EN | What Venture Capital Firms Are Actually Funding in 2026 | MERGE São Paulo

Welcome everyone. Thank you. We will just give like a little bit introductions about yourself and then we go to the questions, please. Amazing to have you guys here as well. Perfect.

So, good afternoon. It's a great pleasure to be here. My name is Michel. I am an investor at Quona. We are a global venture capital firm focused on fintech.

We have been investing on this category for more than one decade already. We captured multiple fintech waves including several of the fintech unicorns here in Brazil and Latin America as well as in other regions in the globe. And we are very excited about blockchain and crypto. It has been one of the core investment priorities for us recently. And we think we can really connect all of the expertise and relationships we have in the TradFi world also into the blockchain and the crypto space as those two areas are more and more converging.

We are focused on the early stage of seed series A, series B. We have about $1 billion in assets under management. And we have a team distributed all over the world. So, offices in Latin America, South Southeast Asia, the US, Europe, and more. And very excited to be discussing panel with you guys here.

Gustavo. No, amazing. Thanks for for having me. Can everyone hear me well? Yes.

Perfect. So, my name is Gustavo. I've been investing with Valor over the past four years. And Valor as a firm is a global VC firm as well. We are generalist.

Um and the firm was actually founded by the former US ambassador to Brazil. So, during his mandate here, he noticed that Brazilians and Latin Americans in general were one of the most entrepreneurial people in the world. Uh very high quality entrepreneurs. The population was super tech savvy, but there were almost no international capital flowing into the region for venture capital investments. Um so, he started investing in the region with this idea of bridging Brazil, Latin America, and and the US.

Um and as I mentioned, we are generalist, but one of the first investments that we made was was actually in Coinbase in their series B. Uh so, a crypto company back in the day was still pretty small. They wanted to expand globally. Um and and they actually mapped Brazil as one of their key regions to expand to uh because they thought the population was pretty booming in crypto. Um so, we invested in the company with the goal of helping them come into Latin America.

And obviously that investment turned out pretty pretty well. And since then, we've invested in more than 25 companies both locally Can you guys hear a little bit of interference? Yes. There's a lot of background noise, actually. No, but but perfect.

Um yeah, as I was mentioning, we invested in more than 25 30 companies in in blockchain and crypto from pre-seed to pre-IPO, uh including Circle and a lot of different names here in Latin America. So, um it's a pleasure to meet you. Uh excited to to discuss blockchain investments with you guys. Uh hello guys. Uh first, thanks for inviting me to be talking here.

Great to be uh present at the BTM Poringa. So, my name is Renato Valente. I'm one of the GPs at Poringa Ventures. We are a Brazilian fund. We are started 2009.

So, we have saw many things happening through these 16 years. Got some unicorns. And uh in the past two to three years, we decided to niche the focus of our fund to this that we call future finance, which is investing fintechs and better finance and blockchain. We shouldn't say to to to to speak that we invest in blockchain because uh uh not everything is blockchain yet, but we think everything's going to change. So, soon we're going to be just fintechs and better finance, maybe just fintech.

So, uh that's related to our thesis. I joined Polygon in 2020. So, uh but I I started a company in 2009, so the 15. Before that, I was CVC at Telefonica. So, I've been in the tech ecosystem for quite a while, and I'm happy to discuss this amazing technology that's uh uh bringing all the assets on chain.

Thank you, Luis. Mason, um hi everyone. I'm Luis Pastor. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Tritemius. So, I've been the crypto digital assets blockchain web three space, whatever you call it, uh for a while, more than 10 years now.

And uh our idea about Tritemius was creating a platform or in on investments, and also uh professional services uh using research and venture building. But, here I'm representing today the the our venture capital arm. So, we are a fund based in Spain focused in um early stage um web three startups. Yeah, we invest mainly in Europe and Latin America. Invest from receipt till uh series A.

And uh I'm also quite interested on what is happening particularly in Brazil because I see that's uh uh you guys were saying like there's a lot of talent and a lot of opportunities, and looking forward for the for the discussion. Brilliant. Thank you very much. Beyond the AI, which everyone is talking about, where are you guys seeing interesting opportunities? Let's say, what is real signal or what is still a hype?

