- il y a 2 jours
Start-Up Ecosystem Taking the Pulse in Latin America
Catégorie
🤖
TechnologieTranscription
00:00Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada
00:30Now, this is one of our interactive sessions, so we really want to hear your thoughts and your questions.
00:35To do that, you just have to connect to the VivaTech platform via the app.
00:39You go to the drop-down menu, titled Interactive Sessions with Slido, and select Stage 3, and you're ready to
00:46share your thoughts with us.
00:47Now, for our first interview, we're going to zero in on South America.
00:52So, please give a warm welcome to Amiel Cornell, founding partner at VentureCraft Studio, and Pierre Schumann, CEO at NuVini.
01:27Hello, everyone.
01:30My name is Amiel Cornell.
01:33I'll be moderating today's conversation with our two guests.
01:38It's an honor to be talking to you right after John Chambers.
01:43I must say he's one of my heroes.
01:47I spent 25 years in Silicon Valley as a serial entrepreneur, as an advisor to technology companies, both small and
01:55large, and as a venture capitalist.
02:02Today, I am an adjunct professor of entrepreneurial finance here in Paris at ESCP Europe, and also the founding partner
02:13of VentureCraft Studio,
02:16a company that advises startups, helping them to improve their valuations by accelerating their go-to-market strategies and improving
02:28their operating cash flow.
02:31So, for today's session, you're going to be hearing from an experienced sailor who has circumnavigated the globe,
02:45and from a concert violinist who has performed in front of packed auditoriums, and you're going to hear that they
02:55have something in common.
02:59We're also going to talk about the ecosystems across the Americas, starting in Latin America, in Brazil.
03:06We'll be spending the next 25 minutes with Pierre Sherman here, whom I'll introduce in a moment.
03:12And then we'll be moving north to California, and we'll be speaking with Carolyn Wynette, whom I will introduce later.
03:21So, for starters, Pierre, let's talk a little bit about your history, a very impressive background as a serial entrepreneur
03:30and as a very successful investor in Brazil.
03:33In 1996, you had your first startup.
03:37This was just two years after the Netscape browser came out and led to the explosion of the internet.
03:46That went very well.
03:48Within two years, you sold your company, which was the second leading search engine in Latin America to Star Media.
03:56In 2006, I believe, you then started the Company Experience Club,
04:02which brought together professionals across many different large tech companies in Brazil.
04:11And then in 2011, you founded and became managing director of Bossa Nova Investments,
04:18which went on to become and is today the number one leading venture capital firm in Latin America,
04:25the most active venture capital firm in Latin America.
04:29And more recently, in 2019, you founded NuVini, which is a serial startup acquirer.
04:37And we'll hear more about this later, but you're about to go public on NASDAQ in the United States,
04:44following a partnership with Mercato Partners in Salt Lake City.
04:50So, it's an honor to share the stage with you here today, Pierre.
04:55To get started, I would love to hear about your experience sailing.
05:01As I said earlier, you circumnavigated the globe with your family.
05:06There were documentaries, even, that were produced about this experience.
05:12What did you learn from that that has helped you in your career as an entrepreneur, as an investor?
05:20Well, first of all, thank you very much for your time, all your time here today and for being here.
05:26Thank you.
05:27It was an honor to be with you also on this stage.
05:31So, my life started by far my professional career as a sailor because my parents decided to go around the
05:39world in a sailboat.
05:40They spent 10 years circumnavigating the world.
05:43And they're now on their fourth circumnavigation.
05:46And I was 15 when we left the first trip.
05:51And I think there were two main blocks of, you know, there were two trips, actually.
05:55One trip, which was the inside the boat trip, which taught me how to, you know, live in a closed
06:04space.
06:04A lot of people went through that, you know, through COVID now.
06:07But live in a closed space, relate with people internally, my family, my parents and my brothers.
06:12Through good and bad times because when you're in the boat, there's a lot of unexpected things happen.
06:17So, it's a lot of teamwork, if you may.
