides a rich experience for people seeking exposure to entrepreneurship while having the support, structure, and methodologies of an experienced group.<h3>Tell us about your personal and professional background before Polymath.</h3>I’m originally from the Canary Islands, a small archipelago a few miles off the West African coast that is part of Spain. I grew up in an idyllic environment: close to the beach and mountains, with postcard-level weather all year-round and a politically safe and stable outlook.I studied International Management, graduating in the heart of a recession (2008). Wanting to understand the triggers, depth, and consequences of the country’s financial crisis, I completed a Master in Finance. This kicked off my career in the financial industry: first, raising investment for commodity projects and managing risk exposure in countries like Cuba, Egypt, and Azerbaijan; later, project managing investor days and some of the largest IPOs in recent history.I always believed that, as a career, one had to choose to either go the analytical or the creative route. I had chosen the analytical one – but always felt there was something missing. After 5 years, I went back to school to complete my MBA, which is when I first learned about innovation strategy. Upon graduation, I had found my passion: to generate impact through innovation.After graduation, I briefly explored the corporate arm of venture building at E.ON, and soon after, landed at Polymath Ventures in Mexico.<h3>Why a Fellowship with Polymath? What were you looking at that time and why you felt this could be a match with your expectations?</h3>I had been following Polymath Ventures since graduating from my MBA. I felt a strong alignment with their vision and values and was impressed with the impact they were generating in LATAM. Having spent some time working in Cuba and Uruguay early in my career, I was also keen on returning to learn more about the region.When the Venture Design &amp; Acceleration Fellowship in Mexico City was published, I knew it was a great option for me. From a personal standpoint, a 4-month fellowship would give me enough flexibility to understand whether Mexico City was a place I wanted to live in long-term, without committing from the start. And from a professional one, I would have the chance to learn about innovation and venture building methodologies by doing, validating whether this was the path I wanted to take. The fellowship was like a prototype of a life I wanted to explore.<h3>How was your overall experience?</h3>Let’s just say: the prototype validated my hypotheses! My fellowship quickly turned into a full-time position (even before my time at Polymath hit the 4-months mark).The fellowship was a steep learning curve for me – not only at a technical level (as I learned about rapid prototyping and human-centered design) but also at a personal one. I came from an environment in which questions and change were discouraged and perks came in the form of jet rides and hotel suites, to one where questions are expected, change is celebrated and perks come in the form of meaning and tangible impact in people’s lives. During this time, I didn’t only grow professionally, but personally, too.<h3>What’s your biggest learning of this Fellowship experience?</h3>As I think back on my fellowship experience, there’s one moment that always comes back to my mind. During my first week, after warm introductions to the team and a deep dive into the project, I was tasked to build quick prototypes to test a hypothesis. I had about an hour before we would gather together again with our deliveries ready to use.I struggled, big time! If you are going to show something to a user, wasn’t it supposed to look great? I was almost paralyzed by the thought of doing something that wasn’t good enough, so I braved myself to go ask for help. Not only did I get my questions answered and my fears busted, but I also gained new friends and allies – beyond the workspace.What I take from this experience is the importance and impact of showing your vulnerabilities and asking for help. This tiny decision helped me break through a mental barrier, learn and grow more, faster, and build amazing friendships with the rest of my team.<h2>Entering the entrepreneurial world with an experienced player</h2>At Polymath each team member has the opportunity to build their path. We provide the landscape, tools, and support for you to experiment and discover the right track for you. Kat, as we call her, joined as a fellow but quickly grew within the org, allowing her to lead strategic projects for the company. Her outstanding performance along with her strong analytical skills led her to transition from business design to led talent acquisition, where she redefined the team and vision to pursue bigger and bolder business goals.Our new fellowship program oriented towards Service Designers is an amazing opportunity for candidates interested in joining the entrepreneurial path while having a group, such as Polymath Ventures, at the backbone of the organization. In this experience, you will work with our seasoned business designers and regional corporate partners to build the next generation of companies.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:36.43%;"><img src="/uploads/Polymath_Fellowship_Program_e96da467a5.png"><figcaption>Fellows designing new companies</figcaption></figure>It’s a unique opportunity for you to bring your experience and unique point of view to help us rethink how we build innovation in Latin America. Are you excited? Apply <a href="https://polymathv.com/join-us/2216882/Service+Design+Fellowship/?utm%5Fsource=Digital&amp;utm%5Fmedium=Blog-Kat&amp;utm%5Fcampaign=Fellowship">here</a>.

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Polymath Fellowship program: The experience and opportunities

Working at a Startup is an exciting opportunity for developers eager to build from scratch, pitch new/crazy ideas, and be part of a scrappy team that is looking to solve complex problems. Even though developers at startups are one of the most valued assets, it is also known that no all developers match their needs and expectations, and in some cases their work structures. In this blog post, we worked with our CTO, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/victor-baumann/">Victor Baumann</a>, to share some tips on how to be a successful developer at a Startup. Welcome!First things first, we want to introduce Vic, our CTO, a Swiss software engineer – passionate about music and mildly alcoholic beverages – with 15+ years of experience across multiple industries, living in Bogotá, Colombia since 2016. He joined our group to lead the tech department of one of our ventures, <a href="https://polymathv.com/ventures/vincu/">Vincu</a>, a recruitment platform that leveraged data and algorithms to deliver highly matched candidates.After 4 years in the role and the closure of Vincu at the beginning of the Pandemic (shit happens in entrepreneurship), Vic transitioned to <a href="https://polymathv.com/ventures/aflore/">Aflore</a> to help their technology team grow and tackle the necessary product adoption to the new reality and eventually to Polymath as CTO with one single goal; to improve engineering across the group. This means defining the development strategy for future ventures, working along existing ventures to understand obstacles and provide quick, efficient, and innovative solutions, and overall build a stack of solutions that allow the healthy growth of our portfolio and our group.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:46.69%;"><img src="/uploads/Victor_Baumann_CTO_Polymath_Ventures_d3c52b39b4.jpeg"><figcaption>Victor Baumann - CTO at Polymath Ventures</figcaption></figure><h2>developers at startups: How to get started?</h2>I actually ended up in this career sort of by accident. During all of my early adolescence, my goal was to become an industrial designer, interior architect, or concept artist but unfortunately did not pass the entry exams for the art schools, mostly due to a lack of perseverance and focus at that age.Since I always liked dabbling around with computers and having done some minor programming on my own, becoming an application developer felt like a decent second choice to have some career to get started and maybe later pivot away from.Only after having been programming for a while, I fully became aware of its creative and craftsmanship aspects as well as the enormous potential of code, to create almost anything I can imagine with little more resources than a computer. Which was especially impactful, since my family was economically struggling at the time.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:48.77%;"><img src="/uploads/Developers_Startups_7ff7e9ddb9.jpeg"><figcaption>Developers at Startups working on ideation</figcaption></figure><h2>How did you get to Polymath?</h2>I never could have cared less about the job title on my business cards – the true luxury of being a software engineer is that you can have tremendously satisfying work and an excellent middle-class life without needing to grind up inane corporate ladders and turning into more of a politician than developer.Based on this, all my career changes were based around continuous personal reflection, whether most of my day to day work is satisfying and interesting, whether I’m working with people that I feel we can advance together and whether the output of my work is actually useful to someone or beneficial to society. If I’m not happy with any of the above I first try to proactively induce change within the place I’m working at by proposing changes, learn about other areas, and involve myself in them or eventually if not viable, looking for somewhere else.For the first 10 years of my career I went through different roles in a wide range of industries and types of companies; from backend to frontend to full-stack, worked for small, bootstrapped companies, large corporations as well as NGOs, government, and as a freelancer, and in different industries such as information management, marketing, journalism, and real estate. After this, I wanted to have a change in the environment itself, since I got a bit burned out in Switzerland for various reasons and started looking for opportunities in Latin America where I have extensively traveled before.Polymath and its ventures called my attention, due to its focusing on strengthening the middle-class, which promises to be working on tackling systemic and societal problems at their root instead of putting pretty makeup on broken things. Nonetheless, I was very skeptical starting out, because everyone has bold claims on their website claiming how they are going to change the world, so I was curious if they could back up all the talk with actions.And well, here I still am, 5 years later having worked with different ventures and now recently in my current role as CTO.<h2>What are you trying to build at Polymath Ventures?</h2>In such a highly dynamic and unpredictable environment we are working in, I do believe that agile software development is fundamentally the soundest way to build products and solve people’s problems. The main issue with it, as with other buzzwords like Lean, DevOps, CI/CD, etc. is that collectively in the industry we have almost forgotten why those exist, what real-world problems they try to solve, and how. Instead, we are often stuck dogmatically following rituals and wielding tools like magic wands expecting miracles to happen. They must work, right? We spent tons of money on books, certificates, and consultancy services that say so. Everyone says they are Agile, few actually approach problems in an agile fashion.So instead of just having them as checkmarks for presentations for investors, continuously challenge ourselves to actually use those tools to actually generate value.Having seen many times over that, what makes or breaks a project is not what technologies, architectures, or processes are used, not whether there are some brilliant visions, but the teams ultimately executing on it, the culture they create, and whether there is an environment that fosters their success. If you don’t have the teams that bring the right mix of skill and mindset, that enjoy working and growing together and are allowed to do so without being buried in bureaucracy, everything else is futile.And lastly, working hard, solving difficult problems, and having fun, and enjoying are not mutually exclusive. Of course, it is not always possible to make everyone happy all the time and every job, including mine, has aspects that are unsatisfying but need to be done. But if the people don’t find pleasure and actually care about what they’re working on and who they are working with, we will not get anywhere.As a CTO what do you look for in potential developers for Polymath?Of course, for any position, depending on the seniority level, the problems the company is facing and the stage they are at, there is a certain technical hard skills threshold a candidate needs to pass. But those skills alone are not worth much. Beyond the bar, every technical skill that might be missing can be obtained on the job. So additionally, developers should show the following mindsets:<ul><li>Reflectiveness. Probably the most common way I have seen people stand in their own way of personal progress is thinking they have learned everything there is to learn, that their way of doing things is the best way to do things. Problem is, you are at best approaching a local maxima and should never stop exploring different ways, listening to other people, and understanding where you are or you eventually will get stuck.</li><li>Team player and communication. You don’t need to be an extrovert at all and wanting to chit-chat or party with everyone all the time. But no lone ranger, no matter how skilled will solve the problems we are facing in isolation, it requires a team across various functions that can communicate with each other efficiently and effectively.</li><li>Pragmatism. There is a huge tendency in the industry to start with a solution instead of a problem. People getting attached to certain tools and want to apply them to everything no matter what. If all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail. You often end up, instead of solving the problem, having a problem with another abstraction on top, which will soon turn into two problems. Instead, think about the problem and the context you are in and it will lead you to simpler, much more maintainable solutions.</li><li>Adaptability. The saying that requirements will change in the future is inevitable is not coming from some startup hipsters in Silicon Valley or because business and product people can seemingly never make up their mind, but it is inherent to the field. There is a reason why agile and iterative programming concepts, under different names, started emerging in the early 70s from the first generation of software engineers. Instead of fearing or trying to avoid it, embrace it. Build things in a way so that they are easy to change in the future without breaking everything or starting from scratch, understand which parts of the system are more likely to change than others to architect accordingly, and avoid unnecessary complexity whenever possible. But also push back on people that want to change things without a proper justification. Always ask why before doing something.</li></ul><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:51.73%;"><img src="/uploads/Women_developers_dcc60ce3b0.jpeg"><figcaption>Women developers</figcaption></figure><h2>What are your three most important recommendations for developers at Startups?</h2>The biggest advantage of working in an early startup or small company is that you can wear many hats, be involved, learn about and shape every aspect of the company. Here is what we have learned about developers at startups.<ul><li>Learn about every aspect of the company. What everyone is doing, the pains they are facing, who the users are. This might sound uninteresting and not related to the profession at first, but without understanding the domain and the users you will not be able to design an adequate system. The only way to ensure what you are building is simple and not a pain in the ass to maintain, is by involving yourself from the beginning of the design process. Don’t be just a code monkey turning specifications into code.</li><li>Be proactive. See the company, the team, and processes like software, something malleable that can always be changed and iterated upon. If you are unhappy about something, the fastest way to change it is just to start doing so. Talk to people, propose solutions, and prototype. Don’t wait for someone else to solve it for you and if necessary don’t wait for the approval. You might have heard that it is easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission. Of course, don’t just recklessly cause pain for others for personal gain.</li><li>If you are not Google you are not Google. While it is very tempting and might look very good on the CV, to use some of the same tools and techniques like the large tech companies that operate at a planetary scale, they are almost never the right choice to start a new project due to the immense amount of baseline complexity, overhead and maintenance cost they add to the system. The reality is that it is a whole lot harder for a product to grow to, say a million users than it is from a technical perspective to scale up to be able to serve these as long as it is decently engineered. It is extremely unlikely that a startup fails because of a tech stack choice not being scalable enough. Care about the productivity and adaptability of the team, instead of worrying about users you don’t yet have.</li></ul>As you build your path as a successful developer at startups, you must consider multiple factors in the equation; what do you want to build, why do you want to build it and whom do you want to join to make it happen. When you join a startup, you are not a regular employee, you are a team member with the ability to craft the future of the company, so getting in sync with the purpose is our best advice for your next career move.Developers are key members of the Polymath team. We build digital solutions, so we need a stellar team of developers capable of challenging the traditional structures, curious enough to invent new solutions from scratch and with limited resources, and driven by the excitement of building.At Polymath, it is not just about your experience, background, or specialty, we care about your way of thinking and your proven technical abilities. So if you are looking for your next challenge, or are just exploring what is around you, take a look at our <a href="https://bit.ly/3kDP2PX">developers opening</a>.

