 So, hello and welcome to SoCAP's 2021 session on how Latin America's entrepreneurs are creating a new and better innovation economy. My name is Jen Stuller-Rivera and I'm the Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility for Moody's Corporation and I'm thrilled to be here today moderating the panel on two of my favorite topics, Latin America and entrepreneurs. Before I have the panelists introduce themselves, I'd like to share just a brief summary of Moody's CSR and our Reshaped Tomorrow initiative. In 2018, Moody's announced our Reshaped Tomorrow Financial Empowerment Initiative, which focused on bringing tools, skills and knowledge to people at every level of the market to promote greater prosperity and opportunity. By supporting underserved communities, we can help fuel economic inclusion and job growth and help markets work better for more people. One of our founding partners selected for the Reshaped Tomorrow initiative was Village Capital. And over the last three years, Moody's has partnered with Village Capital to deliver a capacity building program that gives entrepreneurs the tools to grow successful businesses. Since our partnership was formed, entrepreneurs in the region have started to gain significant attention from investors. This sets the stage for Latin American entrepreneurs to impact society's most pressing issues across financial services, agriculture, health care and more. I'll now turn it over to each of our panelists to introduce themselves. And Matt, let's go ahead and start with you. You could please tell us a little bit about Village Capital, the work going on in Latin America and your role with the organization. Sure. Thanks so much, Jim. And it's good to be with you all. My name is Matt Zeiger, the Chief Program Officer for the Americas at Village Capital. We're based in DC in the US, but have offices around the world or locations around the world now these days. And we've operated for 12 years globally to find, train and invest in underserved entrepreneurs that have an outsized impact on important social and environmental problems, partnerships with Moody's and others around the world really enabled this. And so we look to really thoughtful corporate leaders and founders and funders to help us to power this kind of work to find these entrepreneurs that are not finding support in other ways. My particular role covers all of our kind of entrepreneur and programmatic facing work, external facing work for across the US and Latin America, where we started our office back in 2015. Daniel is our Regional Director for Latin America, so I'm going to turn it over to Daniel. Thank you so much, Matt, Jim, Marina. So, yes, I'm Daniel Cosian, the Regional Director for Village Capital in Latin America, where we've supported over 45 entrepreneurs together with Moody's over the past years. So this is something really exciting for us, especially as we explore different trends such as the future of work and international services and really trying to support and support the entrepreneurs that are making sure that there are services for people that have been left outside for many years, particularly minority communities. And this is something that we're really glad to be working on together. I work with a very talented team here in Mexico City. We also have one team member in Paraguay at the moment. And this is part of what we try to do in terms of building networks of support in different countries. So it's not really just us traveling to different countries and trying to to do what we think is best, but surrounding our teams with the knowledge and also people that understand the local context. And this is what I would say is the main strength that we have as an organization. So really happy to be here today and really happy to be working with you for the past years. And I'm going to turn it to Marina. Hi. Hello, everyone. My name is Marina Rosenberg. I am the country manager for Argentina and for our Moody's Local and MIS operation. And I'm also the commercial head for Latin America. As you might already know, Moody's is I mean, our core business is to do great rating assessments, great rating analysis. We provide ratings for companies, for sovereigns, for anyone that wants to provide better transparency and that wants to access the capital markets and broaden the number of investors willing to buy their securities. But I mean, I'm not sure that this is the right focus of what we are talking about today. So maybe I want to get the core of what we do, which is bring transparency and information to the market. So I would think that the better way to match our business to what we're doing here and the purpose of this conversation today is that we we try to bring clarity, fairness and knowledge to an interconnected world. So we are committed to supporting the social, environmental and financial health of Latin American communities through our business endeavors in local corporate social responsibility programs. So that's the idea. The I mean, the partnership with Village Capital has worked amazingly well for both of us, willing and looking forward to share more of that throughout the panel. Back to you, Jen. Great. Well, thank you, everyone. We've got a really nice agenda of questions over the next 40 minutes. So I'm just going to jump right in. The first couple of questions are for any of you to jump in with an answer. So we'll throw it out there and take turns. So Latin America is considered an emerging market by many. What is your response when you hear that? I can start and then I can pass it to Matt who's also in a unique position