 I'm so pleased to introduce our panelists today. We have Hasmin Guzale up first. She is the co-founder and managing partner of I Think VC, which she will tell you more about. It is a early stage impact VC that focuses on capitalizing Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia. We also have Luis Arbulu, co-founder, managing partner of Sulcantai Ventures, which focuses on a wide variety of impact verticals in the Indian region of South America. We have Santiago Alvarez, the co-founder and managing partner of Alive Ventures, which is a slightly later stage impact VC with a climate and gender lens also focused on Latin America. And we have Sandra Sainz, the managing director of Sonin Capital, which is an impact wealth asset management platform operating all over the world, but with a particular fund focused on Latin America. So so pleased to have this crew up here today. Let's give them a round of applause. Wonderful. And we are here today to talk about navigating exit opportunities in addition to navigating the exit environments that exist all over Latin America. As you all know, there are nascent emerging markets, more developed emerging markets within this region. And throughout, I think, probably all of our investment experience we've encountered a lot of challenge, a lot of opportunity, and a lot of questions about the types of exit environments that exist in this space. So to get started, I would love to do kind of a lay of the land. It's probably not a secret to most people here that in 2021 there was a massive capital injection of a venture investment in Latin America. It was roughly $15 billion venture dollars came into Latin America in 2021. This was more than the previous six years combined. And since then, a lot of this capital has pulled back. There's been a bit of stagnation. So I wanted to start, Sandra, maybe with you about where this 2021 excitement came from and what's happened to it since 2021. Well, I think what you're just mentioning is it's a global situation. It's not just Latin. So first of all, clarify that. Then where the excitement has gone, I think that the excitement is still there. But the thing is that now companies have a tougher time proving themselves before they get poor with capital as it was before, just from very early stages. The companies need to now, first check, go to and prove that they have sustainable business models and that these sustainable business models are the basis of the evaluations that they are presenting to the investors. So investors now are not anymore just looking into huge multiple potential, but they are actually looking into very unit economics of the business models and seeing if these are really, really capable of achieving the growth that they are presenting to investors and therefore giving return, the promised return to the LPs. So I would summarize it in a very simple way. Now I think that it has come to the very basics of what really is the value of the companies. And in that regard, for all the sectors that we are here interested in, which are the impact sectors, meaning sustainable companies that are fighting for sustainable causes or companies that are fighting for social problems, there's a huge potential there. Because these problems are only growing, as we all know. And there's an urgency, as these conferences have been all about, about solving these issues. So the companies that have the drive and the way and innovation to really tackle these problems are really going to have the potential to grow and to show their promised return to LPs. So I think that the fundamentals for them are even stronger than many other companies that are maybe doing other things that are not so relevant anymore, for the world, for the investors, for everyone. So I would start saying that when we say impact investing, it is now a better time than ever to do it. I love that. And one of the things that you said in prep for this conversation that I really appreciated was how there's all sorts of exit activity happening in the region that maybe doesn't receive the same degree of noise as exit activity happening in other regions. So there are several LPs that may not know about all of the opportunities that exist for your all portfolio companies to exit. Has mean, how are you navigating LP expectations in terms of timeline of your portfolio to exit and what their exit prospects might eventually look like? OK. Let me tell you a little bit more about, I think, BC. So we focus on emerging ecosystems within Latin. Within this emerging region of ecosystem, we focus on five specific countries. There are Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay. What else? I think, Peru, of course. And so in terms of LPs that want to invest in the Latin American countries and the Latin American ecosystem, there is a specific value of getting into know these five ecosystems that are, as we want to say, frontier ecosystems. So it's very important to understand the region as a whole and to understand that these specific five countries are emerging ecosystems that is very important to be their first to get the best seat. So the next question, maybe I can tell you a little bit more about what we do, how we think this. But our ecosystems are still growing, but it's very important to be there at the beginning. So for example, I was reading yesterday that within all the ecosystems in Latin America, Chile and Colombia has been the ecosystem with the highest growth. So my question is, who are they going to be the next two or three ecosystems with the highest growth? And they're going to be these five ecosystems that we are going to focus. So it's very important to look that Latin America is not one country. As United States, one country. There are so many ecosystems. And there are so many countries going on there. And I know Colombia, for you Santiago, is one of the regions that you focus specifically on, one of the countries you focus specifically on. What sorts of exit opportunities are you seeing in Colombia and in the other countries you focus on within a lives portfolio? Yes. I think that's a very good question, Savannah, because I mean, for no one, it's a secret, sort