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Developers at Startups: How to build a great career?

On September 7th of 2019, Polymath Ventures hosted the first technology summit specifically focused on discussing Latin America’s technological landscape with the Chinese tech community. A big crowd of Chinese and Latin American entrepreneurs, investors, young professionals, and passionate tech-lovers showed up at The 2019 China-Latin American Tech &amp; Innovation Summit in Beijing.The Summit was structured in a way to facilitate the conversation around opportunities in Latin America’s tech boom. The Summit opened with a thorough and data-backed view of Latin America’s current digital transformation process and the case examples of how to succeed in this environment. The second part of the event focused on industry deep dives in FinTech, E-commerce, Mobility, and Logistics; the fastest growing industries in Latin America and where we see some of the highest momentum and opportunities.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:82.7%;"><img src="/uploads/Summit_Agenda_ENG_1_b388912a67.png"><figcaption>Summit Agenda</figcaption></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Summit-Agenda-ENG-1.png" alt=""></figure>Why we did it<a href="https://polymathv.com/latin-america-becoming-worlds-next-technology-mega-hub/">In previous articles</a>, we’ve talked about the data that has set up Latin America to be the next technological mega-hub. We have also explored why <a href="https://polymathv.com/china-latin-america-next-consequential-alliance/">China can add significant value</a> in Latin America given its extensive experience building digital services and products. Furthermore, we’ve seen a new trend of “going overseas to emerging markets” within the Chinese tech community and that is becoming more prevalent by the day.The summit was part of our first Latin American Tech Expedition to China, where we took a group of prominent entrepreneurs and investors in Latin America to Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou to meet with leading Chinese tech companies like Alibaba Group, Meituan-Dianping, Ele.me, CreditEase, among other relevant firms. We wanted to further understand both their ability to leverage technology to build powerful businesses and their interest in Latin America.The contentAlthough highly interested, Chinese tech players cannot easily access quality information and the right network in Latin America. The Summit was a platform to bridge the information and connection gap between the two regions.During the Summit opening, Wenyi Cai, Founder, and CEO of <a href="https://polymathv.com/">Polymath Ventures</a> showcased how Latin America’s economy and market conditions are most similar to China compared to other emerging markets. She compared GDP per capita similarities between China and Latin America (US$17,000 vs. US$17,700, PPP), the equal level of smartphone penetration (71%) and the huge percentage that the middle class represents in each economy (30%).In addition, she went over some numbers that showed the under-penetration of Chinese venture capital in the region despite having more similar market dynamics compared to regions like India or South East Asia, markets that have seen much higher Chinese investment in the past few years.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:71.41%;"><img src="/uploads/Tech_and_innovation_summit_ba2a4eb083.png"><figcaption>Wenyi Cai- CEO Polymath Ventures</figcaption></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/531567932435_.pic_hd.png" alt=""></figure>In the picture below, Lauren Connolley, Partner at <a href="https://qedinvestors.com/">QED Investors</a> spoke about the reasons why the U.S.-based venture capital firm has made Latin America a key market in building its FinTech portfolio. She talked about their successes in the region, talking about Nubank and Creditas as clear business cases for companies that have successfully built affordable products and that have seen exponential growth.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:72.48%;"><img src="/uploads/QED_Investors_4a6425c0f3.jpeg"><figcaption>Lauren Connolley, Parnet at QED Investors</figcaption></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/7Y3A1230-1.jpg" alt=""></figure>Immediately after, Nadim Matuk, Investment Principal at <a href="https://www.liil.city/">Liil Ventures</a>, spoke about Mobility in Latin America. Nadim talked about the inefficiencies of traditional public transport systems and the high costs of mobility. Nadim then explained how rising mobile phone connectivity has enabled the adoption of alternative ride-sharing options and emphasized the great opportunity that exists to build a connected mobility ecosystem to fulfill all transportation needs in a holistic and affordable fashion.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:71.68%;"><img src="/uploads/Enapsys_b605be4fb4.jpeg"><figcaption>Nadim Matuk, Investment Principal at Liil Ventures</figcaption></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/7Y3A1254-1.jpg" alt=""></figure>Finally, Pablo Sedano, Founder, and CEO of <a href="https://www.enapsys.com/">Enapsys</a> spoke about the opportunity of developing better E-commerce infrastructure in Latin America. Pablo described the massive growth of e-commerce transactions in the region despite the latent infrastructure to support it, the lack of sufficient technology to improve it and the still cash-heavy environment.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:72.94%;"><img src="/uploads/Tech_Innovation_c31e864d93.jpeg"><figcaption>&nbsp;Pablo Sedano, Founder, and CEO of Enapsys</figcaption></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/7Y3A1272-1.jpg" alt=""></figure>And the conversation went both ways…The Tech Summit was also a space to hear from local entrepreneurs and investors who are just starting to develop an interest in Latin America or who are already operating in the region. For us, this was a great opportunity to hear the local perspective and gather more insights on what are some of the burning questions that the Chinese have about our region. Locals yearned for more information about the perception of Chinese businesses in Latin America and the different strategies that Chinese tech firms have taken to enter Latin America.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:71.12%;"><img src="/uploads/Local_participation_1f252bd263.jpeg"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/7Y3A1252.jpg" alt=""></figure>It was especially interesting to observe the level of curiosity that local tech players showcased. Traditionally, access to quality information about Latin American tech has not been readily available, and we were glad to answer these questions in a setting that allowed for a meaningful back-and-forth conversation.<ul><li>How could China’s product strategy and technological expertise help build affordable services in Latin America?</li><li>How could Chinese venture capital add value to founders seeking strategic guidance?</li><li>How could the Chinese ecosystem-building approach turn into actionable methodologies for Latin American entrepreneurs?</li></ul>These are some of the questions that we discussed and that we will continue to explore moving forward.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:70.1%;"><img src="/uploads/Local_support_a646bf2b9f.jpeg"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/7Y3A1249-1.jpg" alt=""></figure>What’s nextIn the coming weeks, we will be discussing in detail what we learned during the Latin American Tech Expedition to China. We will dissect Chinese business models and will trace a roadmap on how these tech giants got to where they are today.We will also analyze the Chinese super-app and how their strategic approach to building products has made waves into other emerging markets. Finally, we will discuss how Latin American entrepreneurs, investors, and governments can become strategic players of the China-Latin America chessboard, and reap the benefits of an alliance that is long overdue.If you would like to receive more information about China, our expedition or discuss perspectives feel free to reach us: <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#204348494e4160504f4c594d415448560e434f4d">[email protected]</a>.

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Polymath Ventures hosted the first China-Latin America Tech & Innovation Summit in Beijing

Francisco has +12 years of experience in companies in the real sector, private equity, investment banking and management consulting in more than 8 countries across Latin America. He was previously CFO and CTO at MesoFoods (Café OMA/Presto) which is one of the biggest food service groups in Colombia with 450+ points of sale. Prior to that he was consultant in Mesoamerica, a leading Private Equity firm focused in Latin America, where he participated in several M&amp;A and strategic consulting projects across all Latin America in various industries including cement and aggregates manufacturing, construction materials wholesale and retail, sugar cane, energy, banking, bakery/coffee bars, airlines and telecommunications. He holds an MBA from INCAE Business School (Costa Rica), and a B.Sc. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from UNITEC (Honduras).

Business Design Director

Francisco Paz 

In order to build successful startups in developing countries, entrepreneurs need to fully understand the<a href="https://polymathv.com/building-business-latin-america-means-building-trust/"> complexity of the market</a>. These markets look very different than hubs like Silicon Valley, so how you design, launch, and fund companies need to look different. A common strategy that we see in emerging markets over and over again is the attempt to replicate business models that previously worked in developed countries. Innovators, entrepreneurs, and investors often believe that a company’s success in a specific demographic will work in the developing world, granted some cultural and operational tweaks are made to adapt to under-developed market constraints.However, more often than not these successful models fail to catch on in emerging economies. The product, the technology, and the model are outstanding, product-market fit has been proven to work but the product does not reach the consumer – what is the missing piece?The reality is that emerging and developed economies are governed by vastly different business environments. A country’s economic status is defined by factors of economic growth; including per capita income, regulatory bodies, market capitalization, and overall levels of liquidity. These factors determine the readiness of the business environment to adapt to innovation and ultimately to build successful startups systematically.In developed markets, mature business environments and solid infrastructure (both hard and soft) made it possible for business model innovation to thrive even in very specific and niche markets. The efficiencies in adjacent sectors and their supply chains supported new agile business models, thus enabling effective cost reductions, better customer experience, and good growth.On the contrary, emerging markets often don’t have the luxury of a well-established infrastructure base nor diverse industrial development. Startups will most likely need to create the adjacent efficiencies for their own operation, which market-creating innovations can achieve.<h3>The power of market-creating innovation</h3>To build startups in developing countries, entrepreneurs must focus on developing new markets that serve people for whom either no products existed, or existing products were not previously accessible – that is, innovators must target non-consumption.However, reaching the right consumers in emerging markets is easier said than done. While disposable incomes are progressively rising in regions like Latin America, price-sensitivity is still high, and finding the right cost structure to reach the masses requires a lot more than leveraging the right technology or having a good idea.In order to develop new markets and give middle-class earners access to new products, it’s important to take a long-term, holistic approach to the process of innovation. Instead of trying to “fix” these markets by bringing successful business models from other countries, the process of innovation must be carried out from within – considering business dynamics and inefficiencies across industries and finding operational models that can seamlessly work across multi-sectoral environments.Market-creating innovation requires highly specialized and multi-disciplinary talent, extensive consumer research, and an ecosystem-building approach. Identifying the product-market fit isn’t enough in the emerging world. Specific infrastructure must be built in conjunction with deploying a new product, in order to reach the consumer at the price-point that will trigger the profitable level of consumption.The original idea behind <a href="https://offer.alibaba.com/cps/snff7epq?bm=cps&amp;src=saf&amp;tp1=60511f5d1ff8230458329603&amp;pid=62">Alibaba</a>, the Chinese e-commerce giant, was to give outsiders access to Chinese goods. Additionally, Alibaba’s founder <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack%5FMa#:~:text=Jack%20Ma%20Yun%20%28Chinese%3A%20%E9%A9%AC,open%20and%20market%2Ddriven%20economy.">Jack Ma</a> realized that the rising middle class was willing to pay for convenient access to a diverse selection of products. Ma saw the opportunity to target non-consumption, to focus on the service to give access to products that the Chinese did not have an opportunity to enjoy.However, the infrastructure to support a platform like Alibaba did not exist. China did not have great broadband access, product merchants did not have a way to feature their products online, and there wasn’t a trustworthy online payments structure. Alibaba understood that if they wanted to reach its customer with its core product, they would need to build the infrastructure to support it.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:64.39%;"><img src="/uploads/Alibaba_business_1c314538a5.png"><figcaption>Source: Alibaba</figcaption></figure>Alibaba built the business infrastructure that was needed to reach its e-commerce customers. By assembling a multi-disciplinary team of logistics, marketing, and financial talent. Alibaba not only built the foundations of e-commerce but also created a local services division that educated SME’s on how to optimize their online business sales – in turn, giving users better access to their core e-commerce services.<a href="https://intl.alipay.com/">Alipay</a> was launched in 2004 to solve the trust issue for online payments. The product was introduced to ease people’s sentiments towards making online payments before actually seeing the product. This payment “infrastructure” that was originally built for Alibaba’s e-commerce business has grown into one the world’s largest unicorn, providing every possible financial service for the massive population of China.In Latin America, startups have already begun to take a similar approach. The e-commerce and logistics companies <a href="https://www.mercadolibre.com.co/">Mercado Libre</a> and <a href="https://www.rappi.com.co/">Rappi</a> are optimizing the logistics and online payments infrastructure, by developing urban logistics networks and embedding user-to-user transfer payments and financial closed-loop systems.<h3>HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN to build startups in developing countries</h3>One of Alibaba’s successes was to rapidly understand the needs of an underserved segment that had the resources and willingness to invest in the category. In our process as builders, we understood that this is key to build startups in developing countries with a low failure rate and the tools and resources to get faster to product-market-fit. Simple surveys or desk research are not sufficient for truly understanding the human experience. Instead, we have learned the importance of going into the field and conduct dozens of in-depth, ethnographic interviews and observations with the actual people impacted by our potential build.To do so we leverage <a href="https://polymathv.com/process/">human-centered design</a>, which allow us to better connect with the people we serve. It allows entrepreneurs to transform data in actionable ideas, it can help to unlock new opportunities and increase the speed and effectiveness of new solutions. This methodology relies on the ability to be intuitive and recognize patterns that allow business builders to construct ideas that are meaningful as well as a functional.<a href="https://polymathv.com/insight-help-us-build-human-centered-businesses/">Human-centered design</a> is a methodology implemented across multiple industries and categories in the process to build startups in developing countries. Its a versatile solution because it is inspired by behaviors rather tan demographics and it relies on dynamic conversations, rather than scripted interviews. When leveraging this methodology, entrepreneurs must consider the following characteristics.<ul><li>Empathy: Approaching a problem with a “beginner’s mind”, resisting biases or quick solutions, and deeply exploring a subject from many angles. Trying things for yourself (taking an exercise class, applying for a job). Making the problems of your users your problems, really internalizing the issues.</li><li>Creativity: Thinking in an expansionary way, exploring unexpected paths and connections between ideas. Being visual, posting things up on your team room walls, discussing, building models and prototypes. Building on the ideas of others. Saying “yes, and…”</li><li>Rationality: Determining the essential components of an idea, and exploring it in a methodical way. Building prototypes to test features of the idea, then measuring your results, in an effort to develop rich concepts that solve the issues you have found.</li></ul><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:63.01%;"><img src="/uploads/interview_real_users_de78e75629.jpeg"><figcaption>Interview with real users</figcaption></figure>When executing interviews with this methodology, entrepreneurs must have a clear understanding of what they would like to achieve and prep the conversations to make sure the objective is pursued at every interaction. The first step is to prep the session and determine the role of each participant in the interview, because if everyone does their job then all data will be captured. They should also consider that smaller groups are more effective because it will make users more comfortable.Once they arrive at the interview, entrepreneurs must consider they are getting into the houses and personal spaces of their users. So respect and courtesy are a must. They should start by introducing themselves and explaining the goals of the sessions. The final user should understand from the kick-off that entrepreneurs are there to listen and learn from them.Lastly, the conversation should flow. Users should be able to tell the story and entrepreneurs must be aware to pursue the goal during this interaction. A pro tip we have for entrepreneurs is that usually some of the most useful bits of information will come in the last few minutes.<h3>Innovation to build startups in developing countries</h3>It is commonly believed that in order for innovations to occur in emerging economies there must be a great regulatory environment in place. However, many studies of entrepreneurial success in China and Africa show that regulation is actually a result of business innovation and not the opposite.In China, when Alibaba developed its online payments system to give convenient access to its users, the regulatory bodies for payment transactions adapted to the new payment alternative. These bodies saw the rate of adoption of online users and developed policies to secure internet payments and build trust – ultimately supporting economic growth.In general, regulatory bodies will adapt to innovation as markets always work towards efficiency. However, to justify costly policy changes, it is imperative that the entrepreneurial ecosystem focuses on developing products and services that create multi-sectoral efficiencies.The Doing Business organization of World Bank clearly defines the business environment as an ecosystem of different players that act in different stages of enterprise development. In emerging markets, these players are often ready to support rudimentary practices but do not sustain new data-driven and agile business models. It is up to the entrepreneurial ecosystem to trigger regulatory change by building profitable markets worth regulating.Latin American governments are already seeking to promote technology by supporting market-creating innovations. In Mexico City, regulatory entities supported the ride-sharing environment by developing shared-economy policies, improving market transparency, and legalizing access to new sources of income.Innovation opportunities in Latin America stem beyond leveraging new technologies. As a country in the emerging economy bracket, supply chains and regulatory bodies are yet to achieve optimal performance. In order to create new markets, businesses will have to be built to not only reach core consumers but also to make the business infrastructure more efficient, and regulation will follow.Entrepreneurs and investors will highly benefit from taking an ecosystem-building approach when developing new business models. Identifying non-consumption is a great first step, that must go with a mix of specialized talent and a business model that can support synergies across industries.When looking to build startups in developing countries, entrepreneurs can take inspiration from <a href="https://polymathv.com/about/">Company Builders</a> like Polymath Ventures, which have developed the right methodology to systematically build successful startups in Latin America. At Polymath we have generated over 200 business concepts, built 10 companies, 7 of them are still operating and we have learned from failures and big wins.

