2022 — Year in Review

2022 was Epakon’s busiest year in terms of deal count and amount of capital deployed. Epakon deployed ~$1.5M, backing 16 companies across Marketplace/Logistics, SaaS, Fintech/Web3, and Consumer. Epakon maintained its commitment to investing in products and technologies that impact underserved communities across the U.S. and emerging markets — we have never been closer to our mission.

Vicente Zavarce (portfolio company Yummy’s CEO, left) and Diego Salas (Epakon’s Managing Partner, right) discuss Epakon’s portfolio strategy after presenting a case discussion on Yummy at Harvard Business School.

Highlighted Investments

MarketPlace/Logistics

• Pleni’s pre-seed

Diego Salas on an onsite visit to Pleni HQ to meet and give a speech to the company’s entire labor force

• TopShip’s seed
• Nook’s pre-seed

SaaS

• Fairo’s pre-seed
• Sync’s pre-seed
• Hue’s pre-seed
• Stack’s pre-seed

Fintech/Web3

• Bunker.Finance’s seed
• Treinta’s Series A

Consumer

• Railbird’s seed
• Discz’s seed

Highlighted Portfolio Company News

• PetsTable’s $2M seed
• Vikua’s $1M seed

Diego Salas and Juan Jose Pocaterra (Vikua’s CEO) have a firechat in Vikua’s HQ in July 2022.

• Yummy’s $47M series A extension

At Yummy’s HQ. Left to right: Ignacio Carrillo (CTO), Diego Salas, Jose Sucre (Venezuela CFO), Alejandro Sierra (Co-founder and General Manager), and Juan Vincentelli (Co-founder and Head of Partnerships).

• 3 Epakon Portfolio companies featured on Forbes 30u30! Shoutout to: Hue Beauty, Discz Music, and Yummy!
• Diego Salas elected to Venecapital Board (Association of Private Venezuelan Capital).
• Diego Salas was one of the key note speakers at the WaveTech Hub’s first Venezuela Private Capital conference.

Performance

Epakon continued to see strong performance across its portfolio companies driven by the performance of our 2020 investments. Our 2021 and 2022 investments will show a much larger MOIC as they develop their technologies and products, demonstrate PMF, and look for capital to scale in 2023. We are proud to say all of our portfolio companies remain alive today.

MOIC and IRR (and variations, including realized gains) are the main KPIs VCs are measured by.

Looking Ahead

While 2022 was a challenging year for startups, geopolitics, and the macroeconomy, we’re thrilled about the prospects of 2023 in Venture Capital, startups, and technology. For 2023, we believe:

1. It’s the best time to invest in startups since 2015. Valuations have come down quite reasonably, and the founder mentality has changed, given the scarcity of cash. It is time to go back to the basics, creating value-added products and technologies that are scalable, innovative, and have excellent unit economics from the get-go.
2. There are MASSIVE amounts of dry powder available to deploy. However, institutional investors and VCs are diving deeper into the businesses, focusing on the top line and the bottom line of the P&L, competition, industry and market comps, and the quality of the teams. There is no longer FOMO on large deals, and investors are taking their time to formulate their thesis and pitch to convince their ICs (investment committees).
3. The hot industries of 2023 are “open” finance, fintech, web3, generative AI, governance AI, logistics, and consumer. For open finance, fintech, and web3, investors will be focused on how innovative the technologies are, how much the firm can monetize from their users, and what the potential TAM is. For generative and governance AI, investors will focus on what’s novel -Chat GPT 4 or JasperAI comparables, and whether the industry they disrupt is willing to accept the changes — think about it as product market fit. For logistics and consumer, the focus will be on the core leverage of retention: user retention, revenue retention, LTV/CAC, frequency, AOV, and ARPU.

We’re excited to continue deploying capital in Latin America and the United States, with opportunistic deployments in alternative geos. Our industry focus remains our areas of expertise: marketplaces/logistics, fintech, SaaS, and Consumer.

If you’re a founder looking for guidance or capital, LP looking to invest with us, or a VC partner looking to co-invest, please feel free to reach out at diego@epakon.com.