Anxiety check! ✍️

In the past few days, have you:

• Overthought about the lack of capital available this year and concluded that you are ✨doomed✨?
• Sighed for the 5th time in a day, thinking "why, oh why, didn't I fundraise in 2021?"
• Dramatized the never-ending entrepreneur suffering, while looking at the rain through your window?

In short, have you been thinking about what you can do to keep your business afloat in the current market maybe a liiittle too hard? Be honest, Marta, your blood pressure needs it.

Well, I don't know how to put this, but… VCs say you're being too drama grrrl.

"[2022] is not very different from what we've seen in 2018 or 2019 in Latin America. It's just different from the last 2 years", said a very chill 🏖️ Santiago Fossati, from Kaszek, at VLS.

And yes, you're right, there's a reset in the market. Less capital, lower valuation, and even risk-taking folks don't want to BFF you. But 🎶nobody said it was eaaasyyy🎶

Reality check: ✍️

Last year, everything was funded – oops.

Now, the market is dancing at its regular pace.

So come on, Ramón, adjust your game for the long term and get that anxiety off your chest.

👉 Izabel Gallera, from Canary, put it simply: "You have to increase your runway. You have to buy more time." That's, basically, being smart about how you are building the business and being more efficient with what you have.

• Give a sincere look at your valuation
• Cut costs and optimize your burn rate
• Then, reassess your Unit Economics…

… and try to gain time.

‍Capital is an option, not a necessity. If you don't have it now, you keep executing. And when the storm passes, you should be able to guarantee investors that you have a solid business.

Believe us: if you succeed at gaining time now, that says f*cking great things about you. And your effort will make investors pay more attention to other cool things you have to offer – like, you know, your purpose in life.

"VC is not like driving a car. (...) We are in the business of flying spaceships, so we pay attention to the mission," stated the certified astronaut Marcelo Lima, from Monashees.

📌 Santiago, Izabel, and Marcelo talked about the venture capital POV on the current market at Vamos Latam Summit.

• How do they pick investments?
• Are they panicking as much as you?
• What do they recommend to startups?

Go find out!

The fellows ask

How can I identify potential growth loops in a company?

Ok founder, for this you have to think of habit formation. That means identifying:

• the problem,
• the persona experiencing the problem,
• the alternative solutions to your product,
• why they are using your offer,
• and what's the natural frequency in which they experience the problem.

With this information, you'll have the capacity to fully understand your use cases: who you should be talking to, how often, and what for. You won't be over or under-messaging them: you'll reach them at the right time and channel to reengage them regularly to form a habit.

Focus on the people who stick with you for a really long time and dig into the quantitative and qualitative data to understand how they discovered the product, what they are doing with it, and what behaviors are retaining them.

Check your dashboards, but also talk to those users and understand their motives and ways of use. That way, you’ll be able to identify potential habit-forming and acquisition loops.

👉 All of this was covered in the session "Why Growth Wins - A new approach to building fast-growing products", led by Adam Fishman, Partner at Reforge, for our Explore fellows.

I'd say you're missing some BIG information if you're still not applying to become a fellow.

Throw us your questions next time

Until November 9th

Hot news ahoy! ⛵

👛 Zulu's wallet got bigger

Colombian fintech Zulu secured a US$ 5 million seed round led by Cadenza Ventures to help more users save in digital dollars, protect their money from devaluation, and send remittances to different countries directly from their digital wallets.

🫶 Sproutfi + Passfolio have a thing

Sproutfi just announced the acquisition of Passfolio's client portfolio in Brazil. With this, all of Passfolio's users will benefit from Sproutfi's lifetime waiver of brokerage fees, no minimum moves, and access to an active community of investors within the platform.

-> Every time your friends subscribe to our newsletter, a new VC meme account is created. So ask them to subscribe (or there will be drama 💅)

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