Sramana Mitra: Are you seeing B2B SaaS in Latin America or is that not so much a trend? Is the trend more towards transaction-based marketplaces and FinTech?
Cristobal Perdomo: FinTech, across the world, is a hot topic. It has become too hot for my taste. That’s the largest sector of ventures you see. I also see SaaS B2B. We have another company that does Spotify for business.
>>>Shripati Acharya: I was talking to an entrepreneur yesterday. He was talking about why they turned down a chance to raise a lot of money.
One is that the structure of the company changes if you raise $10 million instead of $3 million. Sometimes, there are opportunities like that because we have oversubscribed rounds. There is a lot of interest in a particular area. The cost structure changes instantly.
>>>In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:
Sramana Mitra: Let’s do some examples of what kinds of things you’ve invested in. It doesn’t matter if it’s from the first or second fund. What I want to understand is how you think about these investments.
When did they come to you? What did they have when they came to you? What did you see in these ventures to really convince you and compel you to write the check.
>>>Sramana Mitra: What did Cuivviv come to you with?
Shripati Acharya: They actually had the product. They were seeing initial traction. They might have had a hundred thousand questions in total. Today, a billion questions are solved on the platform. What I really liked about it is, they had an understanding and connected with the teachers.
Sramana Mitra: They have a teaching background?
>>>Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Cristobal Perdomo was recorded in May 2019.
Cristobal Perdomo is Co-Founder and General Partner at Jaguar Ventures, a venture fund that invests in Latin America.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s get to know you. Tell us about yourself as well as Jaguar Ventures. What do you like to invest in? What sized funds are you working with?
>>>Sramana Mitra: You’re based in Bangalore?
Shripati Acharya: That’s correct.
Sramana Mitra: Do all the companies need to be in Bangalore?
Shripati Acharya: Most of our companies are in Bangalore. We do have companies in Delhi. There is more effort to do that. We have to make that extra effort.
>>>Shripati Acharya: The reason we say we’re the first institutional check is that we are fairly comfortable in ambiguity in the company. This dovetails into your second question, which is what we are looking for.
We are looking for a thesis from the entrepreneur – a conviction of what they’re trying to build, which exhibits 10x insight. By 10x insight, it could be 10x in terms of the value proposition. It could be 10x in terms of how the product is going to get distributed out to the consumers and customers.
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