We're thrilled to announce the successful close of our funding round, with an incredible $5M led by Andreesen Horowitz.
I am Valentina Valencia. Last year I raised a $5M seed round to solve issues around the following question: Why do startups have a harder time raising debt than equity?
I would like to share with you the journey from what sparked the idea and the vision that we are building today.
I started my career at PayJoy in 2016, an emerging market fintech company. Having built solid experience in both operations and finance, I made the move to Architect Capital, one of the first debt funds to structure credit facilities for startups in Latin America. I became intimately familiar with the complexities of the private debt market, so much that I understood why startups have an incredibly hard time raising debt or are even reluctant to search for it. Fortunately, the rabbit hole I put myself into triggered some ideas that lead us here today.
In a nutshell, I identified a market opportunity to bring transparency to all players, and to improve the operational efficiency with which fintech companies, debt providers and financial intermediaries manage and underwrite credit facilities. Right now more than ever, companies in LatAm need access to viable credit solutions that support innovation and different business models, and we, at Vaas, are on the mission of building the necessary infrastructure to make this happen. VC investments in the region reached $20 billion last year, making it necessary for many capital-intensive companies to have access to debt.
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led the seed round earlier this year, with participation from Nazca, Maya Capital, ClockTower Ventures, Latitud and Marathon Ventures. Rappi's co-founder Sebastian Mejia, Coinbase's board member Gokul Rajaram, Architect Capital's CEO James Sagan, Tacora Capital's CEO Keri Findley, Andres Bilbao from Rappi, Truora's CEO Daniel Bilbao, CEO of Fairplay Manolo Atala, and CEO of Habi Brynne McNulty are some of the angel investors that also participated in the round.
At Vaas, we are on a mission to improve access to debt for startups and make the private credit market more transparent and efficient.
