Andre Maciel
Contributor
Andre Maciel is the founder of Volpe Capital. He formerly worked with J.P. Morgan and was a managing investment partner at SoftBank.
Jennifer Queen
Contributor
Jennifer Queen is the founder of Pina, a PR firm focused on startups and venture capital firms.
Latin American venture capital and growth investments through 2018 had averaged less than $2 billion per year. With quality growth companies starved for capital, the few investors active in the region were making a killing. For instance, having invested in its Latin American franchise throughout different cycles, General Atlantic has an IRRs (internal rate of return) exceeding 50% from those vintages.
As a banker covering technology, I thought there was an opportunity to invest in the region and decided to quit my job at J.P. Morgan and give it a shot. When I called my former boss Nicolas Aguzin to thank him for his support, he said he’d introduce me to Marcelo Claure at SoftBank. By March 2019, we had launched SoftBank in Latin America with an initial commitment of $2 billion, which was worth more than the entire industry at the time.
Great companies like Nubank, Inter, Gympass, Quinto Andar and several others were in their early innings at the time, but the market dislocation did not last long. Latin America became the fastest-growing VC region globally, and the market expanded to $1 …
