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    WE INVEST IN THE BRIGHTEST ENTREPRENEURS IN LATIN AMERICA

     

  • About

    Started by Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs

    Patagonia Ventures Logo

    We are a private investment fund that makes early stage investments on the best and brightest Internet companies in Latin America. As of today, we achieved a remarkable success rate: 15 exits out of 24 investments made.

     

    We develop successful, fast-growth companies by providing capital as well as expertise, mentoring and networking opportunities. We are active investors and our objective is to nurture the ideas of innovative, high-tech entrepreneurs and accelerate their development by offering much more than just funding.

     

    We’re actively looking to invest in extraordinary entrepreneurs who have the ability to think globally and build great global companies.

  • Approach

     

    At Patagonia Ventures, we consider the following key criteria for funding our portfolio companies:

    Sector Focus

    Industries and markets where we can contribute the highest level of expertise and value. Our target investment areas are the following: E-Commerce, Digital Media, Digital Publishing, Digital Advertising, Marketing Services, AdTech, eSports, VR/AR, Marketplaces, Software, Offshore Service Providers, Mobile, Gaming, Video, Entertainment, SAAS, AI, Fintech and InsureTech. Naturally, we favor ventures that complement­ rather than compete with­ our existing portfolio of investments.

    Geographic Focus

    We concentrate our investment activity in Spanish and Portuguese speaking markets, mainly in Latin America. Given our commitment to meaningful partnerships with our management teams, Patagonia Ventures believes that such relationships are best maintained through close geographic proximity. We do, however, continuously evaluate investment opportunities on an International basis, as we look for high quality opportunities that best match our investment criteria

    Geographic Arbitrage

    Ventures that generate revenues from US and/or Europe while having competitive operating costs in Latin America. We do, however, invest in ventures that sell and spend on the same market.

    Low capital requirements

    Ventures that can be launched with little external capital and have profit margins to sustain high growth with internally generated funds.
    We look for ventures with little needs of hard assets, such as custom buildings, manufacturing equipment, etc.

    High margin for error

    Ventures with simple operations and low fixed costs which are less likely to faces cash crunch because of technical delays, costs over-runs and slow build-up of sales.

    Timing (Not too early, Not too late)

    Ventures whose product or service can make an impact on the market today. We do not invest in pure-science inventions where real-world applications are years away, nor are we interested in entering mature markets that are already crowded with competitors.

    Rapid Revenue generation and Break-even point

    Ventures with Products/Services that are far along in the development cycle (i.e. ready for sale), with the ability to create perceived or real revenue within 3 months and with the ability to achieve the breakeven point within 6 months.

    Strong Management team

    Ventures with a committed management team. Ideally 2-3 people involved with complimentary skills. We like frugality and we look for ventures with a frugal management team who are not willing to become employees but entrepreneurs ready for building a profitable company that generates future dividends.
    Ventures where the CEO and the members of the management team have a proper proportion of the ownership to make it worthwhile to invest their time and effort into their project.
    We are looking for Entrepreneurs that know how to use advisors.

    Concentration of Customers and Suppliers

    Ventures targeting an atomized customers base who pays in advance, upfront or quickly and an atomized suppliers base that grants favorable credit terms.
    Ought to have at least 2 customers already identified.

    Market Opportunity

    Ventures tackling a big and rapid growing market opportunity.
    Currently, big companies are mainly focused on their core businesses because they need to optimize their resources. This allows new startups to capture new market opportunities following new trends unattended by those big companies. We look for ventures taking that take advantage of that situation.

    Vision and Focus

    Ventures managed by entrepreneurs with a clear vision and a single focus.
    We don’t invest in startups with multiple products, as we believe that having a single focus maximizes the chances of success.

    Clear Revenue and Financial Model

    Entrepreneurs should know how they are going to make money, which are the customer acquisition cost, customer life time value, cost of sales, margins, operating expenses, taxes, etc.

    Scalable Concept

    Ventures with a compelling business model and a scalable concept: at least $10m in year 5.

    Concise and convincing differentiation

    Ventures that can answer a simple question: Why customers will buy our product or service?

  • Team

    Damian Voltes

    Damian Voltes

    Managing Director

    Damian is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor with a strong experience in mergers & acquisitions.
    Since 1996, he has been building, investing, scaling and exiting media & tech companies in Latin America.

