1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jonathan Lewy of Investo (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Can you elaborate on what kinds of businesses you are investing in? Are these B2B or B2C?

Jonathan Lewy: We are agnostic. Initially, we invested in companies that had a global focus where we could help them enter the Latin American market. That was back in 2013. It was a way for us to be able to enter deals that were maybe difficult to enter but we could add value by helping them launch in Latin America. On the sector, we are completely agnostic. We have invested in different kinds of sectors.

Today, I would say we are more focused on bringing huge returns to our investors. It’s not really important if the market is US or Latin America. We’re trying to find the best potential deals to invest in as early as possible and also to bring a lot of value to

 the company we invest in. We believe that’s how you can attract good entrepreneurs.

Sramana Mitra: You don’t particularly have an investment thesis. You’re more of an opportunistic investor. Whatever deal comes to you, you look at them on a case by case basis.

Jonathan Lewy: We are more into looking at deals that we are interested in. I don’t believe we are opportunistic because we are usually one of the first teams to invest.

Sramana Mitra: Why is it difficult to be opportunistic if you’re the first ticket in?

Jonathan Lewy: I believe that being opportunistic is to hear about good deals and try to get in whereas we try to know the founding team. We usually like to work with them for a couple of weeks or months to see if can add value and if we are on the same page. If we think that we can bring value, then we try to close a deal with them.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about your current portfolio. What have you invested in? What are the highlights of your portfolio? How do you decide what you want to invest in?

Jonathan Lewy: We just need an agreement between me and my partner. It’s really quick. We analyze companies in certain sectors that we are interested in. We try to contact them. We are pretty aggressive in trying to get in contact with companies we like.

Sramana Mitra: That is more my question. What sectors are you interested in?

Jonathan Lewy: I get the confusion. It’s not that we are only investing in FinTech or specific sectors. We analyze certain trends. When we analyze trends, we try to find a company that is doing better on that trend, and then we contact them.

Sramana Mitra: Give me some examples of companies that you have invested in based on that principle.

Jonathan Lewy: We analyzed a company that is now in an accelerator in the US. We analyzed that there is a trend in the way of bringing goods to the end consumer and not using the traditional distribution model. There’s one company called Public Good that is trying to solve that. We reached out to him. We had a great connection and felt that we can bring a lot of value. We decided to jump in.

Sramana Mitra: What is the Latin America angle of this company?

Jonathan Lewy: This company isn’t in Latin America. In the future, it might be also the production and sourcing of the product. For the moment, they’re selling in the US.

Sramana Mitra: You said your fund is focused on Latin America.

Jonathan Lewy: In 2013, that’s how we started. We started to add value by helping companies from other accelerators and helping them enter the Latin American market. Four years onwards, we have been able to create a network. We do not want to be known as a fund that only invests in Latin America.

As I said, we want to invest in the best companies and bring a lot of value to them and to our investors. We do have a lot of Latin American companies. We try to find those companies early on. We invested in a company called Rappi. They ended up entering YC. They’re one of the fastest-growing companies in Latin America today.

In less than three years, they’re raising Series B. They have some of the best VCs in the US. It’s a successful Latin American company. They went to the US to get access to the right network which allowed them to have access to top-tier VCs. Especially when you’re coming from abroad, you need to have access to that if you want to create a huge company.

This segment is part 2 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jonathan Lewy of Investo
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