of, that liquidity in Latin America is one of the biggest challenges for the venture ecosystem. And actually, it's not even for ventures. It's for the entire alternative assets of private market. Because even when you look at private equity outside Brazil and Mexico, that's always front and center of the discussion, like how you can exit and how you can do it in a way that is attractive for all investors, for the angel investors, for the seed investors here, say, along the way. And as Sandra was pointing out, definitely the last 18 months, we've seen a very important market correction in Latin America. Because also, as you mentioned, the year before, there was sort of an influx of capital. It was massive. It was a bubble, really, I believe. It created a lot of opportunities. It provided funding, sort of unrestricted funding to many portfolio companies. And it played a role. But I think the last 18 months sort of have provided a very important correction, sort of, 200 points in terms of also highlighting the importance of thinking about your economics, the importance about considering growing, but in a healthy way. And for the companies that have that mindset, that have been able to adjust, that have been able, sort of, to continue scaling even despite the crisis, then actually the opportunities to your question are available. There are two, I think, two strategies that we see in Colombia and in the region in general that I believe sort of are attractive from our liquidity perspective, and especially for impact. And I will tell you why in just a minute. Sort of the first one is M&A transactions. In Latin America, I think the traditional, we are here in the Bay Area, right? Silicon Valley mindset in terms of, oh, I do early stage investing and I hold on to IPO. I think that Latin America, that is a very, very challenging sort of perspective because it's not there yet, maybe at some point in time, but it's not there yet. But that doesn't mean that that's the only way sort of to get to liquidity. In Latin America, you have a very well-established sort of private sector, private market, like very big corporates, you know, providing goods and services, you know, across different sectors, but also is the region with the biggest inequality, which means many of these corporates, they don't reach under certain segments of the population. That's where I think most of us come in, you know, in terms of providing funding to companies that are specifically addressing market gaps. And when you're able sort of to find those companies, investing them, there are, you know, companies growing healthily to some of those points, you know, they are tapping sort of a vast market. Those are companies that very quickly, they become very attractive for corporates because they're showing them there is a way, there is a profitable way to get into a market in which they had not been able to tap before. So that's an avenue that clearly is providing liquidity to Latin American startups. And I think, you know, it's an avenue that in the impact ecosystem, it's where you have greater opportunities. And the other one I would say is also secondary market. It's something that is taking a bit longer sort of to be developed, but we're starting to see the secondary market. That's something that actually also in 2021, that there were very attractive opportunities sort of to exit to those investors, you know, those international investors that for the first time probably in a year, sort of they look at Latin America with as an investment opportunity, and then provided liquidity to those earlier investors that had already participated in earlier rounds of financing. And right now, where some of this capital has pull out, it means pull out, it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It's just waiting to deploy capital again for the local investors that we continue supporting the companies, those healthy companies that Sandra was pointing out, those companies will require capital, but we'll have healthy and economics again, we'll be able sort of to show growth, we'll be able to show that they're addressing important markets, and therefore these investors will step into the region again and provide that liquidity. And so, you know, there are two different avenues, it's not a traditional sort of VC model Silicon Valley, but for sure, I think is where we need sort of to seek for liquidity. I know Luis, too, you've been thinking quite a bit about secondaries and have a number of examples, so I would love for you to share how you've been thinking about secondaries as a tool to generate liquidity in addition to examples from the Solcantide portfolio. Yeah, absolutely, and to Santiago's point, right? I mean, we're seeing a lot of activity right now after, you know, we're talking about 2021, there's a big correction, I think in Q3 of this year, we're seeing a lot of activity, but more concentrated in less companies that have demonstrated they can be leaders, and they're starting to consolidate. So we are investors in a company called Galgo, it's called Migrante, just made on one acquisition of a financial services company in Colombia, we're investors in a company in Mexico called Mino that acquired another company called Plurk. So there's a lot of acquisitions that aren't to happen, so we're gonna see a lot of consolidation, which is things gonna drive a lot of liquidity to earlier investors. And on secondaries, one thing that's happening is a lot of these companies that we're investors on and we're looking to invest, they have investors that have been in their cap table for a long time and are looking for liquidity, and when rounds are getting formed, a lot of times there's discussion of, okay, is there an opportunity for secondaries? And that serves two purposes. One, it provides liquidity and returns to those earlier investors beyond paper returns, actual DPI, not just TVPI, so distributions. And then it's an opportunity for the new investors to increase their stake in those companies. If you think they're gonna be winners, you wanna have a larger percentage of that company, so there's two deals going on right now where we are buying or negotiating, buying