because he's not only working with the US, but also the Latin America. And this allows for contrast and also, you know, to identify different trends in the different countries and regions. So when we talk about emerging, emerging sometimes means and is seen as a place where there's no opportunity or infrastructure or even networks, right? And that is that is a connotation that is often given to different terms, to different trends as well. But what I identify as emerging is opportunity and Latin America and it is great that investors outside the region have already started to see this is a land where people really try to build different products and services. There are not for, I would say, the opera classes that are for people to use, you know, in everyday lives. So for example, a clear example of that is we train a company that is focused on managing payments for different services and in a country like Mexico, I'm sure in Argentina is similar in Brazil, probably the same. It is really hard to go out and really pay for services, right? And this is something that we struggled with during the pandemic last year. This company is actually one company that I, you know, I use their services to be able to protect me and my family. And this is the type of work that people are developing in the region. So it's not these luxurious items or these luxurious services, but it is products that are useful for people to make their lives easier today. And I'm going to pass it to Matt, I'm sure has more impressions about it. A couple of thoughts come to mind when people say emerging and Daniels always likes to remind our team that it's no longer emerging. Latin America, really, and particularly some of the larger markets like Mexico and Brazil are leading markets, obviously. I think we look at things like gross domestic product per capita. And a surprising statistic is Mexico, Brazil, other larger Latin American countries. And it really as a whole, the GDP per capita is actually closer to places like China than it is to places like Kenya, where we also operate or India even. So it's dramatically higher GDP per capita, as well as the amount of deals that are happening right now. So we track a lot of the VC and investment statistics because it's an often is very relevant to our companies. And right now in Mexico, we're looking we're on target to hit a thousand a thousand deals in about 25 billion dollars invested in startups. And that's running at like 200% of what it was last year and continuing to see that kind of increase. So lots of ways to think about it. But, you know, it's no longer emerging, certainly has emerged and is really meeting a lot of interesting ways. So I wonder what Maureen has to say about that. Well, it's interesting because we all have a different perspective of depending on our backgrounds. I mean, when we talk about emerging, I mean, I think about the concept associated to high growth potential, but high risk associated to that potential. I think about GDP. I think about, I mean, this concept for me implies a transition between a less developed to a more developed region. So I clearly hear your points. And I understand that if we look from, I mean, if we if we analyze emerging by looking at opportunities, network infrastructure, investment, growth. This is, I mean, that time is definitely leading. But also I would like to bring another factor to the table that has to do with equality, equal access to opportunities. And I think that there is a place here where Latin America still is lagging a little bit behind other regions. I see that there is huge, huge talent, capabilities, entrepreneurship, great ideas, but I still perceive that access to capital, access to the opportunity to develop these ideas is still limited. It's not fair. It's not equal. So capital still becomes a limitation. It happens. I mean, I would translate these to every area of the economy. I mean, this is something that we see across all sectors. And, for example, from our perspective, from a Buddhist perspective, we still see that from a great quality would remain strong in the region, despite weaker growth prospects. So this is a region that has been threatened repeatedly by macroeconomic imbalances. I mean, you name it, depending on the country. Inflation is a ghost that appears in all the regions. So it's a very uneven and stop and go, depending, of course, and with each economy, there are outliers in the region. Chile has shown an excellent macroeconomic story, but it's a region with imbalances and with stop and go in terms of growth. So that turns access, that brings access and equality to a different perspective. I mean, I still see an emerging feature where we talk about access and equality. But definitely, I should agree with you, Matt, that in terms of the number of startups and investment in this, I mean, we've seen the beast doubling. So this is amazing. And the region here is definitely leading. We need a little bit more support from investors in order to make it happen. But that's another topic. Great. Different perspectives, but I think the common theme here is that Latin America is certainly leading. And that leads me into my next question, which maybe, Matt, you might want to kick us off, or Daniel. Why are Latin American entrepreneurs continuing to attract such growing volumes of investment? I'll touch on this briefly. So one of the things that's interesting, I think, about Latin America broadly when compared to some of the other markets in which we operate is the scale and speed of growth. So it's both as a whole is about double the population of the United States