    Currently, SVP Corporate Development at Aleph Holding, the world leading digital ad representation company of the top digital platforms such as Twitter, Meta, Snap, TikTok and 40+ more. As an "intrapreneur", Damian have launched and leads Aleph Payments, a cross-border payment business covering 130+ territories with 49 currencies.

    Director at Patagonia Ventures, a private seed investing SPV with a remarkable success rate: 15 exits out of 26 investments.

    Director at Fiera, a Venture Builder that co-creates new companies with entrepreneurs and corporations.

    As entrepreneur, Damian founded 6 Internet companies (3 of them were acquired by public corporations):
    1) Digital Ventures, the largest Display Ad Network in Latin America and exclusive sales representative of Facebook, LinkedIn, Zynga, MySpace. Acquired by FOX, a News Corp. company (NASDAQ:FOX).
    2) InZearch, the first Search Marketing Agency in LatAm. Also acquired by FOX/News Corp.
    3) EmergingCast, a company focused on an Internet-based model for the professional creation of content at scale. Acquired by Demand Media (NYSE:DMD).

    Post-Acquisitions, Damian served for both, FOX and Demand Media, in Global M&A/Corporate Development and international expansion initiatives.

    As an angel investor, Damian wrote first checks to:
    - Wondery (acquired by Amazon)
    - IndexTank (acquired by LinkedIn)
    - Hunt Mobile Ads (acquired by Opera)
    - Properati (acquired by OLX)
    - SandBox (acquired by Animoca)
    - ComentaTV (acquired by Wayin)
    - ttsports (acquired by Resonant Media)
    - RecargaPay (secondary buyout)
    - Playmaker (Reverse Trading Offering and then acquired by Better Collective)
    - Other investments and startups: 123seguro.com, Workana, Octupus, ZetaNet, FAV!, Wayin, Sumavisos, Educabilia, Natural Tech, CuponesOnline, Netkiosk and Intermarketng.

    Damian holds a Bachelor in Business Administration and MBA from Universidad de Belgrano. Postgraduate in Telecommunications from Universidad de San Andres & ITBA and a Mergers & Acquisitions executive program at Stanford Business School.

    In his spare time, Damian enjoys skiing and cycling.

  • Portfolio

    A remarkable success rate: 15 exits out of 23 investments made.

     

    ---- EXITS ----

    Digital Ventures

    Digital Ventures

    ✓ Acquired by FOX International Channels a News Corporation (NASDAQ:FOX)

    Leading Ad Network in Latin American & US Hispanic markets.

    Renamed as .FOX and opened 21 Offices World Wide (expanding from LatAm to Europe & APAC).

    Former Sales House of Facebook, Zynga, LinkedIn in Latin America.

    InZearch

    InZearch

    ✓ Acquired by FOX International Channels a News Corporation (NASDAQ:FOX)

    Leading Search Engine Marketing Agency in Latin America & US Hispanic markets.

    EmergingCast

    Emerging Cast

    ✓ Acquired by Demand Media (NYSE:DMD) - now Leaf Group (NYSE: LEAF)

    Leading on-demand media company for the Latin America & US Hispanic markets. The company creates commercially valuable content at scale in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. The company has developed a content studio that identifies, creates, and distributes text articles and short-form videos, utilizing proprietary algorithms, editorial processes and a community of 60,000+ freelance content creators. Launched eHowenEspanol.com, ehow.com.br, among other O&O Sites.

    IndexTank

    IndexTank

    ✓ Acquired by LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD)

    Real-time, hosted search engine service. It allows developers to quickly build search-based applications without having to worry about hosting their own search software. IndexTank features include: real-time feed indexing, instantaneous availability of search data, geo search, automatic faceting, range search (important for e-commerce) and instant insights about your indexed data.

    Hunt Mobile Ads

    Hunt Mobile Ads

    ✓ Acquired by Opera Media Works / Ad Colony (Opera ASA)

    First mobile advertising network targeted to Spanish-speaking market, including all of Latin American and the U.S. Hispanic market, and offers solutions to discover, build brands and capitalize on the mobile Internet sector.

    ComentaTV

    Comenta.TV

    ✓ Acquried by Wayin

    Analytics and engagement platform for TV shows and live events. Its tools give social producers access to a mass volume of data, enabling them to find relevant tweets in real time to analyze the behavior and integrate the social audience on air with one click.

    Sonico

    Sonico

    ✓ Acquired by Match.com/IAC (NASDAQ:IAC)

    Social Network in Latin America with over 53 million registered users (Sold to match.com/IAC).