earlier investors so they can return capital, they can then go and raise the next fund, which I think is very, it's a healthy way to recycle capital in the ecosystem, and then they are, we're obviously even increasing our stake and at a blended price, so usually secondaries have a discount, up to a liquidity premium, so it gives an opportunity also to enter at a more attractive valuation. What are you seeing in terms of timeline between initial investment and exit? I mean, it's, venture is a liquid asset, so it's not, I don't think it's reasonable to expect, hey, I'm gonna exit this deal in three years. A lot of people, I think in 20 or one got excited because everything was growing, people were coming in and something was saying, they're like, people are buying secondaries of high growth companies like Rapi because they wanna have bigger stakes, so I think a reasonable holding period for any investor inventors like five to 10 years, and then you can provide returns, that's usually what your investors and their fund expect, you don't expect to have, recycle capital so fast that you're giving up returns. So I think investors have been around a company, we're investing in a company that's been around since like 2018, one of the investors is already raising their second fund, so we wanna, we like the company, we like the valuation and we're participating in that deal. So I just wanted to comment on the secondary discussion because just a concrete example came up or I reminded myself in how this is actually also a mind shift sort of that is happening in the region. For those that don't know, I'm in a live interest and we're raising our second fund and we already had a first close. In our first fund, most of the capital that we raised was from VFIs, the development finance institutions and part of the discourse for them is, it's catalytic capital, is we're investing sort of to attract more capital sort of into the region and so on and so forth and funny enough, one of the restrictions in our LPA is you cannot do secondary transactions because that's not catalytic capital, I mean, you're just buying out another investor how that classifies as catalytic. This is 2018, I mean, this is not like 15, 20 years ago. If you think of that from an ecosystem market perspective, that's insane. I mean, how you can have sort of that restriction into an ecosystem, like how you cannot even provide liquidity to the earlier stage investors. We're not seed investors, I mean, we're slightly in the early growth stage of investors, but then the exciting news is in the second wave of our second fund, that's no longer in our LPA. And we are having sort of the similar LPs, but there is I think just another, a more sophisticated discussion and there's been sort of an evolution in the market to say, well, secondary transactions actually now is a liquidity option. It has to be for me. So let's provide also to the earlier investors that came before us, so just sharing an anecdote. And I would like to add something also in terms of alternative exits. Another trend that we're seeing more every day is corporate ventures coming into the play. With interest in buying exactly those players that have penetrated the market and consolidated position, and then this corporate, you know, want to have that pit of that and then maybe by the whole company. So we have very interesting examples of global pharma companies that are putting together funds for the region because they are now seeking specifically this type of companies. In our case, we work along a lot with BIMBO ventures. BIMBO is one of our anchor investors at LATAM impact, the fund that's owned and capital put together with fund of fund those for the region. And BIMBO ventures is also very active in the ecosystem with all that relates to that, you know, food production, ingredients, et cetera. So I think that that is also another new trend for the region and it's very, very interesting. It's opening up a lot of opportunities for exits for these type of companies that are doing things that are relevant for the business models of these corporates. Let me tell you an example of our portfolio construction, how we are thinking about. So we invest in pre-seed and unseed. Up to series A, we can do investment and we are ending the year two of our fund. And we estimate that of our exits opportunities are going to be around 60% secondary and 40% in merchant acquisition. And of the merchant acquisition, we have like two options. In our case that we invest in companies that are in emerging ecosystems in LATAM, the five countries that I already told you, we think like for example, a Mexican or a Brazilian company that want to increase their participation or escalate in LATAM and will be interesting in buying these kind of companies that are maybe in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Paraguay. There are three markets and the other are the one that Santiago mentioned, there are big corporations, very, very traditional, especially in the countries that we work that they are seeing that they are now because the startup ecosystem is growing a lot, they see the technology and they are very afraid of this startup growing a lot. So that's another thing that we are and we have a lot of LPs, or individual LPs, 60% of them are first time VC investors and are the owners of these very, very traditional companies that want to put, want to test the water first and to understand better how this startup ecosystem is growing. And I know you're also working very closely with each of your portfolio companies to help prime them for eventual exit. What are some of the ways that you're supporting them along that journey to get there? Yeah, especially, especially our support come when they want to grow in those countries. We call it an LP base, they are very active and activating and helping and doing the networking to connect and a Bolivian company that is going, for example, to Paraguay or for example, a company in Ecuador now that is moving to Mexico or LP base are really hands on helping them and they invest in, I think because they want to learn how this work and maybe in the next future and they want to have their open innovation arm and then a CVC all together, so that's the idea. For all of you, really in the earliest stages of your diligence process, how are you assessing risk of the deals in your pipeline and at very early stage trying to figure out whether this company might be primed for M&A, whether it might be primed for secondary. Luis, let's start with you. Yeah, and the first thing on, I mean, beyond the normal due diligence, like the team, the market, et cetera, first thing we look at is the corporate structure because it's really, and corporate structure, a lot of the governance issues because it's a really, I mean, doing M&A is really hard. I acquired a number of companies and previous companies that I used to run and especially in Latin America, it's a, you open a company's financial or governance documents and it's, for the most part, it's a mess. There's commingled stuff, personal. We acquired a company, not another fund, but had the owner of the company's car was in the company so they could be for tax reasons and they were paying school tuition from there, so total mess. So the first thing is you need to have a clean governance, clean cap table, clean, like their financials need to be in order and everything like that. In earlier stages, obviously you don't have it so what we do is we help a lot of companies structure. Where do you need to incorporate? It's, you have a local company and then you have a holding company and sometimes a blocker for acquisitions so you need to start working with them on, over the long term, what your governance gonna be? Who's gonna be your legal team? How are you going to start? I mean, you don't need to audit but you need to start working in accounting and having clean books. So a lot of it is just like at the beginning, it's easier to start right than to fix. So a lot of it is just start right, get good advice. There's a lot of bad advice out there. People thinking, oh, I'm gonna incorporate in Uruguay with a Spanish thing and like, okay, that's great for certain kind of companies. It's not really good for venture-backed companies. How about you, Sandra? How are you assessing risk? Well, there's many aspects. Of course, we have to take a deep look at but one that I would maybe want to talk about this here is we check the cap table and we see how aligned are the co-investors that we are investing with. And this is important because sometimes a bad LP can create a lot of damage to the company and to the entrepreneur. So we really wanna see that there's an alignment between the investors and the founders but also that there's an alignment among the investors. And we had very interesting cases in which there is, for instance, a corporate venture in the cap table and then VCs in the cap table and then there's a clear conflict there where they wanna take the company to. So that is something that not only from the investor's point of view but also from the entrepreneur points of view, I think it's worth looking at especially in the sincerely rounds of equity because founders sometimes think that the most important thing is to get the thing going and then if the capital is coming from here whatever, yes, let's receive the check but this may cause problems along the life and the subsequent rounds and the subsequent needs of financing from the company. So that is something that I would recommend. Let me tell you two examples that we have seen especially one entrepreneur from Paraguay and the other from Peru. You do all the checks of the entrepreneur in terms of revenue. The team was great, I mean was great to invest. However, when we see the cap table it's usually you see like angels with 20% of the equity already done. So we do some, we help a lot the entrepreneurs also to go and talk with these angels and to understand because they say I didn't know that at the beginning when I was creating this product I didn't know that I can be busy baked or I can take money from BC and grow to all over Latin America but now after two years I understand this. So to give them the skills and see how they negotiate is 20% with the angels and see in how this works and we have in terms of, we have seen like more than five example of this and three of them they solve the problem. They solve the problem with the angels. They understand how this VC world work and we are working with one of them to keep going and to in the investment community to see if we finally invest. So investing in emerging ecosystem is that you have to take into account all these kinds of things and it's not that the startup will come and have all the checks. Maybe it's a lot of work with entrepreneur and understanding how the VC world work. Thank you for that. One of the things that we were talking about as well was how often non-Latam based investors will come in whether it's to a fund or directly into a company later in Series B. After you've done the work, Louise, to fix it from the get go or start right rather than fix it down the line as you were saying how do you think we can attract more capital impact capital venture capital catalytic capital to Latam earlier, Santiago. I see some raised eyebrows so I would love to start with you. I mean, so I think that's the million dollar question. I mean, I think that's sort of the question that many of us sort of we're trying sort of to address in terms for unlocking the Latin American potential because I think and I shared this in another discussion panel earlier in the week. You know, six, eight years back sort of the first discussion that we had with investors in Latin America was is there pipeline? Is there, I mean, are you really going to be able to find companies that are investable, so on and blah blah blah. And you know, we're now that past that discussion. The ecosystem has grown dramatically, the entrepreneurs, and actually something that I find really interesting in the region is that in Latin America, entrepreneurs are now, they're born with an impact mindset. In the past it was like, oh, I don't know if I'm, I mean, right now you're seeing it, you know, from universities, it's really exciting sort of what is happening from an ecosystem perspective. So I