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How to Build Startups in Developing Countries

Andrew was most recently at I-DEV International in Perú providing investment banking and strategy consulting services to social enterprises operating in emerging and frontier markets. Prior to I-DEV, he was a VP at HSBC in New York, focused on debt transactions for clients in the U.S. retail sector. He also spent time at the Grameen Foundation in Colombia building a credit risk tool applicable to smallholder coffee farmers. Andrew graduated from Tufts University with a double major in economics and international relations.

Investment Director

Andrew Hallman

<h2>Are you thinking about working in Latin America?</h2>Four years ago I was at the same place and my decision to work in Latin America was driven by two reasons. The first was the desire to build meaningful companies from the ground up. After spending 8 years making PowerPoints and sales calls at banks and consulting firms I wanted to actually create things. The second reason is the belief that entrepreneurship can create significant positive social impact in emerging markets.<blockquote>I see entrepreneurship, and particularly the Polymath company builder model, as a beacon of light, a truly meritocratic and honest economic unit operating outside of the crony capitalist system.</blockquote>The economic systems of Colombia, and Latin America in general, are dominated by crony capitalism. The stark reality is that in the traditional economy connections tend to be more important than ability, work ethic, or values. I believe that entrepreneurship, and particularly the Polymath company builder model which focuses on the middle-class, is an important agent of change and that reinforced my desire of working in Latin America.<h2>Company building to foster growth and disruption</h2>The economy remains dependent on the extraction and export of natural resources, which is not sustainable in the long-run. Colombia needs a new wave of economic growth based on the diversification of the economy and innovation in order to continue the momentum built over the last decade, and I believe entrepreneurship has a very important role to play, especially when the entrenched economic players have very little incentive to change or innovate.Entrepreneurs will drive innovation and economic diversification because they are dreamers who push for a better world, and they will do it the way they always do; through hard work, passion, grit, creativity and fearlessness; and perhaps most importantly, they will be meritocratic and inclusive, because to entrepreneurs, ability, and results, not family names, mean the most.<a href="https://polymathv.com/process/">The company building model</a>, implemented by Polymath Ventures, reunites the best of the global entrepreneurial talent along with core methodologies and a risk mindset that aims to truly disrupt business models and economies. Latin America is leapfrogging from a traditional economy to a digital one, which presents a massive opportunity to build consumer-centric digital solutions that respond to the needs of a traditionally underserved segment.I have seen first-hand how entrepreneurship is leading Latin America forward.<a href="https://polymathv.com/ventures/aflore/#utm%5Fsource=Polymath&amp;utm%5Fmedium=why-i-joined">Aflore</a> is a great example of how entrepreneurship can disrupt an industry and create significant positive social impact. The financial services giants in Colombia could not figure out how to lend money to the lower-middle class.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:62.87%;"><img src="/uploads/working_fintech_da519e7a03.jpeg"><figcaption>Working in Fintech</figcaption></figure>Aflore, a <a href="https://polymathv.com/ventures">Polymath Ventures company</a> launched in 2014, has been able to crack the nut by leveraging the trust of existing relationships in lower-middle-class communities to offer financial products. By daring to serve a population that the banks turned their backs on and by creating an innovative new channel for financial products, Aflore has unlocked critical credit to this underserved population. Taking on the status quo is never easy, especially when the incumbents are willing to fight dirty, which they often are.<h2>Latin America thriving landscape</h2>After years of financial, security, and reputational struggles, Latin America has become the epicenter of innovation and entrepreneurship. Several cities of the region are now leading hubs of technology and disruption.<blockquote>According to<a href="https://www.contxto.com/en/opinion/latin-america-startup-ecosystem-not-for-the-faint-of-heart/"> Contxto</a>, in 2019 Latin American startups have raised US$1.6 billion, Brazilian Nubank became the most valuable digital bank in the world, and top global funds such as Softbank, QED, Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz doubled-down on their bets in the region.</blockquote>When considering the rising opportunities for the region, it is important to note that Latin America has similar market conditions with China in terms of income level and digital infrastructure. The size of the middle class in Latin America is also growing rapidly, currently represents about 30% of the population – this is similar to the level of China, and much more significant than the 3% of India.Also, it is important to highlight the resilience shown by the Latin American markets amidst COVID. Besides the evident economic impact and the upcoming challenges to recover, we have seen a remarkable performance in a variety of sectors.<ul><li>E-commerce growth is impressive. Colombia showed a 209% increase in retail e-commerce from February to May and Mexico had an 82% YoY sales increase in “Hot Sale”, Mexico’s largest online shopping festival.</li><li>Boosted by e-commerce, logistics and last-mile delivery also increased significantly. Logistics startup <a href="https://www.loggi.com/en/">Loggi</a> saw a 94% increase in orders in April compared to March.</li><li>Fintech has taken on strong growth. The region increase by 30% the number of contactless transactions in 2020 and the acceleration in mobile banking represented massive growth for financial institutions, HSBC digital customers grew 60% YoY.</li></ul><h2>Rising opportunities to build and grow</h2>I believe the entrepreneurs will continue to win these fights and that they will lead the next phase of growth and progress in Latin America. They will win thanks to hard work, passion, grit, creativity, and fearlessness that cannot be matched by the incumbents. This is crucial for Latin America’s development and this is why I joined at Polymath Ventures.If you are thinking about working in Latin America, check our <a href="https://bit.ly/32MXpS5">Service Design Fellowship</a>, a six-month opportunity to experience the Polymath and Latin American culture, discover the rising professional opportunities for you and expand your cultural experience by living in one of the most interesting, fun and diverse countries of the region.

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Why you should work in Latin America