    Oony

    Oony

    ✓ Management Buyout

    Search engine for daily deals. Oony aggregates deals from different sources and sorts them out to find the best fit for each user using his current location among a mix of signals like users personal interests, memberships and credit cards, time and day, and a machine-learning algorithm based on the use of the service.

    Sumavisos

    Sumavisos

    ✓ Management Buyout

    Search engine and Aggregator of real estate, cars and jobs classifieds in Latin America.

    Properati

    Properati

    ✓ Acquired by OLX

    Real Estate marketplace for Latin America that provides insightful data to help users take better decisions.

    PixOwl

    Pixowl

    ✓ Acquired by animoca

    Develops fun and engaging mobile games for the entire family. It’s cross platform, free-to-download titles dance across the screens of millions of iPhones, iPads and Androids each and every day.

    RecargaPay

    RecargaPay

    ✓ Secondary Buyout

    Formerly FNBox, is the leading mobile prepaid top-up platform in Brazil and Latin America, (with over 1 million mobile customers), and it is now expanding into utility bill payments and financial services for the unbanked.

    OnTrade

    ttsprts

    ✓ Acquired by Fanalitica

    ttsprts is the leading mobile SAAS platform for sports clubs, sports, leagues and federations. Currently the official mobile app for AFA (Asociacion de Futbol Argentina), Superliga (Argentina), Chivas (Mexico), Santos Lagunas (Mexico), among others.

    Wondery

    Wondery

    ✓ Acquired by Aamazon

    Brand-new media company specialized in mobile and on-demand audio storytelling. Wondery creates and curates podcasts to connect wonderers and brands to a world of entertainment and a world of knowledge.
    www.wondery.com

    broken image

    Playmaker

    ✓ RTO (TSXV:PMKR)

    Playmaker is a digital sports media company that lives at the intersection of
    sports, gambling, media and technology. Playmaker is building a collection of
    premier sports media brands, curated to deliver highly engaged audiences of
    sports fans to sports betting companies, leagues, teams and advertisers.

    www.playmaker.fans

    ---- ACTIVE ----

    123Seguro.com

    123Seguro

    Active

    First insurance exchange in Latin America where individuals can compare car insurance plans from leading carriers and purchase them online.

    The company offers a wide array of car insurance plans underwritten by top leading insurance companies through our web sites, customer care centers and network of marketing partners the leading online insurance exchange for Latin America that provides insightful data to help users take better decisions.
    www.123seguro.com

    Workana

    Workana

    Active

    Fastest-growing marketplace for remote and freelance employment targeting Latin America. The company help businesses find & manage the best remote talents for their projects, while also helping workers get projects according to their preferences, skills and price level.
    www.workana.com

    Palermo Plug & Play

    Palermo Plug & Play

    Active

    Real estate company with O&O full equipped mid-size office buildings for fast-growing Internet and media companies. Their properties are located in Palermo Hollywood, the epicenter of the entrepreneurship and Polo Audiovisual (Hub for TV/Film production companies) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

    OnTrade

    Fiera Studio

    Active

    Fiera is a startup studio that co-creates companies with entrepreneurs and corporations. Fiera provides top-tier core resources: Design, engineering, growth hacking, marketing, finance, legal, office space and of course funding.

    www.fierastudio.com

    FAV

    Octupus

    Active

    Octupus helps companies make the big transition from legacy infrastructure and applications to the new generation of Cloud Solutions. Use your Data & Information in order to take better decisions.

    www.octupus.com

    ---- CLOSED ----

    Zetanet

    Zetanet

    ✓ Cash cow company. Divested.

    Trading Desk that simplifies the planning and buying process for digital media, generates efficiencies, cost-savings and increases campaign performance, straddles all real-time bidding environments including ad exchanges, yield optimizers, and ad networks, represents advertisers on the demand-side and trades impartially; buying and selling where it is most efficient.

    OnTrade

    Ontrade

    X Merged. Failed. Closed

    B2B network designed specifically for the travel professional – a virtual environment where buyers and sellers can research, evaluate and transact business using powerful business-match applications.
    The company was merged with Conference Hound.

    Educabilia

    Educabilia

    X Failed. Closed

    Education marketplace in Latin America. It has build a community of curious people where everyone can learn what they want or teach what they know.

    FAV

    FAV Network

    X Failed. Closed

    FAV! is a Multi Channel Network (MCN) targeting Youtubers in Latin America and US Hispanic Markets.

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