don't think like probably that was the bottleneck then. Right now the bottleneck is how we unlock capital to be able to fund, you know, that entrepreneurs sort of that are going and scaling. And I think one of the biggest challenges that we have is something that you are trying to, you know, to address, but it's how we get fund-to-fund structures. Because we're operating in Latin America, sorry, in Colombia mostly. In Colombia there are four patient funds, four, that's it. That means they're relatively big, right? And so they have to deploy a billion dollars a year in alternative assets. They have a team of, I don't know, two or three staff. They cannot do checks of less than 50 million, you know, they cannot do more than 20 deals a year. Alive, I mean, we're hoping we will get sort of to the 80 million range. We will, you know, just by mathematics, we won't be able sort of to get a ticket from a Colombian pension fund. And so we need, I mean, we need to unlock different layers or different ways sort of to channel capital, sort of to the local investors that I think that are also the ones that we are better positioned to find those successful investors and those that are sort of being more innovative and addressing sort of the market gaps. And how we create those structures and how we also change the risk perspective that these more traditional mainstream investors have on the region is sort of the biggest challenge right now. Sandra, how are you expecting exit opportunities to grow and change over the next several years? Well, I think that there's gonna be more corporate, more M&A, I'm not putting my hopes so high in the IPOs yet. But I think that with those, with secondary market, of course, we'll get there. I mean, we'll find our way to grow our ecosystem and continue supporting the maturity of it. Another important sign is that we have seen much more international investors coming to the region, looking at it with a long-term view, not with a short-term view, because the question that most investors raise always is what with all the socioeconomic, political problems that are happening in the region and the specific countries. But this has been always the situation in our region. And I think that when these investors, long-term investors come to the region, they see it in a very different way that we that are leaving the problems inside the country see it. And they see it in a long-term vision and they say, well, we will discount it. We have already, take it that into account, there's always these cycles and they have a more optimistic view sometimes than the national investors or the local investors. So when you were saying about the capitals going out, yeah, that's mostly the case for local investors, but at the same time, you see the reverse effect of international coming to the region. So that is something that I'm also putting my hopes high there. And also, as Santa was saying, trying to unlock pension funds, insurance companies, all our big, big asset allocators more into the space. I agree with Sandra, the 2% of all of the Latin companies, if you see all the exits, only 2% were IPO. That is in the last 10 years. That is going to continue, maybe 3% or 4%. But that is going to remind there. So I agree with that. And talking about our companies again, sometimes we see that a company to reach series A, they have to knock the doors of Mexicans BC. That's always because they want to reach to Mexico as the biggest market in Spanish-speaking Latin. And we always talk with entrepreneurs. Sometimes it's the case to go to Mexico, but sometimes it's not the case. And I was talking with a company called Presta Mipé that is in Salcantay portfolio. And a life, too, and a life, too. And I love what the founder was telling me. Lauri was telling me, how was that run? And she told me, and we lost a lot of time talking to Mexico BCs because we wanted to reach, we wanted to have Mexicans BC in our cup table. And we didn't understand that our focus, it has to be Peru, because the market is too big in Peru for them. And they still have room to increase and to escalate in Peru. So I was thinking about the connection in the ecosystem here in the US and in Latin. It's not, both ecosystems are not well-connected. So there is a huge opportunity to BC, based in the US, to be part of these deals and also work together with BCs like us. And if I may, one thing to follow up on has me in point. One thing we're looking is a lot of companies in the 2021s when capital was free, there was yields were really low, there was growth at all costs. And it was, so they raised a lot of money and it was all used for expansion, growing, opening new offices, hiring both lots of people. And now that capital is, I mean there's about a, I think this year my calculation we're gonna end the investment at about a five billion, which is one third from the peak, but it's actually double what it was like in the previous decade. So there's a lot more capital now, discounting the big bubble. And that capital is being deployed, I think, much more thoughtfully, much more focused on unit economics, much more focused on when are gonna get the most out of this. And a lot of it is like the has me's point, like more thoughtful growth. Is Mexico the real opportunity? Or should I just focus more on my market in Pristamipa's point, it's a fintech for micro-entrepreneurs. Peru is like the, Peru, Bolivia are like the two largest micro-finance markets in the world, the most successful. So there's a huge opportunity there. But other companies that we've invested in like UBITS went to Mexico, grew like crazy there. They're still in there doing really well. They're like, you know, killing it. And now they're looking to actually be an acquirer of other companies. So a lot of things are happening. It's just like, where do you focus your growth? And you know, where do you get the most out of it? Yeah, and I think that one of the signals of a market that is maturing is when you see the entrepreneurs taking the decisions based on the business sense and not on where's the capital, right? Or what do I have to do to align to the investor that has the big ticket? But really going into