On July 7-8, <a href="https://polymathv.com/">Polymath Ventures</a> co-hosted the first online <a href="https://thepassage.cc/summit/">Venture Summit of Emerging Markets</a> with <a href="https://thepassage.cc/">The Passage.</a> It was the first global event that aimed to bring together business and government leaders from 30 countries to explore partnerships and growth opportunities among each other and to discuss how the current context is impacting our businesses and the upcoming opportunities post-COVID. A total of 445,000+ people watched the event through live streaming platforms.We had the great pleasure to have 16 amazing experts from VC, Fintech, E-commerce, and Digital Entertainment industries in Latin America. Let dig into some of the key learnings we got from them<h2>Latin America’s tech industry is staying resilient despite COVID-19</h2>Rafael de Haro, Co-Founder &amp; Managing Partner at Cometa, demonstrated the massive post-COVID opportunities that the region presents compared to other regions. Latin America has one of the highest middle-class representation in the demographic structure in the world, with substantial consumption power and high penetration of smartphones and Internet users.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:67.66%;"><img src="/uploads/Growing_middle_class_905e53801e.png"><figcaption>Growing middle-class represent the opportunity in Latin America</figcaption></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Screen-Shot-2020-07-20-at-2.25.32-PM.png" alt=""></figure><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:67.99%;"><img src="/uploads/Growing_middleclass2_2dff6bb923.png"><figcaption>Digital consumption in Latin America</figcaption></figure>Wenyi Cai, Founder, and CEO of Polymath Ventures, articulated with data that E-commerce, E-logistics, Fintech, and Digital entertainment are growing at record speed since COVID-19. The lockdowns have boosted the customer behavior shift from offline to online and accelerated the digital adoption of various services.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:49.79%;"><img src="/uploads/e_commerce_growh_2a254dfc8a.png"></figure><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:47.56%;"><img src="/uploads/latam_growth_8b8576b269.png"></figure><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:47.24%;"><img src="/uploads/latam_fintechadoption_f248d46e33.png"></figure><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:47.02%;"><img src="/uploads/digital_content_acdc4598a2.png"></figure>Rafael also highlighted the acceleration of the e-commerce and Fintech sectors. According to him, e-commerce which now accounts for just 4% of the region’s retail sales, will surge to 25% in a decade, where previous forecasts estimated penetration of 18% by 2030. At the same time, 7 out of 10 new users of digital payment tools in Latin America expect to continue transacting through digital payment methods.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:61.95%;"><img src="/uploads/regional_gap_ecoomerce_55fd23717e.png"></figure><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:56.23%;"><img src="/uploads/Fintech_regional_66b8c589cd.png"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Screen-Shot-2020-07-20-at-2.17.55-PM.png" alt=""></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Screen-Shot-2020-07-20-at-2.18.01-PM.png" alt=""></figure>Besides the sector-specific opportunities, both Wenyi and Rafael pointed out the opportunities for venture capital to invest in Latin America post-COVID. There exists a significant funding gap for startups in the region compared to other emerging markets, and the crisis has effectively cooled down valuations for investors to access the deals at better prices.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:57.66%;"><img src="/uploads/investment_opportunity_3c8ddd3056.png"></figure><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:56.57%;"><img src="/uploads/investment_opportunities_1d9248f6d6.png"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Screen-Shot-2020-07-20-at-2.18.49-PM.png" alt=""></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Screen-Shot-2020-07-20-at-2.19.29-PM.png" alt=""></figure><h2>Fintech sector: The behavior change from offline to online is here to stay</h2>For the Fintech panel discussion, we had Edwin Zácipa, Latam Top Fintech Influencer; Juan Carlos Riveroll, Head of Wallet at Mercado Pago; Lauren Connelly, Partner at QED Investors; and Maia Eliscovich Sigal, Head of New Business Units at Uala.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:44.48%;"><img src="/uploads/finctech_behavior_b6cc08c177.png"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Montaje-fintech.png" alt=""></figure>The panelists agreed that the digital financial services got accelerated due to COVID-19 and expanded to a wider demographic with more demand.<ul><li>At Mercado Pago, the payment arm of e-commerce giant Mercado Libre, they saw activities increasing 8 times compared to the same period last year, and QR payment has started to be more regularly utilized.</li><li>For Uala, one of the fastest-growing digital banks in Argentina, growth was also observed in all products offered: 40% increase in consumption, 3 times usage in bill payment, and 30% increase in money market account.</li><li>For Lauren, customers are not going back to offline once they have gotten used to the convenience and quality of service provided by the Fintech companies. However, how lending fintech companies are going to evolve still remains to be seen, as the risk increases due to the severe economic shocks to many households and SMEs in the region.</li></ul>Fintech companies in Latin America have played an important role in financial inclusion. In the case of Uala, 70% of their clients have never had a bank account before, and now they are using Uala to pay for services and make investments online. At the regional level, the massive opportunity in the unbanked population makes it easier for digital banks to acquire new customers and design products accessible for many.In terms of new opportunities, QED Investors has been paying extra interest to the “e-commerce enablers”, such as logistics, digital inventory management, and online business tools. At the same time, QED also continues to invest in HR tech companies that connect people’s paycheck with their financial activities, since they are forecasting this will be an important part of the ecosystem going forward.<h2>E-commerce: Latin America will look more like China</h2>For the E-commerce panel discussion, we had Bruno Yoshimura, Co-founder and General Partner at ONEVC; Zach Oschin, Founder and CEO of Elenas; Ricardo Weder, Founder and CEO of Justo; Alejandro Ponce, Founder and CEO of Aiyu; and Carlos Alberto Mira, Founder and CEO of Truckpad.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:37.01%;"><img src="/uploads/commerce_latam_f0389d9f00.png"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/e-commerce-montaje.png" alt=""></figure>All of the four entrepreneurs in this panel have either took investment from China or have been inspired by Chinese business model innovations to build their own. From cargo freight marketplace to social e-commerce, fresh e-commerce, and community buying platform. What allowed for the Chinese business models to be applicable in Latin America is the demographic similarities and economic foundations, such as industry segmentation, smartphone adoption, urban density, and social media usage.The opportunity in e-commerce for Latin America exists in bridging the mistrust that the mass consumer segments have towards transactions online. For both <a href="https://polymathv.com/ventures/">Elenas</a> and Aiyu, the prevalence of direct sales in Latin America works in favor of client acquisition when it comes to a social e-commerce platform – it is easier to build trust with the social sellers leveraging an existing behavior. For brands, especially international ones, it is attractive to work with digital direct sales channels because it offers them the opportunity to tap into an attractive category that have been traditionally dominated by their local competitors.The way the industry has been organized also creates opportunities for fresh e-commerce like Justo. Latin America’s e-grocery penetration is only 2%, compared to China’s 20+%. The market is dominated by large supermarket chains like Walmart, whose main focus on digitization is around non-perishable goods like electronics, not on fresh. Fresh e-commerce requires a different set of skills and complexity of operations, including logistics, supply chain, and inventory management, which will become the barrier to entry for competitors.In the cargo freight space, an online marketplace drastically increases the efficiency of shipper and trucker matchmaking. In the case of Truckpad, before the platform existed a truck driver would spend on average 15 days searching for their next client, and they run empty 40% time. With the platform, it not only increases the utilization of the trucks but also improves the transparency and traceability of the cargo for the shipper.COVID-19 has given a strong boost to all players in e-commerce. Companies are experiencing 3-4 times the growth, more organic conversions of the user base, and higher frequency in the usage of the digital channels.<h2>Digital entertainment: Latin America is an important and attractive market</h2>For the digital entertainment panel discussion, we had Veronica Henao, Advisor of International Cooperation at the Colombian Ministry of Culture; Diego Maldonado, Global Head Rights Management at ONErpm; Arturo Nunez, Senior Games Evangelist at Unity Technologies; and Lucky Zhang, Founder, and CEO of Kalo.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:40.22%;"><img src="/uploads/digital_entertamient_fc5cb306d5.png"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/entertainment.png" alt=""></figure>For each of our speakers, the pandemic has played out differently in their industries. For gaming, the good news is that there has been a 40% increase in the number of people playing games and time spent on games. This behavior translates into higher revenue for game developers. On the other hand, the lockdowns have also caused delays in new games launching due to not having access to critical hardware.For digital music, the consumption lost 30-40% at the beginning of the pandemic due to the loss of some of the strongest use case scenarios like commuting and in-office work hours. But as Diego puts it, “Music always finds its way in our lives”, now the consumption has recovered to pre-COVID level.Social media has been one of the most boosted industries by the pandemic. Daily organic traffic on Kalo has increased 3-4 times compared to the beginning of the year, and the content creators are spending more time producing and uploading videos to the platform.Latin America represents a massive opportunity for digital content and entertainment due to its population size, relatively young demographic, and high internet penetration. In the gaming sector for instance, according to Unity, Latin America has 130-150 million game players, who are mostly mobile gamers and console game lovers. In particular, Latin American consumers are fans of hyper-casual games, because of simplicity and the free-to-play characteristics due to lack of digital payment tools and habit. At the same time, Latin American users are also heavy users of gaming streaming platforms – for instance, Brazil is the second-largest market for Twitch.When it comes to the music industry, the streaming platforms have reinvigorated the growth momentum for the industry. Latin American countries have quite diverse behaviors with paid streaming services. According to ONErpm, Mexico has more than 10 million paid users for music consumption, whereas Colombia has not even 1 million of them. On the contrary, there is a lot of music streaming through YouTube. The need is there, and it’s a matter of how to make monetization possible for this segment.Kalo, the short video social app, has built an interesting platform that allows everyone to express themselves and showcase their lifestyle, no matter the socioeconomic status. This is an important feature that distinguishes the platform from Instagram and even Tiktok, which have been more in tune with the higher-middle to high economic segments.To conclude, we are very excited to learn that across the spectrum of industries, digital innovation is thriving even during the pandemic and the post-covid opportunities are promising.We believe that the upward momentum for the tech industry will continue to grow, representing excelling results for the existing companies, but also generating new insights that allow founders and investors to build and bet for companies designed to transform people’s lives in the region.

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Key takeaways from the first Venture Summit of Emerging Markets

When working remotely companies and employees must consider implementing policies and guidelines to ensure productivity and performance are not affected, and work dynamics and cultural traits remain intact.In preparation for the upcoming weeks, we worked with our Director of Product, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jicorrea/">Juan Ignacio Correa</a>, COO, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/luismcastillo/">Luis Castillo</a> and Founder and COO of Elenas, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasharsch/">Thomas Harsch</a> to develop a list of recommendations that will help you and your team to kick-off this stage with ease.About discipline:<ul><li>DO NOT wear your pajamas. We repeat DO NOT wear your pajamas. It seems obvious but this tip is key to impact your productivity.</li><li>Have a clear and structured schedule, imagine as if it is a normal day. Take time to drink your coffee, have breaks and attend your meetings and regular conversations.</li><li>Be on time for your meetings. Working remotely does not mean cutting on what needs to be done, so everyone expects your punctuality and the same level of commitment.</li><li>We already said it, but save some time for you! Include activities to take care of your energy, do some exercise, stretch or walk around the house and most importantly do not forget to eat and take bathroom breaks.</li><li>Avoid working from your bed or with the TV on. Set up a space for doing the job, it does not have to be fancy, just make sure to have good lighting, a seating area and the basic elements you need to do the job.</li><li>After your workday is over make sure to put your things away, avoid taking your laptop to bed or to dinner. Take some time to decompress and get ready to enjoy some time off work.</li></ul>About communication:<ul><li>Trust is key to making this situation work and in order to gain it, you need to be assertive and proactive with your communication. Remember that over-communicating will always be preferred.</li><li>Be clear about what you need and expect from your colleagues and managers. Being distant can not be an excuse to fail on your deliverables or to avoid asking for help.</li><li>Don’t limit your communication to work-issues, make sure to schedule some friendly calls with your colleagues. It will help you secure the culture, but also to keep the energy going.</li></ul>About teamwork:<ul><li>Structure daily check-ins and check-outs to follow up on deliverables, check motivation and identify potential obstacles or risks to achieve your goals.</li><li>Take advantage of free/paid platforms and solutions to follow up on productivity such as <a href="https://www.google.com/intl/es%5FALL/drive/">Google Drive</a>, to replace Word or Excel documents and enable collaboration, <a href="https://support.google.com/jamboard/answer/7424836?hl=es">Jamboard</a> from the Gsuite to replace whiteboards, for project management we recommend <a href="https://monday.com/lang/es/">Monday</a>, <a href="https://www.atlassian.com/es/software/jira">Jira</a> or <a href="https://trello.com/es">Trello</a> and <a href="https://zoom.us/">Zoom</a> or <a href="https://hangouts.google.com/?hl=es-419">Google Hangouts</a> to make group calls happen.</li><li>We are always talking about learning how to work in teams, but this situation opens an opportunity to re-learn how to work independently, meaning take your time to analyze the number of meetings you have and consider if you can convert them into emails or simpler conversations.</li><li>Being distant eliminates the high fives, the celebrations, and positive feedback. Use <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/">LinkedIn</a> to celebrate your team’s work and give some shoutouts when someone is making progress on their goals.</li><li>Since it is clear we are not wearing our pj’s, make sure you turn on your camera for all meetings. This contributes to maintaining the culture of your team and make things lighter amidst challenging times.</li><li>Help your team and be a safe keeper of the culture, if you identify someone that is not following the agreed guidelines make sure to raise your hand and provide feedback.</li></ul>If you are interested in knowing how are we implementing these guidelines and learn how to do it by yourself, shoot us an email at <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection">[email protected]</a>

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How to master work from home

The Startup Studio concept was founded in 1996 with the creation of <a href="https://www.idealab.com/">Idealab</a>, which is currently the longest-running studio in the world, and since then we have seen three waves of growth that generated the creation of over 200 studios around the world. Around 2013 the industry experienced the second wave which led the creation of over 80 studios at the time, including <a href="https://polymathv.com/">Polymath Ventures</a>, and since then the rise of this new model was unstoppable.The validation and consolidation of this model opened an opportunity to enable channels of collaboration and discussion between studios to share our experience on learnings, methodologies, successes, and failures. The <a href="https://www.gssn.co/">Global Startup Studio Network</a> arises to become a “highly curated community of independent studios all over the world”, where the members of this community have the chance to share ideas, empower their networking within the environment, and support fundraising for their companies. Today, the number of <a href="https://www.gssn.co/studios">startup studios in the GSSN community</a> has risen to 17, including our studio, <a href="https://polymathv.com/">Polymath Ventures</a>.<figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/drewenyi.jpg" alt=""></figure><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:68.05%;"><img src="/uploads/Andrew_Hallman_and_Wenyi_Cai_b4d57381a2.jpeg"><figcaption>Andrew Hallman and Wenyi Cai</figcaption></figure>This January, our Founder and CEO, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/wenyi-cai-5a99876/">Wenyi Cai</a>, and Director of Investment, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewhallman1/">Andrew Hallman</a> had the opportunity to attend the GSSN Studio Summit 2020, a fruitful event where they had the chance to talk about our work for the past years and gather new points of view from the way of work of other studios around the world and how to leverage our knowledge and experiences to help each other to understand the changing environment we are living in, and define the next steps to keep lifting the Venture Studio reputation.After this exciting experience, we worked with Wenyi and Andrew to synthesize the main insights we collected during the event, so take a look at this useful and insightful guide to better understand the current context of Startup Studios around the world and get in the know of what’s next for our businesses.About Investment<ul><li>There seems to be a convergence in terms of the legal structure of studios, with a dual studio company and separate fund structure prevailing. This allows the studio to attract capital from two types of investors: institutional and private. For less flexible institutional investors, the fund structure is attractive because they typically have restrictions in terms of minimum ticket size, the structures they can invest in and the time in which they need to see a return on investment (typically within 10 years). Private investors, on the other hand, are much more flexible in terms of the structures they can invest into and have longer time horizons, so they like investing directly in the studio company.</li></ul>About Founders<ul><li>This is one of the most important competencies that a Startup studio needs to develop. Everyone is trying to figure out how to recruit founders on a scalable basis. Personal networks work very well at the beginning, but eventually, the studio needs to find a more scalable model.</li><li>Building an active community of potential founders seems to be an effective way to build a sustainable pipeline. Effective components of the community are (1) events and (2) engaging potential founders in the ideation process.</li></ul>About Work Dynamics<ul><li>Shared culture is very important. Cohabitation and explicitly shared values are key to this.</li><li>Doing lots of events and creating spaces for founders to interact is helpful.</li><li>At some studios, Founders have equity compensation across the portfolio of companies, so that if others do well, they do well.</li></ul>Core competencies at studio level versus venture level<ul><li>It seems to be a convergence at studios around the types of services they keep in-house and which services need to be built at the venture level. All studios agree that Tech, Product, and Growth need to be built at the venture level because they are so critical to the venture’s success. “Business services”, such as Finance, Accounting, Legal, Talent can stay with the studio for a longer period.</li><li>Senior staff in terms of Product, Data Science, and Growth in the market, are key figures to give advice to the ventures on these topics and help the ventures build their own teams in these areas.</li></ul>About the success of Startup StudiosAfter 24 years of its creation, this business model has been proven and consolidated in multiple categories, industries, and geographies.The advantages of being part of a Studio covers multiple aspects of the building and scaling businesses and our team wanted to share their input on some of the reasons we reinforced during this trip.<ul><li>Speed: One of the main advantages for studio companies is their ability to move fast because of the studio structure. According to GSSN, the average age of a studio company at exit is 4.3 years. Some of the key reasons for this increase in speed are:<ul><li>Knowing business model best practices.</li><li>Understanding the right metrics to build for the sector or demographic you are building for.</li><li>Standardizing key functions like sales (very important for SaaS).</li><li>Ability to move fast, spending 13 months from company creation until closing of Series Seed round, compared to 17 months for the average venture in the industry.</li></ul></li></ul>At Polymath Ventures, our deep demographic knowledge about the LATAM region has helped us get faster to the problem we want to cover. After operating for 8 years in the region, we have developed the abilities to identify the right needs to fulfill and build digital platforms to empower the middle-class, by bridging entrepreneurs and market opportunities, combining our middle-class knowledge with the capacity to recruit the best founders to bring solutions to life. We also provide digital business strategy and key functional support throughout the ventures’ lifecycle and invest 100% of the first round and provide follow-on funding and giving access to an international investor network.<ul><li>Capital efficiency: There is a sense that the studio model is significantly more capital efficient than the VC model because:<ul><li>Heavy focus and expertise on ideation and validation phases mean that very solid business models that are solving deep needs come out of the studio. In our studio, we focus on Human-Centered Design and deep knowledge of the LATAM region to understand the problem and bring value. By starting from a well known and studied demography, we avoid burning capital and doing less prototyping than average, before getting to the right one to develop.</li><li>Studios provide millions of dollars of resources, in kind, to produce quality products or services. Having expertise in different areas such as product, growth and talent development helps the studio to get it right with fewer iterations.</li></ul></li></ul>As always being part of these activities help us refresh our knowledge, contrast our thoughts and come back to our work with our mindset in place to keep building and scaling our ventures. If you are in the world of Startup Studios we invite you to join the conversation and share your thoughts about this piece to <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection">[email protected]</a>.

