 Good afternoon. Let's try that again. Good afternoon. Much better. Thank you. First of all, I want to thank Socap of Force for inviting us to speak here today and for shining the spotlight on Latin America. My name is Raul Pomar. Since you heard Founder's Own Capital. This is a good friend of mine now, Rodrigo, from New Ventures. For those of you not as familiar with Rodrigo and his work, just to quickly sum it up. You know, he's been spent the last 15 years on the, you know, from within the region and building much of the Latin American investment ecosystem. Starting with an accelerator that today, you know, supports over 150 entrepreneurs on an annual basis. Starting a, you know, the green pages, if you would. So a listing of green companies. Later starting the flea, which for those not familiar, is effectively the Socap of Latin America, which is celebrating its 10th year in February. God, the list just goes on and on and on. What you and the, started Adobe Capital as a fund and now Biwala providing new forms of financing. So, you know, beyond kind of what you and your team at New Ventures have done, you know, share kind of, share with our audience and kind of give a little bit of perspective. You know, what's happening in Latin America? What does the impact investment ecosystem look like? How big is it? How do people define it from within the region? Thanks Raul. Thanks for that intro. Thanks everybody for listening. So we started 15 years ago promoting, the term didn't exist at that time, the impact investing, but we were promoting environmental social companies in the region and it just has been booming lately. I mean, the impact investment ecosystem in Latin America I think is probably the second biggest one in the worldwide receiving investing and it keeps growing. It's interesting how it just, it's not just venture capital it can stage capital and go into social entrepreneurs or impact entrepreneurs, it goes everywhere. You see corporates investing, investing in funds, investing in capital just also opening their accelerators or their programs. You see governments getting into the ecosystem. You see a lot of family offices interested in the region. So it's booming and I think it's integrating a lot of people. So entrepreneurship is growing in the whole region of Latin America, but I think impact entrepreneurship is growing more than any other industry. I think Latin America is a region that has a lot of local money. It has a lot of a lot of innovation a lot of talented people a lot of entrepreneurship and also probably the most important thing is that we have a lot of troubles. We have a lot of things to that we need to fix. There's a lot of, but we always think in Latin America that all these problems all these troubles we have we have to change the whole system and think about those as opportunities and I think that's what is happening in Latin America. We're figuring out that if we want to find solutions for most of the social things or social troubles or problems where we're heading for the future or energy I think that those things are not going to change if we don't find innovative ways to work with that. So I think what is happening is that a lot of entrepreneurs are driving that change. They are tired of waiting in philanthropic governments to fix those problems and I think they are using technology using innovation to find solutions for those problems. One of the biggest misconceptions is that they think it's difficult and they think it's hard and it's not. People figure out when they just catch a flight to any place in Latin America and you will see that there's a bunch of people thousands of people that did their MBAs in Ivy Leagues in the United States or in Europe and they speak the same language they do business and the business community is booming because we are too many countries we speak the same language but we are very different countries and problems are very different in every single country but the opportunities are there they're booming and we keep growing we keep growing everything we do the accelerator, the funds and I will say that Latin America has these big opportunities for impact but also have a booming business community different asset classes different governments and different nonprofit organizations working together to drive this change but let me give back to you Raul the first time I came to Soka probably was 10 or 11 years ago and Raul was in this plenary session we were just starting talking about impact investing and Raul was talking to 1000 people about how he was driving change and allocating all these assets and suddenly after 3 years ago we ended up being friends I don't know what happened but I think that was because you started getting interested in Latin America for some reason you ended up probably wasn't the killer or the parties but I know what happened but Raul ended up traveling every month to Mexico and Latin America and we became really good friends I wanted to know why what happened to you what happened that you started looking into Latin America as a big opportunity to invest well fair enough several things actually for me and you actually touched on one of them when you talked about that local money because several years ago reading the Cap Gemini World Wealth Report boring report for many probably but nonetheless it's basically a survey around the world and there was like one thing that kind of struck me that was very interesting on this page where they had asked the question what's the probability of increasing your allocation to social impact investments of all the regions in the world Latin America scored the highest I thought oh well that's interesting the overwhelming majority that's an interesting fact too from a bit professional perspective I actually started my career so as much as I hadn't been there doing much I actually started my career in private banking working with wealthy families when I first started you know so that was another thing so I thought candidly maybe a bit arrogant but nonetheless I thought