and also growing at considerably higher rates. And yet the informal nature of large sections of the economy is still very persistent. I think Marina, to your point, about the quality and equity and really access to economic opportunity distributed throughout the region, it's a very true tiered society in ways that I think even many other markets still are not. And so when you do have solutions like Daniel was talking about that can solve for something like the underbanked population that's less than 50, more than 50% of the population is underbanked. And that's comparison to most other major markets of similar size. That's like 80 or 90% in most places like China or India. So you have a huge demand and need for innovation that improves lives, that changes the way businesses are created or formed. And you also have this massive scale of adoption. So I think those two things together, I think are very attractive for investors and really anyone that are thinking about ways to scale and distribute products as well as really meet demand and need in the society. I definitely would agree with you. I mean, that's a huge opportunity if you look at the region potentially in terms of number of people and opportunities in the underbanked population. I mean, this is also a population that's not served. I mean, that can not access the traditional ecosystem of payments so it needs to have specific solutions to address that doesn't have access to credit. So, I mean, the impact on any solution to better position these underserved people is huge. And I would also add, I mean, why is La Tama attractive? Because there's a lot of talent. And compared to, I mean, productivity is relatively good. Talent is very high. I mean, you have highly educated people that you can hire at a very attractive cost. So for companies, I mean, there are still hubs that remain very attractive in terms of capacity to attract talent to retain talent and cost efficient. In Latin America, we have two of them. One of them is Argentina, the other one is Costa Rica. And many companies are shifting towards settling cost efficient operations because we find talent, productivity and relatively attractive in terms of cost. So that would be my addition, my two cents to your views, Matt. Excellent. Thanks, Marina. So maybe, Daniel, can you tell us a little bit about finance forward and how partnerships like the finance forward between Moody's Village Capital? How is that helping innovation that's helping some of the most pressing needs for small businesses in Latin America? So just tell us a little bit more about that program. Yeah, yeah, of course. So finance forward is a program where we support entrepreneurs coming from all places in Latin America. And I would say that the most important part of this relates to what Marina was sharing earlier in the conversation. It is about access. It is about creating equal opportunities. So we've created a Village Capital a set of criteria where we care about the business and we care about what the potential of this business is. We don't really care about what your background is in terms of college degrees or even graduate education or if you belong to a capital city where capital, of course, funds are concentrated. So think of Sao Paulo, think of Mexico City, think of Buenos Aires, in some cases, or Santiago. What we want to do here is to make it equitable for entrepreneurs to access the opportunity to, one, grow their businesses, train them as founders, and third, opening more networks for them to attract investment, whether it's debt or equity in this way. So finance forward is a set of different workshops where we partner with Moody's and we have partnered with Moody's across different countries in Latin America to provide not only mentorship, which is very specialized. And I would say that what Moody's is adding to this initiative is this risk assessment analysis that comes with the different expertise levels that you all have as Moody's staff members, of course, but also helping entrepreneurs think of opportunities along with risks. So we have a clear example with some offices in, some people in offices, like Buenos Aires or even Sao Paulo, we went back to Buenos Aires. I think it was the end of 2019, 20 before this whole thing happened. And I remember seeing Marina in there with a couple entrepreneurs and it was a really good exercise. These two entrepreneurs have been awarded as the best suited to attract investment from different capital sources. And I remember this particular session because Marina was there along with 15 other peers. And I remember that their founders, one of them from Chile, the other one from Sao Paulo were like, yes, this is really helpful in getting all this feedback because we're always told to fund raise, we're always told how great the company is. But when you get someone that is particularly specialized at risk, you truly find what you need to work on as an entrepreneur. So finance forward is something that really helped entrepreneurs advancing in this way in their investment readiness. But I would say that the most important part of finance forward is also trying to expand the concept of financial health and expand the concept of supporting individuals and families. So Latin America as a whole has been all about financial inclusion for the past, I would say five years, I would say from 2015 to 2019. So financial health, when we talk about it, it's okay, financial inclusion means getting a bank account, getting an access to credit and that's it. But what's after that? And this is something that we've worked on together, identifying