DILA III: portfolio overview

Venture capitalists (VCs) invest through closed funds. These are investment vehicles of a certain size that are committed by their investors for a specific amount of time. Since they are closed funds, they cannot be reopened for new investors once the fund has closed and the lifetime of these vehicles has a certain expiration. VCs must invest the committed capital in a certain time period (usually 4 years) and can only stay in those companies for a certain amount of time as well (typically 8 years).

In DILA, we have invested three funds over the last 8 years. DILA III is a fund that we raised during 2017 with a strategy of investing in approximately 20 companies. We would have three years to find those companies and an additional year to keep investing in that portfolio. We were able to raise 1B Mexican pesos (approximately US$50M) and started investing in July 2017. The plan was to find and initially invest in those 20 companies by July 2020 and would have until July 2021 to keep investing in those companies.

Fast forward 2.5 years: We have analyzed more than 1,500 companies and have invested in exactly 20, as planned. We have invested 60% of the fund, and while we still have the remaining 40% of the fund to invest, we have decided to keep that money to invest only in those 20 companies. That means we will no longer be investing in new companies out of DILA III and must now analyze our current portfolio in order to best allocate our resources within our portfolio companies.

Let’s take a macro perspective of our portfolio:

• 20 companies.
• 46 founders. 40 men and 6 women. 23 Mexican, 4 Spanish, 4 Colombian, 4 from the US, 3 Venezuelan, 2 Peruvian, 2 from Ecuador, 1 Portuguese.
• Our portfolio companies are headquartered in Mexico City (12), Los Ángeles (2), Barcelona, Madrid, Bogotá, Miami, Lima and Monterrey.
• These companies have commercial presence in Mexico, USA, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Spain, among others and will keep expanding worldwide.

I know I am speaking subjectively when I say that I am very excited about the portfolio we have created, I am very proud of the way we were able to deliver on our strategy and am extremely optimistic about the future of each and every one of our companies. As always, I want to take a moment to thank all of the founders that opened up and invited us their projects and their lives, we are forever grateful. The best is yet to come.