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GSSN Studio Summit 2020: What you need to know

After meeting with some of the most important players in Brazil’s tech ecosystem, from active venture capital investors to successful tech companies across e-commerce, fintech, and new mobility, our team put together a summary recapping an excellent 2019 for Brazil’s tech ecosystem and venture capital landscape and highlighting the key players that propelled the country’s meteoric rise2020 started as a great year for Latin America’s venture capital and tech industry – the world’s first tech unicorn of 2020 was born right here in the region in Brazil. On January 3, Brazil’s prop-tech platform Loft announced it’s $175 million Series C led by Vulcan Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, making it the 11th unicorn in Brazil. Loft is also the fastest unicorn to reach the coveted title in Latin America’s history, going from founding to a $1 billion valuation in merely 16 months.As the largest country in Latin America, Brazil has great potential for economic development and the most talked about venture capital market in the region. The impressive performance of the Brazilian venture capital ecosystem in recent years has demonstrated the attractiveness and optimism for technology investment in the country.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:47.38%;"><img src="/uploads/VC_Investment_Brazil_c88172357c.png"><figcaption>Source: Crunchbase</figcaption></figure>According to the Latin American Association of Private Equity and Venture Capital (LAVCA), Brazil’s total absorption of venture capital soared to $ 1.3 billion in 2018, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all funds raised in Latin America in the year. This represents an increase of 52% from 2017’s $859 million investment amount and $369% from that of 2016. In parallel, the volume of transactions increased from 113 in 2017 to 259 in 2018. 9 of the 14 biggest investments in Latin America in 2018 were done in Brazil.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:49.83%;"><img src="/uploads/Dollar_volume_income_f8b71766cb.png"><figcaption>Source: Crunchbase</figcaption></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Bra-2.png" alt=""></figure>According to CrunchBase, the Brazilian market attracted a total of $ 2.34 billion in venture capital in 2019. During the same year, five new unicorns were created in Brazil, the highest number of new unicorns only after the United States and China.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:52.35%;"><img src="/uploads/new_unicorns_brazilk_b4d164b90c.png"><figcaption>Source: Crunchbase</figcaption></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Bra-3.png" alt=""></figure>5 Brazilian unicorns in 2019<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:50.86%;"><img src="/uploads/brazilian_unicorns_2019_8fa3890d23.png"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Screen-Shot-2020-02-05-at-3.44.21-PM.png" alt=""></figure>Overview of Brazil’s local VC landscapeThe following VC funds make up Brazil’s most active venture capital investors, mostly focused on seed and early-stage investments across Brazil, with some already dipping their toes across other markets in Spanish-speaking Latin America and the US**：**<a href="http://monashees.com.br/en/">Monashees:</a> a global venture capital firm based in São Paulo that focuses on early-stage investments. Monashees’ portfolio includes several notable projects in Latin America, such as Rappi, 99 and Grin Scooters.<a href="https://www.kaszek.com/">Kaszek Ventures:</a> focuses on companies rooted in the Latin American market, from seed to Series B rounds in companies that have developed differentiating technologies. In addition to funding, Kaszek also provides network access, product development expertise, and team building workshops to help startups grow their business. Their portfolio includes QuintoAndar and Loggi.<a href="https://www.redpoint.com/">Redpoint eVentures</a>: an early-stage venture capital firm based in São Paulo. The company is the result of a joint effort between Redpoint Ventures and e.ventures of Silicon Valley to raise a LatAm-focused fund. Redpoint eVentures is mostly invested in Brazilian tech companies but is also looking at early investment across Spanish-speaking LatAm. The portfolio includes Rappi and Gympass.<a href="http://valorcapitalgroup.com/">Valor Capital Group:</a> focuses on cross-border opportunities between the US and Brazil, with offices in São Paulo, New York, Menlo Park and Rio de Janeiro. They focus on international technology companies interested in the Brazilian market, as well as local start-up technology companies in Brazil. Valor Capital likes to invest early, in companies that are disrupting or innovating across traditional industries or processes, that have been obsolete for a while and where there is a basic infrastructure or behavior in place. For that reason, they’ve invested in companies like Arquivei, a company that digitizes, stores and optimizes fiscal notes – a tedious process that every enterprise needs to do. Other companies in their portfolio include companies such as Loft, Olist and CargoX.“We like to invest early in companies that are disrupting traditional industries, ” said Phillip Trauer, Investment Principal at Valor. “Unlike other Brazilian venture capital firms, we also provide strategic advisory services to international companies seeking to enter the Brazilian market, including local market research and strategic M&amp;A.”<a href="https://canary.com.br/">Canary: </a>Canary is a seed to Series A fund that invests in technology companies that are at a critical growth stage. Above all, they value the vision of the entrepreneur and the strength of the entrepreneurial team. Due to Canary founders’ background in entrepreneurship, they are well-equipped to help founders with strategy and product. Canary’s portfolio includes Volanty and Loft.Marcos Toledo, a partner at Canary, said: “Canary is investing throughout Latin America, and the majority of these investments are currently in Brazil. We have no particular preference for a specific industry, but we like to be a startup’s first institutional investment, and we use our network of technology experts to find new founders and projects. We prefer entrepreneurs who have previously failed, and people who are experienced in consulting/finance and want to try something new.”<a href="https://www.onevc.vc/">ONEVC:</a> seed-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley and Brazil. ONEVC invests in early rounds of transformational companies that have the potential to become market leaders. While ONEVC is industry agnostic, they like looking at projects that are fundamental to enable other digital services, for instance fintech. ONEVC’s portfolio includes companies such as Kovi, Loggi and Rappi.Other active VCs in Brazil：<ul><li>DFG Investimentos</li><li>Crescera Investimentos</li><li>SP Ventures</li><li>Instituto Inovação</li><li>Ideasnet</li><li>Confrapar</li><li>Astella Investimentos</li><li>Warehouse Investimentos</li><li>W7 Venture Capital</li><li>Barn Investments</li><li>Domo Investments</li></ul>It is worth mentioning that, in Brazil, most local venture capital funds are early-stage focused, and ticket size tends to be small. There is frequent collaboration between the funds, often co-invest in startups. In addition to participating in joint investments, Brazilian VCs often leverage each other’s networks and market expertise to grow the overall ecosystem.The flourish of Brazil’s local funds has largely benefited from the support of the current government. Local players generally believe that the current government is actively supporting business development. Incentives for venture investors include <a href="https://content.next.westlaw.com/Document/Ieb4a24eb1cb511e38578f7ccc38dcbee/View/FullText.html?contextData=%28sc.Default%29&amp;transitionType=Default&amp;firstPage=true&amp;bhcp=1">tax-free capital gains, reduced capital gain tax</a> and related laws for angel, strategic, and institutional investors.<a href="https://www.bndes.gov.br/wps/portal/site/home">The Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES)</a>, a development bank structured as a federal public company associated with the Ministry of Development, Industry, and Trade of Brazil, is also actively involved in venture capital. For instance, BNDES poured $50 million into Crescera Investimentos’ Criatec fund, managed by professional venture capitalists, investing in early start-up projects throughout Brazil. Given BNDES mandate to propel national economic development, the fund was required to invest not only in major cities (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro), but also in second-and third-tier cities like Belo Horizonte and Minas Gerais.Increased interest from international investors in BrazilLoft’s $175 million round is a good example of the growing interest of global investors in Brazil. Loft was Vulcan Capital’s (founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen) first investment in Latin America, and also Andreesen Horowitz’ first investment in Brazil. A16Z invested in Loft’s Series B and has continued to increase its participation in the prop-tech startup, <a href="https://a16z.com/2020/01/03/loft/">remaining very optimistic </a>about its business model and the opportunity behind digitizing the housing market.In Brazil, the depth of participation from international institutions like Riverwood Capital has been steadily increasing. Its portfolio has four Brazilian start-ups, including 99 Taxi, the taxi-hailing firm that Didi Chuxing acquired for $1 billion in 2018. Last year, Riverwood also led the $20 million Series B round of funding for Omie, a fintech firm in São Paulo.San Francisco-based Lumia Capital has invested in six Brazilian startups in recent years and plans to continue investing in the region. Notable companies include CargoX, Instacarro, Meliuz, Trocafone, Pitzi and Quiero Education. Lumia Capital focused on identifying huge market pain points and finding companies that are addressing them with innovative business models and great technology.In Brazil, emerging technologies are transforming dozens of industries and setting off a new cycle of economic growth. Digital transformation of traditional industries, coupled with a large and high-growth market, has attracted the interest of international investors. Nubank is a quintessential example of this phenomenon. Last year, TCV, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, led a $400m round of financing for Nubank, and other international investors such as Tencent, DST Global, Sequoia Capital, Dragoneer, Ribbit Capital, and Thrive Capital also took part in the round.When it comes to Brazil’s international investor scene, SoftBank is another important player to mention. Since announcing its $5 billion VC fund in Latin America in March of last year, SoftBank has led hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investments in Latin America and directly contributed to the creation of several Brazilian unicorns.Last June, SoftBank led a $150 million investment in Loggi, Brazil’s last-mile logistics platform. In September, SoftBank committed $110 million in MadeiraMadeira, the largest online store for home products in Brazil that offers over 300,000 products so you can build, furnish, renovate, and decorate your home using only your smartphone or computer. Another notable investment is Softbank’s $300 million commitment in Gympass, a fitness discovery platform connecting the world’s network of fitness facilities to companies and its employees.International investors are effectively reducing the scarcity of local growth capital in Latin America, accelerating the growth momentum, and also taking the opportunities to harvest quality projects in their later stages. Although international investors’ appetite have driven up startup valuations in Brazil, local VCs don’t see it as an issue since they participate in different stages of the lifetime of a startup.Overall, 2019 was a historic turning point for the Brazilian venture capital market. The growth of Brazil’s local funds, the influx of external venture capital, Brazilian government’s policies incentive for entrepreneurship and venture capital, as well as the growing maturity of the corporate ecosystem, all raise expectations about the prospects of the Brazilian venture capital market in the year to come.Brazil will undoubtedly continue to lead the Latin American market in 2020, and this is the best time to join the revolution.

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An intro to Brazil’s dazzling venture capital landscape and unlimited potential

Juan is Service Design Director at Polymath Ventures, the venture studio for the middle-class in Latin America, where he leads a multidisciplinary team in charge of designing new companies aligned with the purpose of the group and supporting existing ventures to redesign current dynamics and accompany their transformation processes. Previously, he cofounded De Lápices A Cohetes, a company dedicated to providing design and engineering services. Most recently he worked as part of the R&amp;D team at Fitbit where he held the position of Research Mechanical Engineer. He holds an MBA in Design Strategy and an MFA in Design from California College of the Arts and a B.S. in Product Design Engineering from Universidad Eafit.

