Crossing Borders with Nathan Lustig

Originally from Mexico, developing microfinance in Latin America and India was a natural step for Johanna Posada. With over 15 years of experience working in corporate finance, economics, microfinance and investing in emerging markets, Johanna, now based in Seattle, has long been involved in economic development. Currently, as Managing Director and cofounder of Elevar Equity, an impact investment...

In 2014, nearly all US-based VCs were reticent to invest in Latin America. But that didn’t stop Washington, DC based QED from building one of Latin America’s most impressive startup portfolios. Before becoming a Partner at QED Investors, Mike’s path into the finance world was not obvious. Mike’s first foray into finance was his job at Capital One where he pursued his passion for using data to solv...

Juan Pablo Cappello met well-known Argentine entrepreneur Wenceslao Casares when he was “living out of a backpack in New York.” After a brief career in traditional law, Juan Pablo’s career took off when he was on the founding team of Patagon, Latin America’s first online bank, with Casares and two other entrepreneurs. A few years later, in 1999, Patagon was acquired for $750M, becoming one of Lati...

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest global threats that most people don’t know much about. It has the potential to take us back to the days when a small cut could kill you. Maricel Saenz is tackling this problem head on with NextBiotics, a company creating new tools to kill antibiotic resistant bacteria. If that wasn’t enough, she’s taking on antiquated stereotypes of Latin American and fe...

Born in Russia and raised in the US, Vera Makarov never thought she would be an entrepreneur  in Mexico. Although she is now on the receiving end of investments, Vera started her career on the other side of the table: as a traditional investor who then moved into impact investing. She eventually realized she wanted to be the one working on the ground and decided to build her own business. In 2016,...

As the only Latin American woman in her Y Combinator cohort, Marta Forero is helping break the mold for women in the tech industry. From a young age, she knew she wanted to make an impact on the world. After university, she took a high-paying job, which she then left to start a business of her own, combining her passion for education for transformative growth with a love of technology to create an...

What do Start-Up Chile, the Copa Libertadores, and Latin America’s largest crowdfunding campaign have in common? The answer is that Chilean entrepreneur and philanthropist, Matias Rivera, had some hand in their development. Matias loves to solve problems he sees at home or abroad. Once he sees a need, he tries to create a simple and effective solution. With that methodology, Matias has founded fiv...

Missing appointments at a beauty salon can add unnecessary frustration to a person’s daily routine. On the other hand, low paid beauty workers may work a full day and not take a single peso home at the end of a long day away from their families. La Manicurista, a Colombian app that provides on demand beauty services, was born to solve these problems. Two years ago, Alejandria Tenorio, Colombian co...

Sofía Yagüe never imagined she would end up as an expert in Latin American startups and venture capital, and be splitting her time between New York and Miami. We cover frequent legal mistakes that Latin American entrepreneurs make, the best structures for raising capital in the United States or abroad, as well as tips and tricks to keep startups on the right path. Listen to this episode to learn m...

Eugenio Perea is a Mexican entrepreneur, investor, and company builder, and Magma Partners’ newest Venture Partner. Based in Mexico City, his career path has crisscrossed the Mexican ecosystem, consistently returning to the idea that businesses can improve society by creating excellent products that directly solve their customers’ problems. This thesis led Eugenio from his first corporate jobs to...

Jackie Hyland has spent the better part of a decade living, working and studying in Latin America across multiple different industries, which has given her a unique perspective into ways that technology and finance can help serve the region. After spending time with non-profits, impact investment, real estate, traditional venture capital and the the head of Latin America for Silicon Valley bank, J...

On September 20th, 2017, Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico, leaving a permanent mark on the Caribbean island and its people. Most budding startups shut down operations for up to a few months as the nation recuperated. One company, BrainHi, doubled down after the hurricane, helping doctors and dentists treat more patients by automating the process of taking appointments through their AI tech...

Brian York left Colombia when he was two weeks old, adopted by a US family and didn’t come back until 2009. Although he grew up south of Boston, Brian never forgot his Colombian heritage and always planned to travel back to try to meet his biological family. Most people would probably go on vacation to Colombia to accomplish that mission, but not Brian. Instead, he started several businesses in hi...

