Marathon Ventures Debuts $26M Emerging Markets Startup Growth Fund

Colombia-based venture capital firm Marathon Ventures has closed its first fund of $26 million, according to a Wednesday (Feb. 2) announcement that says the money will be used to invest in close to 20 business-to-business (B2B) platforms in FinTech, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and marketplaces.

The fund will bring “a concentrated, value-add approach to seed capital in the region,” according to the Marathon Ventures announcement, which said the VC firm will work with the companies to build partnerships, conduct research, connect them to advisors and investors and recruit talent.

“Many people praise the technology adoption driven by the pandemic for the spike in investment in Latin America, but really it’s the first cohort of startup alumni and experienced founders with a history of formidable execution that helped global funds warm up to the region,” Pablo Navarro, co-founder and operating partner of Marathon Ventures, said in the announcement.

“Marathon’s mission is to maximize the potential of talent in emerging markets,” he said. “Our approach is to invest in promising operators, at the earliest stage by matching them with some of the best companies in the ecosystem, while at the same time helping our select group of portfolio companies build teams and products faster.”

The new fund has invested in eight B2B platforms, which represents a 2x return on the total fund size, per the announcement.

“The first wave of successful companies in Latin America digitized the consumer and we believe the next wave of successful companies will build business-facing solutions that help leapfrog the competition,” Alejandro Echavarria, co-founder and managing partner of Marathon Ventures, said in the notice.

“For example, we believe small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) are sleeping giants and we are very excited about solutions that leverage SaaS and B2B marketplaces to enable them for success,” he said.

Related: B2Brazil Debuts Marketplaces in Mexico, Chile and Colombia

Last week, B2Brazil Serviços Interativos Ltda. launched online marketplaces in Chile (B2Chile), Colombia (B2Colombia) and Mexico (B2Mexico), noting the new trio relies on B2Brazil’s technology and database and the company has more than 20,000 users in the three countries where it debuted.

The new online marketplaces have connections to more than 200,000 companies and hundreds of thousands of products and leads for buying and selling. They all operate in four languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish and Chinese.