Andreessen Horowitz General Partner, Angela Strange and Jeeves Co-Founder/CEO, Dileep Thazhmon – The Incredible Fintech Opportunity in Latin America
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Today’s episode comes from FINNOSUMMIT Connect, a conference organized by Finnovista on the future of Fintech in Latin America.
In this special edition, we bring you a recording from my conversation with Angela Strange, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and Dileep Thazhmon, Co-Founder & CEO at Jeeves.
We discuss:
Angela’s take on the fantastic evolution of fintech in Latin America and why these are still the early days
Angela Strange:
“if you haven't been following the region, it seems like the growth and startup activity has been very slow and then seemingly all at once. But as anyone who's been here would say, well, this has been building for quite a while. And it’s two main reasons: One, the market conditions are ripe for new companies and there's a lot of consumer demand. And Two… there's great, great talent that is ready to pursue those opportunities.”
Jeeves history and why although they are building a global company, they actually decided to launch their first product in Mexico
Dileep Thazhmon:
“There’s a few reasons why LatAm was so appealing [to Jeeves]. We are looking at three things.
The first one is the countries opening up to FinTech regulation, Mexico passed a law, Brazil passed a law, so there are certain regions we wouldn't touch because it's a little bit more opaque.
The second thing is the capital coming into the region. And to be completely honest, I don't think even we expected the amount of capital in the last 12 months that has flooded into startups. So a lot of our growth is driven off of that, right?
And then, the last part is a unique sophistication of LatAm that it didn't have 10-12 years ago.“
Challenges and opportunities for the ecosystem in the region… and a whole lot more!
Angela Strange:
“We are just getting started in the region. I like this quote a lot from Enrique from Brex, which is from a year ago, but it still rings true: ‘it's hard to come up with a good idea in the US, but in Brazil there's lots of obvious ideas.’ that doesn't mean that they're easy to do, right?”
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Full interview --> Spotify | Apple
Emerging Fintech Leaders – Three early-stage fintech companies doing amazing things
Sotira is making financial analytics for small businesses too easy. The consumer SaaS platform to help side hustlers who sell and resell products on platforms like Etsy, Poshmark, and StockX manage their income streams, do financial tracking and optimize profits and pricing for products.These pricing discovery calculators will soon be furthered into real-time analytics dashboard for all of a small business’s financial tracking and expense monitoring needs. Founded by UC Berkeley students, Sotira is still pre-seed and a proud member of the Skydeck HotDesk Incubator Program.
Founders: Amrita Bhasin and Gary Kwong
Based in L.A. and Lithuania, A.ID is a next-generation compliance platform built to help financial institutions vet potential customers in industries deemed as especially speculative or dangerous, like the nascent cannabis industry. Traditionally, fintechs and incumbent banks haven’t had the tools to confidently do business in such sectors, but with A.ID’s technology, they can establish trust while dipping into a massive new market opportunity. Fresh off of a $500K pre-seed from an investor group that includes executives from Robinhood, Square, and Snap, the company is poised to make a lot of noise in the risk and compliance space.
Founders: Ekaterina Romanovskaya and Justinas Kaminskas
Having just raised the largest ever pre-seed round in MENA at $3.25M, Egypt’s Flextock is ready to break onto the global fintech stage. Flextock provides end-to-end e-commerce fulfillment solutions and has so far signed up hundreds of merchants to its platform. Products offered range from pre-shipment to payment collection, and Flextock is now strategically partnering with logistics players throughout the region, like Flexport, to accelerate growth. The YC Africa graduates are planning to use the funding to speed up technology development, recruiting, and geographic expansion.
Founders: Mohamed Mossaad and Enas Siam
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-Thank you for reading!
Miguel Armaza is Host of the 21 Leaders Podcast, Author of the Fintech Leaders Newsletter, and Co-Founder of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas.