Let's get to know each other. Take your time to explore our thinking, how we operate and our investment process.
There are three concrete aspects we like to see in a startup:
Great founding teams: venture capital is a people business. Our main job as investors (at least the way we see it at Canary) is not to be the smartest ones in the room, but to know a talented entrepreneur when we see one. What makes a great founding team? Just check the next FAQ.
BIG markets (and potential to scale fast!): we look for startups that can grow at least 50-100x within the 8-10 years fund lifetime. If your market opportunity (or future vision) is not big enough to accommodate that, it might be an issue for us.
Healthy cap table: founders should keep ownership of their companies and avoid excessive dilution at an early stage. Ideally, the founding team should have at least a 50% stake after the series A. Too much dilution might be an issue for us.
If you wish to learn more about what makes a healthy cap table, check this Q&A with our partner Florian Hagenbuch (in Portuguese).
Published originally on June 27th, 2019.
Updated on April 24th, 2020.
These are the most important things we learned over our years as investors and entrepreneurs when it comes to founding teams:
1. Founder-market-fit: if you are going to spend the next years fighting for your business to succeed, you need to line up extremely well with the upcoming market challenges. A great founder will choose wisely what ideas to pursue, taking into consideration his/her knowledge and passion about the business model, clients and sector. This matters a lot, more than the business idea itself, and should be as important to the founders as it is to investors. A founder with a good market fit will feel more empathetic towards customers, more thoughtful about the market dynamics and will probably be more resilient throughout the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey.
2. Execution: we need to see grit. We need to see hustle. The best founders we know won’t let it go and strongly believe they are the best people to solve the problems they are tackling. They understand early in their journey this path comes with a lot of sacrifices and they are prepared to trade the short term for the long term. We are looking for obsessed founders who are willing to go as far as it takes, rather than great ideas that are in fashion.
3. Selling the dream: as a startup founder, you are selling your dream to a lot of different people, all the time. Whether recruiting and motivating your team, pitching and updating investors or giving interviews to the press you will have to listen well and, at the same time, inspire them that your product is all they have ever wanted.
We are not talking about inventing stories. You won’t conquer people’s hearts by lying. What we are talking about is: (a) putting yourself in other people’s shoes. Listen carefully to understand what is best for their business (b) the ability to deliver a well-constructed, genuine and compelling narrative and c) being trustworthy. When people trust and respect you they will listen to what you are selling.
Published originally on June 27th, 2019.
Updated on May 27th, 2021.
We partner with founders at the first venture capital round, from pre-Power Point to Series A. We’ve invested in rounds as small as USD 250K and as large as USD 15M+. We prefer and typically lead the first round, investing the largest amount of capital and defining the legal terms.
Updated on August 12th, 2021.
No. We are currently looking for the best founders in Latam.
Updated on July 14th, 2021.
We are sector and model agnostic, but we invest in companies that can scale exponentially and take a huge market fast. Technology (not necessarily pure tech!) is what allows such an exponential growth.
Updated on February 14th, 2020.
Not necessarily. First, we’d like to know more about you. We prefer warm intros, i.e., if you know somebody on our network that can introduce you to us (and we strongly recommend you go for it).
If, after this intro, we see that your startup meets most of the criteria we’re looking for, we’ll schedule a few calls with you to learn more about you and your business. Before covid-19, we’d have a face-to-face meeting as we evolve along the process, but times are changing and we have closed a lot of deals 100% online since March 2020.
Published on December 4th, 2019.
Updated on November 25th, 2021.
No. We learned from the best founders that execution is what makes a business successful, not the idea behind it and an NDA aims to preserve an idea.
Also, imagine how much time it will take simply between the back and forth between lawyers until all NDA clauses are good to both sides. Now, multiply that by the dozens of startups we talk to every month… It would take way too much time and money. We would rather spend those talking to founders, organizing events, strengthening our network and helping our companies take off.
BTW: if you think you need an NDA before pitching your idea, we encourage you to read this article and think a little more about it.
Updated on February 14th, 2020.
Yes.
