Fabiola Quinzanos, Monashees Partner on Fintech, Climate and Consumer

Grace Gong (0:01)

Hi, Fabiola, welcome to Venture with Grace.

Fabiola Quinzanos (0:05)

Thank you. Great to be here.

Good morning.

Grace Gong (0:09)

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Visit nebius.com or nebius.com/startup to learn more. Okay, I want to start with like, I feel like since we first met at the dinner, I feel like you guys have such a unique story, both from Monashees as well as yourself coming from abroad. Maybe we could start with like, since you have worked on various different finance positions at different funds, and now you are a partner at Monashees, maybe we could start with what were some core lessons that you've learned early on in your career, kind of shaping to who you are today.

Fabiola Quinzanos (1:12)

I think it's a great question.

Honestly, I think it's more about being prepared and open mind, right?

I started doing growth equity and private equity, and I went to Stanford to do my MBA thinking that I didn't want to switch industries, that I really wanted this. But then when I met the Monashees team and I learned what they were trying to build in Latin America and really how they wanted to position the region at a global level, I was convinced that that was a great opportunity for me, that was transitioning into venture capital, which is investing, but it's so different from doing private equity. So I think the lesson would be have an open mind and be open to change if it makes sense.

Grace Gong (2:05)

For sure. So you guys have invested in a lot of US companies, but also a lot of Latin America based companies like Ratpie and stuff like that. So maybe we'll talk about the investing strategy and maybe the background of the fund as well. For sure.

Fabiola Quinzanos (2:24)

I think this is a great question.

So Monashees was the pioneer of venture capital in the region. If you look at Silicon Valley, the industry has been going for more than 70 years, but in Latin it has been going only for 20 years.

Monashees was started with the premise that what had happened in Silicon Valley could happen in Latin America. So back in 2005, Eric Asher and Fabio Higuel began Monashees.

Back in the day, it was just a Brazilian firm. They were only looking into Brazil, which makes sense, right? Since it was the first VC, that's where the industry and the ecosystem developed. So they started looking into Brazil. It took a while for the industry to take off. After, let's say, this was 2005 In 2016, they started to see other great teams emerging in other geographies. So the first phase of Monashees was putting Latam or Brazil in the global map. And the second phase was to put the region in the global map. So that's when we invested in Rapid Sidron, which was one of the region's flagships for many years. This was a Colombian based company. So that was the first investment out of Brazil.

And then I joined Monashees in 2021 to open the Mexico office. The firm has already started to invest in Mexico, which is the ecosystem that took longer to develop. It's so important to have a boot on the ground. And while the region is quite homogenous, you still need the local nuances, right? Like the local network, the local language, the connections, the cultural affinity. Although we are all in Latin America quite similar, there are some differences. So that's when I joined the firm. And we opened the Mexico office. And it was in 2020 that we started to see a little bit of a market pool in what we call Global Atam. So we have these Latin American founders building global businesses and many of these were outside of Latin America.

These founders wanted Monashees in the cap table because very early on, you need a partner that is hands on, that understands you, that really is your partner, right? Like it's so hard to be an entrepreneur. And having someone you trust in the cap table is so crucial. So that's why we wanted to invest in these Latin American founders building global businesses outside of TAM and September last year, we relocated the Mexico office to San Francisco to double down on this strategy because more and more we're seeing many of these founders from Latin America coming to the US to start companies but also in the context of AI, we want to be here to help transfer all of what we're seeing. You know this, you're here too. Things move so fast that if you're not here, it's so difficult to re-grasp all of what's going on. That's also the reason why we started the office here as well.