Service Design Director

Juan Ignacio Correa

The rise and consolidation of Venture Studios or Venture Builders in the world have opened a collaborative conversation between main players to share best practices, understand their local contexts and identify potential opportunities to create together.Organizations such as <a href="https://www.gssn.co/">The Global Startup Studio Network</a> and <a href="https://venturestudiocollective.com/">The Venture Studio Collective</a> are working towards the development and promotion of this on-going conversation and the strengthening of our global community. In this joint effort, we had the chance to participate in the most recent meeting of <a href="https://venturestudiocollective.com/">The Venture Studio Collective</a> in New York. The event held last October in NYC reunited 8 Venture Builders from the US, Germany, Dubai, and Colombia. From our side Polymath Ventures’ COO, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/luismcastillo/">Luis Castillo</a>, and Product Director, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jicorrea/">Juan Ignacio Correa</a> attended the event and had the chance to present our purpose, way of work and current projects.<figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Luis_castillo_Juan_Ignacio_04526ffd13.png"><figcaption>Luis Castillo and Juan Ignacio Correa</figcaption></figure>Luis Castillo and Juan Ignacio CorreaAfter this experience, we talked to Juan and Luis to get their perspective about the overall event, their view on major trends around Venture Builders and the key takeaways to consider when operating one of them.The overall perspective is that most of the Venture Builders are dealing with the same challenges, however, it is clear that excitement is growing with the opportunity behind them; this might be due to some investment in the US that is shifting to this model, and better valuations around their portfolios.Here are some recommendations and insights our team prepared:About Talent<ul><li>Recruiting more founders increases the effectiveness and speed of the company creation process.</li><li>A founder must be able to build his/her team despite the support of leads from the studio.</li><li>Founder recruitment criteria:<ul><li>Capacity to build a product</li><li>Ability to sell the product and vision to others</li><li>Fundraising skills and a knack for networking skills</li><li>Capacity to build a great team</li></ul></li></ul>About PR &amp; Comms<ul><li>Events and relationships are a core strength. They help build a solid brand to create a strong network that helps the studio with investor and talent flow. <a href="https://highalpha.com/">High Alpha Venture Studio</a> is a great example of how this can be done.</li><li>Another great initiative proposed by <a href="https://humanventures.co/">Human Ventures</a> is having assigned roles in charge of networking (Yes, networking!). This team is responsible for meeting a number of “interesting” people that can create some type of impact on the operation. This initiative makes us think about going back to basics and prioritizing low-cost, offline tactics that can also have major impact on our overall strategy.</li></ul>About Fundraising<ul><li>The common struggle for venture studios in Latam is less of a concern for some other studios located in other regions; many have teams with track records and relationships that make it much easier for them to bring in capital.</li><li>Some studios opt for building an independent fund. This allows them to invest in the companies that go through the studio process and companies they feel are relevant for their portfolio.</li><li>There is a common goal of educating investors on the venture building model. The complexity of defining what a venture builder is, and making others understand that this concept involves the company building process fully done in-house is a priority for all of the attendees.</li></ul>Process Most studios are producing new ventures in record time with the following characteristics in their operations:<ul><li>When the venture reaches series seed, series A, the studio becomes much less involved.</li><li>The relationship between the studio and their ventures continues as a figure of advisor and less focusing on operations.</li><li>New venture ideas come from weekly team sessions or from assigning the responsibility to someone from the leadership team.</li><li>Polymath is unique with its human-centered process for idea generation. Other studios focus on validating as quickly as possible ideas based on needs that they or their ventures have.</li><li>Validation happens without building any part of the product – only a landing page and ads. If the results are interesting, the company building process continues.</li></ul>At Polymath Ventures we tend to apply a slightly different approach; since we build solutions for a user that lives and behaves different from us, we must use a human-centered design process to understand their deep needs. This is essential to carry out the purpose of Polymath and it affects the types of business we create and how we build them.Also, after the company is consolidated we take a hands-on approach that results in a collaborative dynamic framed in the following principles:<ul><li>We create a growth engine backed on cross-functional services; technology, expert guidance from advisors and access to a network of founders.</li><li>We attract top talent to form powerhouse teams as venture Founders. They take significant equity ownership, creating long-term dedication.</li><li>We house powerful methodologies to tackle key stages – from identifying breakthrough, tech &amp; data-driven business models to successfully restructuring.</li></ul>Venture Studios are booming and with them lots of ways and tools to engage their teams and to bring all types of benefits to society. Testing and iterating is essential to venture building regardless of product or segment, and working on speed and efficiency of the process should offer the best results.We invite other Venture Studios/Company Builders/Startup Studios that might be reading this to join the conversation and collaborate with the positioning of the company building model. If you would like to talk to us or find ways to collaborate with our team, shoot us an email at <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#a6cec9cac7e6d6c9cadfcbc7d2ced088c5c9cb">[email protected]</a>.

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Industry Insights: The rise of Venture Builders

In light of our new Fellowship program, we talked to our Talent director, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-p%C3%A9rez-9b45779a/">Nicole Pérez</a> to cover all you need to know about it, her recommendations to win the process, and her perspective on the overall experience.What is a design fellow?A design fellow is someone that sees the world through the lens of a human-centered architect. This person is always questioning the status quo and is passionate about designing solutions that can transform communities and organizations globally. He/She also possesses the ability to guide the strategy and vision of a product (end to end) while at the same can zoom in and nail all the details. And most important of all, a fellow is a team player that is excited to share and learn from a diverse group of high potential profiles.Fellowships are strongly desired roles amidst professionals. Do you have recommendations to strengthen the application?<ul><li>Work diversity: We believe that flexibility is one of the most important qualities for succeeding in this high pace and always changing environment. Show us how your work in the past has adapted and transformed into what was needed at the moment.</li><li>Thoughtfulness: Deeply understanding before jumping into any conclusion is a must-have for this role. Be sure to walk us through your thinking process (especially the Whys) to make important decisions or to answer any questions that will come up during the process.</li><li>Growth mindset: We love vulnerability, acknowledging that we are not perfect and there is a lot to be learned is the first step towards greatness. We encourage you to be open about your previous mistakes and how they teach you something valuable.</li></ul>For those distant to the Fellowship concept, can you provide some insights about what are the professional benefits for fellows at Polymath?<ul><li>Be at our core: During your time as a fellow you will be part of the most important projects for Polymath at this moment, therefore you will act as a key player and constantly work with our top senior leadership.</li><li>Expand your network: Fellows have the opportunity to work with a variety of team members depending on the project needs and given the nature of this fellowship, in particular, you will also get exposure to leaders in other important companies and across different industries.</li><li>Master our methodology: There is no better way to learn than by doing. Instead of spending a relevant amount of money on <a href="https://polymathv.com/process/">company building methodology</a> training, you will be able to learn the methodology from the experts by actually doing it.</li><li>Try without compromise: As a fellow, you will be able to decide if you want to remain in Polymath with an indefinite term role or if you would like to pursue other opportunities. (We warn you though 95% of our fellows decide to stay).</li></ul>On top of the Polymath experience, why this experience in Latin America can be a game-changer for our applicants? If you want to expand your view about the world, you need to start by actually expanding your comfort zone and Latin America is the right place to accomplish that. A region with a vast potential to grow, a middle-class that is booming with not enough services and products to meet current needs, it’s the perfect space for solutions to flourish. We are certain this experience will transform the way you look at problems by bringing new variables in the game.Lastly, but not less important, what’s the differential of our program versus other programs out there? The combination of participating in the core business and having real ownership. We want to expose you to a high stake project and be at the front row of it while learning from our senior talent. —— The objective of the Service Design Fellowship (SDF) is to strengthen our team’s design capabilities to create and launch a new venture with one of our corporate partners. It’s a unique opportunity for professionals to engage with our entrepreneurial methodology, access an extender network of leaders and experts, and experience the Polymath culture.Join our team! <a href="https://polymathv.com/join-us/2216882/Service+Design+Fellowship/?utm%5Fsource=Digital&amp;utm%5Fmedium=Blog%20Nicole&amp;utm%5Fcampaign=Fellowship">Apply here.</a>

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Polymath fellowship program: all you need to know

