Doing It Wrong, Again - Our Next Act
Our most ambitious act, with the same conviction
At First Glance, Our Strategy Looks Flawed
A decade ago we stepped into Latin American venture convinced the region could create global software champions. However, the standard playbook used here felt mismatched. The region demanded a unique approach adapted to its nuances, so we decided to write our own, with concentrated investments, disciplined economics, and deep operational support.
After two successful funds, we decided it’s time to take this approach to the next level. We’re now entering a new phase with the same conviction, and we’re proud to keep “doing it wrong.”
We Dare to be Different
We’re not like other VCs. The conventional Latam venture wisdom was mirrored on the Silicon Valley playbook:
Cheap money fuels blitz‑scale. Capital is abundant, raise early, spend faster to secure distribution and brand before rivals can react.
Price doesn’t matter. Most successful exits occur through Nasdaq or US strategic buyers, so the seed valuation rarely influences ultimate returns.
Metrics can wait until Series A. Seed is about testing and iterating; enforcing strict KPIs too early can choke the experimentation needed to find product‑market fit.
Take bets, a lot of bets, in a very large portfolio. Venture returns concentrate on a few outliers. Diversifying across several dozen tickets raise the odds of owning a breakout company, capturing the power‑law while limiting exposure to any single failure.
Great founders will figure it out. Early traction is less important than the caliber of the founding team; great entrepreneurs pivot, iterate, and eventually land on the winning product without needing close investor guidance.
But we flipped that script and created a venture approach where:
Capital efficiency beats hyper‑growth. Because in Latam, every dollar matters and competition is thinner. Lower CACs let distribution be won with limited burn; ROI beats growth at all costs.
Investment discipline outranks speed. Liquidity is scarce; valuations paid must enable you to return the fund even if a Nasdaq exit never arrives. A global exit is the upside case, not the underwriting assumption.
Metrics come first, narrative second. Software economics reveal themselves early. We believe great retention, paybacks and growth can spot winners far better than résumés or hype.
Focus over fashion. We stay within our circle of competence, making fewer, high-conviction investments where our expertise compounds, ignoring the “flavor-of-the-month” to win through depth. No spray and pray.
Founders need help as much as capital. Money is the ticket; our operator support is the edge. We stand beside founders until the finish line.
In a world where venture capital is still largely shaped by Bay Area orthodoxy, our approach stands out, and not always in flattering terms. We’ve heard it for years:
“You won’t win seed deals with that bar.”
“You’re too conservative.”
“You need to be faster and more aggressive.”
In the eyes of many, SaaSholic is doing venture “wrong.” And yet, our results, both financial and operational, tell a different story.
Been There, Done That
SaaSholic was built around a simple premise: Great companies in Latin America need more than capital. They need the right capital and our model is built for that.
It’s not popular. We won’t be on every headline deal, but it is consistently bringing great outcomes.
Fund I proved our access and thesis, even with small, angel-like checks.
Fund II evolved the model: leading rounds, securing board seats, supporting our portfolio hands-on and helping 70% of our portfolio to successfully raise up-rounds in a down market.
Across both funds, we’ve seen low portfolio mortality and multiple companies grow into clear category leaders.
It works, not in spite of the fact that it looks different, but because it is different.
Some examples from our portfolio show how this edge plays out:
Jusfy. Under the Radar Legaltech
Back in 2022, Jusfy was a non‑obvious investment: a vertical SaaS founded by a practicing lawyer outside Brazil’s usual tech hubs, in a category scarred by prior failures focused on solos and small firms many view as churn-prone. Despite these surface-level flags that initially drove most investors away, we dared to deep dive into the thesis, guided by promising traction ($0.5M ARR by then) and a product that users loved.
Before investing, we spent four months fixing governance, cleaning the cap table and setting an option pool. We then worked on pricing, product, and team, helped recruit a seasoned CTO and later a CFO, and sharpened an AI roadmap that shipped a legal Copilot, adding thousands of users and boosting retention.
Two years after our initial check, we led (again) a Pre-Series A to reinforce the cash position, brought in strategic local and US investors, and placed an experienced board member to strengthen governance and accelerate growth.
The result: a company so capital-efficient it grew 10x in 24 months with minimal burn and now serves ~50,000 lawyers, tracking to $10M ARR by the end of the year.
Overlooked by most, we saw the early signal, provided close support, and helped turn Jusfy into a consensus, Series A-ready company in the applied-AI space.