entrepreneurs, supporting them and also trying to open these options for them. And also for investors, as Marina was saying, capital allocation is really important here to understand what the concept is about. It is not just about one transaction. It is not a one-off interaction between the customer and the client. But it is about creating a path for individuals and families to once save, invest and grow their businesses. And this is the most important part about finance forward. So Marina, I've got a follow-up question to that for you. So what role can corporates like Moody's play in supporting a healthy and diverse startup ecosystem in Latin America? And I think Daniel touched on this a little bit, but if you can maybe just expand from the corporate perspective. Sure, I think that Daniel has touched many interesting points. Maybe we can follow up later. But I mean, what is joining the finance forward 2019 program in Latin America to support entrepreneurs that are changing the way that SMEs and individuals use financial services. So this collaboration among Village Capital, MetLife Foundation, PayPal and Moody's aim to build financial help in communities across Latin America by lifting up new entrepreneurial solutions, particularly local solutions to local problems. We aim to move beyond financial inclusion to achieve financial resilience and stability for individuals and families around the world. So small business owners constantly face stressful financial situations as Daniel was mentioning. So we know that only 45% of MSMEs in Latin survive longer than two years of operation as opposed to 80% in Europe. This is extremely relevant. I mean, we need to provide MSMEs in Latin with tools that they need to thrive. Overall, these companies generate 28% of economic activity and they are underserved. So we need to think about creative solutions to help them and help them survive longer than two years and at least reach out to the levels of their beers in other regions. I mean, even for Moody's, Latin America is a completely different region, completely different animal from the rest of the world. Local markets have very specific dynamics and it's important to understand local nuances and local needs and have created mind thinking about solutions to serve this market. Indeed for us, I mean, Moody's has recently launched a new platform, a new business model to address local markets. It's a new brand called Moody's Local. So we had to adapt our business model, calibrate our methodologies to understand and perceive local risks. So I truly echo what Daniel was saying about the importance of having a partner like Moody's that we can use our expertise and provide this risk assessment perspective, which is very helpful for them. They're used to receiving praises on their great ideas but it's important because when you're going to face a round of capital or several as many successful startups have done, it's important to understand and have the view of an investor and risk assessment is one of key factors. So I mean, at Moody's our commitment to CSR is quite simple. We seek to open the door to a better future for people around the globe. Simple, straightforward. When our actions individually and together as a company give people more access to opportunity, we are happy. Our partnership with Village Capital is part of that commitment to empower SMEs and SMEs owners and growing business knowledge, resources, confidence. These people need to create a better future. It's part of our Moody's Reshape Tomorrow Empowerment Initiative. It's part of our DNA, DNA transparency knowledge. So this commitment is not only financial, not only financial grants but we offer time commitment from our employees that want to share their expertise and through their enthusiasm and leadership, we partner together and we have volunteered for the last three years together offering feedback sessions, acting as smoke board members and reviewing specific project proposals. So through a real commitment focused on the financial health of different entrepreneurs in La Tame, companies can play a key role in boosting our economy. That's the key message we want to make. We want to generate prosperity for underserved communities especially. So happy to partner together with Village Capital. Thanks Marina. Matt or Daniel. So Marina touched on the success rate or the success rate rather for small businesses in Latin America. Could you maybe just touch on what are some of the common problems that you see entrepreneurs are facing in the region and if you could provide some specific examples that'd be great. I'll say broadly but then I'd love Daniel to jump in with some specifics of companies that are being part of this program maybe. I think very much it's a Marina's point. I think access is really quite a challenge and I think this is kind of the story and maybe the narrative of a lot of this is that equal access across geographies and communities throughout Latin America is I would say even more of a challenge than in most other emerging markets and that there is this kind of informal economy that is so kind of structured and is such a large part of society. And so I think that particularly plays itself out in disconnection and networks for capital providers early particularly for capital and also all of the ways in which companies need to kind of form and grow and connect into larger ecosystems in order to succeed. So people have heard of it obviously the friends and family round gap or other kinds of financing gaps that are early on. That's a very dramatic gap in most countries in Latin America. I think