what is strategically that things really matter for my company growth to enable the growth and do that, no? And then look for the investors that are really aligned to that vision. And I think that is something that just happened in mature markets where you see more investors coming, more specialized funds understanding really the dynamics and the industries, which are very different, you know, among all the alternatives that we have in the impact space, just talking about the impact space, no? We have education, we have health, we have clean energies. And each of these are very different in terms of dynamics, industries, market potential, everything. So specialized funds also have a very key role because they understand better really what the companies need and they provide much more value added in the process. Wonderful. We only have a, excuse me, a couple minutes left, but I would love to hear from you all about what members of our audience who presumably are a mix of allocators, founders, impact enthusiasts can do to help connect some of the dots has mean that you were talking about. Santiago, let's start with you. You're putting me on the spot. No, I mean, I think it really depends sort of where you're coming from, right? If you're an entrepreneur, I think Sandra just gave sort of the best advice to them is really look for the right source of funding for your company. One of the biggest mistakes an entrepreneur can make is try to align its business model to the funding. And that's something that actually because of the relatively early stage of the latin ecosystem happens quite often. We invest in the Indian region and many times there is the entrepreneur saying, well, I could expand to Columbia and therefore make it that is an investment available for you. It's like don't go to Columbia just because you want to receive my capital, go if it makes sense, a business sense. So I guess that's one. And then I'm going sort of to the other side of the table. If you're an asset owner, I truly invite asset owners sort of to look at Latin America as an ecosystem that has drastically evolved an ecosystem that is really poised for growth and opportunity, especially when we are in an impact sort of discussion because this impact discussion is about sort of access. It's about getting sort of to untapped markets and technology is playing an incredible role in enabling businesses to be able to reach those segments of the population that previously where it was impossible because of the economics, because of the cost of reaching to them. So Latin America unfortunately is the region sort of with biggest inequality but then is where also you get incredible opportunities nowadays sort of to be able to solve for that need. And here are a few fund managers that can help you sort of to unlock that capital. As a closing question to all would love to hear starting with you has mean about what you're most excited about in the region over the next couple of years. I'm very excited about entrepreneurs coming from the countries that we focus. We really believe that talent is everywhere but I have seen in my previous work as a vice minister of economy that all the entrepreneurs that we were working and giving the grants and they come again to get the same grants all over the year, all over the year because they didn't have opportunities, they didn't have the smart money and people to think and act with them to escalate their business to other countries and also I had a lot of talks with other VCs. Why don't you invest in these Bolivian entrepreneurs or these entrepreneurs from Ecuador and they say I really want to invest but I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do the due diligence. I don't understand the numbers when these entrepreneurs tell me. So I really believe on the growth and the exits of the startups coming from tier ecosystems in Latin and it's very important to be first in the seats and as you already see, we talk about the numbers in Chile and Colombia and then who are going to be the next ecosystems in Latin and in five years we will talk, I'm sure that we will talk about the growth in Peru, the growth in Ecuador, Bolivia and also Paraguay. I'm excited about that. Yeah, I mean for me it's, I mean after a bubble and then the bursting of a bubble, one thing people sometimes fail to appreciate, those bubbles actually create a lot of value and in this case a lot of value is in terms of like people learn more about what venture is, what entrepreneurship is, you're seeing a lot more students that I, back in the day we were thinking about consulting or investment banking, now they're thinking about entrepreneurship, they're looking at impact opportunities because to Santiago's point it's like, our motto is the gap is the opportunity and unfortunately Latin America is full of gaps, those gaps are not gonna get fixed by government, they're not gonna get fixed by corporates, it's the huge opportunity for entrepreneurs leveraging technology to bridge those gaps in education, in financing, in sustainability, in health, et cetera. So I'm really excited about this maturity of the ecosystem, a lot more talent going to try to solve those gaps and then venture, one thing that happened, I mean I'm older than I look, I remember in 99, 2000 when the crash happened, there was a lot of venture in Latin America, people forget about it, but after the crash happened there was none because it was mostly US funds that were doing all the investment and when the bubble crashed they were all gone. Now even after the bursting of the bubble there's funds that are committed to the region, Dallas, all VP in Mexico, Alive, Salcantay, I think, we're not gonna go to Texas and do oil exploration like Hicks Muse did when they put the bubble burst, they're gonna be committed to the regions and they're the ones that are still funding companies at the earlier stages, helping entrepreneurs structure their investment, think of a long-term strategy and then accompanying those companies through their multiple rounds all the way through their exit. If I can go. Something that excites me is the awakening that we are having as a population in general, I'm