Investing in Latin America: VC Trends, Tech Ecosystems & EdTech with Mati Barbero | Nearshore Cafe

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**Brian:** Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast! I’m Brian Samson, your host. If you’re interested in the way VCs are scouting Latin America, founder journeys, and the bridge between Latin America and the States, this is going to be a really interesting podcast for you. Before we jump into it, I want to thank our sponsor, Plug Technologies, plug.te – a great way to connect talent from Latin America to growing U.S. companies. Without further ado, our guest, who is an ambassador, a bridge, and everything else in between: Matty Barbero. Great to have you on the show!

**Matty:** Thank you, thank you, Brian, for inviting me, and thanks again for the introduction. It’s my pleasure to be here.

**Brian:** Now, Matty, maybe we’ll first just start with location. So, you’re from Argentina, and you’re living in Miami now, I mean…

**Matty:** It’s hard to say. I’ve been moving back and forth between Latin America and Miami. What you first said is correct: I’m originally from Argentina, from a city called Rosario. For the last couple of years, I’ve been moving around everywhere. It started as learning from the different tech ecosystems: Chile, Uruguay, obviously Argentina, Colombia, Central America, and then Miami. But now, it turns out, I’m also learning from other startup ecosystems, like in Asia too, and it keeps expanding. I’ve adopted that lifestyle of moving around different places, obviously taking advantage of the different events and activities happening in the different ecosystems as well. So it’s like a mix of work and travel and meeting people — everything combined. It’s a way of living at this point; it’s been like that for the last year.

**Brian:** Amazing, amazing! Yeah, I think it’s inspiring for a lot of people. That’s really cool. That was me a long time ago, before kids, so I’m living vicariously now.

**Matty:** Everyone actually says the same. It’s like, they say, “Matty, you can do it because you don’t have any kids.” So, I guess I’m taking advantage of that moment. But yeah, I’m really, really enjoying it. I love meeting new people, so traveling is, I guess, the right vehicle to learn from new people and obviously their cultures and how they do business and stuff.

**Brian:** So, as we mentioned at the outset, you’ve talked a lot about and done investing in Latin America. We’ll get into your founder journey a little bit later, but I think let’s just start with investing. You’re part of Impakta and also 500 Startups. Can you talk about each of those funds?

**Matty:** Recently, I joined Bigma, which is a venture capital firm investing in early-stage fintech companies too. So…

**Brian:** Oh, awesome, awesome! So, we’ve got three different funds. Can you talk about each of these funds and what each of them are looking for?

**Matty:** 500 is looking for early-stage, pre-seed Latin American founders and Latin American companies. They want to invest in 60 different companies all across Latin America. They’re agnostic in terms of industry, and they want the founders to be Latin American. Impakta is similar, but the only thing is they are investing in companies doing impact or changing the world for good. And then at Bigma, as I recently said, they are looking to invest in fintech companies. Same thing: 60 companies for the next couple of years, pre-seed stage, and Latin America. So, three things in common there, right? Latin American founders, Latin American companies. That’s my passion. That’s what I’ve been working with a lot of Latinos for the last couple of years, and I know there’s a lot of potential in our region. I feel like this is a way for me, not only giving back by supporting with connections, but financially supporting this journey. And the other thing that these funds have in common – and I pay a lot of attention to this – is the people. The people who work behind all of these venture capital firms are awesome, are great. They’ve been in the business for the last eight to ten years. They’ve founded companies, they’ve failed, they’ve built ecosystems from scratch. They’re good people, and when I was starting my journey in the startup ecosystem, they were very supportive and very open to doing things with me. So, that’s also something I pay attention to: Latin America and this concept of people.

**Brian:** Correct. What does it mean to be a founder in Latin America in 2024-2025 versus even five years ago, pre-COVID? Talk about how the world has changed. What does that look like today? Access to opportunities, investments, talent – what does that look like today?

**Matty:** Well, I mean, I guess things changed a lot. I wasn’t a founder by that time. I can’t speak to how it was before COVID because I actually started working in the startup ecosystem — first in a consulting firm that later turned into an accelerator, and I ran that too. I started from my home, very virtually, and then obviously I started moving to Miami and Latin America. But, I guess one of the things that changed a lot is people. People now are way more used to working remotely, as I was saying, or adopting this kind of working from anywhere and going to the exact place that needs me to be there, but not me to be there the full year, you know, 12 months, 100% focused there. Then, thanks to this, a lot of Latin American people started to be more and more attracted to, let’s say, big companies from the U.S., right? So, access to talent remotely increased a lot. I saw a bunch of friends, a bunch of different people, starting to work for companies from abroad thanks to this. So, I guess things change a lot. I can’t speak to how it was before, but while I was transitioning and starting this, I noticed these two particular things that make sense.