Our model is to invest in great people and not only in great business models. When entrepreneurs come to us, they might not be sure of how their business will evolve over time (we are an early stage fund after all). So there’s a chance they will become competitors of entrepreneurs we have already invested in. We don’t have (nor wish to have) control over that. We will, however, tell you if we are investing in a competitor. You can be sure that we never, ever share data or any sensible information between companies. Chinese wall mode is always on as we fiercely guard our reputation and never put it at risk.
Updated on February 14th, 2020.
Yes, this is actually a core part of our investment strategy.
So much that in our term sheet, we require the right to keep our equity stake in a follow-on round (also known as “pro rata“). In a subsequent up equity round, led by a top tier fund, we intend to exercise that right and will often times seek to increase our stake (aka “super pro rata”).
To be clear, it is not a part of our strategy to participate in bridge or inside rounds so you should generally not count on us in those situations.
If you wish to learn more, just download our standard term sheet: here .
Published originally on June 27th, 2019.
Updated on February 14th, 2020.
Just to make things easier, cheaper and faster for both sides.
It is worth knowing that we only invest in offshore structures (LLC, Cayman, etc.) and not in Brazilian S.A and LTDAs. No worries, we can help you set these up in no time and at a reasonable cost 😉
Published originally on June 27th, 2019.
Updated on February 14th, 2020.
Access to markets and expertise: our network is our most important asset. And we have not only access to the best tech founders in Latam, but also to several key people across industries and sectors. Connections include potential customers and investors, suppliers, business partners, game-change talent and several others, looking for win-win relationships.
Corporate Connections: We are your first head of biz dev. We’ll scale your ‘warm’ access to potential customers and strategic partnerships.
Fundraising: We are your thought partner, your pitch listener, your CRM, your designer, your source of market information. We’re hands on to help our partners on raising subsequent VC rounds, reducing the information asymmetry of the market.
Hiring: we are constantly mapping the best talent available to create a network that can help the portfolio companies to attract experts and key-hires for their open positions. We also collaborate with our companies to create a culture, based on data and relationships, of how they can build and grow with their teams. Apart from that, we team up with the best universities in Brazil and US to help startups get in touch with fresh and talented undergraduates, throughout our Summer Internship Program.
Communications: Do you want to spread the word of your company? We can help you to get in touch with journalists and make the headlines. More than that, we can help you create a comms culture inside your startup, hiring talent or connecting you to the best agencies around.
Knowledge: We organize plenty of events during the year. Not that “inspirational-motivational” kind of meetings… we are all about generating excellent and useful content for entrepreneurs. For example, if we are going to organize a meetup about how to best manage an engineering team, we are going to have an expert as brilliant as the Instagram co-founder as a speaker (true story, by the way). And we also run a lot of surveys to help our founders with benchmarks on different subjects — from marketing tools to Compensation for C-Levels.
Published originally on June 27th, 2019.
Updated on July 14th, 2021.
Yes. We have a plug and play system with the world’s most renowned VC lawyers and accountants. The same happens with banks and providers abroad. All of them have a special (and below market cost) package for Canary startups.
Updated on July 14th, 2021.
Of course!
We have already invested in quite a few powerpoint-stage businesses.
However, a few validations before investing are always helpful. Are the founders full-time on the business? Have the business hypotheses been tested? Has the startup made its first hirings?
Also, we love data so we will probably ask you to send us some info on your business – it will be easier for us to validate your convictions on the market or the business model with them.
Updated on October 15th, 2021.
It depends: after you reach out to us, we need to understand more about you, your co-founders and your business. After that, we might schedule a call or face-to-face meeting with you, in order to ask a few more questions.
We discuss new investments on a weekly basis. Our goal is to make investment decisions in a few weeks at most.
Published originally on June 27th, 2019.
Updated on November 25th, 2021.
If you are a founder, it’s good for you to know that we prefer warm intros, so if you know anyone who can make that referral, you should go for it.
For institutional information, you can also send an email to info@canary.com.br.
For press inquiries, go for press@canary.com.br.
And in case you’re looking for a job position in any of the startups we’ve invested in, please contact talent@canary.com.br.
Published originally on June 27th, 2019.
Updated on November 25th, 2021.