Some entrepreneurs are born, others are made. Federico Casas identifies as the former. A lifelong entrepreneur, Federico started his first business at age eight, and hasn’t stopped since. As one of the first movers in Mexico City’s budding startup ecosystem in the early 2000s, Federico has watched Mexico and Latin America undergo a tech revolution and has been evolving his work alongside it every...

Daniel Undurraga never thought he would sell even one Latin American company to a company in the US market, but with the recent US$225M acquisition of Cornershop, a grocery-delivery app he has officially sold two startups to US companies. His first startup, Needish, was the basis for Clan Descuento, a Chilean Groupon clone that was acquired by Groupon in 2010. Clandescuento's acquistion was before...

Venture capital, especially in Latin America, can often seem like a black box where founders have very little access to information about what happens on the inside of the firm. I’ve gotten so many questions about how to apply, when do it, pitfalls to avoid and so many more. On the last episode of Crossing Borders, I interviewed Komal Dadlani, CEO and cofounder of Lab4U. One of her conditions for...

From a very young age, Komal Dadlani has wanted to make a difference in the world. After studying the careers of people who had changed the world - Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Pablo Valenzuela - Komal realized that she wanted to be a scientist, specifically a biochemist. Studying science in Chile is not easy; up to 88% of schools don’t have lab equipment, and even those that do are not using it....

As Start-Up Chile’s first Executive Director, Jean Boudeguer was one of the first people I met when I arrived in Chile. Jean is actually the only ex-Start-Up Chile Executive Director who had not yet appeared on Crossing Borders! Jean faced unique challenges as Start-Up Chile's first director. He had to build the program, yet didn't have any previous governmental experience. After Start-Up Chile, J...

With the recent acquisition of Cornershop, Rappi's $200M round and Uber Eats continued expansion, Latin America’s last mile delivery market has heated up. In the past 10 years, over 50% of the region connected to the Internet, creating a booming market for e-commerce and other online businesses. The growth of food delivery startups, especially in Latin America’s biggest markets, has been propelled...

Horacio Melo and I have been trying to organize a time to do this podcast for a few years and I'm excited to finally be able to share it. Once the Executive Director of Start-Up Chile, Horacio went on to build his own startup - just two months after becoming a Dad for the first time. Horacio knows what it takes to build a great company; after all, he watched and mentored over 1000 startups as they...

The Mexican venture capital and startup ecosystem is changing fast. And ALLVP’s Federico Antoni has been there helping it grow since 2012 when he and his partner Fernando Lelo de Larrea started their first fund. The once-CEO of a Mexican fashion company started investing after he failed to reinvent an aging consumer brand. The transition from a corporate position to the world of entrepreneurship m...

Most people skip over Bolivia when talking about Latin America’s startup ecosystem. The landlocked 11-million person country has yet to develop a thriving homegrown tech scene, but it shows tremendous potential for growth. It often just takes one or two success stories to catalyze the whole industry. Carlos Jordan, founder of UltraCasas and UltraCreditos, might be just the entrepreneur Bolivia nee...

If you don’t believe entrepreneurship is a grueling job, just ask Ignacio Guglielmetti. Ignacio says he has never worked harder than he does for his startup Cuida Mi Mascota, and he used to be a management consultant - one of the most demanding jobs out there. His path from consulting to building a pet-sitting startup was far from clear; it took him to the Netherlands, USA, Mexico, Argentina, Puer...

This podcast with Emilia Diaz, a Chilean entrepreneur who dropped out of university at age 21 to run the biotech startup Kaitek Labs, is one of my favorite podcasts so far. And it's one of the most necessary. In the US, we celebrate entrepreneurs who learn lessons from failure. I always knew that I'd be able to get a job if my startups didn't work. I still know it today. But in Latin America, peop...

Pedro Pablo del Campo is a Chilean entrepreneur, and the newest addition to our Magma Partners team. Born in Punta Arenas, one of the most Southerly cities in the world, Pedro Pablo traveled the world in his youth since his father was in the Air Force and then a commercial pilot. From a young age, Pedro Pablo was eager to be involved in early-stage enterprises and has gone on to founding or joinin...