06:21Having to deal with, you know, within the boat also with different scenarios where I did, I self-studied.
06:30I was, I studied through high school through correspondence.
06:35So, I had to have the discipline to study at the right time and do the tests and not fall
06:39behind, even though I was in Tahiti with a beautiful, you know, weather and beautiful ocean.
06:44So, a lot of self-discipline.
06:46And the external trip, which is obviously very interesting.
06:49You know, Mark Twain said that, you know, traveling and getting to know the world is fatal to ignorance and
06:56discrimination.
06:57Because when you get to know other cultures and you get to know other places, which are very different from
07:02your own, sometimes even in values, you come to understand that the world is really not the world, only the
07:10world that you believe in.
07:11It is a much bigger place.
07:12And that helps you, sometimes you can disagree, sometimes you can agree, but you learn to respect the different, you
07:21know, political views, religious views, even, you know, what food people eat, which seems very trivial, but there are some
07:29weird foods that people eat throughout the world.
07:31So, being in a boat gave me this worldview and this flexibility in trying and learning to adapt to the
07:39environments.
07:40Also, you know, sailing, again, we're going through good weather and bad weather.
07:44And we talk a lot about that.
07:46There's a lot of, you know, parallels to, you know, starting companies.
07:51And we're now, you know, the market is on a headwind.
07:54In the boat, when you have a headwind, you really have a headwind.
07:56You go two, three days, you know, going almost nowhere, wind coming, you're eating very little, having to wait for
08:04the winds to pass, because the winds do pass, as markets do correct and come back.
08:09So, I think those are two, you know, big pillars of learning through those areas of the boat.
08:14Clearly, as a sailor, you have to develop strong improvisational skills.
08:18Things don't always go according to plan.
08:21And I'm sure that you've had to use that in your entrepreneurial activity.
08:26When you're doing due diligence on deals as an investor, do you find that that ability to adapt to different
08:34cultures and different types of people, that social intelligence that you develop perhaps as you were sailing, comes in handy?
08:42Yeah, I think that in due diligence in talking to founders and understanding the markets and understanding their histories, because
08:49at the end of the day, you know, companies are, you know, basically founder-led enterprises.
08:56And getting to be able to relate and understand, even within Brazil and Latin America, their different, you know, history
09:02and their different culture, assuming and understand their values, allows us to better understand the companies and see where they
09:10came from and where potentially they can go.
09:12So, let's talk about Bossa Nova Investments, if we may.
09:18Could you tell us a little bit about the investment thesis that you applied at Bossa Nova?
09:25Was it strictly focused on Brazil or Latin America more broadly?
09:32So, Bossa Nova has done 90% of the investments in Brazil.
09:37And the thesis was, because at the point when I founded the company and when we scaled the business back
09:43in 15, founded the company in 11, scaled the business back in 15.
09:47So, to give you some perspective, in 2015, we had 36 companies in our portfolio.
09:53When I left the company to start Nuveni, we had 908 companies invested in Brazil.
10:00Right now, we have 1,985 companies.
10:03We just did our 100th exit in Brazil.
10:05Wow.
10:06The 100th exit.
10:08Exit, yeah.
10:08We scaled the business.
10:10And the focus of the thesis was and is still B2B, because there's not enough capital in America for you
10:18to do consumer-facing enterprises at scale.
10:21I see.
10:23And then after Bossa Nova, you moved on to Nuveni.
10:27Tell us more about Nuveni, kind of past, present, and future, because I know you have big plans now, as
10:33I alluded to in my introductory remarks.
10:36Sure.
10:36Nuveni, I founded Nuveni because after investing and seeing hundreds of companies go from pre-seed.
10:43We invested in pre-seed.
10:44That's very important.
10:44We were at pre-seed stage.
10:46First institutional investor, if you may, following hundreds of companies that we did and did not invest.
10:51I noticed, and now it's even easier to perceive, that even good companies did not scale to reach liquidity, if
11:02you may, even through an IPO or through acquisition.
11:05So you had, in Brazil, there's over 2,000, 2,500 companies right now.
