The Case for Bridging LatAm and Silicon Valley

From ideation to scale, building a startup isn’t for the faint of heart – now add to that Latin America, and you’re playing the startup game on hard mode.

LatAm is known for both its vibrant culture and unique challenges: limited access to capital, inequality gaps, unclear regulatory landscapes, and more.

Yet these outsized challenges also create outsized opportunities for bold founders willing to solve these massive, pressing problems.

We’ve helped hundreds of pre-founders through our Latitud Fellowship, and stayed even closer to dozens of early-stage founders through Latitud Fund I and Fund II.

In these years, we’ve seen how success for regional entrepreneurs often depends on bridging LatAm and Silicon Valley — connecting local expertise with global resources.

Here’s why: Latin American startups without local and international footing will most likely fail.

Harsh? Yes. But it’s harsher to figure it out alone.

We all know Silicon Valley is the Mecca for tech entrepreneurship. Just like a self-fulfilling prophecy, most of the know-how and playbooks remain in that region. It’s an unfortunate reality that most people will never have access to that knowledge and experience. Even more than that: the mere air one breathes in the Bay Area is full of energy and glimpses of the future.

But let’s be honest here: what works in the US doesn’t necessarily work in Latin America.

We need local teeth to take the best-in-class learnings in SV and then adapt, tropicalize to the realities of LatAm's dynamic markets. It’s the old guidance followed by your Mexican dad of “tener colmillo”, or by your Brazilian tio of “ser macaco velho”.

There are almost no resources that give you the best of both worlds. Before the Latitud Fellowship, that is.

Our program for the ideation stage kicks off by connecting you to the reality of building in LatAm, shared by top people who’ve actually done it before.

It’s not pretty talk and a bunch of fluff – it’s raw experience, handed down only to the 10 pre-founders who get selected for this Fellowship.

Our boots-on-the-ground team across Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and beyond, plus our even wider network of top founders and operators, brings unfair insights into LatAm’s unique dynamics:

• Get tailored guidance. Our deep understanding of regional markets will help you refine customer-centric strategies.
• Navigate local challenges. We’ll help you overcome common roadblocks, such as early distribution and recruiting.
• Leverage established networks. Our strong relationships with local stakeholders can give a boost to your initial operations.

By the end of eight intense weeks of learning and building, we’ll spend a week in Silicon Valley. There, we’ll connect you to top investors, operators, and mentors. You’ll get to not only learn but also pitch your now-refined idea to the world’s most elite technologists and financiers.

Having international VCs in the cap table brings scale and perspective to LatAm startups:

• Global market access. You’ll see more opened doors and enhance your credibility with reputable backers.
• Significant capital. It’s more common for international VCs to support ambitious scaling and later-stage growth.
• Operational know-how that’s best-in-class. Through previous checks, these investors have accessed proven strategies for building globally-competitive operations.

You can lead a stronger startup ecosystem in LatAm

For the region’s tech companies, success lies in blending local and global support. Bridging LatAm and Silicon Valley equips founders to both tackle regional challenges more successfully and achieve true global impact.

For that, we want you to leverage Latitud. Know more about our ideation-stage fellowship.