The Colombian fintech Mono has launched a new initiative to connect Colombian startups to Latin American funds and investors. This initiative goes by the name of Mono VC, and some of the participant investors and funds are Magma Partners, QED, ALLVP, startup founders, Rappi investors, and other angel investors.
To be part of this initiative, startups send their investment decks to the Mono team, who categorizes the startups according to their industry, stage, and other criteria. After filtering the information, they send it to the investment funds.
This initiative started as a Linkedin post made by one of Mono’s founders, Tomás Lobo. His inquiry on early stage startup recommendations resulted in over 120 meetings with entrepreneurs.
This experience led the Mono team to devise an efficient strategy to connect both parties. They had connections to startups and investors, and this initiative would accelerate Colombia’s startup ecosystem.
Startups that apply to Mono VC must comply with the requirement of being Mono’s client. According to Tomás Lobo, the Mono team came up with the idea while at Y Combinator in San Francisco:
“We set the goal of growing the startup ecosystem in Colombia a lot (…) For now it’s only for clients so that we can filter a little more. But the truth is that we are not closed to it always being this way”.