Clicksign. Contrarian E-signature Leader
At first glance, Clicksign looked hard to underwrite. A significantly larger company than seed, in a “boring” category that needed 4x our maximum check within weeks, seemingly a unique and timely opportunity. However, a deep dive into fundamentals showed a different picture: sustainable unit economics, working customer acquisition channels, and category leadership in a segment growing 50% annually, valued at compelling terms.
We asked the founders for 48 hours to secure the necessary funds (thanks to our LPs who quickly understood the magnitude of the opportunity and committed to the co-investment) and went all-in. After committing, we helped right-size the team, and reinforced the culture needed to lift productivity, returning the business to profitability within months.
Later, we increased our ownership significantly by buying an early investor’s stake at the same valuation we paid 18 months earlier, when the company was 40% smaller and faced some uncertainty. Since then, we’ve helped hire a CFO, Head of Sales, and Head of Marketing, supported the revamping of the GTM strategy and further advanced the product toward an AI focus.
The company has operated profitably since 2023, has exceeded the Rule of 40 since our entry, and its current ARR already surpassed the price we paid.
Clicksign was a contrarian investment, proving that correctly pricing risk, fixing the machine, and doubling down when others won’t unlock durable growth.
Clad. Turning a Brazilian Insight into an American Opportunity
Clad presents another side of our thesis, the SaaSholic Studio, where we incubate high-potential ventures with second-time founders.
When Danilo Costa, fresh from his successful exit at Educbank, came to us with a simple question, “Could this model work in the US?”, the answer wasn’t obvious. Most K-12 schools there are public, regulation is complex, and incumbents are entrenched. But we saw something different: a $100B private education market with 6 million students and schools struggling with the same liquidity gaps Danilo had already solved in Brazil.
Our team flew to the US alongside the founder for customer interviews and business development to validate the thesis, which built the conviction to sponsor an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) period, recruit a co-founder, and develop a business plan. After the incubation period, we raised a Pre-Seed round with global investors from our network: RallyCap, FJ Labs, BackFuture and K50 Ventures, a round of almost 10x the size of our initial commitment to fund execution.
The Clad thesis shows how our high-conviction, hands-on support makes us the first call for ambitious founders and gives our investors unique access.
The Best Vintages Are Forged in Doubt, Not Euphoria
Being a venture investor in Latin America is contrarian by default. Double‑digit interest rates, political noise, currency swings and structural inefficiencies nudge investors toward low-risk bonds. On the surface, this feels prudent.
Yet, history argues the opposite. Latam’s breakout stories were born when capital was tight and macro gloom prevailed1. Top-quartile VC funds from those vintages outperformed every local public and private asset benchmark. Scarcity, not abundance, minted the outsized returns2.
The same setup is back. Global capital has retreated3, valuations reset, and a new wave of AI-native founders are building with battle-tested playbooks. For investors willing to lean in, the window is wide open once again.
Latam VC fundamentals are solid:
Large, underpenetrated market. Latin America is already online, with over 600M people connected, yet its business processes still remain largely manual. Cloud adoption, B2B software penetration, and enterprise AI deployment still trail developed markets, leaving spreadsheets, paper, and WhatsApp to run critical workflows.
Repeat founders on the rise. Regional ecosystems are maturing fast. Second-time founders and veteran operators of Latam’s first unicorn wave are launching second acts armed with scar tissue and global networks. Their share of new startups nearly doubled from 2019 to 20244, and they are twice as likely to reach unicorn outcomes5. This didn’t exist in previous batches.
Capital efficiency as a feature. Latin American startups return more exit value per invested dollar than other emerging markets6 because less capital means fewer bidding wars, lower CACs, and founders with the runway to build products before competition crowds in.
Local idiosyncrasies create moats. Heavy tax complexity, labor informality, multiple currencies and a proprietary financial infrastructure open doors for homegrown solutions where global players can’t compete.
A widening funding gap. Deal volume has fallen back to 2019 levels7, while every enterprise is being pushed to have an AI strategy. Ambitious founders are racing to seize the gap, growing faster than any previous cohort with minimal outside capital. As early‑stage funding remains scarce, the opportunity to back these inevitable companies at great terms is still wide open for seed investors.
Where We’re Going: The Rise of Super Intelligent Software
Latin America is overlooked while AI mania grips the rest of the world. Global investors are going all‑in on how AI is reinventing software:
Every boom rides a super‑trend. Internet, cloud, and mobile each forged outsized winners; AI is next. Every wave compounded on the last, amplifying the outcomes. SaaS drove most $2–20B exits in the past decade, and enhanced by AI it is now giving birth to Super Intelligent Software (SIS). The end game will be larger, faster-growing companies with superior economics.