11:10There are SaaS, B2B, growing 30%, 40% a year with 20% to 30% EBITDA, where founders have
11:18either bootstrapped, which is a very lonely and enduring thing to do,
11:22or even received venture capital, and haven't been able to continue on the venture path, and creates a frustration for
11:29founders, obviously, that they have created good companies, but they're not exit-sized companies yet, and it will take a
11:35long time to become exit-sized companies.
11:37So, Nuveni was created in the principle that we could acquire these companies with an earn-out structure that allows
11:44the founders to capture value for three to five years after the acquisition, so they're not out of the business.
11:49We keep the founders running the business.
11:51The founders are running the business.
11:53And then, the sum of these companies would create something valuable that investors would look like, and that's what we
11:59built, and that's what we're on our final phase now, where we should be able to finalize this pack within
12:04the next 60 days.
12:05So, are you very hands-on? Should we think of Nuveni as a startup studio in some sense?
12:14Actually, the main question most investors ask us, and even founders in the beginning, was, how active are you with
12:20the companies?
12:21And when we look at the companies, and the way we look, we look at how we help when we
12:25work the companies, everything that's product, technology, scaling the business, strategy, which the founders are very good at.
12:34Every single company we acquired is a leader in their segment, so we're not getting second-tier and third-tier
12:40founders here.
12:41They run the business.
12:43On the other hand, everything that's related to compliance, we're audited from day one.
12:48Auditing, legal, everything that requires us to have consistency so we could become public one day.
12:54They have zero flexibility on base because we need to have a consistency there.
12:58And then in people, which is the middle area, I can give an example.
13:02When we acquired the companies, none of our companies were at great places to work.
13:05I don't know if that's used also here.
13:07Every single company we have is now at great places to work.
13:10Employee churn is down 66%, almost 70%.
13:12So we've built leadership programs so that the founders can keep focusing in technology, and the human resources person in
13:20the company can focus on retailing their employees, which is obviously the driver that allows the company to keep growing
13:26and generating value.
13:27So we don't interfere in strategy.
13:28We help where we believe the founders can generate the most value from themselves.
13:33Excellent.
13:34And to date, where have you been looking for most of your acquisition candidates?
13:38Is it mostly in Brazil?
13:40Brazil, of course, is roughly half.
13:44It's the largest economy in Latin America and almost half the population.
13:50215 million people in Brazil out of the 450 million in Latin America.
13:56Are you looking exclusively in Brazil for your acquisitions, or are you also going to Mexico, Colombia, Peru, etc.?
14:03So right now, Brazil is a low-hanging fruit for us because I've been an investor and been in the
14:09market for many, many years.
14:11So we have really interesting opportunities right now there.
14:14But we are talking to companies on the Latin side of Latin America, the Spanish-speaking side, if you may.
14:20So Mexico, Colombia, Chile, even Argentina.
14:23We spoke to a couple of Portuguese startups, a couple of Spanish startups.
14:26So right now, we are focused on prioritizing Brazil, given the size of the opportunity there.
14:31But we do plan to expand, focusing on the Latin-speaking countries, if you may.
14:36Very interesting.
14:37So we are in Europe, of course.
14:38And so there may be Spanish and Portuguese entrepreneurs here at VivaTech.
14:44Is one of the qualifying criteria that they want to expand into Latin America and leverage your network of relationships?
14:55Yeah, I believe that it's not a pre-requirement.
14:58But today we have clients in eight countries, 26,000 clients spread out to eight countries.
15:03We're bringing new companies on board that are going to increase the presence in the region.
15:07And there's a lot of opportunities for, you know, co-selling and expanding for companies that are based here, not
15:14even only in Portugal and Spain,
15:16but at looking at the Latin American market as a whole to reach the market through our, you know, the
15:21companies that are in Nuveni right now.
15:23So we see that as a important, you know, path for growth for these companies.
15:29But again, it's not a pre-requirement that they focus, that they're, you know, looking for all of Latin America.