<hr><blockquote>DAY 1</blockquote><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/xiaomi-logo-png-xiaomi-accesories-600-1.png" alt=""></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Day_one_Xiaomi_0cf5e64b8a.png"></figure>“Consumers are at the center of our Universe”Our first visit took us to<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/2300557/"> Xiaomi Technology</a>’s avant-garde new campus, where we learned about the smartphone giant’s mission to serve the mass market by offering quality products at an affordable price. Xiaomi’s top priority is to harness consumer trust by remaining close to its audience, and by basing its philosophy on four core pillars: Innovation, Design, Quality, and Value for Money.One of Xiaomi’s biggest accomplishments has been to create the “MiFan” concept, a knit-tight community of fans who truly embrace and appreciate the value for money that Xiaomi delivers. Xiaomi has also developed the MiOT ecosystem, a large network of smart device manufacturers that develop high-tech products that can be accessed through Xiaomi’s MIUI operating system and follow standardized usability and design protocols. MiFans interact within the Mi Community on a daily basis, where they have an opportunity to learn about new products or give Xiaomi feedback on existing ones.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:78.77%;"><img src="/uploads/day_xiaomi_48d415e4bf.jpeg"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/BeFunky-collage-1.jpg" alt=""></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/ByteDance.png" alt=""></figure>“Building global platforms that foster creativity and enrich people’s lives”<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:40.35%;"><img src="/uploads/Byte_Dance_d111bbe38d.png"></figure>Then we visited<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/6575553/"> ByteDance</a>’s business headquarters, where we learned about the company’s ability to create viral products and use innovative content to reach the mass market in China and around the world.Bytedance was founded in March of 2013 and launched Toutiao, a news aggregator platform that leverages algorithms to give readers personalized suggestions according to their reading patterns. Today, it is one of the largest news aggregator platforms in the world, present in over 200 million monthly unique devices.Bytedance’s most viral product was founded in 2016; Douyin, or internationally known as TikTok. TikTok is a short-video creation platform that provides users with a myriad of content customization features and that is giving both consumers and commerces a powerful storytelling tool. Douyin and TikTok have surpassed the 500 million MAU mark that was disclosed last year and recently announced its <a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3029893/bytedance-releases-apps-boost-marketing-plans-advertisers-its-short">marketing plans for advertisers in its short-video platforms</a>. Today, the ByteDance content conglomerate is valued at over 75 billion dollars, the highest valuation for a private company worldwide.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:69.65%;"><img src="/uploads/Be_Funky_collage_3_9673de70b0.jpeg"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/BeFunky-collage-3.jpg" alt=""></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/VIPKid.png" alt=""></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/vipkid_bf20c36f0e.png"></figure>“Tech globally, work locally”We spent some time with<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/3802582/"> VIPKid</a> + LingoBus at their Qing Dynasty temple office. This company is revolutionizing online learning, offering kids from the ages 5-12 access to interactive language courses in English and Chinese, and even using virtual reality technology to assist real teachers online.VIPKid is one of the youngest unicorns in China, valued at over 3 billion dollars since its inception just over 5 years ago. VIPKid has 600,000 paying students and over 70,000 teachers across the U.S., making it the biggest employer of teachers worldwide.VIPKid deploys technology with a human touch. Through its artificial intelligence technology, VIPKid measures how frequently a teacher smiles throughout the entire virtual lesson, how often and for how long the pupil speaks and other facial expressions and behavior measurements that are paired to the performance of the student. VIPKid has a competitive recruiting program for its teachers and continuously trains its staff to give kids an exciting and productive experience.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:65.4%;"><img src="/uploads/vip_kid_2_70b6b5de7b.jpeg"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/BeFunky-collage-2.jpg" alt=""></figure><hr><blockquote>DAY 2</blockquote><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/meituan_logo.png" alt=""></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/meituan_logo_300x120_99cf8dc9a0.png"></figure>“Our mission is to help people throughout their daily lives; to live better, to eat better”On our second day, we had the opportunity to visit Meituan-Dianping<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/1166424/"> 美团点评</a>, a one-stop-shop lifestyle platform that allows users to fulfill almost any needs at any time of the day. One of Meituan’s competitive advantages is its ability to operate across the entire value chain with the power of fully automated AI systems and big data.Meituan-Dianping reached profitability this year, just a year after its IPO, with a market cap of 56 billion dollars and over 3 billion dollars in revenue.Meituan-Dianping has aggregated platforms across different services, such as movie ticketing, ride-hailing, bike-sharing, food delivery, trip and hotel booking, and airfare ticketing.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:66.56%;"><img src="/uploads/Yooli_d437ea3acc.jpeg"></figure><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:46.35%;"><img src="/uploads/Yooli_logo_18dea6e908.jpeg"></figure>“Don’t stop, never give up, keep your head high and reach the top”We then visited fintech startup<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/5399517/"> Yooli 有利网</a>, a P2P lending firm that offers transparent consumer lending products to borrowers. Yooli has created a powerful matchmaking platform that connects investors with borrowers that fit the right risk profile, a system that was fully developed in-house due to the lack of standardized credit systems in China.It is important to notice that Yooli is one of the few FinTech firms that survived during China’s regulation crackdown of similar firms. Yooli endured by quickly adjusting to the new regulatory framework that the government developed, including strict reform on fund-pooling for investors and the banning of offline promotion of similar investment vehicles.For its credit risk profiling, Yooli leverages open-source data from Alipay, the Chinese Central Bank, and consumer behavior data that hints at borrowers’ propensity to make payments in time and their overall purchasing power to identify accurate funding needs. The average consumer loan hovers at 7,300 RMB (about 1,000 dollars) and an installment repayment plan between 12-18 months.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:70.61%;"><img src="/uploads/credit_eas_cc71051839.jpeg"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/BeFunky-collage-8.jpg" alt=""></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/CreditEase.png" alt=""></figure><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:24.16%;"><img src="/uploads/creadit_ease_097356df4d.png"></figure>“Social responsibility, credit responsibility”CreditEase<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/1244919/"> 宜信公司</a> is redefining fintech by leveraging the latest technology to offer consumer and SME loans, build high-return portfolios for high-net-worth individuals and even give farmers access to credit across China.CreditEase operates across four main verticals: CreditEase Wealth and Asset Management, Yiren Digital (consumer, SME, Agriculture, and Supply Chain Financing), InsurTech and FinTech Enabling Services (risk management and infrastructure technology).One of CreditEase’s biggest goals is to tap the RMB17.4 trillion (USD2.5 trillion) consumer credit market, where the outstanding balance has grown at a swift CAGR of 21%. This massive growth has mainly been driven by future consumption estimates of a larger middle class, low consumer credit penetration and total retail sales expanding at a 7-8% rate.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:33%;"><img src="/uploads/link_sure_1013bcc583.png"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/BeFunky-collage-5.jpg" alt=""></figure><hr><blockquote>DAY 3</blockquote><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/LinkSure.png" alt=""></figure>“The behavior of the internet user is changing. Consumers are shifting from a proactive to a passive interaction online, constantly seeking to be fed with new information. We must rethink how we offer products or services based on that change in the dynamic”We had the pleasure of meeting <a href="https://www.wifi.com/about.html">LinkSure</a>, the creator of Wifi MasterKey, a hotspot-sharing platform with over 900 million monthly active users, one of the most utilized apps in the world.It was especially interesting to learn about LinkSure’s core strategy to acquire a massive database of users and leverage their internet traffic to learn about what consumers care about and why. For instance, the company has developed a platform for users to generate fiction short stories for anyone on the platform to read. These stories gave LinkSure insights on user behavior, tastes and preferences and allowed it to then generate in-house content that resonates. This strategy has allowed LinkSure to reach a purely organic 95% retention rate on average.<figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/new_retail_f1e78f4a36.png"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Eleme.png" alt=""></figure>“Unlocking the value of new retail ”We also discussed e-commerce trends with <a href="https://www.ele.me/">Ele.me</a>, one of the largest online shopping platforms in the world. Ele.me has created and integrated an O2O ecosystem of lifestyle services in China. Ele.me was acquired by Alibaba in 2018 for 488 million dollars, and offers take-out and delivery food services as its core product, taking 4.5 million deliveries per day on average.Ele.me’s philosophy is that a consumer that is acquired on one of its business verticals can easily transition to other services and in turn, monetizing a first-time user becomes much easier and less costly, increasing average profit per user as the company grows.We also learned how Ele.me is leveraging the power of in-house video content, an extensive understanding of its consumers and a well-developed e-commerce platform to uplift its value proposition. For instance, a user can watch a “China food tour” video on Ele.me’s platform and as he or she watches, order the specific product or dish that is being filmed, and have it delivered at their footsteps before the video ends.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:69.32%;"><img src="/uploads/unlocking_new_retail_0ece9757c0.jpeg"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/BeFunky-collage-6.jpg" alt=""></figure><hr><blockquote>DAY 4</blockquote><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/FTA.png" alt=""></figure><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:37.66%;"><img src="/uploads/china_venture_e539088a9d.png"></figure>“Committed to constructing China’s road logistics infrastructure, providing the freight-truck matching platform for truckers and shippers, as well as integrated services to truck users”We visited Full Truck Alliance Group (FTA), the largest inter-city logistics matching company in China backed by Softbank. The company is revolutionary in digitizing the traditional offline, human-heavy shipper and cargo trucker matching system, improving trucks’ operating efficiency by reducing empty runs and increasing matching success.The company already dominated the Chinese market when two of the leading logistics matching platforms merged into FTA, Yunmanman, and Huochebang. Unlike most internet companies in China that were started in either Beijing, Shanghai or Hangzhou, both Yunmanman and Huochebang were created in second-tier provincial capitals in China due to the customers it serves. The truckers that the company serves are usually not technologically savvy, so the company built a powerful ground sales team in charge of installing the apps for the truckers one by one.<figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/nio_54ae9e6634.png"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/NIO.png" alt=""></figure>“Shaping a joyful lifestyle by offering premium smart electric vehicles with best user experience”We visited Nio House, the flagship customer experience center of Nio, the “Tesla” of China. The company designs and builds electric vehicles and provides top-notch customer experience to its car owners.Nio is also investing in charging stations in major highways to enable users to travel longer distances with the EV. The cars are powered by world-leading engines that accelerate to 100 km/h in 4 seconds. The cars are also equipped with an in-car AI assistant that can control temperature and air quality inside the vehicles. Our delegation test rode the flagship model ES8.<hr><blockquote>DAY 5</blockquote><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/ALIBABA.png" alt=""></figure><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:37.3%;"><img src="/uploads/ALIBABA_300x65_fda04153ef.png"></figure>“To make easy to do business, anywhere”On our last day, our delegation had the opportunity to visit<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/3839570/"> Alibaba Group</a>, one of the most successful e-commerce companies in the world. Alibaba has 601 million monthly active users and 666 million mobile monthly active users. The e-commerce giant delivers 100 million packages a day and has reached 900 million annual users on AliPay.We spent some time talking with AliCloud’s strategy department learning about how the company’s mix of Cloud + Big Data + AI capabilities have enabled it to create an ecosystem of retail, marketing, finance, logistics, travel, healthcare and entertainment verticals that share and communicate data with each other.Today, Alibaba’s public cloud services encompass a 47% share of the Chinese market with over 1 million paying customers.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:64.95%;"><img src="/uploads/alibaba_d6b5f44252.jpeg"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/BeFunky-collage-7.jpg" alt=""></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Screen-Shot-2019-09-25-at-11.47.18.png" alt=""></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/pinpong_87a445cb08.png"></figure>“Helping new economy players keep their hard-earned profits”To wrap up the trip, we visited Hangzhou-based <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/10311918/">PingPong</a>, a company that supports new economy merchants in all aspects related to e-commerce cross-border transactions.PingPong is a B2B platform with a product matrix of diversified services that leverage its core competencies: an extensive payments network, global compliance network, and geo-agnostic technologies. Some of its value-adding services for merchants include payout and collections, supply chain finance, currency exchange hedging, and local market intelligence.PingPong already has 800,000+ merchant sellers using its services and is seeking to capitalize on the 1.1 trillion dollars gross merchandise volume that Chinese e-commerce exports see in China per year.And so it continues…These meetings, followed by <a href="https://polymathv.com/polymath-ventures-hosted-first-china-latin-america-tech-innovation-summit-beijing/">The China-Latin America Tech &amp; Innovation Summit</a> put an end to a week full of insightful conversations with some of the most influential tech players in China. Stay tuned to read about the strategy that some of these Chinese companies undertook to win in China’s fiercely competitive landscape.

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An Inside Look into Polymath Ventures’ First Latin American Tech Expedition to China

We care about our talent today and tomorrowAt Polymath Ventures, what really makes us different is that we attract and retain highly competitive talent, fit to excel in our challenging environment and committed to improving the quality of life of Latin America’s underserved middle class.To be able to attract exceptional talent from all over the world, we had to develop an exceptional approach! – We decided to completely disrupt the way “Human Resources” or “Recruitment department” universally worked, and we became the new “scientists of talent” having a disciplined approach to experiment, iterate and, especially, LEARN. Combined with a set of technological tools and automation, we find the combination of approaches to attract talent that we believe cannot only add significant value at Polymath Ventures but that can also find a place at our company to learn, grow, laugh and build a solid professional career.We would like to share our expertise with you, so keep reading to learn how to maximize your recruitment efforts by leveraging our data-driven methodology.We are not your average talent teamWe aren’t a traditional human resources group. Our secret ingredient is that our team is made of profiles that come from different industries, departments, and countries. That way, each member of the group brings knowledge, and valuable experiences that we apply to this new type of “Talent-Scientist Department” we have inside our company!In our group, we have:<ul><li>Engineers: that bring a defined process structure, design, implementation, and optimization to our different projects.</li><li>Entrepreneurs: who can bring outside-the-box thinking to our processes and develop new strategies based on previous results.</li><li>Human-centered design advocates: that lead our user-centered approach, putting our candidates first and ensuring that their recruitment journey is transparent, approachable and memorable.</li></ul>We wholeheartedly believe in the value of multidisciplinary teams, capable of bringing learnings and approaches from their respective industries and turning them into a common process – one that is iterative and uniquely adaptive to our candidate and internal hire needs.We are scientistsTo ensure that we achieve quality results in short periods, we use the scientific method. Our Talent Acquisition team developed a Learning Cycle strategy that consists of a regular exercise:<ol><li>Research: qualitative &amp; quantitative. Our research involves a mix of continuous feedback from candidates and interviewers who’ve participated in our process and real measurements of our funnel data, including conversion rates, time per stage and quality of sourcing channels.</li><li>Hypothesis: we analyze the data that we have and define a possible hypothesis on why things happen the way they do.</li><li>Lean Experimentation: we build and construct experiments to test our hypothesis. We always aim for experiments that are quick to implement, to match our fast learning cycles.</li><li>Progress Review: once the experiment is implemented, we hold check-in on its progress to understand whether it is on the right track or not. At this point, we decide whether the experiment is testing our hypothesis or not (for example, we can’t define whether a hypothesis is proven as true or false if the experiment doesn’t generate a critical mass of data).</li><li>Results Analysis: once the experiment is “completed,” we check the results and define whether it aligns with our hypothesis or not (i.e. is the hypothesis proven as true or false).</li><li>Learnings &amp; Next Steps: we take the results of our experiment and convert them into more profound learnings that then help us define where to focus on for the next learning cycle.</li></ol>These stages go along with scheduled meetings during the whole process, which helps us review the results we are reaching in each step of the recruitment exercise. These meetings also help us draw key insights and re-settle the aspects that could be improved. It is basically composed of Learning Meetings, where we set initiatives and review results and PMO Meetings as checkpoints during the learning cycles where we adjust the experiments.<figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/meeting-schedule-2-Recovered-1.jpg" alt=""></figure><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:62.81%;"><img src="/uploads/Learning_cycle_Talent_9174b6dc20.jpeg"><figcaption>Learning cycle</figcaption></figure>We are data-driven decision-makers – The Headhunting ProcessCarefully crafting a profile personaThe recruitment process starts by creating the profile persona that encompasses the skill set and personality that we need for any specific role. We do this by leveraging our Human-Centered Design Methodology to uncover deep human needs through the understanding of customs, habits, and mutual preferences.This methodology consists of the following steps:<ul><li>Research &amp; benchmark: We stay on top of hiring trends across different markets to understand our value proposition to target candidates and how we compare to our competitors.</li><li>Profile Definition: We conduct problem-solving sessions with hiring managers and key stakeholders to gain a deep understanding of the profile they are looking for. We usually start by defining what problem this profile would solve, and from there, move into what tasks he or she will need to perform and what technical skills, experiences, and mindsets the candidate will require to be successful.</li><li>Synthesis: We empathize with the hiring manager, understand their needs and jointly work towards defining the profile of the ideal candidate.</li></ul>Discipline &amp; Speed of ExperimentationOnce we have a certain level of clarity of what we look for, we brainstorm on potential ways we can filter profiles for these characteristics using LinkedIn Recruiter Lite. When creating these filters, we make sure that our sample size is representative to avoid false positives or false negatives.Those filtered candidates are then reviewed, and approved/rejected based on how closely they represent the defined profile. As our universe of candidates is finite, we always double-check whether a candidate has already applied or been contacted by our team before. The leads that remain are the ones that we reach out to. We use funnel charts to determine the success of our experiments. We measure our progress in twice a month so that we can compare how our previous experiments match our latest initiatives. That way, we can pinpoint what variables changed from a timeframe to another and decipher what we need to continue implementing and what needs to be dropped.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:80.64%;"><img src="/uploads/Funneltalent_681760d383.png"><figcaption>Sprint flowchart for lead generation</figcaption></figure>Constant IterationIn order to identify bottlenecks or areas of critical focus, we develop a cohort analysis, showcasing the results achieved week-on-week. Being able to visualize this data allows us to put our efforts into moving candidates through the funnel to ultimately give candidates a better experience and also achieve our recruitment goals promptly.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:66.34%;"><img src="/uploads/Grafica_talent_Recovered_1024x685_c293ab4a26.jpeg"><figcaption>Recruitment process follow-up</figcaption></figure>The following flowchart sums up the headhunting journey, from the “Defining our Hypothesis” stage, where we create a theory that we want to validate through experiments, until the “Storage of the experiment for guidelines” phase, where we save our best results to be used as guidelines for future processes in which candidates have a similar profile.It is essential to have decision-making steps throughout the whole process, where the effectiveness of the design could be questioned to guarantee that moving forward through the steps will make sense, regarding the objectives that were set in the beginning.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:64.35%;"><img src="/uploads/grafica_Recovered_956x1024_49fe86b844.jpeg"><figcaption>Headhunting process overview</figcaption></figure>We are tech nerdsWe love to experiment and learn new tools in order to simplify our processes and save time, beyond the usual email templates, scheduling weekly email reminders, etc. At Polymath Ventures, we enjoy finding new ways to increase productivity.Our passion is our driving force and we always go the extra mile. Thus, we link our Monday.com boards to our calendars, to keep track of our deadlines. Also, we automate our channels of communication with the applicants through the incorporation of Zapier, an online automation tool, capable of connecting apps and services. Through it, we keep track of all our recruiting LinkedIn messages and we connect our ATS to Google Sheets to have semi-live reports on each of our current positions.These actions have reduced our response time with applicants, making this process more efficient and ultimately giving candidates in our funnel the best experience possible!<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:65.48%;"><img src="/uploads/Zapier_Integration_1_1c760b2ae3.jpeg"><figcaption>Zapier integration</figcaption></figure>But things don’t end here…We continuously question how we do things and by taking the helicopter view, we always find ways to improve ourselves. For us, it is all about agile processes, lean experiments and continuously learning from our results. Our commitment is with the high potential talent that is located in every corner of the world. We want to find them and connect with them, so they can have the opportunity to access a new world of possibilities by building scalable companies with a huge social impact. You will never hear us say “that’s just how we do things around here”. The world evolves and so do we!