the difference between major capital markets and not non major capital markets like we've talked about here is quite broad and having those companies be able to come from other countries and tap or communities and tap into some of those larger networks is very challenging. I think so those are a few things I think that come to mind lots of others but Daniel others that come to mind that you want to talk about some examples. Yeah, I would just like to touch on something that's really important that has changed over the past three years mainly which is entrepreneurs particularly those that are growing startups used to go to places like the US like London France, Spain to fundraise and that's changing right and this is part of what in terms of power dynamics has been changing as we were talking about potential as we were talking about infrastructure in the region now you have a venture capital funds coming to Latin America and this is good news right because in the end while capital has been concentrated for the past years and yes it's been very challenging to access these networks and really it is it is a closed network most of the times this is changing and this is good news for the ecosystem right because if you want as a huge fund to have good returns on that then you need someone to start the journey and that's where the seed funds appear and for seed funds to appear then you have to have different diversification in the journey and this is being positive in Latin America with regards to what's been happening with the SME ecosystem small business ecosystem one of the main challenges that they go through and that entrepreneurs have been trying to work on and solve is actually knowing what they need to do in terms of financials right but that's not going to be addressed by a startup giving you a platform and that's it and this is part of the financial health concept this is addressed by startups creating solutions and products that are based and that are created in their language so if we think of a small business in Chile of a small business in Central America just think of a small mom and pop shop they already have enough to do during the day right stock up going to Centella vastus to these major warehouses in the region they already have enough to even be financial experts and this is something that's been changing in the past five years in 2016 2017 you would see startups working towards providing services to SMEs and creating super complex platforms that only if you had a major or even if you have a financial graduated degree then you can understand it and then you can plug numbers and yes it is easy in that way right but something that's been changing is actually understanding that people don't have to be experts at doing anything right in terms of investing in terms of managing your finances you only need a platform that is friendly that is usable and that goes you know high hand-by-hand with what the user needs and this has been changing we have a platform that's called CFO Remoto we supported that company in 2019 and they really understood that they're based in Chile they understood the journey and they didn't just want to create a nice dashboard and and that's it no they actually developed a product with people that had small businesses understanding and Philip was mentioning this understanding that they already have enough to do and this has been changing you have investment platforms in here that no longer require you to be a financial expert or even an advisor and that's been changing and that's good because we see improvements in the way that entrepreneurs are thinking through their problems to solve different challenges that are you know common to families and SMEs in particular so that that leads me to a follow-up question that you just touched on here and maybe I'll ask Matt to address this so when we think about fundraising and capital we know that the vast majority of capital dollars in the region is going to Mexico and Brazil so how can we ensure that more dollars are going to the other countries in the region yeah it's interesting I think I mean there's obviously a lot of activity growing and across the region and in other hubs and we've talked on in a number of these obviously the Santiago and others Argentina I think what one of the ways you know one of the ways I think we approach making sure that there is access our programs like this and partnerships with Moody's is creating pathways that are agnostic to location and really finding and spending time seeking out networks that are on the ground in more disconnected communities with underserved entrepreneurs so not to toot our own horn I guess but I think it's critical that there are continues to be accelerator and early-stage support programs that are accessible throughout the region particularly in communities that are underserved or smaller communities I think that's that's one one cripple piece I think you know from a macro standpoint I think many you know particularly countries like Mexico are quite similar to their similar doing business they have a similar kind of regulatory climate to the U.S. particularly even now they continue to kind of advance labor regulations and other standards that I think the banking community and investment community it's fairly easy to do business in Mexico it's not so easy to do business in Brazil and it's not so easy to do business in some other countries and so I think continuing to find obviously Moody's is very involved in this thinking about the risk of doing business in different countries and kind of pricing that in and understanding how