Yeah, um first of all, I'd say that we're big believers believers blockchain is a real infrastructure shift. And fast forward a couple of years from now, most financial assets will be on chain because it's simply better infrastructure. It's global, it's programmable, it's always on, it's cheaper. So, there'll be a lot of opportunities across different layers of the stack, both infrastructure and applications. A couple of ones that we've been paying a lot of attention that we can bring to to you guys.

First, we do believe in the rise of specialized layer two blockchains. Think about Stripe spearheading Temple for payments. Think about Figure, who's doing very interesting work on tokenized home equity markets in the US and did a very successful IPO last year. Within our own portfolio, we are early investors in a company called Hamsa, which is building blockchain capital markets platform and working with a lot of the leading banks in Brazil and the US. Um, and we should see the rise of more and more of those platforms that are targeting a use case and going very deep into building the product and the ecosystem tailored to it.

Another area that we are excited about is what we would call banking as a service 2.0. So, that is companies that are providing the infrastructure and all the tooling for other companies to implement stable coins and blockchain into their own ecosystems. For instance, we are proud to have led recently the series A financing round of Avenia, who's the leading stablecoin infrastructure provider offering products like global accounts, cross-border payments, stablecoin instruments, and more for players like banks, PSPs, or any platform who want to embed those products into their own ecosystems. Another area we are excited about is the other side of this equation.

So, that is the stablecoin-based neo banks, be it serving consumers, be it serving businesses, in which they're leveraging this new age infrastructure to innovate with programmable banking products. We have invested in a company called PayB Bank, which has a fully licensed commercial uh regulatory regime, and has been serving many of the global crypto companies and PSPs, who today are still very much underserved by the traditional financial services sector. And lastly, I would say um it's not about AI or crypto. I would say it's more and more about AI and crypto. Those two words are more and more converging.

We are very excited about agent commerce, for instance. Uh there's a lot of debate on what is the winning rail for agent commerce as today we are doing already the discovery into ChatGPT and Claude, but soon those platforms will be doing payments as well, be it consumer payments, be it B2B supply chain payments, be it agent to agent payments. I do think that credit cards, real-time payments like PIX, will have its fair share of this ecosystem, but definitely stablecoins and crypto as well. And there's a lot of opportunity around authentication, fraud prevention, and other tooling to really help this ecosystem to flourish. So, those are some of the areas we're excited about, but I'm sure there's many other ones in which uh we can discuss here.

Sure, Gustav. No, for sure, and I'm fully aligned. I think that our core principle is that um the whole traditional financial ecosystem will migrate to blockchain rails, and I think that this process obviously doesn't happen overnight. I think that uh this process will happen over the course of the next 5 or 10 years, and it's our job as investors to time the market and pick the best opportunities in the right timing, because I think that uh I've like being sure of the time is as important as being sure of the thesis. So, I think that our job is just selecting uh when uh should this stack be built.

Uh I think that within that we are dividing our mental model into two core stages or big industries we are we like to invest in. The first one is real world asset organization is as broad as possible, but uh when you think about traditional financial markets and these assets moving on chain. Uh there are huge industries in each vertical that you can uh kind of have a parallel in the tokenized world. So, from fund administration to asset issuance to back office optimization to banking as a service to compliance and several different layers that you can have in this market that are super exciting on its own. Uh so, I think that each of these different industries would have its own winner and and yeah.

Um so, the other area we're we're focusing on is on on chain payments and this goes from uh glocal payments as what as we call it, which is global rails and connecting global rails and local rails um with via stablecoins, via connections with local payment systems like Pix, instant payment systems, RTGSs. Um so, yeah. And then obviously authentic payments as well is an area that we're very excited about. But but yeah, a lot of things to to discover and to study in this market. Uh it's a very exciting time.

Renato? Yeah, um yeah. The same with the the my colleagues here, but I I just would add that uh we like entrepreneurs solving big problems big real world problems. Like we're really critical about crypto and blockchain stuff because we're uh I don't know, 3 years ago was just crypto people developing for crypto people. So, we don't like that.

