Miami, Florida, June 28th 2022 – 15 fireside chats, 4 workshops, 2  community events. 3 unicorns, 1 NBA Hall of Famer.  Entertainment and Meditation. An intense agenda that brought together startup founders of the Newtopia VC: VC Latam, with leaders like Manu Ginóbili (4 times NBA champion), Patricio Jutard (Co-founder of Mural and Newtopia), Martín Migoya (Globant  Co-founder), Darío Maffei (Indigo CBO), Nicolás Tejerina (Navent Founder), Pedro Arnt (CFO of MercadoLibre), Adrian Garcia Aranyos (President of Endeavor Global), Agustina Fainguersch (Managing Director of Meta for Latam), Andres Jara & Pamela Scheurer (Cofounders of Nubimetrics), Pedro Suarez (Former CBO of Dow Global), Jorge Gutierrez & Alex Santana (AWS), Juan Pablo Capello & Victoria Sanchez (PAG Law), and representatives from JP Morgan (Damian Grinberg & Tomi Pierucci) , The Venture City, GoHub, Microsoft for Startups, among many others. 

 Mariano Mayer, Newtopia Managing Partner,  explains why this meeting. “Being a Hands-On Venture Capital Firm, for early-stage startups, means that we need to generate rapport  with the members, and we believe that doing it face-to-face is keen. That is why, our assistance to every batch starts with an intensive and on-site week where we interact and consolidate Human Relationships that are the basis for trust.”

 The new startups of the Newtopia VC that participated in this edition come from 9 Latin American countries and belong to industries such as Fintech, Logistics, HRTech, Martech, Marketplace,  Agrotech, among others. These are: Nuqlea, Koban, Creditop, UbankU, Orkid, Lizit, Alfred, Beu, Lara, Tap, Menta, Polemix, Get Globy and Frescoo.  Additionally, representatives from previous batches joined as volunteers, for a total of 40 entrepreneurs, who are all part of the community.

 “During the week, we have connected entrepreneurs with knowledge, by inviting speakers, founders of the leading companies of Latin and North America, that have had success and failures, many of them have already become unicorns. We have had events with other funds, investors and advisors, who were able to meet and interact with them and put a face to every project” said Diego Noriega, Newtopia VC Managing Partner. 

 His peer, Sacha Spitz,  as way of example regarding how valuable these talks are, mentioned: “Martín Migoya, Globant CEO and Co-founder,  who told  entrepreneurs < I come from the future and I want to say, that everything is okay>,  referring to the crisis that various startups from Latin America are going through. Globant was one of the first unicorns and has endured different issues and crises, and has been able to keep moving forward. Events like the Academy Week allow us to share those experiences and transfer those learnings to our companies”.

 However, what’s most exciting, according to Noriega,  is “to have connected these entrepreneurs with the community, of which not only they are core figures of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, but also entrepreneurs from previous batches. They provided their testimony about how they progressed along the way with newtopia, what has worked for them, offering peer-to-peer support so that together they can overcome the valley of death”. 

 Christophe Robilliard,  for instance,  is founder of Kashin and considers that the difference brought by newtopia, compared to other funds, is that it builds a community of entrepreneurs. “ In my case I am from the first batch and I joined this Academy Week to help the entrepreneurs from batch three. The new startups invested have very disruptive proposals with an amazing future. At the same time, Newtopia is always helping, bringing amazing speakers, who are Latin American and understand the problems that we have in the region”.

 The  Newtopia Academy Week Miami–S22 has been an ideal occasion to learn and network. The methodology of the event was suitable for the participants to have a dialogue, ask, clear out doubts, and request advice firsthand.

 About it, Julián Bender, Founder & CRO of Sirena.app (one of the guest speakers)  points out: “that what really makes Newtopia different is that it is composed and led entirely by entrepreneurs that have already gone through this path, had success and failures. The passion to help startups is just amazing”.

 “Why do we do it? Because we have the vision of enhancing the region through investment and assistance to high-impact entrepreneurs. With that, creating an ideal opportunity to learn, interact, enjoy and share concerns along the entrepreneurial pathway amongst those that are just getting started and those that have a couple of decades of experience. If we are able to convey this effectively, we are going to increase the startups’ potential and lower their huge mortality rates”, concluded Diego Noriega.