Meet Flink: México’s Leading Neobroker
By Mercedes Bent and Will Kohler
We’re thrilled to announce that Lightspeed is leading the $57M Series B of Flink, the leading neobroker in México. Flink surpassed 1M brokerage accounts earlier this year after launching their brokerage product in the summer of 2020.
We first met the Flink team the day before Mercedes’ birthday. It was a Friday morning and we had a zoom call with Sergio (Flink Co-founder & CEO.) In that first call, we were enraptured by the vision he shared for creating more financial inclusion in his home country of México. His passion, earnestness and perseverance for his vision of México as a thriving financial ecosystem and democratizing wealth investment was beyond compelling. The excitement leapt through the video screen, and would later show up in multiple brand visuals like the one depicted above. Flink’s vision for the future goes beyond accessing stocks, and we wanted to be a part of it.
So despite Mercedes having getaway plans for her birthday weekend, we ended up speaking with Sergio and his team several times over the weekend, and every week for months after that, including several (Covid safe) meetings in México City.
Flink’s team has executed incredibly well since we first met them. Flink has grown to be the largest neobroker in the country, helping over 1 million customers become investors, and worked closely with México’s regulator, the CNBV, to ensure they’re building their consumer app in the most consumer friendly way possible.
The vast majority of their users are first time investors, bringing access to owning US based stocks to the masses in México. Flink wants their product to help these investors create wealth through equity ownership in the brands they love. This is their mission.
Flink’s mission to create generational wealth and help grow wealth for everyone in México was easy to love — and for good reason. For a country as large as México (127M population), the percentage of the population investing in stocks prior to 2020 was relatively small. In June of 2019 it was reported there were 218k brokerage accounts in México across 35 firms. Today that number is dramatically higher as companies like Flink help expand the market size and help investors learn more about equities.
Flink’s attention to their community is second to none. We’ve watched as their team at all levels stays up into the early hours of the morning responding to customer chats. Flink’s podcast, “Finanzas en órbita” has become a go-to destination for financial and stock market education in México and their active community on social media is full of posts sharing user’s stock portfolios with each other and asking for advice.
A Retail Zeitgeist
Over the past year, we all collectively experienced the global cultural phenomenon that was the rise of retail investing. Spurred on by covid lockdowns, record low interest rates in the US and beyond, and an increased cultural awareness of the benefits of investing, tens of millions of investors across the globe became equities investors.
According to CNBC, investors put more money into the stock market in the 5 months from December 2020 to April 2021 than in the previous 12 years combined.
This was a global phenomenon with stock brokerages in East Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, and of course, Latin America surging.
In fact Mercedes went on CNBC in January of 2021 to discuss retail investing and highlighted Flink as one of the global examples of retail investing surges.
This surge in retail investing and fintech coincided with another large movement of 2021 that Flink is helping fuel: LATAM’s skyrocketing VC funding as a region on fire.
It is estimated that between $6–9B was invested in LATAM in the first half of 2020, double all of 2020. Here’s LAVCA’s estimation of how much was invested:
LATAM and Flink’s successes aside, we are beyond thrilled to work with Flink because their team is full of the nicest, most thoughtful, creative and caring people. Shoutout to Sofia, Jésica, Pamela, Jimena, Gustavo, Pedro, Pamela, Max, Vero, Sergio and so many more working to build this amazing company. Thank you for giving Lightspeed the opportunity to partner with you.
Flink marks Lightspeed’s third investment serving Mexico’s people alongside Stori and Frubana, with more to come. We are big believers in México, and bullish on LATAM.
¡Viva México!
If you’re interested in learning more about #Flink, #fintech and #LATAM, join us Thurs 8/26 @ 9:30am PT on Twitter Spaces to meet the Flink team https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1zqKVXYyOPpJB
