#001: Latitud, Nubank, Treinta

Giants get even bigger whilst SoftBank spins and Worldcoin wobbles

Apr 18, 2022

Hey fellow technopolists,

Welcome to the first edition of Technopoly, the weekly newsletter covering technology, startups, and culture in LATAM. Thanks for joining. I’m fully installed in CDMX, and that means it’s time to get cracking.

What’s hot

🚀 Going long on Latitud. A16Z and NFX led a $11.5m seed round in Latitud, LATAM’s premier accelerator, alongside a star-studded cast of angels from Nubank, Rappi, Creditas, dLocal, Bitso, and still others. Latitud intends to productise it’s executional know-how into a suite of software tools that become the “operating system for LATAM startups”. The software play is a clever move: rather than taking precious equity, it’s a sticky way to monetise that’s much more founder-friendly. (TechCrunch, 1,171 words)

📱Nubank streamlines payments (and BNPL). NuPay, the new ecommerce solution from the Brazilian fintech, offers the ability to make payments from debit and credit cards in full or interest-free installments. For merchants, they also claim to target lower transaction commissions, though rates aren’t yet disclosed. Their expansion is a huge win for consumers and businesses across the continent. Personally, I’m waiting with bated breath until I no longer need to go to the convenience store each month to pay my wifi bill. (Nubank blog [in Portuguese], 409 words)

💰 Treinta bags Colombia’s biggest Series A. The Bogota-based fintech has raised $46m, with angels from Jeeves, Mastercard, Clara (Mexico’s breakout B2B fintech unicorn), and Nubank writing cheques. Treinta offers a cheap digital ledger and sales tools to over 50 million micro-retailers across LATAM, boasting $10bn in GMV annually. They plan to use the funds to continue their expansion into Spanish-speaking LATAM. (Contxto, 244 words)

What’s not

⛓️ Worldcoin raises data privacy flags. Backed by A16Z with elite advisors like Sam Altman, Worldcoin launched their eponymous stablecoin in 2021 to experiment with a crypto-based universal basic income, targeting 1 billion users by 2023. They offered free tokens (and sometimes cash) to potential users from 24 mostly developing countries worldwide. The catch? Users had to hand over iris scans and biometric data for access (GDPR suicide), and in many cases Worldcoin’s fleet of data collectors offered little to no explanation to users as to what the data was being used for. Now an investigation by MIT Tech Review has revealed that Worldcoin has hoarded data from roughly half a million users who often had no idea why they were getting “free money”. (MIT Technology Review, 7,234 words)

🌀 SoftBank spins out its LATAM fund. The new fund, Upload Ventures, will hold onto SoftBank’s $5bn portfolio and continue SoftBank’s plan to deploy $100m in early stage companies annually. The spinout — headed by the same cast of investors — is a volte face from SoftBank’s position 6 months ago, when Masa Son quashed the prospect of a spinout despite the protests of his ex-COO Marcelo Claure. It’s another twist for SoftBank that distracts from their 2022 challenges, with quarterly earnings down 97% year-on-year and the Nvidia-ARM megadeal nixed. (TechCrunch, 697 words)

Stat of the week

Quantity doesn’t usually correlate with quality, but this chart paints a simple picture as to why some LATAM ecosystems are more advanced than others (US shown as benchmark):

Source: Endeavor via Alex Gonzalez Ormerud @ Rest of World

For the culture

Katie Kiewel (partner at Prana & of Khôra) published the second edition of her monthly newsletter with amazing play-by-play updates on the LATAM ecoystem. She’s also posted a comprehensive set of recommendations for all things CDMX — definitely subscribe and bookmark for your next trip. (Musings from Mexico City; CDMX recommendations)
Omar Apollo, the Mexican-American pop-R&B songster, dropped his debut full-length album, “Ivory”, earlier this month. With collaborations from heavyweights like Pharrell, Kali Uchis, and Daniel Caesar, Apollo effortlessly concocts a technicolour collage of sultry autotuned harmonies, liquid indie riffs, and exuberant trap-gaeton swagger as he croons his way through bilingual, gender-fluid romance and melodrama. (Spotify, 41 minutes; The Guardian, 928 words)

That’s all for this edition. If you like what you’re reading, then please consider reaching out, forwarding to a friend, or posting on socials!