to provide additional support to companies that are within those regions that are just very hard whether it's for currency fluctuations or legal risk or other things and so I think that's that we have to talk about that as obviously another distribution risk for access and in the region where it's very disproportionately it affects certain folks and not others so those are those are two things that come to mind. Shifting gears a little bit let's let's talk about lessons learned so Marina I'm going to go to you for this one what does Moody's learn from partnering with an organization like Village Capital? So many things but first of all I mean why I want to highlight why we're working with Village Capital I mean Moody's is a company that really cares about reputation that we value and we select carefully our partners for everything so I think that Village Capital in its nature in its sense its DNA has core values shares core values without having I'm going to pick up some things that Danielle mentioned throughout the conversation I mean financial inclusion goes together with our CSR values I mean looking at business potential businesses that create impact on local communities especially under cert ones diversity this is something that we've learned and we really like from the selection process of Village Capital projects I mean they look at the they don't look at the educational level of the founders but they look at the fact that are there women in the among funders or in the executive committees or that are going to have management positions so we we are on board with this diversity policies as well and the fact that we seek at creating networks that enable people to grow grow because of learning more financially or connecting with people that are going to help them develop the potential of their business so what we've learned we've learned that there is so much potential so much opportunity so much creativity that we're not aware of I mean traditionally our business gets in contact with companies that are well evolved and when you're about to access the debt capital market either domestically speaking or internationally speaking you're a more mature company so seeing all these universe of startups and their needs also helps us to understand the products that we need to develop in order to serve these markets in order to serve these companies to understand different there's totally different shift and the needs of these companies in terms of funding is completely different their potential their stage startups are totally different animals so it helps us getting feedback or getting a different view to understand better to create better products to in some cases think about getting input for methodologies I mean to rethink our business and be able to serve not only large companies or well established companies but also smaller companies something I remember the meeting that Daniel is talking about I mean we had a few entrepreneurs that came and they were very happy and pitching their companies like as they were to pitch an investor they were expecting a very smooth meeting and all of us starting asking questions about risk profile business potential cost structure like everything that we looked at when we do a great rating it was a little bit overwhelming but I think that overall it was very positive so I think that that's the contribution that we can the optics where we can help we understand what investors look at how they look at things how they think about investment what they are seeking for so it's important to be able to convey that you to local entrepreneurs and also it's important to share the goodbyes and make sure that they get the motivation that they need because for a startup to start around with investors can be a little bit challenging can be a little bit threatening so it's important that the moral side of the story and we learn a lot of course and there are many many great ideas we've been in contact and we did follow-ups with many of the projects that we have been working with I mean a few Brazilian entrepreneurs contacted us because they might be potentially seeking at or needing a rating in the future so it's a great partnership for us we learn more than what we give I mean that always happens whenever we do a CSR activity we go to the activity thinking that we're going to be helping receive more than what we were expecting and more than what we'd given but it's a very positive experience for us so thank you for that I want to publicly thank Village Capital for the opportunity of working together and Jen for enabling all this. Thanks Marina of course you know it was really the success of the Latin program and finance forward that prompted Moody's to continue to expand our support with Village Capital and that employee engagement perspective was so important we received such wonderful feedback from our colleagues which Marina just articulated that it was a win-win situation so we're now you know we've expanded into the US we've expanded into Africa side by side with Village Capital so it's been a wonderful partnership but staying in the lines of lessons learned Daniel Village Capital has been operating in Latin America for seven years now what lessons have you learned about supporting entrepreneurs in Latin America and you know sort of just given the last 18 months with COVID would love to hear some of your thoughts around that. Yeah thank you Jen so the first one what have we learned about it I would say that we are reminded that and we often tell founders that the founders are not the startups right and that they also need to take care