not talking just Latin, but I live in, well, I work and I love Latin so that's where I can comment on, but I'm sure this is global, there's an awakening about how much we need to work in terms of sustainability and social problems, how much we need to really innovate and use technology to come up with the solutions for the many gaps that Luis was referring to. But something that makes me very, very happy and excites me every day is to see how many people out there, entrepreneurs, fund managers, everyone, it's looking more and more at these problems and thinking in creative ways to come up with solutions from different seats, perspectives, development institutions, fund the funds as we are or direct funds or companies, people, entrepreneurs, students, everyone, it's more conscious today of the urgency of what we need to do in order to drive us as humanity. So that really, really excites me and inspires me every day. I would love to give a round of applause to our panelists. Thank you so much for joining. I may have a little bit of bias. Two of the four of these are in our portfolio. It's an impact foundation, it's possible a third might join but I truly think these are the best of the best and would love to invite audience questions if you have any for our panelists for the remainder of our time together. How, if at all, are you sinking around the notion of sustainability of impact beyond exit? It's a little bit of kind of an advanced practice but an impact investing world, thinking about finding aligned partners in exits that are gonna kind of support the ongoing mission of the business. It's not gonna always dictate or be a decision-making factor in exit, you have to do what makes sense for the business and ideally, a partner that's gonna support the business is gonna support the impact of the business but there are different kinds of, corporates, other exit opportunities that might influence how much that impact is locked into the next phase of a company's growth so I'm curious if that's playing into your thinking at all, was you talk about exits? Yeah and actually, we just went through a really great discussion run on LPs, we were in a strategy together and a lot of it is the way to ensure that that impact continues is to have the company be extremely successful and whoever buys that company, buys it because they're having so much success at that impact that they're not just buying it to get the talent, a lot of acquisitions are like talent acquisitions, no, you, we want the financial institution that will acquire at one day per cent meet because oh my god, the micro-entrepreneur space is so good and they're doing so great at it that we wanna continue to support this so I think a lot of people sometimes get, I mean impact, if you wanna use like a two by two matrix it's like how big it is, the opportunity but also how well you're doing in it so a lot of impact investors over, I think many years were so focused on how the depth of the impact and not on, you know, you're not gonna have impact if you're only serving like one per cent of the market you need to grow it and then whoever acquires is gonna wanna continue doing that because it's, the opportunity is there. I would compliment also that I think one of the first things that we do in due diligence is really sort of understanding how the business model is aligned with the impact and it's not something tangential, right? Like, but it's actually embedded in the DNA of the company and the business model and therefore, you know, that goes sort of to Luis like if successful company is acquired because there is a, you know, they're in a market that is growing and they're scaling and that's the business model is very difficult to envision, you know, that someone will acquire unless because it's the competition and they want, you know, to kill it, which would be sad but I guess that's also, you know, something you need to look at, you know, when you're exiting but if it's embedded in the business model, the impact then it's something that goes hand by hand. Any other questions from folks? Thanks for sharing insights, valuable insights. The question is, do you prioritize or include metrics on social impact returns combined with economics because we want to grow both together? There is a prioritization on that. How do you kind of weight that in the overall return? Yeah. Yes, thanks for the question. Of course it is very important and actually we, I'm talking from Latin impact perspective, someone in capital. For us, we only do impact, right? But when you say what you do impact, what do you mean, right? You need indicators. You need data that shows as in financial returns you need that data that supports that you're actually doing impact, no? In terms of access, in terms of whatever you're doing, the type of impact that you're at. So we have developed internally a methodology to track this impact through indicators, specific indicators per industry because these of course are different from industry to industry. We, as we commit the money, we ask for legal compromise from the companies or funds to report these impact indicators. And we are not saying that we wanna have like a whole set of indicators that are gonna complicate the life of, but as Adeu was saying, these are in the DNA of the companies. So basically you're talking about unit economics and operation performance indicators, because if you're talking for instance about a health company, patients rich is an operational indicator but it's also an impact indicator, right? So in that sense, we get that, we get the compromise, the legal binding compromise of them in reporting those and we also report that to our own LPs. So it is as key as getting the other financial data. Just to the comment, I think it's also, we need to, all of us, to change our mindset in terms of what we think when we think about impact and impact indicators is, we, you know, in the past, as you know, it's like someone force is like top-down approach of saying you need to report number of users and like not valuable data. And because that's just a burden across the value chain for until the entrepreneur that needs to collect, if you're a