**Brian:** Yeah, what does it look like today? Is there more optimism? And maybe even, because I want to think about the big picture – macro across the continent in the region – but then also take into account that every country is different, every city is different with its ecosystem. Maybe you could talk about just general optimism right now and if there are any particular micro-regions or cities that you’re especially interested in right now?

**Matty:** And I agree with you. We as Latin Americans, I feel, are fragmented economies, right? Sometimes, countries operate by themselves, and economies are not very big, which venture capitalists then tell us, “Hey, that’s, you know, the total addressable market or the addressable market back there is not big enough.” So that’s why companies consider this and other things, and then they go to the U.S. market or to bigger economies in order to get invested or to find better opportunities. But I’m very bullish about our region. I’ve been seeing not only the money coming from — now that I’m working closely with venture capital firms — I see LPs coming from everywhere, across the globe. Even from Europe, coming here to invest through these VCs that I was mentioning, or Saudi Arabia, that they joined PMU. So, if those guys, those folks, are very, very bullish about what’s going on in our region, well, maybe I am too, right? I met a lot of founders from different countries across Latin America. I feel, at this point, from all of the countries, but I particularly connected very well and worked a lot with Colombians, Chileans, and also Argentinians. As I was saying, I feel specifically in these three countries, I feel very, very bullish, not only because of the talent, but also because there’s an important thing working in the background: the public sector. In Argentina, not right now, but I expect this to start moving with the new administration. But in Colombia and Chile, the public sector and nonprofit organizations have been working for the last 10 years in order to have the good presence that I’m explaining right now. That is very important when you have the public sector working very well connected with the private sector. That’s where the magic happens, right? They do events together, they organize activities together, demo days, they send entrepreneurs to Miami, to different cities across the U.S. — private and public sector both combined. And that is something that has been demonstrated to be successful, and that’s why I’m very, very bullish about the region.

**Brian:** Are there any patterns that you want to share? Are you seeing companies focused on markets in Latin America, or are they trying to solve global problems? Is there any particular sector — whether it’s fintech or something else — that’s really bringing minds together?

**Matty:** I mean, I guess fintech and the boom of fintech was a couple of years ago when digital banks started, when wallets for crypto started, and all of that. Fintech is, I guess, still a very important industry; that’s why I invested in fintech too. Especially for fragmented economies, like cross-border transactions and things like that, it’s going to be very important in our region. But when I joined Impakta and I started talking and working a little bit closer with David, the general partner, David Alvo, I started to notice that health tech, biotech, climate tech – all of these impact industries – are starting to become something that I expect to be very important in the next five to ten years, right? Maybe the next big thing, same as fintech was a couple of years ago. I expect biotech, health tech, climate tech, things related to energy, and so on – things like that that generate impact – are the next main topics, or what founders are looking to develop ideas around. I literally saw it this year when I went to my alma mater, my university in my hometown. When they’re taking their last course, they need to develop an idea; it’s like a pre-incubation process, let’s put it that way. The kids — the 20-year-olds, 21-year-old kids — were very smart, and they were thinking about these things that I was saying. They were not thinking about fintech or things like that. Five years ago, when I was doing that, six, seven years ago, when I was in their position, I was thinking about fintech and things like that, right? Now they’re more like, “Okay, how can we change the world? How can we impact?” I keep reading about that, I keep listening about that. I keep reading news about new VCs popping up, new nonprofit organizations, the Investment Development Bank investing around that. So, it’s definitely something around that. And I’m talking about Latin America, of course. I don’t know about other regions in the rest of the world, but mainly in Latin America, I’m hearing a lot about that.

**Brian:** Yeah, Matty, as you said at the beginning, you’re a guy who loves to travel. You’re going around a lot of conferences, meetups, all sorts of stuff. Can you talk about a recent conference that you went to that was focused on the Latin America tech ecosystem, things like that? Can you talk about that?

**Matty:** Yeah, so this year there was a thing that started in Latin America: different countries started making their ‘Tech Weeks.’ So, the Argentina Tech Week, the Colombia Tech Week, the Chile Tech Week, the Peru Tech Week, and so on. And then in Uruguay, in a couple of months – actually, in one month from now – we’re going to have this Uru… they call it ‘Punch,’ but it’s a city called Punta in Uruguay, which a lot of PEs and the startup ecosystem go to. So, I guess the two that I like the most, and then obviously Mexico Tech Week, sorry about that… the two I like the most were Colombia Tech Week and Chile Tech Week. Again, it’s not a coincidence. I came three weeks ago from Chile Tech Week; there was a huge, huge event called EtM. 40,000 people attended for three days!