We don't choose small as yet. So, uh but uh when we find entrepreneurs like uh when a when a company that we invested they are doing uh cross border payments for global logistics. Uh and what they are really doing is helping frightens to build a orchestrate layer and they use stable coins to do the the payments. But payments are just a feature of the solution. So that's kind of thing that we find really interesting.

Uh we had another company that uh it's uh a credit for real estate. And by the way, they use Polygon to share through Polygon through uh uh residual the the the the customer profile financial profile. So it's kind of stuff I think interesting when entrepreneurs are building using the technology not because it's cool, but because it makes sense. It's cheaper, it's faster, it's more scalable. Luis.

Yeah, they have discussed many things I agree with. I want to going to stick to the point of Renato. So we try to invest in companies that we believe that they are bringing real value. And our thesis is around infrastructure, DeFi, the the new fintech as we call it intersections on tokenization, AI, and also for us is quite critical cybersecurity and privacy. That that's something that we are looking very close at.

Uh for instance, just to give a few examples that probably makes more sense. We invested in a in a company that is bringing best practices of cybersecurity to financial institutions that want to jump into offering services on blockchain or maybe um tokenizing on on blockchain. So they have to secure the smart contracts, they have to secure their assets on chain, their nodes, their connections. So and this company provides um let's say a framework on cybersecurity on top of that. We also invested in a company that is uh a company that is providing guarantees on micro-loans uh in uh Latin America.

Uh the the regulated lender, the fintechs, they need uh this collateral, these guarantees, and they tokenize the guarantee, and these guarantees are governed by a smart contract. So, you create efficiencies in an event that is a a default. So, you execute the smart contract easily, and you repay that that guarantee. And they they started with their own cash, but now they're going to start using other guarantees as gold, as tokenized gold, tokenized grain, uh stablecoins even. So, I believe uh this these sort of companies that are bringing value right now.

And then also, I agree with Gustavo. We are also looking at the at the full picture. We believe that maybe and uh in the near future, we have to look very close at post-quantum cryptography, that for us is quite important in terms of disrupting everything, not only not only crypto. Thank you very much. In the next next question, I'll put the Brazilian in the focus, and I'll say Brazil is a crypto powerhouse as it is.

We got Drex in the development, maturing regulation framework, population already know and use Pix. Do you see Brazil as a genuine different market for blockchain investment, or is just mostly following the global trends? I don't need to be the first one. Does anyone want to start with this this one? I can go.

I think Brazil is an interesting place because it's a huge country, like 200 million people, that's tax savvy already uh had this amazing payment digital payment system, which Pix. So, it's a amazing country to test things. And if you think how can work in Brazil, might work anywhere in the world. Like a Swiss is amazing, but it's too small. So, uh going to work if it works in Swiss, Work here.

Hmm, I don't know. So, I think Brazil can be a leader on on on chain technology. Uh we already seeing like a I really like Avena. Great investment. I saw the guys when they were really really in the beginning.

But uh it's a it's an amazing company that can be a world leader. Yeah. That's the idea. Yeah. If I can add something on top of that and I let you guys uh that for me like investing from Spain like I also see Brazil like a great country with many possibilities in terms of talent and opportunities.

You also have a legal framework that now is in place with VASP that I think that it is sort of similar to what we are having with CASP in in Europe. But at the same time because of what you mentioned especially with Pag of Peaks and everything I think that's uh it's going to be able to test solutions that are going to be easily to propagate worldwide because I believe that crypto and the FinTech 2.0 is global. So, we we just invested in a in a company in Brazil. Unfortunately, we cannot announce it yet.

But but we are quite excited and myself generally quite impressed of everything that is happening here. Just as a as a funny note, the last time I was in São Paulo was 20 years ago. And I'm super impressed of the of the growth and things happening here.

Welcome back. Yeah. Cheers. And and and just to build on what you just said, about 2 weeks ago we brought portfolio companies that we invest all over the world our LPs and other players from our network to do a deep dive in Brazil and the conclusion was consensual. Brazil is one of the most advanced markets in the world when it comes to FinTech infrastructure and FinTech in general.