of themselves and it is also related to what Marina was saying that if we have a session that is particularly hard but never disrespectful because this is not the way that we do things but the part we prefer to tell them and we prefer to let them know when we're working together than having them go out and having you know investors or other entities tell them something that they have been prepared for so this is what we've learned over the past seven years to understand that one their people that their people are not the same as you know the startups they have their own identity they also need support and we're here to support them so this is why we take very seriously the work that we do so every single session that we have every single program that we launch it is not with the intention to just you know be published on different outlets but it is with the intention of understanding that if they do well in their business the region is going to do well and in the end our families are going to do well so this is what we've learned that is not just about having different sessions different programs but it goes beyond that and related to COVID so this is really I would say that of course it was it was hard to understand and also to know what they could do next what startups are I would say one of the most risky asset classes if you think of is that way so uncertainty is part of their DNA and something that we saw last year was that they of course they had when I remember March 2020 and I'm sure everyone remembers right but March 2020 we were just finding out about the news that we there are some lockdowns and there are some businesses particularly the ones that are focused on agriculture and also consumer that they were shutting down they're having issues they probably took one or two weeks to adjust and they continued some other businesses really pivoted to other different sectors to other different solutions others especially the ones that are digital based so an increase in terms of customer growth which is good because it means that what they wanted to develop in the end help people but as I think through it we had some sessions with founders from not only the past three years but six years seven years trying to figure out how can we support them because it's not enough to tell me yeah this is gonna be fine and just hold on but asking them hey what do you need in terms of investor support in terms of a staff support and at some point we even we even went to them saying hey think of us Village Capital as extra staff members of your team and whatever we can do in two three weeks please let us know because we were in a sort of comfortable position they were already struggling with uncertainty before and this was just a huge hit on them but I would say that something that Latin Americans have in particular is the capacity and also the ability to adapt and to build solutions out of different things that probably were aimed for a different function and this is why you entrepreneurs particularly the Argentinian ones are great because they adapt under different circumstances and no matter the context. So just playing off of that a little bit Matt would love your perspective from from a global perspective you know Village Capital is obviously a global organization I touched a little bit upon the Moody's expansion into some of the other markets like the US and Africa but you're also in Europe men on South Africa how do you see the Latin American market being different from those other regions that Village Capital is working with across the world. That's a great question I so we operate we have offices and fairly large teams in Nairobi and Southeast Asia covering many countries throughout Africa through Southeast Asia like you said in the least in Europe now we have a new regional director and team there as well as Lydam and the US and so I think one of the things we do see that I think is unique here is that there is this kind of magic mixture of both like a very productive and highly functioning economy and you know met multiple economies as well as a still a massive a massive informal economy that actually is like from a percentage wise quite quite a bit larger than most other places it's close to some countries in Africa and India but again the GDPs are quite higher in Latin America largely for each country that we operate in so there's this kind of interesting mixture of both like a ton of capital and a ton of business going on as well as like a lack of systems and tools to support it and so the opportunity to do to do good the opportunity to create systems and to create formalities around that economy in lots of different ways whether it's agriculture housing or banking or credit access or these things is really pretty dramatic and also we see this the scale of kind of global interest quite high compared to most other markets similar in Africa we're actually just embarking on raising a Latin and in Africa focused emerging market investment fund because we see a similar kind of global interest in those markets as well as opportunity to really change millions of lives through investing in the kinds of companies that we're supporting here so I'd say there are lots of lots of similarities lots of differences but I think that's one that's one way in which I think about it the opportunity is just grand and growing in ways that really eclips most of their markets in the world. So that's a great point to my last question to the group is what do you see Latin America looking like in say 10 to 15 years what is changing now that you're excited about? I hope it doesn't