Agents do the work. SIS platforms deploy AI agents to run end‑to‑end workflows, cutting headcount and turning weeks of effort into minutes. With continuous live-data feedback, these systems will outperform human experts in speed, accuracy, and cost. This shift is already clear in customer service, coding, and sales, and soon will become true for other industries.
Markets expanding ten‑fold. Clients now pay for results, not seats. Outcome-based pricing lets software capture a larger share of the value it creates, expanding contract sizes and aligning incentives. Budgets shift from payroll to software, raising the global addressable market from a $650B license pool to an $8T labor wallet8.
Record-breaking unit economics. Distribution physics have changed: social media turns virality into instant adoption. AI-driven superior UX/UI cuts time-to-value to minutes, reducing onboarding and shortening sales cycles. Growth curves are steepening, and companies are reaching ARR thresholds in record time.
Bigger exits than the last cycle. Traditional SaaS produced 300+ unicorns9; add agents, data moats and outcome pricing, and Super Intelligent Software is set to unleash an even larger wave of multi‑billion‑dollar winners.
Latam is already climbing this ladder. Founders here are already leapfrogging by skipping legacy stacks and jumping straight from spreadsheets to intelligence. Our AI Benchmark10 shows 60% of startups born since 2023 are AI-native and growing 1.6x faster than peers. Yet their valuations have a 50-70% discount to US comparables11.
Funding has not caught up to reality. The talent is in place, the economics are superior, and the valuations compelling. Owning this generation before it becomes consensus is the logical extension of everything we’ve done so far.
Our Unfair Advantage: How SaaSholic Will Win
We are here, on the ground, as the tide turns. Over our two funds we’ve refined our model, and a decade of execution has sharpened our edge.
More than ten years of sector focus give us superior pattern recognition. We’ve published the largest SaaS + AI benchmark datasets12 of the region, enabling us to ignore the noise and focus on metrics and fundamentals. We’ve built a system to spot contrarian founders early and back them before the market does.
Every dollar we invest arrives with operating leverage. Founders reward that partnership with first calls and fair terms, and LPs get the upside. That flywheel is our edge.
Over time we’ve refined our processes into a system that drives returns, from sourcing to exit.
Sourcing: Proactive, Thesis-Led Dealflow
We don’t wait for decks to land in our inboxes. We proactively research high-potential markets and founders. Research reports, media, and a network of founders and LPs surface promising teams before they start thinking about raising a round. By engaging and adding value early, with market insight, product feedback and a company-building vision, we become our founders’ first true believers.
Investment Criteria: Fast, Disciplined, Data-driven
Price matters. Every opportunity we pursue runs through our investment napkin, distilled from the patterns of past winners. We invest only when exceptional founders, great metrics and fair pricing intersect. The scorecard delivers a quick, transparent yes / no, earning respect even when we pass deals. Conviction lets us lead; discipline keeps us selective.
Portfolio Success: Hands-On Partnerships to Help our Companies Win
Day 0 starts with a founder-signed 100-day plan. We front‑load impact by providing them with a recommended tech stack of cloud, AI, payments, and partners, along with a founding team design. This makes our investment pay out fast to founders, making us often win deals even against larger checks and higher valuations.
Every month, we hold strategic reviews for each investment, analyzing the evolution of core metrics: ARR growth, cARR13, NRR, burn, and revenue/gross margins per FTE. If a metric slips, a partner sprints to help solve it as soon as possible.
Our hiring guild has placed several C-Level leaders and co-founders, and helped to structure proper governance. We help install KPI tracking, board-grade reporting and governance standards that raise the bar and prepare companies for future rounds in record time.
Fundraising & Exits: Engineering Liquidity Early
We stay hands-on from fundraising preparation to close, sharpening the narrative, polishing decks, and opening warm intros. Because their best partners will often be abroad, we coach founders to global governance and reporting standards to satisfy top-tier funds. Most Fund II companies raised their next rounds with global funds from our network.
On exits, we bring potential buyers into the conversation early, sometimes years before a deal is feasible, so they can track performance and build conviction. IPOs can deliver the largest outcomes, but we recognize their low probability. Therefore, we underwrite every deal to meet our hurdles without relying on public markets.
How We’ll Capture the Latam Opportunity
We’re now taking our most ambitious step. In our new phase, we’ll continue to execute our investment strategy at a larger scale, building on the lessons learned to date.
What Remains Unchanged
Betting on misfits. Backing overlooked founders with urgency, obsession and grit, tackling non-obvious markets.
Remaining lean, agile and close. A small, highly-incentivized team that ensures speed and founder proximity. No corporate bureaucracy and politics.