We have one of the most sophisticated FinTech banks. We have PIX which has $7 billion in TPV. It's way more than UPI. It's way more than Fed Now and all the real-time payment systems in the globe. We have open finance.

Everyone knows UK as the pioneer for open finance, but Brazil, in terms of open finance API calls per day, is five times larger than the UK. Very sophisticated our capital markets, and I can continue chatting about the great things on Brazil. But the point being is that there's already a lot of global companies that are coming to Brazil as a laboratory, not only for fintech, more and more for blockchain as well. We are the fifth largest country in the world in terms of crypto adoption. We have been having the Drex project, the central bank digital currency project and tokenized deposits with participation from all of the S1 banks already for a couple of years.

There's the regulation for virtual asset service providers from from last year. But what I wanted to see more, and I think we're starting to see this mindset shift in the ecosystem, is really Brazilian founders that had the opportunity to build here a really sophisticated ecosystem going global and being global winners. Um historically, everyone has been trapped because the market locally here is very large, but as a second third stage of the evolution of the ecosystem, I'm excited to see the first ones trying to do so. No, I fully agree. Um I think that Brazil, we like to say that is the beta market for financial innovation in the world.

Companies built here can be exported globally, and I fully agree with that. Uh we should start seeing more founders doing that here in Brazil, and I think we have all the potential in the world to do it. Um we recently wrote a report together with with McKinsey called the Brazil stack, uh just highlighting all of these financial innovation initiatives here in the country. And it's actually pretty interesting because everyone says about PIX, which is the most uh high-profile project, or open finance, which uh is just launching now at scale. Uh But but I think this has been been built over the course of the last 15 years.

Like when you think about the opening of the merchant acquiring markets, we had two companies that could process payments and credit card machines and POS machines. So, ever since then the central bank has been releasing uh a series of of regulations and financial innovations that really push the ecosystem forward. So, I think this is super important for for the whole world to to to actually look at Brazil and see see kind of a benchmark and it's actually something to be very proud of. Thank you. Um the next question is exactly about when a project walk in and start pitch their ideas to you, what is instantly red flag?

Well, for me as it comes to crypto blockchain specially, I would say is a lack of care as it comes to compliance and regulation. Everyone remember FTX and other bad cases we had in crypto. So, I think this is kind of like a key element that is a must for every deal that we do here in in this space. Yeah, I think that honestly we we are open to to all ideas. I wouldn't say there are any typical red flag that from to start like to to start talking like we ask directly.

I mean obviously the basic stuff like being compliant to regulation and having having like a very strict compliance is super important. I think that we we love to talk to smart people and I think that the biggest red flag that we usually see is people that are not like thoughtful. Uh I think that um whenever talking to a founder, we don't expect them to have all the answers in any way. We we just like to have interesting conversations, discuss and have uh open kimono conversations. So, uh like talking about the future and just seeing how founders think about building their business, even if that's going to change in like 6 months.

We like to see that they they think about the future and think about building a billion-dollar-plus company. So, so I think that um talking to founders that that think in that way is is super super exciting and one of the parts that I like most about my day. Yeah, I would say like a lack of ambition maybe, like we need to invest things that can really really be big companies. And sometimes is the the the the founder is so in love with their this solution, the technology, they are not seeing the big picture or or why this solution going to change something in society. So, we're we like to spend our time resolving big problems.

I think that this is the most when someone talking to us is the the most thing that we would find. In our case, like well, we have three things that we always look at as a project. So, we look at the team. I speak of if have the proper team to build what they are willing to to to build. Um the market, if they have tested the market, if they have any previous experience, that's also quite important.

And um in terms of also the deliverables, if they're going to be able to deliver, we look at that. But when it comes to to crypto and being in the space for a while, something that I noticed that now is is not that obvious anymore, but they are thinking about the token and how to finance themselves with tokens that for me um for a centralized company, tokens probably this a little bit controversial, don't make any sense at all. So, because for me the nature of tokens is decentralized, is how everything is started. So, if you want to build the new um Ave, so if you are Ave Labs, that's fine. So, you're going to have a a DAO.