company that your business model, the impact is embedded in the business company, the impact measurement must be related same as measuring financial performance, operational performance is, I mean, if like it's understanding your customer how to proceed your business or your product or your services, understanding sort of, I don't know, if you're an education company that you're trying to provide a training to improve access to paying jobs, formal jobs, it's like measure that to see if actually what you're offering is helping to achieve that goal or not. So is, and we use a third party that is specialized in that is called 60 decibels. Initially when all our companies go through impact measurements with them, initially we have to pay for it because the companies is like, they have this mentality is like impact reporting is a burden on me, it's not valuable, it's just a burden. We've had, after they go through the process, they see the data, the quality of the data, now saying, you know what, I'll pay for it next time because it's just providing valuable information to the entrepreneur, to us as fund managers and then sort of to the LPs, the asset owners of what's happening and to be able sort of to take informed decisions in terms of product, and then of course that translates into the impact as well. So it creates a virtual circle rather than traditional mentality of this is a burden which is I think the one that comes from the traditional DFI world and like an impact study, it's a three year study, I mean technology has also enabled us to do it much more faster and much more efficiently. And so as a VC company, first we have to understand at least the logic how this company will return at least 10 times or 15 times what we are putting in the company. So that's first. And the second thing that we always look before that investment go to a company go to investment committees, how these companies is solving a structural problem in Latin within a sector that we focus. And for that, we also have developed an internal like matrix where we put the potentials, indicators and social and climate indicators that we are going to use if we invest in this company. And sometimes this exercise is very good because sometimes we understand the financial return and then we thought that this company may have a lot of impact. But after putting all the numbers in the matrix we understood that that was not the case. And another thing that is super interesting as we invest early stage, pre-seed, seed, and of course the companies, they don't have all the indicators. They know that they are making the impact more or less and they are going, so in the first three months we sit with them and we build with them the indicators that they will measure. And so it's something very easy, it's not very difficult. And after that, that opened a lot of doors for them in terms of companies that they are selling their products or in terms of other potentials, VCs that are coming because now they have the indicator. So it's a super important key that we work with them and they are open only because they have all the indicators in order. And I'm sorry, I don't want to hijack the conversation but I'm just passionate about this specific point because I think also as a sector, we are at close roots in terms that, many people outside of this room also are starting to talk about impact but then there is also the risk of the social wash, the green wash and then in five years time it's like this was another CSR or this was something else that didn't work out. So we need to measure because if we don't measure we won't be able sort of to show that we're delivering on what we have set out to do. We have time for one or two more questions if anyone has any. I wanted to go into one of the initial points of returns of investment and exit strategies in Latin. So how do you see from your experience like going public in Latin America versus going public in the US if we look into some examples like Nubank that went public in Brazil and in NASDAQ I believe. So maybe possibilities for impact driven companies like have you seen any success stories that you could share or if there's a chance for like ADRs between Latin and US like how do you see that potential for long-term exit strategy for all of us? I mean the companies, the Latin American companies that went public in the last few years, Nubank, SadaLogic, the local, et cetera, they all listed in New York. And NASDAQ or NYSE, because of liquidity, right? It's you wanna, and you wanna be in a market where you're actively traded, you can raise capital at the end, that's why you go public because you're raising capital through the IPOs. Unfortunately, I don't know all the bolsas or exchanges in Latin America that tend to be very concentrated on either financial services or mining. So it's very difficult for companies to go public. There are no, the Mexican stock exchange, I forgot her, she's been pushing a lot at like the Biva, the stock exchange and trying to push it. But at the end of the day, I think you're gonna have, if you go public, which I think we're talking earlier, less than half of half a percent of companies will eventually go public, not just Latin America, also in Silicon Valley. It's more how do you kind of prepare yourself for an acquisition more so than just go in public? I think once you get to the go in public, you need to make sure it'll probably be New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ or venture-backed companies. Of the Brazilian IPO, I think that is 50-50. I was reading the other day an article that was 50-50. And another example that I was thinking about is like we are now having conversation with a entrepreneur from Ecuador and he had an IPO, it's a marketplace of vehicles and they did an IPO in Australia. That was, and it was a really good exit. That was like eight years ago. So we have to open our mind about that. So that was a good question. They had another company exit in Australia, Life360, which was an investor in a previous fund. They also did an IPO in Australia and I'm still kind of baffled why. But it was like, you know, that's where they were able to raise capital.