Leading early, doubling down. Continue being the first institutional check leading at Pre-Seed and Seed and preserving ownership through pro-ratas in every winner.
Champion capital efficiency. Every dollar matters. Fast payback, low burn, and consistent work towards traction and retention ensure a high ROI per dollar invested.
Bridging the gap between Latam and Silicon Valley. Bring global partners to our companies soon after investing, pushing world-class benchmarks.
What is Leveling Up
Ability to truly lead rounds. Invest larger checks that will let us solo-lead rounds, secure the full runway founders need, and anchor larger companies while holding 15%+ stakes. Founders can spend less time fundraising and we can stay focused on investing.
More governance and influence. Board seats on every lead turn oversight into operating leverage as our champions mature.
What we’re looking for
We’re searching for founders who will define the Super Intelligent Software wave. The things that excite us most are:
Vertical, AI-native platforms embedded in labor-intensive or friction-heavy workflows, replacing pen-and-paper and spreadsheets to deliver 10x outcomes.
Scalable professional services automation for law, accounting, finance, consulting and other language and process-dense professions, perfect for AI. These sectors face high labor costs, repetitive tasks, and growing data complexity.
Proprietary Small Language Models (SLMs) tuned on domain data to outperform foundational models at a fraction of the cost.
Pricing models aligned with client outcomes, ensuring ROI and capturing a fair share of the value created. Software that can bridge from traditional IT budgets and eat into labor budgets.
Low friction, low-CAC distribution powered by teams with sharp storytelling, field expertise and founder-market fit.
Multimodal interfaces, using text, voice and video, meeting users where they already work.
Platforms with immediate business impact, while laying the groundwork for superintelligence.
The founders we back are already thinking several steps ahead, building with a clear view of what becomes possible in a world shaped by abundant intelligence.
Arriving Early for the Super-Cycle
We’re at the dawn of an AI-driven super-cycle. Super Intelligent Software will create hyper-efficient, high-growth companies and the outsized returns that follow.
Latin America is the blind spot. Talent is ready, adoption curves are leapfrogging, yet capital remains scarce. The rules of the game are shifting and no one holds the pole position. This gap will close quickly.
If you believe the region’s founders are ready to build the next generation of world-changing companies and deserve real partners, our approach is built for you.
506(b) Non‑Solicitation Disclaimer
This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Any offer or solicitation will be made only to prospective investors with whom we have a pre‑existing, substantive relationship and only by means of definitive offering documents. Interests in any investment vehicle will not be offered or sold through this post. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Any references to portfolio companies are illustrative and are not intended as investment recommendations.
Nubank, 99, Creditas, EBANX, Wellhub, QuintoAndar, Loggi, Wildlife Studios, and others were founded between 2011-13, when average prime rates were 9.4%.
Latam VC funds have outperformed fixed income (CDI), local public equities (IBOV), global public equities (S&P 500) in USD during 2012-22 vintages, and disproportionately rank among the top quintile and quartile of VC funds globally, Atlantico. VC funds have outperformed PE during analyzed vintages, Spectra.
Latam’s 2025 annualized VC activity is $3.0B, 40% below 2019 levels and 85% below the 2021 peak, LAVCA. Latam currently accounts for only 1.5% of the global VC funding, Atlantico.
Repeat founders made up 40% of all new startup founders from 2019 to 2024, and their share of venture capital climbed from 24% in 2019 to 49% in 2024, LAVCA.
From 2017 to 2023, Latam’s VC investment rose from 0.02% to 0.1% of GDP, yielding 12 exits above $1B and $82B in aggregate market cap. India’s 0.5-0.7 % produced 8 exits and $67B, while Southeast Asia’s 0.2-0.3% produced 7 exits and $80B.
Deal volume has returned to 2018-2020 averages, 60% off the 2021 highs.
The enterprise software market is estimated at $650B. Foundation Capital values white-collar labor spend at $8.5T, and Sequoia estimates the combined Services + Software opportunity at $10T, 10-15x larger than today’s software market.
SaaS has produced 320 unicorns, while the broader software category counts 903, Crunchbase Unicorn Company List.
Check our Latam AI Benchmark full report.
The median pre-money valuation for a US seed round is $15.6M (Carta), compared with $5-11M in Latam (Latam AI Benchmark).
Check our State of SaaS Latam full report.
Find more about our proprietary cARR framework here: Great Returns Should be a Consequence… Enter cARR!
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oh man i get so excited and filled with hope for the region every time i read about what yall are doing. keep it up!
Reading content like that just makes me even more proud to have someday contributed to making those wrongs go a little bit more in the direction aimed. Keep going!