wait a second if this is a thesis having worked with that community in the past having the experience in impact investing I thought I was in a pretty good position to test that thesis in addition first generation Cuban American married to a Mexican who had been spending all this time traveling all over the world advocating and talking about impact investing at some point I kind of woke up to myself and said wait a second you know what am I doing for the part of the world that is kind of I'm most rooted in culturally from an identify with you know why am I not spending more time there and as you know I finally did take you up on your offer and I did come down and I went to the conferences and yes the parties were great but candidly what really blew me away what impressed me the most was not you know not just the the scale the quantity the quality from entrepreneurs different types of asset owners just the level of engagement that I saw throughout the community really drove me to say you know what there is a huge there there and something that candidly is a great opportunity for me in terms of what I want to accomplish but I think for all of us as an ecosystem and environment so yeah it's time to start spending some more time down there and you know with you and others of course now have built these great partnerships so taking what you said that's what happened now at the same time we know the region you already touched on a few of these kind of myths and misconceptions like any you know the region does have a lot of myths and misconceptions and I think you know it would be interesting just to kind of hear from you kind of what are some of the key ones that you think of I know you touched on one in terms of the level of diversity that exists in the region but talk about a few other kind of key myths or misconceptions that many in the audience may have when it comes to Latin America as I mentioned before one is it's people think that it's really difficult to do business in Latin America and it is if you don't have the right connections or the right path to start but it's if you want to do it it's easy I mean it's a very well integrated community as I mentioned but again it's a lot of countries some are very small some are very big markets like if you put together Brazil and Mexico there's a 13 economy of the world and Brazil might be the 9th economy of the world so they're both big economies and Brazil by itself could be a continent so it's complicated in that sense but on the other hand there's a lot of willingness of people to the business there's a lot of innovation there's a lot of excitement about impact investing usually we have a lot of philanthropy that used to be very traditional there are shifting to move towards investing there are also a lot of facilities as well so in many countries it's just very easy to get into because there's not a lot of barriers there's not a lot of competition there are things that it's really interesting that family offices are starting to invest a lot of money so with our first fund the first fund we just had like a couple of investors from the region probably half of our investors are from the region so we're seeing that every time it's much more excitement and some of the things like violence it happens it does there's a lot of violence we have a lot of countries and probably right now some a little bit more you see what's going on in Chile what's going on in Ecuador yeah we have those problems but it's Latin America we have all the history and that's not going to change probably and as we all know it's not just happening in Latin America today you can see it happening in Spain you can hear it in the UK there's stuff happening not just in the global south in places like Latin America it's happening but that's what we are there for that's what we're fighting for that's what we want to create these businesses that reduce inequality and that's what is going to reduce the violence that violence is not just because we're Latin America they come because there's a lot of inequality and if we don't fight it we don't create different sources to how to we approach education in a more innovative way it's not going to happen but I think the biggest asset of Latin America is that we already understood that we know that our governments are not going to solve those problems we know that philanthropy is not going to solve those problems we have to do it through innovation and I think there's a lot of excitement there's not a lot of technology in Latin America it's not that we have those innovation labs that we're going to create the new technologies in the world but there's a lot of innovation about how to define new business models to solve health problems, education problems, housing we see lots of entrepreneurs just finding approaches to solve those issues and that's what is really exciting about what is booming impact investing across Latin America I would just add on that same tone I think a couple myths that I see often that I think we've all experienced across the globe is this concept you often hear oh there's no deal flow, there's no deal flow I think unfortunately in a place like Latin America that perception has been highlighted by some of the industry's own activities take for example with no ill will whatsoever to our friends at the Jinn and Cambridge Associates but many of you might recall back several years ago they published this impact venture capital PE and VC benchmarks and they put out the charts and the numbers and I think one of the things that struck me was right away when you look at that chart it was completely dominated by funds in Africa the US in Asia and there's this tiny little sliver that was kind of Latin America so I picked the phone and called over there and said hey guys I'm looking at this report this analysis I see you've split out all these things can you give me a little more color on Latin America and what the response was was not statistically relevant because we only had six contributions to the constituent universe six and