**Brian:** Yeah, it was amazing.

**Matty:** So, these guys, they’ve been doing this for the last 10 years. They started with some small gatherings at someone’s place, and then Daniel turned this into a big, big event. They have a huge park in Santiago, Chile, and they use that space for three consecutive days: from Thursday to Saturday. And it was amazing. I spoke there about internationalization, but the most important, most impactful thing for me was that there’s a lot going on. There are a lot of corporates trying to play into and connect with startups. A lot of PEs are coming from different countries, from different continents. And for me, it was simply, simply amazing, right? How this common topic — startups — can bring together people from all over the world. I saw the same in Colombia. In August, they did the Colombia Tech Week; there were like 160 events or something like that. I hosted about 20 events during that week, and it was amazing. I know the guys executing all of this in the background, and it’s so cool that everything starts with small things. They were thinking of doing some small events, some small activities, and thanks to the support of both the private and public sectors, these things are changing people’s lives because they get invested, they get new connections, new clients, new partners. They meet new people, and it’s simply amazing. These types of events and activities are mind-blowing.

**Brian:** That’s awesome. Hearing the size, the energy that was there must have just been absolutely incredible. I think there’s even maybe some bias, right, from the States, about how big the Latin America tech scene is. But yeah, you hear numbers like 40,000 people in one city, it’s exciting!

**Matty:** And there were more side events; they did like 40 or 50 side events, and I was not even able to see the full event. It was like, how do you say this? It’s like when you go to a music festival – so big, so much going on. It was huge. I’d never seen something like that. Now I’m a big promoter of EtM, and they did a great job. But yeah, same for Colombia, same for Argentina; everyone has been creating these, well, Mexico as I was saying, and yeah, it was simply amazing.

**Brian:** Matty, in addition to being a connector and an investor, you’re also a founder. Please tell us more about what you’re working on today and what the idea and the vision is.

**Matty:** All right. So, I became a founder, let’s put it this way, by accident. I was not looking to become a founder. But last year, as I was saying, I was running an accelerator. Then, we stopped working together. While I was running that accelerator, there were between 250 and 270 companies that went through it. One of the companies was this Chilean company called Apol. It has a different name and way of operating marketing there. They called me once, and the company was about to do an exit. My comment was, “Hey, why don’t you literally operate in the U.S.?” — which was the thing that I was supporting you before, right? We agreed on doing that together. So, that’s why I say, “Hey, I became a founder by accident.” But I love the team, I love the product, and I love what we are now executing. Back in the day, about a year ago, we were planning to do this in the U.S. So, that’s correct. Now I am the co-founder of School In One. We are an all-in-one app for schools. Basically, we are an EdTech company, Software as a Service, for schools in the U.S. So, long story short: the problem we identified is schools have, on average, five to six different platforms to do grading, attendance, and communicating with parents. All of the information that students generate is somehow everywhere, in six different platforms. And sometimes, schools still use emails, and information is everywhere. They’re spending a lot of money on these five to six different software. We said, “Hey, why don’t we bring something that gets all of these together — not integrating this, having an all-in-one product — but then also bring a user-friendly experience to teachers, who are the people using this the most, and also for parents?” So, we have both things: we have an app for parents and teachers. They can also log in through the web. And again, ideally, all the information flows all in one, in a single place, all in one through School In One. So, that’s what we are doing. We launched this year. We are already operating with a few schools, which I love to call my partners. It’s a slow industry, but it’s been well. I mean, people love our product. It’s just a matter of adoption, so it takes some time, but we are doing a great job. So yeah, that’s my story as a founder so far.

**Brian:** Very cool, very cool. Well, we’ll have to check back with you in a few years and see all the milestones. Matty, I want to be respectful of your time. If anyone is interested in your startup, what’s the best way to reach you?

**Matty:** So, it’s my LinkedIn. I always reply. You can find me on LinkedIn, Matty Barbero. I love to reply. If there’s a school out there that wants to learn more about how we can add value, I’m happy to talk, happy to listen to what they’re facing and to see if we add value. Let me also share something else, Brian. If there’s any other Latin American founder or investor, or someone from Latin America looking to expand abroad and do business in Miami, I’m very happy to support them through my LinkedIn. I also founded what I like to call a nonprofit organization; it’s called Project 97. I use it to support Latin American entrepreneurs every time I can, of course, right? It’s not easy with the startup and all of the things moving around. But every time I can, if I can make an introduction, if I can have a few meetings with any founder and add some value for their internationalization or help them accelerate that learning curve, I’m always happy to do it. For me, it’s so hard to say no, so I’m always open to connect.

**Brian:** Well, here at the Nearshore Cafe, we’re very supportive of people who are ambassadors for the region, bringing spotlight. And Matty is definitely one of the key people there. You’ve been listening to the Nearshore Cafe podcast with our guest, Matty Barbero. You can find us at NearshoreCafePodcast.com. This podcast was sponsored by Plug Technologies, plug.te — a great way to connect talent from Latin America to growing U.S. companies. Thanks, everyone, for listening! We’ll see you next time.

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