15:36And so now going forward, it sounds like you're going to have access to a lot more capital for Nuveni
15:42by going public on the NASDAQ.
15:44Where do things stand with the Mercato partners' partnership?
15:50Right.
15:51So we are in the final process.
15:54Mercato is a private equity firm in the U.S. out of Salt Lake.
15:57They're a $2 billion private equity firm focused on tech.
15:59They've done pretty well.
16:01According to Prequen, they're, until 2014, they were top 15 in the world out of 10,000 funds investing in
16:07tech in returns.
16:10And we partner with them because they understand tech, they understand enterprise.
16:14And they had a SPAC, which has now become a bad word for everyone, but they had a SPAC that
16:20made a lot of sense for us to merge with.
16:22Special purpose acquisition company.
16:24Which is already listed in NASDAQ.
16:26So they have a vehicle listed in NASDAQ and we're doing a reverse merger with that vehicle.
16:30We should be able to complete this merger within the next 60 days.
16:34So we've been doing this since December.
16:37It's been a long, complex path.
16:40Going public in the U.S. is, we were audited from day one by Deloitte.
16:46So it's not that we didn't have the processes.
16:49We run Oracle, everything very expensive from day one.
16:52We were very expensive, back-end, for a very small company for a long time.
16:55But even then, the U.S. listing in the U.S. and going through the SEC filings is an extremely,
17:03extremely, extremely complex process.
17:08But again, we're in the final stages.
17:10We should be able to announce the listing before August.
17:16Very exciting.
17:17We wish you well with that.
17:19In the last minutes we have together, let's talk more about the trends in Latin America as you see them.
17:25Maybe starting with the investment trends.
17:29The numbers I've seen suggest that in 2022, $7.8 billion were invested in startups across Latin America, about half
17:40of that in Brazil.
17:42That was considerably less than in 2021, but that was true of venture capital investment around the world.
17:51It's still, $7.8 billion is still much more than the average of the previous five years.
17:59How do you see the investment climate in Brazil and in Latin America evolving going forward?
18:06So I think that, again, the whole world went through a bubble, or went through a peak, which I don't
18:14believe is coming back so soon.
18:15I think there's a historical average where we'll eventually get back to within the next two to three years.
18:21But there's a difference, interesting difference in Latin America is that companies never had unlimited capital.
18:30Even when we looked at SoftBank going to Latin America, it invested $5 billion over a period of two and
18:37a half years, which is a lot of money.
18:39But still, the market sizes are huge, right?
18:42We're talking about 600 million, 400 million people, billions and billions of dollars in GMVs in different segments, even niches.
18:51So, entrepreneurs, apart from the past two years, really didn't have that much capital.
18:56So, the companies like Mercado Livre and Nubank, even, spent 10, 12 years focusing on product and slowly building companies,
19:04which are now worth, you know, $20 to $200 billion, and that is something that's ingrained in the entrepreneurial community
19:13and spirit, if you may.
19:14So, we see that there is some capital coming back.
19:19So, there's been some consistent, smaller $20 to $50 million rounds happening back now.
19:27So, capital is starting to become deployed, still very selective.
19:31But then, on the very early stage, on the seed and where Bossa Nova is, Bossa Nova did 130 investments
19:37last year.
19:38In the seed stage, there's still a lot of opportunities because Brazil, different than the U.S.
19:43and probably somewhat different than Europe, has so many problems, right?
19:47There's so many things that need to be solved through technology.
19:50So, there are a lot of smaller companies that are working in niches that potentially could grow, that are receiving
19:56funding.
19:56So, funding at the early stage has really, very early stage, has really continued at a good flow.
20:02Let's also talk about some of the technology trends in Latin America.
20:07FinTech, I believe, has taken up roughly half of the investments going into Latin America in the last few years.
20:15Maybe we can start there, and how important do you see the fintech revolution in Latin America?
20:22Yeah, so, I think fintech took a big part of the capital or a big part of the funding
20:29because there is such a structural problem with finance and access to banking
20:36and access to organizing finances in Latin America that it was an obvious opportunity.