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Inside Polymath Ventures: how to turn talent acquisition into a science

The opportunity to transform the direct sales category by combining existing trust-based relationships with the power of digital sharing and purchasing behaviors was the starting point for Zach Oschin, Thomas Harsch and the team at Polymath Ventures to develop the idea behind Elenas: the first social commerce start-up in Latin America.Elenas is disrupting the $26 billion USD direct sales market by connecting leading lifestyle brands with a massive network of ambassadors who can promote and sell those brands’ products over WhatsApp and social media. After one year the company has already enabled over 25.000 women across Colombia to build their own online store and earn an extra income for themselves and their families.The impact of this venture is directly related to the social and economic conditions of the countries in which it operates, especially regarding issues of gender equality. According to the Human Development Report for Latin America, “women dedicate at least 3 more hours to domestic tasks than men and between 1 to 4 hours less than men to business activities”, which reflects the complexities and potential obstacles for women to secure job and extra income opportunities which fulfill their families’ economic needs. These conditions provide a tremendous opportunity to develop and innovate on traditional business models in order to transform the work structures which constrain women today.Elenas represents a new opportunity for a massive population of women who need to generate an extra income or want more flexibility in their schedules but are restricted by this traditional job market and antiquated direct sales opportunities. The current model of selling products via catalog to friends and family forces them to take on economic risk as they buy products upfront and have to handle the tedious operations of delivering products and using a paper catalog to sell.<blockquote>“When the number of employed women increases, then economies grow. According to multiple studies executed the rise of women in the workforce or a reduction on the gender disparity, produces a faster economic growth”. – OCDE</blockquote>The impact behind Elenas’ operation enables a positive cycle of empowerment for ambassadors and brands that are part of the network. This new channel has enabled over 30 Colombian lifestyle brands to achieve 25% WoW sales growth during their first month on the platform; one of these brands is Dermanat, a Colombian cosmetics company from Colombia that has developed natural products for over 30 years. Elenas has also opened a distribution channel for international companies that are looking to expand their operations to Latin America such as W7 Cosmetics, an innovative and trendy cosmetics company from London that has developed an extensive range of high-quality cosmetics at an affordable price.For the ambassador network, they are currently earning 3-8x what they earn through traditional direct sales, while the top sellers are earning more than the Colombian minimum wage. For these women, the extra income represents a 20-50% additional income to their full-time salaries.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:68.76%;"><img src="/uploads/Elenas_Business_Model_27b7491623.jpeg"><figcaption>Elenas Business Model</figcaption></figure><figure class="image"><img src="/uploads/Elenas-1.jpg" alt=""></figure>Elenas’ innovative business model has been featured by global media outlets such as TechCrunch, La FM, and Caracol and has been recognized by renowned organizations such as Georgetown University and CitiVentures. The Elenas team has grown to over 20 people and continues to evolve rapidly as the company’s message spreads around the country.Currently, the Elenas team is working to build out an even more extensive set of digital tools for its’ network of ambassadors so that they can earn more in less time. By using data collection and machine learning technologies the Elenas platform will provide even better recommendations to ambassadors and clients to better the browsing and purchasing experience.By the end of 2019, Elenas plans on extensively growing its base of ambassadors in Colombia and in the coming years it plans to expand the business to other markets in Latin America. If you are interested in learning more about how Elenas is disrupting this traditional category or want to join the growing team you can contact them by emailing <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#cdbdbfa8bebe8da8a1a8a3acbee3a1ac">[email protected]</a>.

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Elenas breaks socioeconomic barriers with its innovative social commerce business

Patrick Morselli is a renowned entrepreneur with extensive experience in Europe, the US and Latin America. He led Uber’s successful international expansion into Latin America, which still is one of the fastest-growing and most profitable regions for the company. He then directed WeWork’s expansion into the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and set up the expansion for the other global markets. Patrick is now in New York and London doing venture building and investments.We talked with Patrick about his experience on the ground leading and implementing the important expansion effort of these companies, as well as his recommendation on how to navigate the Latin American market.<blockquote>The Interview</blockquote>Q: How was your experience leading Uber’s LatAm expansion? Why did the company decide to enter LatAm?A: For many companies that are considering going global, Latin America is often an overlooked region because it is less easy to enter than Europe, and a smaller opportunity compared to Asian markets. Usually, you divide Asia into China, India, and SEA. Latin America, compared to those, is still smaller and quite challenging. At the time when it was about Uber entering Latin America, we didn’t really know what we would find. For me, it was about looking at the numbers and the metrics on mobility, commuting, and transit. It was a data-backed intuition. When you are in a new market, you don’t make decisions based on a consulting approach, you try to take fast trial and error decisions and that’s what Mexico City was like for us at the beginning. The results were great beyond expectations, so we decided to continue.Q: What data did you look at that showed you Latin America was an interesting opportunity?A: Some of it was internal data and metrics that the company uses. However, starting from the fact that one of Uber’s main goals is to bring better experience in mobility around the world, it was natural to look at the cities where the experience was not so good. It was about finding cities where public transportation is not as good as in other cities, where the number of people moving around every day is significant and the inefficiencies of mobility are high.Q: What were your achievements during your time at Uber?A: We were able to successfully launch Mexico, then Colombia, Chile, Peru, Brazil, and Panama. It really taught me something that I applied afterward which is the value of developing a strong expansion playbook.Q: Could you elaborate on that?A: The playbook is a set of guidelines and principles that don’t break, applicable to any type of geographies, any type of expansion. Then there are a set of elements that you do need to customize city by city, but as you grow, those elements that you customize are fewer and fewer. The playbook is at the core of every successful expansion. Many people interpret the playbook as a to-do list, but in reality, it is not. It is context, it is a certain structure for communicating among the different teams. It is also a specific commitment and responsibility for specific people. It’s leadership for launchers. It’s of course also a set of actions that need to be taken, but the actions by themselves are less important than the context that enables them.Q: Could you give us some examples of this expansion playbook?A: Yeah. Probably the most important thing that so many companies do wrong is that they think there is one person who is responsible (for the expansion). That’s wrong because nothing can be achieved at that speed, at that size by just a single person. Therefore, one of the most important things about the playbook — and this can only be done at the highest levels of the organization — is to realize that every department and everyone is responsible (for the objective) as a team. Everybody is responsible for their own part. And they’re also responsible for letting others know if they are doing something wrong.Q: In your case when you started in Mexico, how big of a team was there on the ground?A: We had a very small and lean team, however, we were getting a lot of support from HQ and that was important. You’ll want to keep the organization lean, but you want to get a lot of support on all the things that are needed for expansion, such as the internationalization of the language, legal support, analytical support, etc.Q: And the team grew very quickly once you started showing performance?A: Yes, definitely. However, hiring the right people was one of the biggest bottlenecks.Q: How come?A: If you hire the right people, everything else is going to be solved somehow. I think you definitely need talent with local knowledge, but you also need the type of professionals that are unbiased and used to making decisions based on data and not based on what they think is their knowledge of the market.Q: How did you overcome the talent challenge?A: I network a lot whenever I’m entering a new country. Eventually, by understanding the local ecosystem, you also understand what kind of people you need to lead your company.Q: Was that talent more international or more locally available at that time?A: It was both. We definitely preferred to hire people, whether international or local, that actually came with some experience in the local city or country.Q: What other challenges did you face that was perhaps harder to overcome?A: For me personally, hiring is the biggest and most important. Of course, because you have a supply-side and the demand side, you’re always going to get into situations where what you’ve been doing to grow demand or grow supply is not necessarily the best strategy anymore. So you need to adjust in order to get back on track to double-digit growth that you’re looking for in that market.Q: Another question people often ask is how similar countries are across Latin America. Would you say knowledge transfer across countries was easy?A: Ultimately, it’s a region that has many things in common across countries. However, the cultural way of doing business that is slightly different. But it’s not hard once you enter the first country in the region, for example, Mexico, to get an understanding of how to adapt to the other countries. Just be really open-minded. You have to be humble to ask and learn from people around you in the ecosystem. Most of these countries have ecosystems that are really open and willing to share information, so you have to show that you are there with good intentions. With that in mind, you will usually find many people that are really willing to help. In Latin America, you need a little bit adaptation (across countries) but it’s not as different as going into a different region. And of course, typically Brazil is separate. It’s its own thing.Q: Could you give an example of the difference in business culture, for instance, Brazil vs. Mexico or some other country?A: I think you can see places where doing business is more personable than analytical. Chile and Argentina are more analytical. In Brazil and Mexico, it’s much more about relationships. To create a strong partnership, you have to get to know each other as people first. There is also the rhythm of doing business. Brazil is typically a more bureaucratic country, things are done at a different pace. You have certain countries that are much more open about their feelings – for example, Brazil. Then you have certain other countries where it’s almost culturally prohibited to say no. So, you have to be careful because sometimes when people say, “Oh yes, I agree”. In reality, often, it means no. Reading between the lines is very important. There is also the case of countries that have a really strict top-down type of leadership approach (the case of Brazil again), while other countries have a flatter organization.Q: Were there mistakes you made? Could you share some experience that may help newcomers to be better informed?A: Yeah, a lot of mistakes were made. I think you just have to be ready to embrace the mistakes and act as fast as possible on them.I think if someone comes into Latin America and is new to the market, one of the biggest mistakes they might make is just to hire local talent and expect them to immediately understand their business model or the culture and the pace of the company. You always need to have some sort of knowledge transfer system in place, where you actively share the goals of the company and your way of doing business. What’s your way of growing? Why are you successful as a company in the first place? These are elements that need to be clear for the expansion to work.Q: For the next part, we would like to discuss market dynamics. What were some peculiarities of Latin America’s market consumers that make this type of expansion possible?A: What I like about Latin America generally is that it’s a very young region. There are lots of young people that are very, very open to new products and services. They’re tech-savvy. They’re very digital and they create a relationship with brands that it’s usually better and more loyal than what happens in mature markets like the United States or Europe. In Latin America, consumers are still giving meaning to a brand and connecting that brand with a specific set of attributes. From my experience, if the marketing is done right, the reaction from customers is much stronger, and the adoption is faster and more loyal than the United States, for example.A: Do you think loyalty has something to do with the limited amount of options available compared to other more mature markets?A: Yes. I think that’s definitely another aspect.Q: When you say marketing done right, what goes into “right”? Is it the type of channel? Getting to the right demographic?A: Depends on the project you are launching. There is not a specific formula of channels or spend that is ideal. You do marketing right when you know who you are talking to and you speak in their same language with content that is meaningful for them. It attracts attention and generates trust.Q: What type of content did you notice that appealed more to the demographic that you were tackling?A: When we launched, it was the beginning of the influencer movement on Instagram. Now, this has exacerbated because there are now so many influencers promoting so many products that consumers are not trusting them anymore. You also see that for certain topics people tend to inform themselves much better. For example, there is a lot more awareness about health and wellness. People read a lot about it. So, I think in that context, that field, people now tend to not look for what the influencers say, but look for what science says, what is the latest research. Depending on the field and depending on the type of product that is being sold, we can identify content channels that are more or less effective.Q: What is your take on Latin America’s venture capital growth in the past 3 years?A: It’s a growing region that is becoming more and more mature. Mexico and Brazil are really large markets and are getting a lot of attention. Brazil has more barriers to entry compared to Mexico. As economies become more stable politically, they become more investable. It makes sense that there is an increasing interest in these countries. Just like there is an increasing interest in Southeast Asia.Q: To what extent do you believe political changes and fluctuations can be a risk to the region?A: It’s definitely a risk. It’s a barrier to entry, a risk for growth. But now the whole region is slowly becoming more stable. Brazil and Mexico are becoming relatively more stable than they were just 15 or 25 years ago. However, there’s a very long way to go and we don’t know if they will ever get even close to that level of stability of China, for example.Q: To conclude, what advice would you give to Chinese tech companies or entrepreneurs who want to come to Latin America?A: I would say first enter a country like Mexico where the barriers to entry are lower than, say, Brazil. I would say be super open and be ready to learn in-depth about the local ecosystem. Spend time with local entrepreneurs because they’re going to share with you their learnings. Keep your principles in terms of the culture, the way of doing business, the vision and the mission of your company. But learn the cultural nuances of each new country. Try to hire people that are very disciplined with data that are able to take decisions based on data, but also people that have the leadership and management skills to change their management style to something that works with the local dynamic. People that are very flexible and versatile in the way they talk and manage people (are very critical).

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Patrick Morselli, former Uber LATAM expansion head, shares tips on how to grow your tech business in Latin America

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