Ep. 50: Mexican unicorns show resilience & we have reason to celebrate!
Welcome to Miranda Scenius: Your weekly newsletter on technology, innovation, and startups in Mexico.
So far, so good. With the current funding environment, we all wondered which unicorns would fall first this year. Luckily, so far Mexican unicorns have shown resilience and found a lifeline in credit lines. While maybe some of them cannot claim their unicorn status anymore, but surviving this time of chaos is a great achievement and confirms that Latino founders never lack resilience and grit.
On the recognition front, not only can we celebrate startups raising funds, but we want to also highlight Finerio Connect's win in the Deloitte's LetStartup program, and Leadsales’ global expansion to India through the FalconX accelerator program.
Lastly, you’re reading the 50th episode of the newsletter. No milestones are too small! Let us know what you like most about Miranda Scenius and how we could improve by writing directly to this email. Vamos México!
Follow The Money
Unicorn Stori secures a US$50 million credit line
The FinTech known for its mission to provide credit card access to 80 million Mexicans, has recently secured a US$50 million credit line from Community Investment Management (CIM). For context, the startup reached a $1.2 billion 'unicorn' valuation in July 2022. The fresh capital is intended to sustain Stori's growth rate, facilitate more approvals, and enhance the credit lines of customers participating in the company's "Construye" program. Stori issued its first credit card two years ago, and now boasts 2 million users. If you want to learn more about Stori’s journey and mission, we covered them in one of our Deep Dives here.
Sector: FinTech - Challenger Bank
Total raised to date: US$225 million Equity + US$175 million Debt
Founders: Bin Chen, Marlene Garayzar, Nick Chen
Investors: Community Investment Management
InsurTech Airbag raises US$700,000
Airbag uses novel approaches and cutting-edge technology to address global traffic accidents. The investment will support Airbag's mission to enhance driver safety and operational efficiency for companies. The round was led by social impact venture capital fund Impacta VC.
Sector: InsurTech
Total raised to date: US$0.7 million
Founders: Adrián Trucios, Raúl Dávila, José Manuel Beauregard, Alonso Guzmán
Investors: Impacta VC, Carabela, Zev Siegl
Startups News
Uber for Business has joined forces with Mendel
Together they have worked on an intelligent invoice recovery system, to streamline invoice management for orders placed via the Uber Eats app. With this partnership, employees can simply send a photo of a restaurant-issued receipt to Mendel via WhatsApp, following which Uber Eats and the restaurant will process the billing, and Mendel will send the final invoice to the customer. The integration, which is live as of today, offers significant benefits like automated invoice recovery, time savings, and an integrated user experience.
Finerio Connect wins Deloitte's LetStartup program
This corporate entrepreneurship initiative, currently in its second iteration, encourages strategic alliances with startups in Latin America to create value and tackle business challenges. As the winner, Finerio Connect will gain the opportunity to expand its operations across 16 countries in the region, while also working alongside Deloitte to develop a business plan for marketing in Latin America.
Leadsales Expands to India via FalconX
Leadsales, known for creating the first CRM for WhatsApp in Mexico, is making its entry into India through the FalconX accelerator program. The expansion comes after Leadsales participated in Meta's acceleration program, "The Future of Messaging." With the test phase set for 2024, Leadsales aims to explore potential markets, translate their platform for local users, and identify businesses that can help scale their operations. FalconX, a global accelerator founded by five successful Indian entrepreneurs, will provide the necessary support and resources for Leadsales' global growth.
VC - Accelerators - M&A News
ALLVP unveiled a US$150 million fund for AI startup
Named "ALLVP IV", this new fund marks an important bet on the opportunity AI presents, predicting that their future investments will heavily feature AI components. The fund has already made its inaugural investment in Senzai, an AI-driven platform engineered to supercharge sales and marketing campaigns for businesses. Currently, ALLVP manages over $300 million in assets.
Rest of the World
Brazil's IDTech Unico Expands to Mexico
Unico is bringing its biometric data verification system, IDPay, to Mexico to address a significant challenge in e-commerce: purchase rejection. The system, developed in collaboration with financial institutions like Neon, C6, Digio, and XP, uses biometric data to verify identity during transactions. Unico's expansion follows a successful 8-month test with Mexican FinTechs, and the company is set to officially launch in the country in June.
Pablo Estevez is the co-founder of Gus.Chat a leading messaging AI company in LATAM and Europe. After leading Gus Chat to profitability and millions in quarterly revenue, he decided to join EY as their Managing Director for SaaS in LATAM. Today he leads EY's portfolio of SaaS and is constantly looking to meet founders that are doing interesting things in enterprise B2B. You can connect with him on Twitter.
What would you have liked to have known before starting your company?
When you start a company, generally one founder is focused on tech and the other is focused on sales and product. The first goal is to bring in a client so you work hard doing that and once you sell that first account people tend to keep trying to sell new accounts because that's the intuitive thing to do. The problem is that you're under the assumption that more leads is always better, but counterintuitively once you have 1-3 clients your job needs to switch to focusing on customer success. At that point, more leads equals more distractions from customer success. Your sale isn't over until you have a clear success case with the customer’s name on it and you've penetrated the account enough to upsell them from your initial billing. In those months you constantly get pressure from shiny accounts that want to pilot your product and people trying to introduce you to a CEO for a dream deal. If you want to scale you have to categorically say no to all those opportunities. If they wanted to meet you with no clients and no success cases, they'll want to meet you once you publish your business case on the first account. The only exception to this is if your first client is not a fit (i.e afraid of innovating.)
What do outsiders often fail to understand about your company?
People think messaging is about chatbots and automation, when it’s all about customer experience. A good messaging experience has a chatbot but it’s really about telling customers what they want to hear, when they want to hear it, and where they want to hear it. A good messaging experience can tell you when a product you wanted to buy is restocked and should send you your flight tickets five minutes before you arrive at the airport, so you don't need to search for them in your email. From the EY front, there is plenty of surprising tech coming out of EY that is affordable to the average company. I'm talking real SaaS doing around $1k USD in MRR.
What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours?
Art and enterprise sales. But never at the same time.
What’s the weirdest job you’ve ever had to do?
Pick up trash, I was on a trash truck, would love to say I learned a grandiose lesson, but I just learned to wash my hands well.
What makes you bullish on the Mexican startup ecosystem?
Huge market, amazing talent. When I started Gus eight years ago, finding tech talent for niche roles like Product Management or Customer Relations was almost impossible. You had to bring people in and train them by making them read a lot of content on the way to do the job. Today there are communities of people in every job and we've become world-class at doing any job at a start-up. Match that with 1 billion+ people in Latam with low penetration of tech and you have a perfect foundation for success.
See you for the next edition. Have a question or any feedback? Just hit reply. We'd love to chat!