20:44As a reference, three and a half years ago, 55% to 60% of people in Latin America got
20:52paid in cash
20:53and 60% didn't have a bank account.
20:56So, imagine someone getting paid in cash, and they're walking around with their money up and down.
21:01So, they can't save the money.
21:02They can't do e-commerce.
21:04They can't do anything.
21:05They put it literally under the mattress or inside a jar.
21:08And that makes life very complex for consumers, for retailers, so for everyone in the ecosystem.
21:20There's a lot of money that was hard to circulate.
21:25So, fintech took a big part of that capital because it solved many problems.
21:30So, again, today, only 30% of people actually get their salaries paid in cash.
21:38So, it's down 50%.
21:40In Brazil, you have banking penetration is up to 80%, where it was 30%, 40%, as little as five or
21:48six years ago.
21:49That's because of neobanks such as Nubank and others that have moved to the digital.
21:52And then the traditional banks had to go after them and follow them and move into digital also.
21:57So, still talking about fintech, if you wanted to open a bank account in Brazil five years ago, you'd have
22:03to walk into a branch.
22:04And then the manager would look at you and say, ah, you know, come back tomorrow.
22:08And if you walked into a pile of cash, they wouldn't, you know, sometimes not accept it because you're getting
22:13paid in cash.
22:13You're going to put cash in.
22:14And it was really, really a restrictive and a non-inclusive, you know, scenario, right?
22:23So, the middle class and the upper class had access to credit, had access to financial instruments, had access to
22:30e-commerce, were able to travel.
22:32So, fintech was a really structural problem, which, you know, venture-based companies led the transformation and the access and
22:42the impact of that is tremendous.
22:44What is another technology trend that you are particularly interested in, either as an investor or an acquirer or simply
22:52as a citizen of the world?
22:57So, we're seeing, I think there's two trends there.
23:00The first is, health tech has been evolving at a good pace and that allows, you know, again, the system
23:08is, a better structure of the system.
23:11And that's private and public.
23:14And that still has some regulatory, you know, issues, obviously, but it's coming at a pace that's very interesting.
23:21And the other segment that we look at, which is not an impact segment, but is an important segment, because
23:30it's starting to make a big change for the life of small mom-and-pop operations, is ERPs and software
23:37as a service.
23:38The software as a service in Brazil is growing at twice the pace of the global pace, because a lot
23:44of entrepreneurs are looking at niches, as I mentioned in the beginning,
23:48and are solving problems for verticals.
23:51The largest ERP for eyeglass shops in Brazil is ours.
23:54So, we have 5,000 eyeglass shops that use an ERP that were using a notebook or a spreadsheet to
24:01control their shop.
24:03Now, they have an ERP that integrates to the bank.
24:06They have credit now because there's a way to control their cash flow.
24:09They can control their employees.
24:12They can offer credit to their clients.
24:14So, that transforms, you know, the whole experience on that specific niche.
24:19And there's thousands of niches in Brazil that can help improve through that.
24:27Maybe just as a final question, I can't believe that we've almost run out of time already.
24:32You're very worldly.
24:34You have experience in economies around the world.
24:38Since we're going to be talking about North America in a few minutes with our other guest,
24:43how would you compare and contrast the startup ecosystem in Latin America compared to that of North America or Europe,
24:50for that matter?
24:52So, I believe that on the knowledge side, we're very close because knowledge now is fully available.
24:58So, you know, we have a lot of access to knowledge.
25:01On the capital side, there's a big deficiency.
25:04And that makes it so that it's very easy to start a business, but very hard to scale a business.
25:13So, there's low barriers of entry to start, but it's very hard to scale because of lack of capital,
25:19even if you're successful because of the lack of capital.
25:22Well, we'll have to stop there.
25:24But thank you very much.
25:26It's been a delight speaking with you, Pierre.
25:29Thank you.
25:29Thank you very much.
25:30Great to be here.
25:32Thanks so much.
Commentaires