Diego Noriega, Managing Partner, represented Newtopia VC in the NAVES seminar on venture financing held at the IAE Business School, with the participation of other leaders from the entrepreneurial world.
NAVES is a training program for entrepreneurs and SMEs from all over the country that has been carried out for 8 years with the IAE Entrepreneurship Center. In this last edition, only 100 of the 1,900 projects registered in the Program were selected.
Diego was invited to talk with these entrepreneurs about his experience as an entrepreneur and investor, he spoke about the emergence and mission of Newtopia as an investment fund and answered some questions.
In this context, he raised a parallelism between entrepreneurs and investors, giving as an example what the emergence of Newtopia meant:
«We have been here for a year and in the process we had to pitch to investors, but not to raise a million dollars, but to raise fifty million dollars, and expand our network of contacts in the world, with which, as investors, our own reputation and the capital of others are at stake. At this point it is similar to what happens in a startup.”
About Newtopia
Newtopia is a VC Fund that aims to become one of the main engines of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Latin America, but Diego rather defines it as
«a group of entrepreneurs who are now on the investors’ side.»
In turn, Mariano Mayer, one of its Co-Founders, has defined it on another occasion as «a new life that is possible today in Latin America, combining talent and technology to solve all the enormous problems that the region has.»
The founders of Newtopia managed to see an opportunity in the pandemic, since it ended up taking down many prejudices and fears that existed in the entrepreneurial world about whether or not it was possible to transform and digitize certain sectors, which made many entrepreneurs work on solving enormous and urgent problems, which today are seen as great opportunities.
Newtopia mainly offers investment, but also a mentoring model, to support and advise companies in very early stages of development so that they can grow and scale at a regional or global level. To this end, Newtopia also has a community of almost 100 top-level entrepreneurs and athletes as investors and advisors, who support portfolio companies.
Under the motto of “industries agnosticism”, since there is no marked preference in this regard, today Newtopia’s portfolio is made up of technology-based companies from different industries such as Aleph Solutions (Ecommerce), Oliver (SportTech), For_Me (Social Commerce), Orkid (Hardware), Mokens League (Web3) or kashin (Fintech), among others.
“I love to say that at Newtopia we are entrepreneurs who are now on the investors’ side”
Newtopia as an investment fund
Regarding what it means to be an investment fund, Diego highlighted that “the model of being a fund that supports entrepreneurs and accompanies them, on the one hand, is great and I feel blessed to be able to do it. But on the other hand, it implies working with several entrepreneurs at the same time, generating a bond, falling in love with their projects, and at the same time having a bond with your investors so that the value proposition towards them is fulfilled”.
In addition, he highlighted the main mission of Newtopia, focusing on what really moves them as investors: «We have a very strong purpose that unites us, which is the desire to change Latin America, and we believe that the most appropriate vehicle is investing and supporting entrepreneurs”.
«We trust projects that can hit it out of the park in such a way that it has repercussions throughout society, in all the stakeholders of the ecosystem, creating new companies, more higher quality employment, among other things,» he added.
Also present at this conference, as exhibitors and pacesetters from the entrepreneurial world, Juan Manuel Porcaro, Executive Director of the Argentine Association of Private, Entrepreneurial and Seed Capital (ARCAP), Silvia Torres Carbonell, Director of the Entrepreneurship Center IAE Business School, Jorge Grad, angel investor, Matias Peire, founder and CEO of GridX, Daniel Jejcic, Avenida+ CEO , Lorena Suarez, Alaya Capital Managing Partner and President of ARCAP, Diego González, Partner at MrPink, Rafael Galante, President of the Board of Directors at Crecer SGR and Silvia Carrasco, Founder & Partner of LoM.
At Newtopia we are excited to continue spreading entrepreneurial energy, the values and purposes that drive us to transform Latin America and we trust that these forums created in academic environments are necessary to continue promoting the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
So.. are you an entrepreneur and you want to get in touch with us to analyze what you are building? That’s great! We really appreciate that interest.
If after reading our Manifest, you consider that you check all of the boxes, do not hesitate applying to Newtopia Latam VC!
