The way to a VC's heart

Last week's lesson was serious business:

VCs can rule out founders for their corporate structure, or give 'em hell to change the one they have.

Then we noticed that, while we meant to show how you could scare off VCs, we might have ended up scaring YOU instead of them. 😅

Let's change the wording. Nothing to be scared of, but in a scenario where raising a round is getting harder, precautions must be taken.

Oh, if only there was a way of tilting the odds in your favor… Welp, Brazilian founder, there is, and it's called a Delaware Tostada (aka a Delaware LLC.)

(Tranquilidad comunidad de habla hispana, estamos trabajándole en español también. Deveritas)

Why a Tostada might be for you?

Let's say you’re looking to raise a US$100k round and your investors want you to set up in a country they trust before they can wire you any money.

You look into the Cayman Sandwich and BOOM: it costs upwards of US$6k to set up (or $30k+ if you don't do it with Latitud), and an extra US$5k+ each year to maintain.

👊 This is where you get passive-aggressive with us on social media. But ok, we understand, because if you're just starting, that's a big chunk of your check gone.

You won't digest the whole sandwich at the start, but a tostada is much much lighter.

Having a Delaware Tostada means adding a Delaware LLC on top of your local operating company in Brazil. It's the Cayman Sandwich without the top bun (which you can add later).

Brazilian founders will typically need to add a Delaware LLC to their local company and cook themselves a Delaware Tostada when they're ready to raise angel investment, a pre-Seed, or a Seed round.

If you're trying to keep your figure – whatever this figure is – a Tostada lets you:

• Have a setup in a jurisdiction VCs know and love.
• Avoid being taxed in a country you have 0 operations in.
• Lay the foundation for an easier Series A and beyond, because flipping your  Delaware LLC into a full Cayman Sandwich is easy peasy. You'll have it when you need it.

Btw, AI gets it 😎

Tech Talks #2: Google's journey from Java to Kotlin

Kotlin enthusiasts, this is your talk.

Curious to know why Google is betting on Kotlin with Android development? And how on earth have they handled the migration from Java?

Come find out!

👉 James Ward, Kotlin Product Manager at Google, will be chatting with our CTO, Yuri Danilchenko, next Monday 13th on the second edition of Tech Talks by Latitud.

They'll be talking about:

• The challenges faced by Google during this process;
• ​How they’ve made it a successful change.

RSVP and find out if Kotlin is THE language your new project was waiting for 🫶

Fundraising recipes by Latitud 👩‍🍳

🌶️ Recipe #2: Understand your market better than everyone

If you can't explain your business or market with confidence, you are a red flag for the VCs. That means, no check.

How to work against this? Try the Idea Maze.

This is an amazing framework shared by Gabriel Vasquez (a16z) for understanding how well you know your business, products, and market.

👉 The startup journey is like a maze with different paths. Should you turn right or left?

If you enter the maze at ground level, page blank, you won't have the answer. You'll feel around blindly, with no luck.

Successful founders analyze past casualties of players battling the same maze, train their top-down view, and finally draw a map of the maze.

The earlier you can have that guide and the more you update and refine it, the better. That way, you'll have a clear view of your business/market and become the master of the maze – and by that, we mean the master of your startup's journey.

Hot News Ahoy! ⛵

👁️ Scale-Up Endeavor 2023.1

Endeavor has selected 59 Brazilian startups for its 2023 Scale-Up Program. Some of our Portfolio Companies have made the list, and we couldn’t be happier for them!

Shoutout to the teams of NG.Cash, Zarv, Bamboo, Linkana, Unbox, Liti, KillB!

👏 Immersion experience

Fundadores.VC will host a 2-days immersion experience in São Paulo on April 12th and 13th. This event will bring together founders fundraising pre-seed and seed rounds, and Latitud will be there to spice things up with some amazing mentors 😎. Register here with the code LATITUD20OFF (YES, discounts!) and go get everything you need to do a successful round.

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-> Every time one of your friends subscribes to our Newsletter, a startup gets the right corporate structure and saves a lot of money ✨

So ask them to subscribe!

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