LatAm founders: Fundraise in Silicon Valley (a how-to-guide)

Last Fall, the awesome team at Platzi invited me to participate in PlatziConf Mexico 2018, their flagship conference, in my hometown of Mexico City. This was a fantastic event with a couple thousand attendees and another tens of thousands of streamers from across LatAm and the broader Spanish speaking world. It was extremely encouraging to interact with such an engaged community of young people who are eager to learn and improve their career and life prospects!

My pitch is for LatAm entrepreneurs to take the plunge and aim to fundraise from Silicon Valley. The reason is simple: while extremely competitive, Silicon Valley has a lot of capital and experience looking to scale the types of businesses that can really change the economic profile of the region.

As one of the very few investors at a larger VC firm hailing from LatAm, my goal is to provide a frank roadmap to navigating Silicon Valley while fundraising. The presentation summarizes some of the most common questions I often answer when interacting 1:1 with LatAm and other Hispanic founders. The Platzi team uploaded the video of the chat here, and I’m uploading the slides here (I’ve added quite a few links that compile some of the best writings I’ve read on fundraising and startups over the years). Since the videos were posted, I’ve received some exciting follow up questions and in future posts I’ll expand on some of the ideas that generate interest.

If you’re one of the crazy and ambitious entrepreneurs hoping to build a massive business in LatAm or targeting Spanish-speaking and hispanic customers and businesses, please reach out. I’d love to chat with you!