Mexico’s Conekta from Founder and Investor point of view
A few weeks ago, I had the good fortune to chat in Mexico City with both the co-founder and the investor of one of Mexico’s key startups, Conekta. Conekta is a payments platform that has previously secured funding from local VCs as well as some international angel investors such as Dave McClure. I spoke with the company’s co-founder and CEO, Hector Cardenas, as well as one of it’s investors, Eric Perez-Grovas, General Partner of Jaguar Ventures.
Eric has an impressive background before launching Jaguar Ventures. In addition to Jaguar Ventures, he is actively involved with the Mexican startup ecosystem as the Chairman of the Board of a Mexican eCommerce association; his partner is based in Argentina and they have been active investors there as well.
He started his career at Mckinsey & Co. and went on to run the Mexican operations of MercadoLibre and Brands Club at their founding. He sits on the boards and/or advises a number of startups and is an Endeavor mentor. This experience serves him well in his present role as investor. I first met Eric when he was on a VC panel and found his comments very insightful and balanced (as mentioned, Jaguar Ventures has invested outside of Mexico) and was looking forward to this conversation.
With respect to Conekta, along with his co-founders, Hector graduated as an engineer from the University of Waterloo several years back. He and his co-founders (who are from Canada) decided to create Conekta and have put a lot of emphasis on product development and customer service. Hector has an ambitious vision of the future with a Latin American role for Conekta. Since meeting Hector, I’ve found him to have a great balance between his global world view and his practical perspective on getting a business off the ground in Latin America.
Unfortunately, I was unable to take notes (apologies) since I was focused on the conversation, but key topics that we touched upon had to do with the challenges and opportunities in Mexico and Latin America as well as key characteristics of founders. Eric looks for real business results (aka, traction) as opposed to pure hope and dreams; something he found with Conekta. Both Hector and Eric spoke of the key skills that entrepreneurs in Latin America need which is sales and execution within the context of a highly challenging business environment (e.g., Latin America).
For me, these conversations are incredibly enjoyable. I have great admiration for entrepreneurs who have been able to build successful startups (partly, because I haven’t) as well as anyone who is smart and knowledgeable on this subject. I hope to have more of these opportunities to speak with more of these people in the future.