What women-led startups in Latin America lost and gained during the recent tech downturn
There are very few female founders or C-suite executives in the region. In 2021, female founding teams received only $38 million of the $14 billion in funding that was deployed in the region — less than 1%. Much of this problem is because most investors are men. You see this everywhere: from very visible regional VC firms to other more low-profile ones. They usually don’t support diverse teams during the startups’ early stages; there are basically no female mentors or investors that can help the teams so early on. Women show up when the startups start growing and making headlines and suddenly people say they’re a boys’ club. There are large companies today that did have women in their funding teams, like Kavak, but that’s rarely the case.
That’s part of why I joined Tarasa Collective. It’s the first women-only angel syndicate in Latin America. We have women investors based all over the region with very diverse profiles, coming from VC firms like Brazilian fund Monashees or companies like Duolingo. All of us at Tarasa have entered the region’s boys’ club because they’re our colleagues and co-founders, so we can support women who are new to the ecosystem by helping them with introductions and protecting them once they’re inside. Our investment parameters are also strict. During the height of the VC boom in the region, someone with just a PowerPoint presentation and an idea was able to raise money. Now, we’re really looking for companies that already have traction and a proven track record — and they don’t need to be exclusively founded by women. They just need to be making a conscious effort to promote diversity in their teams.
