Minteo: Why We Invested
The Latin American NFT market is different, and these guys know how.
I hired Will Durán as a co-op in 2015 as one of our first team members building out Northeastern University’s Experiential Network, which has now served over 11,000 students with real world work projects from over 2,300 employers. His hustle, street smarts, and enthusiasm were unparalleled and I told him that whenever he starts his own thing I’ll be working for him. Seven years later, after staying in touch after he graduated college, got experience with a Bay Area startup, and started some small businesses in his home country Colombia, I’m excited to be investing in his new startup Minteo, which will bring a billion Latin Americans and Spanish speakers into NFTs and crypto.
Will’s co-founders, Javier Santiago Lozano-Cadena and Santiago Rodriguez Ortiz, previously co-founded Wompi, the fastest growing payments gateway in Colombia (processing over $1B USD/yr) and acquired by Bancolombia. Through that experience, they built critical relationships with financial institutions across Latin America and know how the system works. This know-how serves as an important moat in enabling individuals to on/off ramp fiat into crypto.
Latin America & Crypto
- “Generally speaking, Asia Pacific (APAC) and Latin America (LATAM) are more optimistic about the value of blockchain and its tokens…” New Value: Crypto Trends in Business & Beyond
- 5 Investors Explain Why Latin America is Poised to Weather the Crypto Winter, TechCrunch
- Crypto Adoption Seen Accelerating Across Latin America in 2022, Bloomberg
Minteo’s launch is perfectly timed for Devcon in Bogota this October. As a leading team in their “home court”, they will show the thousands of dApp builders flying in from all over the world why Minteo and Colombia is poised to help onboard a billion consumers into crypto. With over 34 “unicorns”, Latin America is poised to be a pillar for technology platforms. The NFT market is experiencing explosive growth, but Latin America is drastically underserved. It is simply too hard to convert local currencies into crypto and the large NFT marketplaces require you to bring your own wallet. Furthermore, existing solutions are geared towards desktop and browser based wallets, but Latam ecommerce is highly mobile and Minteo will be mobile first.
Minteo will become the leading NFT marketplace for LATAM with seamless fiat on-ramps, and affordable transaction fees, showcasing local content and local culture. Minteo is off to an incredible start building relationships and community around brands, content creators and artists in Colombia and Mexico. We’re thrilled to be co-investing with OpenSea Ventures and Fabric, among others in this $4.3 million financing.
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