The token is going to be a governance tokens and it's going to be Ave a a opportunity to vote or is it you're going to have any utility so far. But I I was involved in a startup long long time ago. We're tokenizing art. That was uh 10 years ago. And we suffered everything because of regulation.

So, you really have to observe that what about if it doesn't exist a token? Is your company going to work or is not going to work? So, you need to the token to finance your company or if there's a a real utility uh on that. That that's something that we we check all the time all together with the compliance and and regulatory firm. But uh I believe that now after what has happened, not only FTX, so many things, ups and downs, I'm going to give you some information.

So, maybe you don't know, but according to CoinGecko, 83% of the tokens has already disappeared since the very beginning. So, it means that they didn't make any sense in the first place. So, we looked at that if the founders have clear idea how to launch the project. That's most critical aspect for us. Yeah, I would say that the jurisdictions of the project.

Sometimes I'm in Estonia, I'm in somewhere, I'm in Iceland. So, when you look at that, especially the crypto people like to have some different jurisdictions for the the project. Sometimes that that's a big red flag. All right. Thank you.

So, we know that the there is phases to get funding. So, we have the pre-seed, the seed, the I What's your favorite phase of being funded in startups? Uh Do you want to go first? I didn't get my favorite what? Sorry?

Which phase do you like to invest on in startups? Like pre-seed, seed? Why? Our thesis is around from pre-seed till pre-seed say um is is not a matter of taste. It's because at some point we know that it's riskier.

Obviously, that's according to the return, too. And uh only invest in a startup that we can help somehow. So, the way of helping is like either we we know the industry, we can connect with clients if it's a B2B, or we can help them to expand into the in different markets. Uh and and I say that's from the very beginning has a a good aspect. So, you can help them to pivot and orientate if they that that happens.

So, for us that that is also interesting. riskier, but for us is more interesting because we are going to support them all along the way. So, we are intending to to make around 15 investments in our our first one. Our first one is 21 million fund. So, that's why I believe that if we also reserve the capital, that is how it works venture capital, we are going to be able to support them along the way along their their their growth.

Uh we do we like we do pre-seed, but we prefer to do seed when something already already developed, some kind of validations, first customer, starting to has some revenue, so we can evaluate something. But we can invest in company in project that are in the PowerPoint. We did in the past. But we more focus on seed doing checks around 500k to 2 million dollars. Yeah.

Um so, Valor has two major strategies. We have a venture fund which invests from pre-seed to to a late series A or early series B. And and then we have a growth fund as well, which invests from pre-seed from from series B to pre-IPO. Um so, yeah, we invest from pre-seed to pre-IPO. Obviously, check sizes vary accordingly, but but yeah, usually check sizes are from Yeah.

three to to 10 or 15. Yeah, I I I started my career first focused on public equities, and then I always have been migrating earlier and earlier, so I did pre-seed equity and then growth equity and then early stage. And I just feel that the beginning of the company creation is the magical moment and where is the connection of the founder is the most unique and the greatest one. So, personally, that's where myself like to invest the most. The earlier, the better.

As a firm, Quona is focused on the early stage, meaning seed, series A, a little bit of series B. And over time, we've been becoming more multi-stage. So, we already have a growth fund fully dedicated to our portfolio with the idea that we'll continue backing companies that we continue to see a lot of upside, but they are ready to grown up, to mature for the early stage funds. And like Valor, we are now kind of like a multi-stage firm doing early stage and and growth. When um when a startup gets a evaluation of 1 billion, it's called a unicorn.

Did you ever um founded a unicorn? And what was the field, the sector? For me, it's quite a straightforward uh because we Yes. Two years of of the fund, I I wish I hope so at some point uh to get some of the outliers, but I mean like uh not not not yet. I mean like uh the feeling would be, I guess, amazing, but I mean like obviously uh something that I read recently about it is not just invested in an unicorn.

That means like uh the the the the unicorn has to last over time. And I think that is the the most difficult part, right? Yeah, we we invested one unicorn. Uh was in 2013. It's Loggi.

