Helping founders grow faster.
We invest in the world's fastest-growing tech startups and help them grow through in-house expertise and resources for product and engineering
Our thesis
We invest in tech startups that show evidence of product-market-fit in the U.S. market and partner with them to scale their engineering team in Latin America while removing obstacles to growth.
Our Team
Our team includes former serial entrepreneurs, business executives and engineers with expertise in Data Science, Talent Relations, Marketing, Finance, Hardware and Software Engineering.
General Partner
Over a decade creating, growing, investing and selling technology companies. Previously founder of Grooveshark, Onswipe, PulsoSocial and Socialatom Group.
Value-add: Andres focuses on helping founders survive crisis. From founder disputes to litigation and everything in between.
Partner
Erik is an expert in finance, data science and business strategy whose experience includes helping leading financial institutions respond to major crises in the global markets, building new companies and organizations, contributing to finance literature and facilitating international business ties.
Value-add: Erik works with founders in all aspects of their business development, financial and fundraising strategies plus assistance in Data Science for those startups in that field.
Partner
Serial entrepreneur and Electrical Engineer with over two decades of extensive executive experience creating, growing and selling technology companies in Latin America, Asia and the U.S.
Value-add: Hernando helps founders manage their growth in multiple geographies, advising in operations, legal and financial matters. Hernando can also provide assistance in hardware manufacturing, supply chain management, fin-tech, and security related companies.
Venture Partner
Jessica Mercedes is an expert in Technical Recruiting, Developer and Public Relations for tech companies both in Latin America and in the U.S. Previously, Jessica has worked with firms like Google Developers, Rackspace, Netflix, Corona and Pepsi.
Value-add: Jessica assists founders with their technical and executive recruiting, marketing, public and developer relations .
Process
How we work.
Value-add
In addition to funding, we partner with entrepreneurs to help them scale their growth and product while also removing obstacles to growth along the way through support in five more areas:
- Public Relations & Marketing
- Business Development & Sales
- Finance & Fundraising
- Product & Engineering
- Executive & Technical Recruiting
Founders we seek to back
We are more likely to invest if your team has the following:
- You are — or your co-founder is — able to write software.
- You are solving a problem you’ve lived yourself.
- You’ve managed to build and launch the product.
- Your product is getting market adoption in the U.S.
Investment Process
We strive to make it from first meeting or call to money in the bank in less than three weeks. We've been entrepreneurs before and we know how painful the process of fundraising can be, which is why we make an effort to give you an answer as quickly as possible without wasting your time. These are traditionally the steps we take for each deal.
- Pitch Meeting (Call or in-person): This is when you meet someone in our team and it is the opportunity for us to learn from you as well as for us to pitch you. If we agree that we are a fit we, schedule a second call with at least one additional team member. At this point we'll ask you to send us any material that supports the fit with our investment thesis.
- Partner Meeting (Video-call): After reviewing all the materials you send our way, we hold this call to dive deeper into the progress of the company and the founding team.
- Diligence Q&A (e-mail): At this stage we ask you to send us whichever diligence material you have already prepared for investors, usually includes cap-table and previous employee and investor agreements. If we need clarifications we will ask them for them via e-mail.
- Decision Made (e-mail): Our decision to invest or to pass will be sent via e-mail. If we pass, it will include the reasons why we felt it is not a fit at that moment. If we decide to invest, we request the investment agreement via electronic signature and wire-transfer instructions.
Investment Terms
We can invest up to $5 million in aggregate in any given company and we are limited to investing in valuations or caps under $30 million. Normally, we start by investing tickets of $50,000 in any first transaction with the intention of additional follow-on investment in subsequent rounds. We don't normally lead rounds so we align ourselves with the terms set by the lead or first investor. After we make a decision to invest, we sign the term sheet, SAFE, KISS or Convertible Note within a day of receiving it and make a Wire-transfer within 10 days.
Portfolio
Meet our awesome startups!
Audio based group running classes
Studio makes audio group running classes that pair motivating instructors with killer playlists.
Invest in Art Online
Arthena gives you access to an alternative asset class with the highest barrier to entry and strongest historical returns. We invest in the most liquid segment of the art market, with the lowest volatility, yielding tremendous growth uncorrelated to traditional investments.
Print and Assemble Electronics in Minutes
Building electronic devices has always been a compromise between cost, flexibility and time. BotFactory is born with the idea of providing all three, anywhere and to everyone.
Art streamed to your wall via connected canvas.
Meural is the game-changing internet-connected digital canvas + content platform to discover, experience, and consume art and photography.
Presentations that design themselves
Create slides in a fraction of the time you would normally spend on Power Point. By separating content from design, users can focus on what they want to say while the rest is taken care of automatically.
Booking platform for creative talent.
Platform for hiring models, photographers, stylists, hair and make-up artists directly from your phone, bypassing traditional agencies, saving 30% or more.
IoT App Builder
Helping makers and engineers around the world to easily build applications for the Internet of Things.
A Better Way to Build Sites
A full-featured CMS for your static site with support for Jekyll, Hugo and Git
Connected Mobility Products
World's first hardware-agnostic technology platform for action sports.
Legal analytics platform
Giving lawyers an advantage in litigation with competitive data-driven intelligence.
Event Discovery in Real-Time
Get inspired to get out of the house and enjoy real experiences with real people.
Professional Platform for Nurses
We are a team of Nurses, Doctors, Technologists and Executives dedicated to help nurses find jobs that they love.
Autonomous delivery infrastructure
The company with the most AI and robot driven deliveries in the world.
Pachama
Forest Carbon Credits market
Restoring the Forests to Solve Climate Change
Connect
Firstrock Capital © 2017