look the same. No I mean plenty of things are changing I think that as we've seen the number of startups and investments duplicating this space should continue and should create more opportunities I think that I would like to see Latin America with equal access more equal access to capital to opportunities so that this creative force of entrepreneurs can materialize and we can start seeing and I've seen that there's a huge discussion in the chat group related to corruption and related to where and how we could create tools to have disruptive tools in order to separate corruption from regulation and create the environments the necessary environments for I mean to attract capital I think that at least I would like to see better access and contract enforcement and better regulation and I mean the basics that can assure investment a secure path so that they can find Latin opportunities creative that would be my wishful thinking I wish I could know how it's going to look like but I don't. Great. Matt, Daniel, any thoughts on the next 10 to 15 years and what you're excited about? Yeah I can go next and then I'm interested about Matt's view on this one because he has experience in Latin America as well. So the first one would be access to opportunity like Marina said the other one is ending poverty and I know that there are many costs as most of what can be solved by entrepreneurs but are systemic issues that are of course as we see in the chat here but I'm an optimist in the end because entrepreneurs exist because of different failures and different opportunities in the system and we see it today where there's as long as there's an opportunity for us to make more visible and make people uncomfortable with what is existing today and as long as we share the vision and also the expectation that we have on them and entrepreneurs and you know really general public we have the chance to change this right and when you think of Latin America you can think of corruption, you can think of different issues that we have here and yes they exist but in the end these problems exist and we probably exist in Latin America and other countries because it is part of you know the different dynamics but that shouldn't be an excuse for us not doing our best. So when I think of Latin America I see that entrepreneurs can help society educate poverty because that is what you know capital and also what private institutions are for in the end and I see Latin America as a place where we can access different opportunities and this is going to make a difference right when we have people like the ones that are mentoring for Moody's they do it because they want to not because they're being forced to right and when we have more people like that and we have more people caring about what's happening with our families and our children whenever we have or not then that's going to change right so I would like to think about it instead. I like something that I've read in the chat that has to do with wherever and however we want the future to look like we need good role models to follow so we should become we should become the future that we want to see so thank you Armando. Yeah it's such a great I think there's so many ways to answer that question about the future of the region. I think we're just the amount of growth that we're seeing and the standards and the ways in which I think many of the national governments are really understanding the regulatory needs just to kind of create a better environment for business and to ensure that there's some consistency in that environment. I think that's that's fairly quickly changing across many markets in Latin America and so I think that one of the one of the beautiful things I think that's happening here that I think will play out over the next 15 years is that when we think a lot about technology or innovation in like a Maslow's hierarchies kind of principle where there's there's a lot of in the U.S. and Silicon Valley and places like that there's a lot of money and time spent on luxuries on the things that are at the top of that pyramid that are the small problems that a very small number of people globally face. But in economies like Latin America and startup communities particularly most of the activity in the capital is actually focusing on the things that change the most lives. So all of the things we've talked about here and so I think that I think you're going to see continue to see Latin America really lead in technology adoption and innovation and regulatory change and investment that is truly a new model. So part of what we're thinking about this panel is that it's it's really reinventing the way we think about the purpose of innovation and technology in people's lives to really dramatically improve the majority of people's lives not the not the wealthy elite only and that that's a very inverted way to think about technology and investment and I think we're really optimistic to use Daniel's term about this community in this region and our work together even in that being being a grand part of helping that to see that future become reality. So just to quickly recap what we've learned over the last 45 minutes no longer is it just emerging. Latin is leading Latin America is uniquely shaping entrepreneurship and venture capital driven by innovation that matters to society and accessibility to entrepreneurship programming and capital remains a barrier to equitable distribution of economic opportunity. So Marina, Matt, Daniel thank you so much for joining today and for sharing all your words of wisdom. Look forward to our next conversation together.