It's a logistics company. Uh not the first Our first funds were agnostic. And Loggi actually is the second uh uh checks of the firm. The first check was in 2011, a edutech company called uh Ker Education. It's still alive.

Log is the second one, so a unicorn, $2 billion last valuation paper. And now it's a different story. But it's a great company. It's still a logistics company. It's completely massive.

They track especially the small the small e-commerces in Brazil helping them to deliver the package on time. It's a great company, but it still have a long way. But still lasting, so 13 years. That's amazing. Yeah, we're still there.

My partner is still on the on the on the on the board. And it's amazing to see a company from from zero. We were the first check ever pre-seed 2013. And I'm still there. We made several investments along the way.

So really interesting to see the whole journey, which is already which is is still would take long time to and I expect to to be a huge business. No, amazing. Yeah. So Valor has invested in about one in every five unicorns in in LatAm, about 20% of them. And I mean, when you think about Latin America in general, and that's why I think going back to the Brazil point, that's why I think it's so interesting because the the venture ecosystem in Brazil started across several different industries, but over time like most of the six very successful companies and the outsized returns were focused more on fintech and and crypto and blockchain.

And we believe that this new wave is also going to come with that. So over time our unicorns also became a little bit more skewed towards towards fintech. So we've invested in Stone, also back in 2014, the the merchant acquirer, then in CloudWalk, the the second generation merchant acquirer as well. And then several other companies like Coinbase, Tortola, Olist, several others, Gympass, which is now Wellhub. And and yeah, hopefully many more to come.

Congrats. Yeah, in our case we invested on a number of unicorns across the globe. I have the numbers fresh for Latin America. So, out of 16 investments on the early stage we made, four became unicorns. And out of the first fund which is 2016 vintage uh which is more mature, we made six investments and three became unicorns.

So, Creditas which we called out the first institutional round. They're the largest secured lending platform in Latin America doing home equity loans, auto equity loans, and payroll loans. Uh secondly, Neon which we invested on the Series A. They have more than 20 million accounts serving banking needs for consumers in Brazil. And the company, even though already being at a very large scale, continues to compound at 50% growth rates which just demonstrates the depth of the Brazilian market as it comes to financial services.

And the third one from this fund is Konfio, which is a banking platform also doing software and payments for SMEs in Mexico. Um and hopefully many more to come including companies that are being created today or very recently in this new blockchain uh thesis that we've been excited about very very recently. Thank you. And if you have someone in LPs that would like to be looking for funds, what would be your tip? Like what they need to put attention to in your expertise?

I'd say just building a great business and not caring much about the details of the fundraising process. If you have a great business, this will be figured out. And you have our names here. Just send us a message on LinkedIn and we'd to chat and learn more about what you guys are doing. Couldn't agree more.

I think that uh when you have a great business and great idea and great ambition, great execution, I think that the other things just come along. So, so yeah, uh if if you want to build a great business with us, just just send me a message. More than happy to talk after the the talk as well. Yeah, just a word that we we invest in a story. So, it's important to know us and have for us to know you and talk and then create the the relationship and see things are going and I will have to adjust in a in a in a in a in a point of of time.

Going to be started on the way. So, it's important to start soon the relationship with the funds. Uh and happy to talk with anyone who want to build on blockchain. Yeah, I agree with them. I mean, like something uh that I I would recommend is also like starting chatting to to the VC people just to to know where we are, where you are, uh the different opportunities that it might uh come up in the in the future.

And also, uh something that's uh I'd like to to see on the decks is again, uh what they said, a real-life problem solved. And something that is clear to to understand, not not so that convoluted, nothing to do with tokens and to launch a TGE or whatever it is. I mentioned it before. I get that uh all the time. That's something that's uh is is straightforward.

That's the most important. And at some point for us in proceed, if a nice storytelling about the team and how you met and how you're going to build it, that that's the the key for us. That's it. So, I'm happy to get any any decks or anything from from the audience, for sure. Thank you very much, each one of you.

Thank you very much

Thank you. for you and our time is up. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Woo!