then spending that time down there and getting to see we've identified six funds that contributed to that universe we've identified well over a hundred funds in the ecosystem that are operating and yes it's an immature marketplace where 48% or so of those funds maybe first time funds but it's 48% so guess what that means the other half maybe on her second third or maybe even fourth fund so they must have at least done something right and so I think what the failure is is getting those stories out why weren't those other 40 or 50 funds that likely were already on the fund too aware of and connected to this global ecosystem so that they too would be reported so I think that's one of the major misconceptions I think as an industry we're doing a good job knocking that down globally but we've got plenty of work to do in Latin America and I think another thing that you said is really important about Latin America because I've literally heard these words Rodrigo mentioned multiple times the inequality that's driving the needs and some of these opportunity I can't tell you though how many times in talking with impact investors maybe some of you in this room who are allocating capital to the global south but when pressed on the question what are you doing in Latin America you know what the response is it's too developed really it's too developed which is there but you also have to look at when you look at the the Gini coefficient which is basically this measure of inequality Latin America is one of the most unequal parts of this unfortunately the worst in terms of inequality and so there is which is kind of inherent in what impact investment is really an incredibly powerful tool to solve so there is deal flow there as you've said repeatedly there is need and opportunity and what we just really need to do is as I said so Cap is doing with this event shine the spotlight let's get this community let's get this region kind of plugged in into this global community which I think for the first time now is kind of starts to seem to be kind of happening coming up near as we start to wrap up this conversation Rodrigo why don't you just some closing thoughts how would you want to kind of leave this audience understanding what either from a risk perspective or really opportunity perspective you see for the region that they should be considering I always say that Latin America in our perspective is the best place to do impact investing I mean if we have these kind of polarity you know we have a lot of troubles very diverse countries very poor populations sometimes just the case of Mexico I think we have at least 50 million people under poverty lanes I mean that's a lot of poverty and some other countries like Nicaragua that are very much less developed than others so there's a lot of needs but on the other hand there's a lot of highly educated well trained innovative entrepreneurship there's a community we see that it's thriving when we started New Angeles 15 years ago I remember reading like the Fortune magazine or the business magazines there was just talking about big corporates now when you open those magazines they're talking about social entrepreneurship all the time I see in most of the innovation it's going to solve this trouble so you have these big opportunities and on the other hand you have like this industry that actually works it's sometimes it's difficult sometimes hard but there's infrastructure there are lawyers there are accelerators it works, I mean there's a lot of funds that are booming you have government supporting this growth so you have these two sites that define an impact investment industry sometimes we need to be aware is that I always say that impact investing is different in different countries I think how people define impact I see that every country has their issues that are more relevant to another like for example gender inequality probably in some developed countries it's much more important but in some other countries it's more access to no hunger just try to get to more basic things so I think in Latin America there are a lot of things that you have to solve and in different countries you need to understand the local needs we run the fleet it's called Latin America conference is growing very fast and as I mentioned before there's a lot of interest from all the sectors and I invite all of you to visit Latin America to do business in Latin America to invest in Latin America there's a lot of people here we have a Latin lounge for the first time in Socap which I really appreciate to intentional media and all the organizers of Socap to put attention in Latin America because we really need it we need to and we believe also that we can also not just import innovation we believe that we're building new things and probably new ways to solve impact issues and we're sure that they're going to come from Latin America we're doing really exciting things and I'm sure we're going to see more Latin American entrepreneurs in the scene in the future in the future years I would just add in closing look as we talk I don't want to sound very clear but in terms of we clearly understand there are risks there are all the issues but these risks are inherent everywhere else so I would just say the challenge if you're an impact investor and you're committed to investing already and you have the risk appetite as it is to invest in the global south make sure you get kind of Latin America on your radar not only because if you're prepared to understand and evaluate and mitigate those risks wherever possible it does represent this highly compelling opportunity and you know said simply when it comes time to those diligence trips and you've got to think about that I'll just tell you this the water is warm the food is great the music will get you out of your seat and we can all do what we like which is doing well by doing good and actually Latin America lets you and you're going to get the best returns financial returns well thank you all so much and we look forward to being with you over the course of SOCAP